I never had the heart to tell him that it was hard to be entertained by the subject when you were asleep. I was the note-taker for his classes, since so many students fell asleep that they hired me for an admittedly extortive price. And quite honestly, if it weren’t for the three cups of Mercury’s Mocha I had before every class, I would have been dead with the rest of them during that one hour of class time. The subject was dull and boring, the classroom was hot and still, and Briggs’s voice had a hypnotizing quality that made you fall asleep after only a couple of minutes.
After three years of taking notes, I thought it was impossible for him to ever have an exciting lecture. It just wasn’t going to happen. The only exciting part about his lectures were his ridiculously purple socks that he always wore, and even that was only exciting under the influence of three Mercury’s Mochas.
He was droning on one day and I was trying to stay awake by tapping my foot to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” when something unthinkable happened.
A student interrupted.
Just as Briggs was talking about quantum chronometric tunnel theory being linked with dynamic fluid reciprocation – whatever that meant – a student stood up and threw a paper airplane at him.
“This lecture sucks!” the student cried.
The classroom woke from its stupor and watched, transfixed as this student – I recognized him as Jeremy – crossed his arms over his chest and smirked.
The airplane did a loop-the-loop in low-gravity conditions and headed right toward Briggs’s head.
Briggs dodged the airplane and snatched it out of the air before it could knock down the whiteboard, which was only attached to the space station’s wall by one nail. Then he glared at Jeremy. “This lecture wouldn’t, as you call it, ‘suck’ if you actually did the required reading before class,” he said, wrinkling his nose in distaste.
The rest of us gave a nervous chuckle.
Briggs cleared his throat. “Now, like I was saying...”
“Yes, yes,” Jeremy interrupted. “Like you were saying, the quantum chronometric tunneling must be kept under a velocity of twenty paraseconds because of heat transfer affecting the wavelength of the thermocycling,” he said, dismissing his words with his hand. “I understand that. But what is it good for?”
Briggs blinked, a smile crawling to his face. “You read the material?”
“Yeah, I read the material,” Jeremy said. “And it’s useless too. The idea is not practical in any sense. Jiggling electrons? Photons rotating into other dimensions? How is that stuff even real?”
Briggs looked disappointed. “You didn’t read the material.”
“I just told you that I did.”
“No, you didn’t. If you did, you would realize how stupid your question was.”
Jeremy’s face grew red. “If it’s so stupid, then give me a demonstration on quantum chronometric tunneling,” Jeremy demanded, leaning back on his chair. “If you can.”
The whole classroom, myself included, sucked in its breath.
Briggs paused thoughtfully. “Well, if you want a demonstration, you’ll have to give me your shirt first.”
Jeremy balked at him, his eyes bulging out from his head. “What?” he cried, his voice strangled.
Several of the girls in the classroom started giggling uncontrollably. And no, I’ll never admit it for sure, but one of those girls may have been me.
Briggs chuckled. “All right, then give me your socks.”
Jeremy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “My socks are dirty.”
“Even better.” Briggs took out a small machine that looked like a remote control and aimed it at Jeremy’s feet. “Ready... set...”
Jeremy swore and slipped off his shoes, revealing a pair of worn-out formerly white socks that looked very gray.
“Now, go!”
Briggs punched the button. Immediately, smoke and the smell of burnt rubber permeated throughout the classroom. As the smoke cleared, two things became apparent at once. The first thing that I noticed was Briggs’s newly blackened face and frizzed hair. The second thing was Jeremy’s naked feet.
His socks had somehow been transported to his desk, cleaned, pressed, and nicely folded. And very, very purple.
The whole class snickered and Jeremy’s face turned as purple as his socks. At first, he could only sputter in disbelief. Finally, he choked out, “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously!” Briggs said grinning widely. “A demonstration of top-notch quality, don’t you think? However, next time, I urge you to read a little harder before you ask any more stupid questions. There are many possible applications to this technology, such as proton-phasal transportation and chiral atom removal.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jeremy demanded.
“The socks don’t smell,” Briggs explained patiently.
We had kept silent till then, but with this last sentence, we roared in laughter. Briggs was talking about smelly socks. No, Doctor Briggs, who had his Ph.D.s in Quantum Mechanics, Physics, and Chemistry, was talking about smelly socks. Several of the students were sprawled over their desks in laughing fits, others were rolling on the floor, and still others were sitting still, tears streaming from their faces. I was laughing so hard that I had hiccups.
Jeremy looked confused, as if he knew that he had just been had, but he had no idea how. He picked up his socks skeptically and wrinkled his nose. “They’re violet now.”
“So they are!” Briggs said, smiling. “So they are! Now, like I was saying -- quantum chronometric tunneling...”
We all paid attention after that.
Spoiler! :
Anyway, so I figured maybe that was going to have something to do with what you were writing about, since I was sadly lost. But through the length of whatever the teacher was trying to teach his students, you had that protagonist student which I found very much a mood lightener. It read off so smoothly. It was short, and witty. I think I can say I liked it, despite the first impression your opening lines gave me. D:
I guess the reason why I wrote this is because it would be neat to have this technology... and purple socks. 
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