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MIT is sort of like dying and going to nerd-heaven, if nerd-heaven were a dreary dirty mid-century concrete pile without a football team.
Calvin spent the summer backpacking in Canada and told his parents he would get himself to school. They both looked somewhat relieved that they had gotten him out of childhood with all of his minor extremities and a minimum of scars, but his mom teared up a little and his dad shook his hand so stoically that Calvin had to hug him just to terrify him.
He rolls into his dorm room in a pair of cut-off jean shorts and shoes with toes. He likes being able to look down and wiggle them in plain sight.
His plan was to spend the first couple hours enjoying sleeping in a bed- pillows, amazing!- but when he opens the door, he finds a very serious-looking Eastern European kid in a three-piece suit, the kid’s entire family including what seems like several small cousins in neon sneakers and glitter tee-shirts, and a box turtle.
“I am Oleg,” his roommate says, very seriously. He has a very light Lithuanian accent. He’s setting up a computer system that involves three monitors, while his family buzzes around him unpacking things. The box turtle is peeking out from under Oleg’s desk.
Calvin introduces himself and then asks the turtle’s name.
Oleg blinks. “Turtle,” he says, looking confused. “It doesn’t do tricks.”
Calvin hasn’t learned many social skills since elementary school, but he keeps to himself his plan to call the turtle Kierkegaard.
+++
Calvin chose MIT for the pranks.
“Most people choose it for the rigorous undergraduate education and the prestigious degree and also the gobs of money to be made in Silicon Valley at the end,” Hobbes reminds him helpfully the day he realizes he will actually, for the first time in his life, have to do homework.
“I need to build a very small, very quiet six-cylinder engine by next week,” Calvin says dismally. “Then I need to install it in a home-made wind turbine hidden on the roof where it will power a projector that will broadcast a video of the Air Force Academy goat painted crimson. This is crucial to the plan.”
“Executing plans created by other people was a terrible idea for your creativity,” Hobbes says. “I mean, a painted goat? Amateurs.”
“How,” Calvin says, ignoring him, “am I supposed to do all that when I have to learn calculus?”
“Oh, move over,” Hobbes sighs. “It’s just limits.”
When Oleg comes back from the library, he finds Calvin asleep on top of his calculus book, curled up next to a stuffed tiger. He loosens his tie and turns on the turtle’s heat lamp. Calvin stirs a little and mutters as it starts to hum.
+++
The goat projection is entirely successful. It pains Calvin to admit it, but Hobbes was right; the video itself is painfully boring. But the engine is very, very quiet, and no one finds the wind turbine. Calvin and Oleg go in on a minor power project- Oleg programs the meter; Calvin mucks around on the roof- and sell green electric to LAN parties. They make enough to keep Hobbes and Kierkegaard in raw steaks and turtle pellets.
“Raw meat is not healthy for you,” Oleg says tentatively one day.
“What?” Calvin says from where he’s soddering a bike chain. “Oh, it’s part of a tiger’s natural diet, don’t worry about it.”
It’s MIT. Buying real food for a stuffed tiger isn’t the strangest thing anyone’s ever done.
+++
There are several problems with Calvin’s newfound notoriety. He and Hobbes have to spend a lot of time across the river in the Harvard science library, for one thing; otherwise he never gets any work done. He only makes it to about half of the Ultimate practices he wants to be at, for another.
But the worst thing, the absolute worst thing since he had to sit still for four hours in the SAT testing center, is when Martha, his contact in the cell, shows up at his dorm room looking very serious. Martha has very straight, very red hair. It shimmers when she moves but clashes horribly with Hobbes’ stripes when she sits down on Calvin’s bed without asking.
“We have some intelligence,” she says seriously.
“Kay,” Calvin answers. He’s doing push-ups on the floor, trying to burn off enough energy to work on problem sets. Kierkegaard is peeking his head out from under Oleg’s desk, bobbing his head up and down in time. Calvin’s started taking him up to the roof to toddle around while he works on the wind turbine. He has a lot more personality with a name.
“It was...a very complicated cipher,” says Martha. “But the contents of the message indicate that we were intended to decode it.”
“Right,” Calvin says. Martha likes the sneaky-deaky Mad Magazine underground spy parts of pranks. Calvin likes the parts where he builds something that blows something else up.
“We believe that capture the flag has begun,” Martha says.
“What does that mean?” Calvin asks. There’s no harm in nudging Martha along a little bit, especially if it lets her explain something.
“The stakes are higher,” Martha says.
“Uh-huh,” Calvin replies. “What’s the message say?”
Martha clears her throat and looks at Hobbes meaningfully. “‘Tigers are endangered.’”
Calvin freezes in midair.
+++
His first plan does not go over well.
“I am not going in there,” Hobbes says flatly.
“Please,” Calvin says desperately. “It's just for a little while.”
“No,” Hobbes says.
“Hobbes, please,” Calvin begs. “What if they get you? I can’t let them get you, please, this is for your own good.”
“This is a terrible plan!” Hobbes yells. “This is the worst plan you have ever had! Your plans have gotten terrible since you started college!”
“Hobbes, come on, it’s just for a little while,” Calvin tells him. “It’s just until finals start, no one does anything once finals start.”
“It’s dark in there,” Hobbes says.
“I'm really sorry, but please?” Calvin’s voice hasn’t been this high-pitched since middle school. “I swear I will come get you the second reading period begins. The second. Hobbes, please, they might do something really bad to you, please.”
“I AM A BENGAL TIGER!” Hobbes shouts. “I am not a valuable object to be stored in a safe deposit box!”
+++
“I bet you planned this, you jerk,” Calvin says. “I bet you’re the freakin’ vice-president of those freakin’ Cornell losers.”
“This is going to be great,” Hobbes says happily. “I’ve always wanted to enroll at an all-women’s college.”
“Just- just shut up and get in the backpack, okay?” Calvin asks. Hobbes has gotten a distinct attitude since they moved to Cambridge.
+++
“You have got to be kidding me,” Suzie says.
Wellesley is way prettier than MIT. There are trees and nice bushes and stone benches everywhere, and the dorms look like houses.
“Suzie, please, just for a couple weeks,” Calvin says. “He barely takes up any room.”
Suzie has her own bedroom, no roommate, and what looks like a fireplace.
“You brought Hobbes to college,” Suzie says. “You brought Hobbes to college and you want me to run a one-tiger stuffed animal boarding facility?”
“I’ll owe you one, and I brought, like, a bunch of tuna for him, you won’t have to do anything,” Calvin pleads.
“You owe me, like, fifty,” Suzie says. “I got you through European history on the first try and you were in the hospital during midterms.”
“I possibly should have timed the home-made hang-glider trials slightly better, I completely agree, I’ll owe you fifty-one,” Calvin says. “Suzie, just, please, I swear I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important, please.”
“You’ve said please like five times in the last thirty-five seconds,” Suzie says. “Which is five more than you have ever said it to me in your entire life.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m a jerk, but I really- just please, please do this for me?”
Suzie sighs. “Fine, hand him over.”
They complete the transfer, although Suzie looks a little dubious when Calvin unloads the tuna. But she doesn’t say anything, and Calvin mentally notes that he owes her fifty-two.
The ride back to campus is lonely and dreary. It starts to rain two stops before his dorm and he slinks off the bus with his hood flipped up, feeling like a sad lonely college freshman for the first time.
+++
Hobbes comes home just before Christmas. He practically shreds his way out of Calvin’s backpack and sends Kierkegaard scurrying back under Oleg’s desk. He stalks around the laundry on Calvin’s floor before settling in Calvin’s desk chair with his feet on the bed.
“They broke in here like four times,” Calvin tells him. “We had to take Kierkegaard to the biology department. They kept painting his shell and stuff.”
“Suzie is a great roommate, just so you know,” Hobbes says smugly. “College women are great.”
“You jerk, I bet you, like, watched her change her clothes and stuff,” Calvin says meanly. He doesn’t want to tell Hobbes that he bought a tiger beanie baby and let the Big Red steal it and- well, it was ugly. He can’t tell Hobbes.
“I did not.” Hobbes sounds affronted. “I’m a gentleman.”
“A gentle animal, more like,” Calvin snorts. “Get outta my chair, I have to study.”
“You’re lucky I taught you everything I know,” Hobbes says. “You would never pass calculus otherwise.”
“Please, you can’t add,” Calvin says. Things are back the way they should be.
+++
They take the train home together for Christmas. Calvin is pretty sure he passed most of his finals, or at least enough that they’ll let him back next semester. Hobbes has mostly gotten over his two week vacation at Girls Gone Nerdy, and has gone back to reading while Calvin studies.
They take the overnight train and Calvin cashes out some wind turbine money to get a sleeper. He and Hobbes spread out on the bunks, watching the snow spin by.