High on chocolate and caffeine, I strode with new energy back to my office, determined to tackle that monster mound of papers. I stopped off at the Student Union bookstore to buy a fresh red magic marker and a six pack of Diet Coke.

I decided to start with the mid-term tests first. The kids didn't really care about the daily assignments. But one-fourth of their grade was based on the mid-term, and the dead-line to drop a class was just one week away. After seeing their test results, some of these kids would be scrambling for their pink slips.

I plowed through the tests at top speed, leaving a bloody trail of comments in the margins, until I hit Aquarius Dawn Kapinski's paper. She'd done alright on the True/False and Multiple Choice sections. The essay rambled, but hit all the salient points. The sucker punch came in the last section.

The students had been required to use one of the three pre- approved methods of prophecy: Trance Images, Reflected Visions or Readings.

If they used Trance Images they were limited to simple daydreams. Night dreams or trances brought on by a variety of hallucinogenic substances are far more powerful and specific. But the mid-term had to be completed in the lecture hall. And I couldn't have the kids smoking illegal substances or slamming schnapps shots in a campus building. I know. I asked before hand. Chancellor Phillips had not been happy about the question.

The kids' other choices included Reflected Visions, using a water bowl or crystal ball; or Readings, using a tarot deck, I- Ching or Runes stones.

Aquarius had used the water bowl -- no surprise there. Water was clearly her foci. It was the prophecy that brought me up short.

I wasn't dense. I knew it wasn't original material. A lot of prophecies aren't. Most prophets are just channeling a message being sent by someone or something else from a different plane or dimension. But a few of the more wily students come into class with a little something prepared, just in case their vision isn't working that day.

Last semester, one kid had tried to pass off his predictions for The Octa-Pods, the Miskatonic Swim Team. Which would be perfectly acceptable -- except it was for a meet they'd swum the week before.

Now, it's always possible to pick up the past and that shouldn't be held against the prophet. So, I did some research on the case. I might have bought the kid's predictions -- if he hadn't been a time-keeper for the team.

But what was Aquarius Dawn Kapinski, a good Midwestern girl from the Show Me State, doing channeling something that sounded like a Hindu Purana?

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