Friends and fellow students, today begins that most dark period of the school year known as Finals Week. In honor of this horrible, horrible time in all of our lives, us here at Great Mysteries have prepared a special series to help get you through the hard times.
Special Edition: Great Mysteries of the ASU-niverse
Mystery #124 – The Math Dungeon
I wrote you a story. I hope you like it.
Once upon a time, in a magic world of sundevils and wonderment, lived a little Math Department Head named King Blinky. Now, King Blinky was a kind and generous Math Department Head who ruled over the Math Department with a fair and merciful hand, until the day he died in a tragic vegetable soup accident.
Now, King Blinky’s assistant, Dr. Misery, was the exact opposite of his humble boss. For years, Dr. Misery had watched the Math Department sink in popularity. In fact, Dr. Misery hated nothing more than losing students to what he called “the wimpy classes”. Once upon a time, students from far and wide had learned powerful calculations in the Math Department’s hallowed halls. But now, the students were mostly visitors fulfilling a required college algebra credit before walking out the door forever. “These traitors!” thought Dr. Misery to himself, “They think they can escape the grasp of the Math Department?! Well, some day I will have my chance, and when I do, we’ll see who gets off with just an easy semester!”
Dr. Misery was a patient man, and so when it came time to replace King Blinky, he knew his opportunity had arrived at last. He commissioned a pit be built at the very heart of campus, deep beneath the foundations of the tallest tower. At the bottom of this pit, he ordered another, even darker and deeper pit dug, until there reached a portal from the surface down into the depths of hell itself. Inside the shaft, Dr. Misery’s workmen built a series of dark stairwells and long, foreboding hallways, with which to instill fear in all who dared enter. And at the very deepest point, at the end of the most gloomy hallway and the very darkest stairwell, they built the Math Dungeon.
Only when the construction was complete did Dr. Misery proceed with the next part of his plan. Into the Dungeon he ordered all sorts of evil things, dragons and goblins and trolls and really uncomfortable desks. Great posters of rules were hung on the walls, and many fluffy bunnies were sacrificed to instill the chamber with dark curses against joy and happiness. Only after all manner of evil had been put into the Dungeon was Dr. Misery satisfied.
And so it was decreed that henceforth, all Math Students unlucky enough to descend into the deepest pits of campus, to the Math Dungeon itself, would know the full measure of Dr. Misery’s hatred for humanity. Sometimes, if you are quiet as you pass down Palm Walk, you can hear them. They are the tortured souls, confined within the walls of their own doom. Pray, children, pray to whatever gods you can that their fate does not befall you, for the Math Dungeon breaks more than a man’s body. Aye, it has power to cleave thy very soul in twain.
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