Diploma Part 1/25
Diploma
When Rodney McKay received the document attesting to his third PhD, he shared the news with his cat, drank two bottles of a too-sweet Chardonnay, and woke up with a headache.
That next night, it was a bottle of Absolut. He considered adding orange juice, but even the knowledge that he’d probably be the only person on Earth ever to see his shiny new diploma hanging on the wall in the tidy frame he’d bought a week before wasn’t enough to push things that far.
But the next night he was back to the Chardonnay. Three bottles, this time, and when he woke up, it was Monday and there was no one to give a shit that he spent the morning puking and the afternoon in bed.
Tuesday he spent almost five full minutes staring into the mirror above his bathroom sink, sternly explaining to himself that he’d actually never been much of a drinker, and thirty-six was too old to be taking up a young man’s hobby. Alcohol would solve nothing, and he could do the math to prove it...but only when he was sober.
A few days later, he thought about that, and then about the mix of vodka and Chardonnay in his stomach, and then one more time about orange juice, or a nice slice of lemon chicken.
Or...
Fuck it.
Of all things, it was blasting the soundtrack to Purple Rain through noise-cancellation headphones for five repeats in a row, minus a piss break, that got him to contemplate life beyond the only ambition he’d mustered in the past three years: two PhDs, one in astrophysics, the other in electrical engineering. They were his consolation prize, his shaken fist to the universe to prove that, denied the one prize he was supposed to get in life, he’d make his own damn prizes, and fuck you very much.
And he hated Prince, but the baseline felt like a heartbeat.
And now he had his degrees, the ones that would do him any good, and though he’d long ago lost the ability to leave the house without the drugs - which were the worst thing ever, as they made him stupid - he could make a life now, working as a consultant with any one (or two) of a number of think tanks, corporations, multi-nationals, even the American government, which , damn them, always had the coolest toys. With his computers and the Internet and his plans to create the first-ever telehologram conferencing system, he’d be famous. He’d win the Nobel Prize, he’d save the world.
He just had to do it alone.
Second Part is Here
When Rodney McKay received the document attesting to his third PhD, he shared the news with his cat, drank two bottles of a too-sweet Chardonnay, and woke up with a headache.
That next night, it was a bottle of Absolut. He considered adding orange juice, but even the knowledge that he’d probably be the only person on Earth ever to see his shiny new diploma hanging on the wall in the tidy frame he’d bought a week before wasn’t enough to push things that far.
But the next night he was back to the Chardonnay. Three bottles, this time, and when he woke up, it was Monday and there was no one to give a shit that he spent the morning puking and the afternoon in bed.
Tuesday he spent almost five full minutes staring into the mirror above his bathroom sink, sternly explaining to himself that he’d actually never been much of a drinker, and thirty-six was too old to be taking up a young man’s hobby. Alcohol would solve nothing, and he could do the math to prove it...but only when he was sober.
A few days later, he thought about that, and then about the mix of vodka and Chardonnay in his stomach, and then one more time about orange juice, or a nice slice of lemon chicken.
Or...
Fuck it.
Of all things, it was blasting the soundtrack to Purple Rain through noise-cancellation headphones for five repeats in a row, minus a piss break, that got him to contemplate life beyond the only ambition he’d mustered in the past three years: two PhDs, one in astrophysics, the other in electrical engineering. They were his consolation prize, his shaken fist to the universe to prove that, denied the one prize he was supposed to get in life, he’d make his own damn prizes, and fuck you very much.
And he hated Prince, but the baseline felt like a heartbeat.
And now he had his degrees, the ones that would do him any good, and though he’d long ago lost the ability to leave the house without the drugs - which were the worst thing ever, as they made him stupid - he could make a life now, working as a consultant with any one (or two) of a number of think tanks, corporations, multi-nationals, even the American government, which , damn them, always had the coolest toys. With his computers and the Internet and his plans to create the first-ever telehologram conferencing system, he’d be famous. He’d win the Nobel Prize, he’d save the world.
He just had to do it alone.
Second Part is Here