The Earthling's Dare

Blades of grass issued into the air. The droning noise of the mowers was like the constant hum of gigantic gas-powered cicadae. Sequan Vast, six feet tall, nineteen years of age, turned his mower on a dime. His cherrywood colored skin turned darker and his short Afro sparkled with drops of water. He perfected the simple art of ensuring the blades didn’t fly in his face. A sweat stained t-shirt and gaiter, muddy boots and dirty blue jeans all showed a man bent on the execution of excellent work.

He rested. The other guys crowded around him like they were his disciples. A man who had the mouth of a bullfrog and the voice akin to the reptile laughed and pointed at him. He was fifty-three years old and had an almond bald head.

“What are you doing out here, Professor?” Lum Givens addressed.

“I’m making that money. What are y’all doing?”

A full-blooded Irishman named Liam Gregor acknowledged, “You know you need to be the head of a classroom.”

“That’s why I’m going to school.”

It was true. After he got cleaned up, a decent portion of his paycheck went to night classes at First State Community College in Bear, Delaware. He excelled. By taking Economics and Finance courses, Vast knew how to invest and what to invest. His day job afforded him the ability to literally shape the earth in his own image. Clients often marveled, mouths agape at the professional jobs that he completed. Now, as he sat in class, he absorbed the lessons and applied them as best he could to his time on the mower.

During down time away from the guys, he would study his notes and prepare for tests. He wrote in his head complete essays and memorized each word before going to his phone and sending them to his professor. As the twilight came and the mowers had been moved to the trucks, he saw the guys hanging around the area.

“Hey, Professor!” Liam called. “Is she hot or what?” He held up a profile of a scantily clad woman. “She’s not my type. I like women who dress like conservative news anchors!”

Liam laughed a good laugh. It was washed in glee, dipped in joy, and coated with sheer happiness. “You’re a funny one, Vast!”

On the last day of the semester, the final exam brought him a chance to exhibit his knowledge of the markets. He knew that capitalism was reclaimed from Marx in the twentieth century and that the only social system of justice could change minds, one at a time.

He passed. As an ace, he had A+ marks on Mathematics and History as well. He enjoyed the fact that he could be launched now with the credits he earned to New Sweden University in Wilmington, Delaware. He tackled this feat with as much vigor and intensity as he did in the classroom at FSCC. Back at the job site where the guys sat around and watched the news, the men all chipped in to give Vast a cake.

“I thank you all for this. This is splendid,” Vast spoke with sincerity and from his capacity to express gratitude.

“I have a dare for you….” Hector Mañuel said. He was short, maybe five feet five inches and had skin the color of wood chips.

“What’s that?” Vast asked.

“Why don’t you actually become a professor?”

“Give me six years or less.” Vast retorted with his chest poked out and his chin slightly canted.

“Are we putting money down on this?” Hector asked.

“No wager. Just call it a dare.”

“Okay. I dare you to become an actual professor.”

The two men shook hands as the other workers laughed and snorted like schoolboys with too much sugar in them.

Vast attacked his studies. He still rumbled on the mower to pay his student bills without any loans. In his one room apartment, he had no phone, no TV, barely running water, and infrequent heat and air conditioning. Piles of books made literary mountains and comforted him in moments that other males would see as dreadful. Once the gas worked he ate his small meals under light that came and went as well. Through all of this, he knew that he would be able to determine if he would eat chicken noodle soup or tomato soup under the glow of his kitchen’s low watt bulb.

Once he found rest, it was already Saturday and he just straightened up his own bedroom and tidied up the books and the futon parked against the wall. A giant rug covered the space from the kitchen to the bedroom. He vacuumed this with the precision that he focused on everything he did. On Sundays, he studied on his phone the Daily Delaware for new apartments, read classifieds for women worthy of his time, and the weather for the upcoming week in April. All the sun. He smirked like the devil had tickled the earlobe of a young lady.

On Monday, He got up at five and reported to work at six in a clean pickup truck that had been at least two decades old. It also bit into his wages to keep it running and in good condition.

“Are you teaching yet?” Givens asked. Vast shook his head and grinned.

“Not yet, Lum. I said––”

“Six years. I know, I’m just pestering you.”

After work, Vast donned fresh attire from the arctic cold blast of water that masqueraded as a shower. Yet, he still made it fifteen minutes prior like he did with Delaland Mowing Services Inc. Once the class got started, Vast wished to only take notes on what he needed. The class taught about corporate structure and ethics. This presented the first time that Vast had ever encountered a professor who didn’t quibble about not being in the news for embezzling or running a Ponzi screen. She actually spoke about the morality of capitalism. Her long flowing brown hair and alabaster skin and high cheekbones drew him and she set his mind afire with her awesome rhetoric.

Something in the course, the idea of oil companies actually being clean words and the Robber Barons actually being heroes ignited something deep in his soul. He had known all about that and agreed with it, but he had never heard anyone speak on these topics like that.

In time, he had graduated from New Sweden University with a 4.0 grade point average. Graduate school beckoned like a siren calling shipmates on the high seas. He felt a boost of confidence once he entered the classroom. Everything he had stored in his brain housing group spilled out and retooled itself in preparation for this new journey. As he perfected his sense of where he was and the condition he had been in at his other apartment, the landscaping job provided him a bonus and a higher position as shift supervisor. He walked into his new townhouse and just flipped up and down the switch. He wondered about the glory of decades of discovery and the hours of digging into the earth to find oil and natural gas that allowed for this light to function.

He got rid of the futon and purchased a queen-sized bed. Not too much else he needed so he didn’t purchase more than a large screen TV and a couch and kitchen table. A microwave sat on the counter. Later, after work, he felt a surge of power as the warm spray of the shower covered his body. In the time that he took to get dressed only to get dirty again, he knew exactly what he was doing. By earning his master’s degree, he recognized he would be a great example of how he could discover his own abilities intellectually. But he still mowed lawns. As a supervisor, he didn’t do as much on the mower but he still handled the books and the hours of the men who occupied the machines. When he clocked out of his shift, he headed to class.

Environmental Studies emblazoned in gold with a burgundy background broadcast from the digital screen at the front of the lecture hall. This stood as his current major.

“We must know, by now, that man is on a path of destruction with fossil fuels.” The professor said it and Vast got the hell out of there. He switched his major that did not include catastrophizing. All he needed was a swift display of lies and he exited the school itself. He returned to his books. He looked up tomes regarding the flourishing of man due in part to the arrival of fossil fuels on the market. He read about how over a billion people rose up out of poverty in the past thirty years. He read how oil and natural gas represented a great irony. The very people who yearned to see the poorest people on the planet receive proper food and shelter, comfort and leisure time, could not receive it because of the false views about the fossil fuels that contributed to death and destruction. Vast continued. He took up a book regarding how a single solar panel or a windmill blade far outweighs the cost to produce even the slightest bit of oil or natural gas. That fire in his brain reignited and his soul was baptized in wonder. He visited the president of DIT, Angela Pitt.

“Yes, Mr. Vast?” She asked. Her pinewood colored skin and black hair with flecks of gray in a bun spoke of her sixty years on this earth. “What is it you want to do?”

“There is a GED styled program for master’s degrees. I would like to expedite my learning and enroll in this program.”

“You do know it will be more expensive than going the traditional route, right?”

“I do.”

“Okay, just submit your information to the registrar and good luck, young man,” Angela remarked.

Vast completed the necessary paperwork and then some more. He finished the exam which took close to an hour and a half. After he received his grade of a perfect one hundred percent, he officially picked up his master’s degree.

Back on the mower, he felt a bit of assurance rise up in him.

“Are you still studying?” Liam asked. He wiped a bit of sweat from his brow.

“I’m finished.”

“You're going for the doctorate?”

“I have it on my radar screen.”

Vast relaxed later that evening and opened a book on the wonders of the oil industry and how hydraulic fracturing had revolutionized the natural gas business. He relished it. He got up from his bed and went to the kitchen table. He sketched out a lesson plan that he would use after achieving his doctorate. He opened up his notebook and looked online for classes pertaining to doctoral studies. He found one. Once he obtained the amount of time it would take to be called doctor (four months) he leapt at the challenge.

Upon completion of the course, Vast readied himself for the day he would preside over a classroom. From his days as a mower he knew that could do it. He invited the guys from Delaland to his ceremony in his living room. Curiously, they all showed up in tuxedos. Vast paid it no mind as he slid off the paper envelope and revealed the fact that he would forever be known as Dr. Sequan Vast.

The men laughed and cheered. Alcohol flowed but never touched Vast’s lips. He did enjoy the subs and soda that the men provided, though.

“You still have to work on Monday, Dr. Vast!” Mañuel reminded the newly minted post graduate degree holder at twenty five years of age.

“I think I came out well in that dare,” Vast countered.

“You should have wagered!”

“I think I got the best out of the deal.”

At first, Vast taught as an adjunct professor. He looked out at the forty or so students and felt an urge to show off his schooling. Once he saw a few heads bob and a few students walk out, he knew he had to adjust his way of teaching. Then, he fired up the electronic board and showed a movie. It concerned an oil man in the year 2000 attempting to show an entire bureaucracy why oil drilling is moral and how it could save billions of lives the world over.

This elicited a response in the Environmental Studies class that Vast had anticipated.

“Yes, you sir, with the gray jacket,” Vast called.

“Okay, so the idea of the man wanting to save his nose is already problematic. I mean, oil is what is choking the life out of the planet and worsening life for plants and animals.”

Vast breathed. Then he said, “Did you know that oil is all around us? Look amongst yourselves. Those chairs, this board, that gray jacket are all products of dirty, messy oil. Yet, it was refined like in the film.

So goes for natural gas and even nuclear power, even though it is not a fossil fuel. Are there any other questions?” No one raised their hands. The classroom let out like a flood splashed through the students.

Afterward, the professor of the course approached Vast. Dr. Tremaine Husser related. “You’re a bright light. I give you that. You recovered with the film, but I think you should teach elsewhere.”

“Like where?”

"A church basement."

"I'm an atheist."

"That's okay, they allow anyone in to rent for a small fee."

In a place with tile floors and a stage, a few chairs and a table with coffee, Dr. Vast saw six students from the lecture hall enter into the room. Three more filed in and he had to get extra chairs to accommodate them.

He turned to his circle of avid listeners and asked a question:

“What is human flourishing?”