Black coffee and the thrill of his first day teaching Cultural Anthropology sent adrenaline surging through Dr. Kane. He was ready.
“Dr. Kane!” the voice said with authority.
He looked around and was surprised to see a petite androgynous person, no more than twenty.
His brief pause appeared to have given them the opening they were waiting for, because the student hurried toward him, nearly dropping the stack of books in their arms.
They had an offbeat, brainy swagger. Their style shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did: a patchwork of worn denim, layered jewelry, and a vintage band tee. Not vintage in a designer way, but like it had survived generations and passed down from a great grandparent.
One side of their head was shaved clean, revealing a bold thunderbird tattoo etched just above the ear. The other side of their head was covered by a long sweep of dark hair that nearly concealed one eye.
They brushed it aside with a quick exhale and said, in a warm voice, “Dr. Kane, I’m Zitkala, but most people call me Bird. I go by she/her.”
Her tone was grounding, like a voice made for storytelling.
“Nice to meet you, Bird.”
“I heard you might be looking for a personal assistant,” she continued, handing him a neatly folded résumé.
“It would be an honor to work with you. I admire your research, and I’ve read Roots of Division twice, once for the argument, once for what you chose not to say.”
Perceptive, he thought. A thinker.
“I’m passionate about Cultural Anthropology, and I feel how absent Indigenous voices still are. My people are missing from the conversations that matter. I want to help change that.”
Dr. Kane studied her for a moment. It was the calm confidence, the unforced intellect. Something in her presence resonated with him before he could name why.
“Alright,” he said. “You’re in.”
She blinked, surprised. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he replied with a faint smile.
He was already thinking ahead. He’d assess her work, and if his instinct proved right, she’d be the first addition to the quartet for Mr. Chen’s project. Two birds with one stone—though he caught himself before saying it aloud.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing toward his office.
As he reached for the door, his eyes lingered on the name etched in gold letters:
Dr. Marcus Kane
Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Office: Building C, Room 214
A swell of pride moved through him. If only Mama could see this, he thought. She’d finally know I made good on every sacrifice she made for me.
* * *
The lecture hall buzzed with restless energy as just over fifty students settled in. Some slouched behind glowing screens, but most of them murmured about the community lockdown and the armed soldiers stationed at the university entrance that morning.
Dr. Kane had noticed them earlier that morning too. Security never appeared without reason. After nights spent searching everything he could find on The Company and Mr. Chen, his nerves were raw. The sight of armed soldiers felt less like coincidence than confirmation.
Most students were in their twenties, though a few older faces suggested career-changers drawn to Cultural Anthropology. They looked up when he entered. Dr. Kane wasn’t what they expected. No tweed, no cluttered briefcase. Just an open collar, dark slacks, and a calm, unreadable gaze.
“Growing up as the only mixed‑race kid in a mostly white neighborhood,” he began, “I felt caught between worlds, belonging to neither.” His hands lifted, palms up, like a scale searching for balance.
“I found refuge in books; they gave me space to think. When it was time for college, I chose Cultural Anthropology. I’d realized race isn’t simple. It’s layered. Messy. Alive.”
He caught himself before oversharing. As he clicked on the projector, a faint buzz lingered, a mechanical disturbance, yet oddly unsettling.
* * *
His name appeared on the screen, along with the title and a brief course outline.
Week 1: What Is Culture?
Week 2: Race, Ethnicity, and Human Variation
Week 3: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity
…
Weekly Bonus Days
“When I teach,” he said, “I bring my own experience into the room. I want you to do the same. Honesty. Even when it’s uncomfortable.”
A few students shifted in their seats.
“Bonus days are different,” he continued. “No curriculum. No safety net. You choose the topic, because the issues shaping your lives don’t wait for a textbook.”
He scanned the room.
“But honesty has rules. Let people finish. And speak to the idea, not the person.”
He capped the marker, expression unreadable. “Today is your first bonus day. Every Friday, this room belongs to you.”
His gaze held them. “Show me what questions keep you awake at night.”
* * *
For the next two weeks, Dr. Kane threw himself into the classroom. Observing, listening, probing. Students leaned into debates, scribbled in notebooks, or stared blankly at screens. He drifted among them, catching flashes of curiosity, frustration, and the occasional spark of something bold.
But there was a problem. Passion wasn’t the issue; direction was. Their engagement flared hot, then fizzled. Often too shallow or worse, too rigid. And rigidity was the least helpful quality for building a team.
He began to worry. Time was slipping, and the quartet he needed still felt out of reach.
Then everything shifted.
He noticed Tamika on bonus day two.
By bonus day three, he was certain: the same day Jeff unintentionally forced his way onto Kane’s radar.
* * *
The day began like any other. Dr. Kane was prepared and caffeinated.
“Race is a social construct. Initially justified by religion, later reinforced by pseudo-science. Genetics has since disproven its biological basis, but its consequences persist.”
He raised a sheet of paper. “I want to read you something:
‘What if I told you, it was never about race?
Race was never the cause; it became the excuse. A clean explanation for greed, envy, and the systematic transfer of a people’s wealth, knowledge, and power. Racism as an idea is tidy. Something we can label as ignorance or misguided thinking, something we imagine can be corrected. It feels fixable.
But greed, theft, and piracy, those are darker forces. They are not mistakes or misunderstandings. They are acts we easily call evil.
To acknowledge this truth means more than rejecting racism. It means admitting that those who carried it out were not merely misled. They were predatory.’
What are your thoughts?”
* * *
“You think that supermarket security guard out here worrying about some ‘real agenda’?” Kemar said. “He just doesn’t trust us. It’s automatic, like breathing.”
“I agree. Racism feels more potent now,” Jerrard said, leaning back, arms crossed. “It’s better organized. Manufactured even. And education is the new weapon. They hide our real history and ban books that tell the truth. Most of what we know about ourselves, we learned online, not in school.”
“Can I ask something?” Emma said, her voice hesitant. “When did we start acting like Western education is the only source of our history? Before colonialism, African societies had their own systems: storytelling, lessons passed through families. Knowledge came from community, not classrooms. And some regions even had formal schools long before slavery.
“So, I don’t fully agree. The information exists. We can educate ourselves… most people just don’t.”
That pulled Tamika’s response.
* * *
“First of all, that is way out of context. And second of all, who is ‘we’?” Tamika asked, rising to her feet.
Murmurs rippled through the room, rising toward open dissent.
Dr. Kane raised a red card gently, his signal for tone. “Remember,” he said, “we challenge ideas, not people.”
The flash of red drew silence like a magnet, conversations collapsing mid-breath.
Tamika nodded once, her voice steadying as she reframed. “For our ancestors, storytelling wasn’t just entertainment, it was how they kept their culture alive. The colonizers understood that. They knew that real power wasn’t in chains. It was in erasing memory.”
She continued softly. “Slavery wasn’t just the theft of freedom. It was psychological warfare.
“Divide the tribes. Erase the language. Bury the culture. These acts were all designed to breed confusion, not unity. That’s how you destroy a civilization.”
A few murmurs rose.
“We were distracted by race while our identities were being eradicated right under our noses. It was calculated. And devastatingly effective.”
She shook her head.
“And the damage didn’t end when the chains came off. The erasure followed us into the present. We still don’t know who we are. That’s why we keep fighting the wrong battle. We’re forever chasing equality, but we fail to recognize that unity is the only way to rebuild.”
Tamika swallowed and sat quietly, opening a notebook that she had on her desk.
“I agree with most of what you said, but you talk about your ancestors like they were one unified people. They weren’t. They had conflict and were divided long before anyone else arrived,” Emma said.
“Identity isn’t a museum exhibit waiting to be recovered. It’s something we, all of us, build, revise, and choose every day. The real enemy isn’t the past; it’s the way we keep using it to avoid the present.”
Then from her seat, Tamika’s voice rose, steady and confident. “I’m not arguing for a single, unified past. I’m arguing that fragmentation made us easier to conquer. Division wasn’t new, but it was exploited. And that exploitation still shapes how identity is formed today.”
Dr. Kane felt the first real stir of recognition. Tamika hadn’t tried to win the argument or soften it. She listened, clarified the frame, and left the contradiction standing. It was rare. It mattered. But he wanted to be certain.
* * *
Four days before the deadline, he felt the first real edge of panic. A desperate thought kept circling: Maybe I should just pick two random students and hope for the best.
The anxiety gnawed at him all day, and by nightfall it had triggered one of his most vivid night terrors.
That night, as sleep pulled him under, he was small again—no longer himself.
Barefoot on red, cracked earth.
The sky splitting open in blue fire.
Screams came first.
Then the shadows. Soldiers poured out of them. Weapons flared.
A crack that wasn’t thunder.
Bodies hitting dirt.
The air burned with iron and ash.
Someone grabbed his wrist. His mother…perhaps a stranger? He never saw. Only the pull, the stumble, the desperate whisper: Run. Run.
He jolted awake, breath trapped in his throat, sheets twisted around him like restraints.
For a moment, it felt like the hand still held on to him. That was new.
He’d had this nightmare since childhood. But this time, it felt closer.
He fumbled for the prescription bottle in his drawer. His hands shook as he swallowed two pills dry and lay back, staring into the dark. Sleep wouldn’t return, but maybe rest would. He clung to that thin hope.
Morning arrived with the same dread clinging to him. And then, just as he was about to give up on identifying the fourth member of the quartet, something happened. Jeff, usually easygoing and almost forgettable, threw a curveball into the room.
