Wise Men

Chapter 1

Genius, I think, is a fever; and ingenuity its symptoms. As curious as a plague, it infests the worthy and eats them whole with hot fangs, licks up the last of their entrails with a vermillion tongue, and smacks its lips when it’s done. There is no cure for the disease; and once everything about him is eaten away by the vile plague, it is only that very same plague which keeps him living. It shines like fever in his eyes, rots away at his mind until all that is left is one, fated cause which rips at his flesh like the disease at his guts.

I personally observed the slow descent into fever-induced insanity of Revelin Lesage.

Behind those hard eyes and cold expression lay a fire which threatened to burn him and everyone around him. I suppose I was the only person stupid enough to get close to him, but I think that by now I was oblivious to the heat of the fire at my face.

It goes without saying that Revelin was the most brilliant person I knew.

I hated to think anyone could trump the fierce determination with which he conquered his surroundings. Today, I was watching him intensely studying the anemic text of the out of date and yellowing textbook for Macroeconomics. His green eyes swept back and forth along the lines like a dog after a squirrel. His lips and mine were stained with the acrid taste of chicken soup that should have been coffee. Caffeine ran through our veins, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our blood was half coffee half red blood cells. Never ending determination was not always a pretty sight, especially the week before finals.

After eight hours I had stopped studying due to the migraine pounding at my temples. At least I had gotten him to close the windows and keep the lights low. At even the lowest setting the light still made my stomach flip. I crashed into my desk seat and downed another paper cup of coffee and a handful of aspirin. I knew neither would be much help, but I didn’t have the money for real drugs. I shut my eyes and pressed the bottom of my hand to the bridge of my nose. The pressure point did little to ease the pain.

“Oh, aspirin, save me,” I groaned as the small, red pills edged down my sore throat. Using my arms as a pillow I rested my head on the desk and murmured a question to my studious roommate. “What chapter are you on?” Probably another five chapters ahead of me.

Actually six.

“Fifteen,” Revelin answered with a voice like melted chocolate. Able to charm the scale from a snake with his silver tongue and slight southern drawl, his hawk-like gaze still remained fixated on the figures and facts which would never leave his brain. Whether through eidetic memory or sorcery, Revelin never forgot a face, fact, or statistic. Though I doubted he needed to. He could charm his way to an A with a quick smile and a wink. It was surprising how quickly his demeanor could change depending on the circumstance.

“What’s disinflation?” I quizzed him in a low voice. Any noise over the sound of a pen dropping would send my temples blaring. Maybe a Q and A session would give me a quick brush up before the rest of the information oozed out of me like water from a saturated sponge. Keeping up my 3.9 GPA was going to take some work. I groaned as another pain akin to a hammer to my scalp pounded on my cerebrum. No, this was worse than a hammer. I’d curl up in a ball on my bed if I wasn’t afraid of the drunken fraternity antics that kept everyone perpetually on their toes.

“That was last chapter,” he said at the turn of a page. His voice was drawl, slow, and monotone as though he had to pull each word from his perfectly minded mouth. “It’s the decrease in the rate of inflation.”

My mind, more mathematically oriented than anything, thought of the calculus equivalent to distract myself. It didn’t help except to remind me that Linear Algebra was not the final I was going to fail this semester.