Pangaea

Chapter 1 Pangea

"Don't think that the fact of having everything available exempts you from the duty to preserve it." Professor Donato Scagli enjoyed entering the university, savoring every second. He deliberately entered in silence and waited for the crowd to calm down. He liked dramatic entrances and had a good baritone voice which helped him when he reinforced it with moderation, and the entrance into the courtroom was his favorite dramatic entrance. Gradually the young people realized the situation and began to settle down among the long rows of wooden seats. After the summer holidays he always missed that place, he had great pleasure in crossing the monumental entrance, the wooden door of the classroom finding so many young people eager to learn. He had the apparent age of about fifty, with thin but short and graying hair, he dressed sportily and observed everything with his black, lively and inquiring eyes. He stopped those standing next to the large light Formica chair that he had placed in its usual place.

"Sit down, sit down, take your seat!"

That was his sign at the beginning of the year. He assessed The glance of living room and, as usual, he happened to wonder why the human wave always started from the bottom, from the first seats, spread upwards and its passage between the many rows of cantilevered seats on which many students were taking their seats, made chaos order and calm. He waited a moment for adequate silence, while he enjoyed the colorful mass he would be spending time with the years to come. "I am Professor Donato Scagli and you are the best expression of your generation. Don't let that mean we didn't have better. You will surely have recognized the curse expressed by Rodolfo Celi. I said damn, like the motto: "With great power comes great responsibility", which is from Ben Parker."

"Stan Lee, incorrectly attributed to Ben Parker." said a boy in one of the back rows.

The teacher looked for the origin of the voice, but the number of students prevented him from doing so. "Who is?"

"Adrian Roy."

"If he would stand up he would help me to focus."

The teacher had now sunk into the leather chair he had made appear, sitting more on his back than on his butt, almost reaching his chin at the height of the desk top. That environment was his home and he demonstrated it in every gesture.

"Adrian Roy." repeated the other after having proudly stood up to his full height, having removed a tuft of brown hair in front of his eyes with an involuntarily seductive gesture and having placed his inseparable black bag on the light shelf in front of him, so that contained objects do not fall.

Scagli lingered on the subject for a moment. "Well, I must tell you that your companion is right. Mine was a trap to see if anyone was ready. You see, if your ability is to be an astronaut, a theorist, a magician, an alchemist, or a leader, so be it, but if you could be an astronaut and theorist and a magician and an alchemist and a leader and you were only one of those things, you would have missed the mark and that's it. This is what society asks you, not to excel, but not to miss the target. I will set traps for you, I will praise you and I will mistreat you, but I will not allow you to miss the mark. The other teachers will do the same." He turned to the speaker. "Mr. Roy, what would you like to do when you grow up?"

Adrian smiled and chose to answer sincerely, even if it would have seemed presumptuous of him. "I'd like to command the protonator."

The teacher visualized the archives mentally. "With your votes it could become a real possibility. I should have impressed you with the usual responsibility talk and the usual blah, blah, blah."As he spoke he shook his head highlighting the discrepancy between what he should have done and his words. "You are a pleasant diversion. What do you think would change in the protonator?"

"I don't know, for now I would like it to remain as it is. I wouldn't change either the name despite the ancient controversy about protonation."

"I know: "Protonation is the addition of a proton onto a lone pair of electrons in a molecule" and the protonator does something completely different. I would also like it if it were that simple. I see that you have an excellent propensity for alchemy, physics, chemistry and magical arts. Why would you give up everything to go and manage a machine alone in space?"