"I am Shakespeare."

John smiled, amused at his own arrogance. The girl laughed, as she had been for the last ten minutes, it was yet another escalation. He wondered if she could peak. Everything he had said from the moment they met, minutes before. That her name was already forgotten amused him even more, because he was sure that she knew his. John, John was captivating, absurd and huge. Not huge, giant, he was a thin man, but he took up a room easily. Held it against the will of other large men, and the rare large woman. He often noticed that large women would try to take the room through their sexuality, and so John, despite his disinterest, and occasional spite would take it from her. He often joked about 'whipping it out' in the middle of conversation or argument. He mentioned it to the girl.

"Bring them to their knees?" she said wittily.

"Bring them to their senses." And she laughed. Peaked in fact, for John had just disgusted himself and felt the need to leave.

He got up, excusing himself, picked up his coat, and said goodnight to Angela, the host, the delicate model delighted by the beauty of her body in youth, knowing nothing of her world. Nothing wrong with that John thought. He slipped out and walked slowly home. The trip was brief as they were all in school, his dorm only blocks from her apartment. This is how we differ, fundamentally he thought, because her vanity would compel her to waste money, to make a show of herself with her clothes and home. Money is important. It went deeper, but it was easier to be blunt. John was always blunt with himself.

--- --- --- ---

"John, how would you change the world?"

"You can't, so I wouldn't bother." Not the answer Dr. Parker wanted he knew, but it was an old debate, and though superfluous argument frustrated him, it also came quickly to his mind.

"You're wrong, or jaded. I hope it's just the former. We are all far too young to be jaded." Dr. Parker made a point of the word 'we.' Not obviously, for he had wit as a speaker, but at the age of sixty he was trying to make a point.

"I'm not jaded sir, honestly, but tell me why I'm wrong." John could give himself a dozen reasons, but they were all false, or incomplete. He hated it when people said you couldn't change the world, and yet he believed it. Knew it in fact. But John did not lie when he said he wasn't jaded, he would argue passionately against anyone else making the claim, because he didn't want to know that, and didn't think anyone else should be made to bear the reality of it.

"Instead let me tell you how I would do it." Dramatic pause, Dr. Parker almost said the words in his head as he looked around the room. "I would control one person. That's all you need. Any man or institution that has absolute control over one person can change the world. And I'm not talking small scale, this isn't teaching a man to fish, this is telling someone to do something, and because of his or her faith in you, it gets done. At some point you will all realize that in order to accomplish something, you simply have to do it. It's simple, but impossible. We contradict ourselves, we waiver and worry. The most passionate, straightforward and effective soldiers have been fighting religious wars because they have absolute faith in God, however he is perceived, and that's not the discussion we're having here so take the comparison at face value. But imagine yourself in absolute control of someone. When you tell them to do something they will not waiver because they believe in you, despite how you might feel about them. Tell that person to become president and provide them the means to do so, and they very well might. Tell them to kill, or commit a crime, and if you have absolute control, they will do it effectively and completely. Changing the world by yourself, unique from anyone else, is, perhaps, impossible, but with a conduit, by removing all doubt from the person, they will accomplish everything you set them to. That's how you change the world." The teacher expected a moment of awkward, or reverent silence.

But he had scared John, and so John spoke immediately.

"Really?"

Irreverent jackass Dr. Parker thought.

"Yes, really, not exactly complex or revolutionary, but it's the truth." Because I am a teacher it is the truth. I can decide that, that is what we do. Teachers create truth with greater frequency and fervency than any poet or scientist, and I am at the top of my field.

"Your confidence is …" John trailed off.

"What?"

"Nothing." John said nothing more and class resumed, many students explaining their plans to change the world, many, far too many, just riffing on Dr. Parker's idea. Turning it into something too complicated, ruining it, creating their failure in the idea's inception. John knew the teacher was correct. He was certain of it.

--- --- --- ---

Dr. Parker was in the wrong profession. The letters following his name were M.D. and he found himself teaching a college sleeper course on world history. Not that he wasn't qualified, he had a poly-sci degree. It was just a bachelor's, a relic from his brief youthful romance with peace, love, and protests. It was enough for the school that recruited him for his name and quickly found out he was past his productive days.

Dr. Parker had made that name for himself as a particularly innovative surgeon. The tragedy was that he grew timid with age, as had the old guard when he first arrived. In his youth they called him reckless and irreverent, but he thought of himself as a god, and privately joked that the most reckless, irreverent force in the world was God, so they would keep good company.

But, one day it occurred to him that people die. There had always been death, sometimes as he was operating, but it was distant somehow. The difference that day was his patient died before he could ever get him open. He was never given the chance. On the way in from pre-op he had an aneurysm. Not much to it. Just seized and died. Without permission. Taken before he could do anything about it, and without being able to take that responsibility, he felt very common.

Most would say he became a better surgeon that day. Suddenly he was more precise, stern and careful than ever before. No risks, however, meant no innovation, and though he managed to keep a reasonable pace within his ever advancing field, eventually the cruelties of age robbed him of his prowess. Slowed reactions and light hand tremors are what took him out of the operating room. His now standardized, homogenized techniques are what drove him from medicine. All he had left was his name.

It was enough that he had his choice of medical schools. He knew he might amount to the doddering old man wandering the halls, until he received an unexpected offer of a return to his first love. It came from a small city college with connections to Columbia and NYU, both of whom loved the arrangement, touting Dr. Parker as their own.

Years passed and life grew dull, but comfortable. Which, as with most people of a certain caliber, certainly meant there would be some unsolicited excitement on its way. And though he suspected this in his most secret paranoid self, he never thought his would be the hands that took responsibility for life and death again.

--- --- --- ---

John had written out a list of everyone he knew well, and then deleted the name of anyone who knew him well. He removed anyone who was raised in the city and removed all of the males. As long as this is just an experiment, I might as well enjoy myself. He was left with two names, Maya, his roommate Eddie's girlfriend, and Angela, the model.

Maya would be easier. She was polite and impressed with how much John remembered when she came over. It was easy to impress when her boyfriend spent every spare minute on the computer flirting with underage girls he claimed were shockingly mature and intelligent. Shockingly vulnerable too. With Eddie so distant Maya talked to John and he remembered only the bad things, only the tragedies. That way, later, when they saw each other at a party he'd ask with sincerity how things were going, he'd remember names and relationships. He liked knowing that if he felt like it he could have her. But he didn't want her, didn't want trouble where he lived, and with a sulky, perhaps violent Eddie in mind, he crossed her name off the list.

Angela…

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