Conspiracy Boards
“Okay, so AUVs operate independently from the shipand have no connecting cables, whereas ROVs are connected to an operator on the ship. AUV stands for autonomous underwater vehicle and is commonly known as an uncrewed underwater vehicle” Dick shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth, frantically scribbling into his notebook.
“Correct. Now, when was the Ulabarun discovered?” Jerry was upside down, lying on her couch, with her feet on the wall. She was typing upside down on her laptop, rapidly scrolling through the tabs on her computer.
“OH!” Faham yelled from her chair. “It was 1982? But, but. It took 11 excavation seasons from 84 to 94 to finish excavations.” She grinned.
“And required like 22400 dives and 6613 hours.” Jerry scoffed.
“And this is why my degree is in business and not smart people things.” Nico walked in, carrying more snacks and hot chocolate.
“I’m cutting you all off from caffeine for the next few hours, I can barely tell where y’alls notes end and the guesses begin.”
“Hopefully, the professors won't notice either. Thanks, Nico.”
“We have been at this for a few hours now, Jerry, I need a break,” Dick complained.
“Well, I brought yarn for a conspiracy board. We could take half an hour to loop some yarn around, then switch to” Faham dragged the o sound out as she thought, “methods?”
“Ugh. methods.” Jerry flopped onto the floor with a loud thud. “Yeah, let's make a board. I think I have an extra corkboard from last semester's Celtic history paper.” slowly, she crawled her way to a standing position and trudged to her room to search for the corkboard.
“How is your girlfriend?” Faham asked. She liked keeping up with her classmates, and Dick had let his girlfriend dye his hair pink this week.
“She's good. Apparently, literature is kicking her ass right now. She's learning old English for something in her thesis. I don't understand it, but it's pretty cool. We're thinking of doing a purple in my hair next time she gets stressed. It washes out, so it's not like she's doing any damage.”
“I dyed my hair when I was younger. My friends and I thought that cool-aid dip thing would be fun. It did not turn out well, and I don't think I have even been more grateful for my Hijab than those two months of hiding it from my mother.” She laughed, throwing her head back, and was quickly joined by Dick.
“How about you, Jerry, ever dye your hair?” Dick called, Jerry had been trying to sneak back through the hallway with the pretzels and an energy drink.
“Put the Monster down!” Nico said. Jerry pouted but put the half-open can on the floor and rejoined her cohort.
“No, but I help Nico when they want to do something new.”
“You've never dyed your hair?” dick and Faham looked at her in shock.
“Nope. I didn't even cut it until last year. I forgot y’all didn't know me when it was long.”
“Woah.”
“Anyway, the conspiracy board? We can just do a digital one for now, i can't find the corkboard.”
“Did you look for it, or did you just try to sneak caffeine past Nico?”
“No comment. Anyway, I’ll go first. The school doesn't have a record of when the doc started teaching but! I messaged some of the alumni from the ’80s, and they said that Dr. Sigrid taught there then and had graduate students. They couldn't remember how many graduate students they had, though. And that they were using she/her pronouns then.” Jerry typed quickly on a PowerPoint slide, glaring at each red underlined word as she went back to fix them.
“I went through their publications, couldn't find a last name.” Dick moved his mouth as if chewing on his thought. Jerry's typing continued.
“I didn't think we were being serious, so I didn't do much other than bring yarn that is apparently not needed. But, a lot of their clothing is midcentury. I don't think they've realized their patch thread is a slightly different color than the textile.”
“See, and that's why we love you, Faham. Textiles are hard.” Dick dramatically flopped over, making sure to avoid landing on Faham while making his point.
“No, you just don't pay attention to them because they don't preserve well. However. I love the dyes.” she smiled, moving to the side as Dick fell over. She knew he wouldn't touch her, but it never hurt to be cautious.
“Okay, so we have no last name on the school website, or on schedules, or on publications, hella old clothes, but they drive a ‘22 Packard and are converting it to electric, which is amazing. They have oober tenure.” Jerry listed, “Is there anything I’m missing?”
They looked at each other, thinking.
“Didn’t you say they had a sibling?” Nico asked, having joined the conspiracy circle.
“Not confirmed,” Faham frowned, “but she is seen on the docs Instagram feed.”
“The doc has Instagram!” The room echoed with the group's yells.
“Uh, yeah,” she backed away, looking bewildered, before handing her phone over to Jerry.
Jerry scrolled through the Instagram feed; the posts were sporadic: Sigrid showing off a one-eyed raccoon they often referred to as their baby, videos of a tortoise eating, artistic shots of coffee, and, occasionally, pictures of them with a shorter brunet at museums. The museum captions were usually about the museum, curations, and a joke about similarities between either Sigrid or the brunet and a painting.
Jerry pressed her finger against the clearest picture of Sigrid and their friend, copied it, and sent it to herself before handing the phone back to its owner. She copied the picture into her PowerPoint as their center point.
“Do you think Prezie will let us make a spider web thing?”
“We should make this public to the graduate students in the department. I bet Dr. Jameson and Flynn's students would love this. They're taking bets on how long til they get engaged, but they need to do more than examine their professor's love lives.” Dick said.
“Like, were any better trying to figure out our professor's last name.” Jerry laughed.
Across town, Sigrid was lying across their couch cuddling a one-eyed raccoon, scrolling through Instagram, when they noticed a new follow request. “Hello, Dick. Of course, you can follow my Instagram.” They said to the near-empty room.
Blaire, on the other hand, felt a wave of dread wash over her as she finished her laundry.