Wanted Here – Ch.20 | KT OLLA

HANDS went through glass flasks, from the conical ones to the beakers and reagent bottles. In a large laboratory room at Cannon.

It was a Saturday morning.

A day many students would be busy with their personal matters. And their teachers would stick to their families at home. 

On this Saturday, however, some Cannonites were up and doing in the university’s chemistry lab. And the one in charge was Marcuz.

Yes, Marcuz López had taken up the job at Cannon. And the college had just resumed for a new session.

So the gentleman had moved into the apartment allotted to him at the staff quarters on campus.

His entry level was Graduate Assistant as he was retained at the college as a graduate student.

So Marcuz planned to keep going with his studies and papers. Till he was a senior academic staff and faculty member.

And till he’d reached the level of an associate professor, and distinguished professor.

Now Mr. López wanted to groom minds and grow them. He wasn’t a genius himself… he was only academically brilliant.

But he wanted to provide enabling atmosphere for inventions.

That was the “him” he found while he took up the job. As his brother Luca, had told him to find himself first.

Now Marcuz had been given the freedom to organize extra tutorials for students. So he had asked himself:

What does Marcuz want? What do I want so badly?

Then he’d thought: I want freedom for caged minds. I want Cannonites soaring!

But there was this problem.

Wait...! Cannon is on my heels. And they may catch up with me any time from now.

Still, I’m here already. If they look through the school, they should find me.

He mused it loud: “What if I make the searchers plenty?—

“If it’s Cannon alone searching for me, they’ll get me in time. What if I make their opponents search for me, too?

“Let the world comb through Cannon to find me! And they will find the dons before they get me!”

Yes, Luca had told him to find his chasers indeed. To find them before they got him.

Meanwhile, Cannon had lifted its entry ban for pressmen and security agents. As well as for the attorneys at Pendulum Bros.

It was something it thought to do at the dawn of the New Year, as a way of washing its public image sparkling clean.

So, it trusted the Bar enough to be respectable people. And not go invading their premises still.

It trusted the gentlemen and ladies of the press, too. To be civil enough to hold back.

Yes, their statement had appealed to a high sense of etiquette and civil manners. So much they were cajoled and stayed back for honor.

The school management had planned to quietly bar the entries, again, before those people would have got a rethink. When their blackmail would have eased on them.

Yet now, while Cannon had just opened its gates, Marcuz López was flinging them wider.

For he organized a tutorial of practical chemistry in the lab. Called the media from several TV channels…

And called his class, “Cannon Skies.”

“This thing is done to tell y’all that Cannon is still safe!”

That was what he told the media.