Revenge of the sdreN
Chapter 3
Once she got over the initial shock, Catherine had to admit that things weren’t so bad. It wasn’t quite how she wanted it, but she had a boyfriend who thought she was gorgeous, and all the girls she used to be jealous of seemed to have settled to the bottom rungs of the social ladder. Maybe she could learn to live with this, at least for a little while.
She went through the rest of the day cataloging the many subtle and not-so-subtle differences in this new world. She had to look up her classes on the school website, since they were completely different from what she remembered. Her course load as a Communications major seemed fairly trivial to her, so that left her plenty of time for other things but she was disappointed that her boyfriend Chad was going to have another intense day of practice which meant she wouldn’t be able to hang out with him after her classes wrapped up. Today was Thursday, so she could barely wait for the weekend when they could spend some quality time together.
She went to sleep Thursday eager to see more of this new reality.
Catherine finally woke up Friday after about half an hour of hitting the snooze button. She sat down at the vanity, and realized she had left her makeup on overnight and now it looked terrible. That was odd, usually she remembered to take it off as part of her nightly routine.
Nightly routine? Catherine probed her memories and realized that she did have fuzzy memories of a nightly routine where she always removed her makeup. That couldn’t be right. She looked at the various products on her vanity, and realized with horror that she knew what every bottle and container was for. That was eyeliner, this was mascara, that was foundation....
Yesterday, if Sai hadn’t done her makeup for her, she would have been at a loss for what to do. Today, it seemed she had gained some of the knowledge her counterpart in this reality had had. Maybe that was nothing to worry about? She needed some sort of test to see if she was just gaining memories, or if she was loosing memories as well. Looking around her room, her eyes eventually fell on her wall of posters.
Okay, simple test. Who was Andrea Ablasser? She was... a German supermodel. Catherine’s heart sunk. No, that wasn’t right. She strained to recall.
Finally, she remembered. She was a scientist of... biology? No, immunology. Catherine was now sure it was immunology, but she was worried about how difficult it had been for her to arrive at that answer. She wasn’t just getting new memories, she was losing her old ones.
Catherine tried to remain calm in the face of this new information. She was most concerned about any deterioration in her knowledge of physics. She got out her phone and googled ‘Sample physics problems.’ After finding a set of problems that was supposed to be particularly difficult, she picked one at random and tried to work through it.
Even though she had been doing problems like this just last week to keep her skills sharp, it felt like she was really rusty. She had to look up a few equations that she used to have memorized, and strained to recall conceptual notions that she previously knew like the back of her hand. Overall, it was more difficult than she expected, but she did manage to work through the problem and get the correct answer.
Okay, she could work with this. Whatever was happening to her memories seemed to be happening slowly, and her course load was pretty light so she could just spend some time each day reviewing physics. As much as she had started to accept the other aspects of this new reality, she still valued her mind above most things. She made a mental note to review physics after her classes finished today, and to look into dropping one of her electives this semester in order to take a physics class.
Catherine met Sai and Jeremy for breakfast. Unfortunately, Chad had a morning class Monday-Wednesday-Friday, so he wasn’t able to meet them. Catherine was starting to get annoyed with her situation. The least the magic necklace could have done was give her a boyfriend she could actually spend time with. Saturday couldn’t come fast enough.
After finishing breakfast, Catherine walked into the class she was pretty sure she was going to drop in favor of physics. History of Western Fashion. When she arrived to the classroom, she was surprised to see one of her old professors at the front of the room. How had she not noticed? She checked the new schedule she had printed out yesterday, and saw that it said Prof. Andrea Baker, Dept. of Fashion and Apparel Studies. It should have been Dr. Andrea Calkins, Dept. of Physics.
Dr. Calkins had been one of Catherine’s favorite professors. Although she was one of the toughest professors in terms of workload and grading, she was passionate about what she taught and had helped Catherine fall in love with physics all over again. She did have a few idiosyncracies, like her tendency to go on feminist rants once or twice a semester (usually when her latest relationship ended in heartbreak), but overall Catherine appreciated the tough, no nonsense attitude she had and had always viewed her as a mentor and a role model.
“Oh no, what did that necklace do to you?” Catherine half whispered.
Physically Prof. Andrea Baker didn’t look too different from the homely Dr. Andrea Calkins, but her clothes were a different story. She was wearing a white floral-print dress under a black crepe vest, and she had on six-inch heels that made her strike a taller silhouette behind the lectern. Her black hair was several inches longer than Catherine had ever seen it, and it had brown balayage highlights. The old Andrea wouldn’t have known or cared what half of that fashion jargon meant, since she had long ago decided to take after Einstein and Steve Jobs and buy multiple copies of the same collared shirt and dress pants and wear the same outfit every day.
However this wasn’t the change Catherine found the most striking. She had been in this new world for more than a day, and had already started to get used to everyone having different wardrobes (though thinking on it, that might have been another side effect of her memories changing.) No, what stuck out to Catherine was the gaudy diamond ring the professor wore on her finger.
Catherine had long privately believed that Dr. Calkins was probably going to end up a spinster once she finally admitted that no man would ever be good enough for her exacting standards. She never thought she would see the day when Dr. Calkins had another man’s last name, and a wedding ring to go along with it.
Catherine sat down towards the front of the class and braced for the disappointment of seeing what her hero had become.
Prof. Baker gave a big, fake smile. “Hello, class. Welcome to the first day of History of Western Fashion. Now I’m sure many here took this class because it was three credits and the average grade the last four years running was an A—. This is a mistake.”
There were some mild utterances of disappointment.
The professor continued. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying this class is particularly difficult. If you show up and do your homework, you’ll probably do fine. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t consider this class some unimportant elective that you’ll take and never use in life. For example...” The professor looked around the room, and pointed at a redheaded girl sitting in the middle of the class. “You, please join me at the front of the room.”
The girl walked to the front of the room. She was the kind of girl that would be regarded as about average no matter what universe one found oneself in. As the expression went, she had “a body built for porn, and a face built for radio.” Vice versa for Catherine’s current reality. She was dressed in a simple t-shirt and shorts.
“What is your name?” The professor asked.
The redhead spoke up, “Emily.”
The professor nodded. “Alright, class. Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with Emily’s appearance?”
Catherine was horrified. The professor was just asking for trouble with that question. For her own part, Emily looked unsure of what to do about this situation.
A boy in the front row was the first to raise his hand.
“Yes?”
The boy gave a smug smile. “Well, she’s got a pretty enough face, but her breast and hips make a horrible hourglass shape.”
Emily blushed in humiliation. The professor got out a marker and started writing on the white board. ‘Hourglass figure.’
“Okay, her body is a little hard to look at. What else?”
This time a girl in the back raised her hand.
“Her legs are long and thin and she’s got a thigh gap.”
The professor added to the list. ‘Long legs’, ‘Thigh gap.’
“Very good. Anything else?”
Emily’s whole face was red at this point. Catherine felt bad for the girl, and disgusted at what her formerly favorite professor was doing.
Many hands were in the air now, but the professor passed them over. “You, the good-looking girl near the front. What is wrong with this poor specimen?”
The professor was pointing at Catherine.
Catherine didn’t want to make a scene in the middle of class, but she also didn’t want to embarrass this girl any further. “Uh, I really can’t... think of anything else.”
The professor prodded her further. “Come on! We haven’t even got halfway down the list of things wrong with this girl’s appearance. Surely you can think of at least one more.”
Catherine knew that if she didn’t say something someone else would, so she decided to play along but soften the blow as much as possible. “It’s really not that bad, but her skin’s kind of... pale. I guess.”
The professor gave a compassionate smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I see what you’re trying to do, and it really is quite admirable. But don’t cherry coat it. Her skin is a sickly pale color.” And ‘pale skin’ was added to white board.
Emily had had enough at this point. She covered her face and ran out of the room. Catherine couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought she saw tears streaming down her face through the gaps in her hands.
A blonde girl who had been sitting next to Emily got up and was about to run after her, but the professor raised her voice. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I—,” the blonde girl started to speak, but she was cut off by the professor.
“Sit back down. I expect all students to attend the entirety of the first three classes, or I drop them from the class.”
Catherine was amazed that the blonde girl actually sat down. Why would anyone want to stay in this nightmare of a class?
The professor put down the marker and walked back to the lectern. “Now, as you all might have guessed I haven’t tortured that poor girl for no reason. I was trying to make a point.” The professor crossed her arms. “In society, we’re told it’s whats on the inside that counts. That’s a beautiful thought, but look at what just happened here. With almost no prompting, you showed your true colors. Those of you who didn’t raise your hands aren’t blameless either. You’re just in denial about what you really are.”
The professor walked back to the white board. “No, appearance matters. First impressions matter. And above all, fashion matters. Lets go down this list shall we? Hourglass shape. Can anyone think of something Emily could wear to hide her embarrassing proportions?”
A boy raised his hand and didn’t wait to be called on. “Chest binders?”
The professor nodded. “Yes, that could hide how hideous her large breasts look with her skinny body. Anything else?”
A girl this time. “A fatsuit?”
Much of the class laughed.
“Yes, if she was too lazy to count calories in order to get a fatter, fuller appearance, she could wear a fatsuit. Though, she could go the other way as well. Breast reduction surgery is becoming a popular option for those who wish to join the desirable ranks of the beanpole body shape, but that is outside the purview of this class. Now how about her long legs?”
The class continued in this manner for another 30 minutes, and Catherine actually found herself getting interested in the lecture in spite of herself. She had to keep reminding herself that this whole class was a travesty, and that she would have to report Prof. Baker to her academic adviser when she dropped the class. Even if it was kind of interesting.
The rest of Catherine’s classes weren’t nearly as eventful, and her opinions about the ease of the communication major were reinforced the more she saw more of its core classes. To her, it seemed like it was basically “common sense” the major. When her classes finished she went in to her adviser.
More accurately, she “accidentally” went to the physics adviser and was redirected down the hall to her actual adviser. She explained that she wanted to drop “History of Western Fashion”, and take “Principles of Electricity and Magnetism.” She held off on mentioning Prof. Baker’s antics in class.
The adviser typed something into her computer, and read for a few seconds. “I’m sorry, it looks like you don’t have the pre-reqs for it. You usually need to have taken ‘Classical Mechanics and Math Methods’ and ‘Experimental Physics’ to take that class.”
Catherine expected this. “I know, but is there some way I can test out of the pre-reqs? I’m pretty confident I know everything I need to from the lower level classes.”
The adviser looked at her with disbelief. “My records say here that you took General Physics 1 and got a C—, and that you failed Calc 1 once before passing with a C the next semester.”
Ouch. Catherine didn’t know her grades were so low in this reality. “Please, trust me. Whatever hoops I need to jump through, I want to do this. I want to minor in physics so I have something a little meatier on my resume.”
The faculty adviser tried to steer her towards something a little more realistic, but when she saw that Catherine wouldn’t back down, she eventually relented.
“Alright, we can give you a few placement tests next Friday. If you do well enough on them, we’ll let you test out of the classes. But even if you get into a higher level physics class, if you want to minor in it you have a long way to go. You’ll need 25 relevant credit hours, and right now you only have 4. Also, I’m holding off on dropping your other class until you know you’ve made it into your physics class. You’re too close to not having enough credit hours to be considered a full time student.”
That was good enough for Catherine. She was close to having everything she wanted in this reality. She thanked the adviser and left the room. It was only an hour later that she realized that in her enthusiasm, she had left without reporting Prof. Baker. Oh well. She was sure someone else was sure to do so, so it didn’t matter that much. It really wasn’t like her to be that forgetful, though.
Catherine finished her communications homework in no time, and got started on her self-imposed physics review. She found an old final exam from another university online and started to work the problems.
There were 20 questions on the exam, and each question was designed to test understanding of several key concepts. Slowly but slowly, she was starting to get back into the swing of things. She had completed 5 questions when she heard a knock on her door.
She answered it, and was greeted by Sai. “Hey, Kat! You ready to, like, go out? I hear the Rhino is doing a special back-to-school deal on drinks tonight.”
Catherine looked down at her unfinished problems. “Uh, I’m kind of busy studying right now. I think I’ll pass.”
Sai came up and playfully grabbed her arm. “Come on! You have all weekend to do your homework. Plus, it’s not like anything from the first week back matters anyways.”
Catherine didn’t want to explain that the real reason she needed to study was because her memories were slowly being overwritten. On the other hand...
She had never been to a single party in all of her years of college. She was kind of rusty, but she had checked her answers on the five questions, and all of them were correct so did she really need to keep studying for tonight?
“Alright, I’ll come.” Catherine said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”