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"Buer, I'm going to revert back into a False God if you make me do this," Wanderer threatened. The two of the them were standing outside a closed door that lead into a lecture hall within the Akademiya. Muted tones of conversation wisped out into the hall the two of them were residing, indicating just how packed the room was. Which, why wouldn't it be? The Archon of a nation had personally announced a new required class for all Akademiya students that needed to be completed in order to begin drafting the thesis to their research projects they would be undertaking in just a year or so. Said class being Research Ethics: An Introduction to Designing an Ethical Project. Apparently there was a human experimentation problem within the nation, and Lesser Lord Kusanali had not only decided that an ethics course should be mandatory, but somehow he was designated as most qualified to teach it. Him. The same person who had tried to overthrow her own position by becoming a false god! Well, almost the same person, ignoring the whole stint of erasing his past existence and then reclaiming it. One could claim that the him who had done that was in an alternate universe.
Pushing the complications of identity crises aside! Even if he wasn't the one who committed all those countless atrocities! He was a student in the Akademiya! And the person who had enrolled him was also the same person who was forcing him to become a professor! If this wasn't unconventional then it was definitely unethical! Way to start an ethics class! Choose the most unethical option in coming up with a professor for it! Nothing could go wrong ever with this decision!
"Don't be silly Hat Guy! You don't have a Gnosis to try and attempt doing that! And who else could teach these students the atrocities of human experimentation! After all, you yourself have firsthand knowledge of the dark path it eventually ends up leading people down and the pain that eventually falls upon their victims! You'll do great! And I'll be there to personally cheer you on!" More like the personally make sure he doesn't just walk into that room, write DO NOT DO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION!!!! and then leave. Well, on her head be it. It's not his fault if these students learn nothing. She was the one who chose the least qualified person to teach.
"Whatever. Let's get this over with."
"That's the spirit!" The small Archon opened the door, effectively bringing the entire hall to a tense silence as they honed in on the two of them walking up on the slightly raised platform where the professor was meant to lecture to over several hundred students at a time. "Welcome to your new ethics course everyone! This is your professor, Dr. Hat Guy!" Wow, on top of the very unethical hiring - wait, was he getting paid? Oh he had better, otherwise he would start a riot - he was also faking a PhD. This entire thing reeked of no ethical consideration. Maybe they should make an ethics board that deliberated and decided if things were ethical. Though, from the way things kept going, it seemed like he would be forced onto the board. Which also should be unethical considering the first thing they should look into would be the situation regarding his hiring. "Hopefully after this semester he will be able to express upon you all the importance of researching utilizing ethical means and to look upon other potential topics of research if one such topic doesn't fall within an ethical approach of study." With those oh so inspiring words, Lesser Lord Kusanali hopped off the stage and took a seat in the back corner of the room, giving the most menacing thumbs up Wanderer had seen in his not exactly human existence.
That left him alone up on the platform, a sea of expecting students watching his every move. No doubt a few had already recognized him from the few classes he had begun attending. After all, Lesser Lord Kusanali hadn't exactly forced him to wear any sort of uniform as a new professor, and he had forgone ever wearing the typical student uniform for any of his classes. Thankfully, being forced into enrollment came with the perks of no one wanted to try and tell him to do anything because he got a recommendation letter from God. Whispered conversations were beginning to break out as they realized they were being taught by one of their fellow students. Perhaps they would also come to the realization that he probably didn't have any actual credentials to teach them other than like five buckets worth of trauma and they would riot for him and end up defenestrating him before he could do it himself. But until then...
He sighed and picked up a piece of chalk. Boosting himself with a sustained air current courtesy of his vision, he began writing at the top of the large chalkboard.
HOW TO BE ETHICAL IN RESEARCH
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DON'T DO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION
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SERIOUSLY JUST DON'T DO HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION
He turned back to face the sea of confused faces that hadn't bothered to pull out any sort of writing utensils.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Write this down!" He barked, ignoring Lesser Lord Kusanali's new round of thumbs up. "This is the basis to ethical research. And yet it seems like no one in this Archons forsaken country has ever heard the phrase 'human experimentation is BAD' so clearly we need to dumb it down and go back to the bare bones basics for all of you." He watched in satisfaction as everyone began scrambling for something to write with. Perhaps this whole teaching thing had some merit if he could bask in the terror he struck into hundreds with only a few words and get absolutely no reprimand. In fact, the literal God in the room seemed to even be on board with his actions.
A brave, or perhaps stupid, soul tentatively raised their hand into the air. "What?" He acknowledged them. He had no idea what they could possibly have a question about considering he had only written three sentences.
"Um, Professor, what exactly constitutes as human experimentation? After all, several famous studies involve humans within the experiments, but those aren't frowned upon and are even see as revolutionary in their field?" He rolled his eyes and turned back to the board.
HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION VS. HUMAN PARTICIPATION
INFORMED CONSENT
"The major factor that differentiates the two of these things is the issue of informed consent. One of these things informs the humans within the experiment what they will experience and what the general idea of the research is and allow them to consent to be a subject of the experiment if they are ok with going through such things. The other does not. I'll give you a singular guess as to which is which. If you get it wrong I'm throwing you out the window." He was blatantly ignoring the thumbs down that that last sentence had garnered from what could only be considered his evaluator. After all, it wasn't a threat, it was a promise. He would one hundred percent throw someone out a window if they couldn't put two and two together and get four. "Is this making sense yet?" Hesitant nods bobbed throughout the entire room. "Good. Maybe you all aren't as big as idiots as all the other people this school has produced. Now, what qualifies as actual informed consent you may ask? Let me dumb it down."
Several grueling monologues and dumb questions asked later, the time slot that was reserved for the class had finally come to an end. "Alright. That's the end of this. See you whenever the next session is. Uhhhh homework is to beat your notes into your thick skulls until you remember what human experimentation is and what informed consent is. I don't know. I don't want to grade anything so it's not like there's going to be a test on this. Your test can be whether your research project gets approved for ethicality or not in like a year. Now leave." He watched silently as everyone quickly left the room, crowding around and no doubt beginning to gossip about the lecture and his qualification. Oh well. Wasn't his problem. If he got fired for being illegally hired, that was fine by him. It's not like he could do anything about that one.
"I think that went extremely well!" He frowned down at the Archon in front of him who was madly grinning at him.
"I think it was horrible."
"Yes, yes, but you definitely enlightened quite a few individuals about misconceptions towards ethics within research, which was the ultimate goal of this class! All things considered, the first day could have been far worse!" He rolled his eyes and stomped over to the window, only taking the time to open it for fear that he'd be forced to teach even more if he broke the glass, and proceeded to throw himself out it.
He flew over to a overhanging roof he had started claiming as a designated rest space after days of classes to avoid the crowds of students leaving their classes for the day. Lesser Lord Kusanali definitely knew about the spot, but she seemed to respect that he went there for solitude and never seemed to interrupt his time there. It was perhaps one of the nicer parts of his imprisonment within the nation.
"Are we sure that Hat Guy actually has the qualifications to teach? I heard he was a fairly new student to the Akademiya." Ew. He didn't want to hear student gossip. Especially not gossip about him. Weren't these people supposed to be scholars? How did they have this much time to gossip.
"I mean, Lord Kusanali herself vouched for him and I heard she personally appointed him to the position. So clearly she thinks he's qualified. Should we really question an Archon's judgement?" Oh yeah, because Archons were just so infallible and all knowing. "Besides, I thought it was an insightful lecture. It's not often you have a professor ready to call out scholars on their bullshit... Oh don't look so scandalized! You've heard the rumors about Siraj and that other guy! Collective Consciousness? We aren't insects! Our minds are far too complex and unique for such a thing to ever work out in the long run and those so called scholars should have known at least that much! People get hurt when researcher are left to their own devices with their over inflated egos. I think Professor Hat Guy might be what these people need."
"I mean, I guess you're right, but we'll just have to see how the rest of the semester goes before we can form a proper opinion on him as a professor." He heard the group of students walking off and sighed. Turning over onto his side, he closed his eyes and just allowed himself the time to bask in the warmth of the sun before something ultimately went to shit like everything else in his life did.
The next few sessions of his teaching actually went fairly well. The in depth description of Dottore's actions seemed to traumatize at least half of the class to the point where he's sure that lesson would forever stick with them of the message Do Not Become This Man. He's pretty sure at least three people were starting to look nauseous and several others were holding back tears. And well, if that's what it took for him to not have to go and break into another Matra holding cell and beat the shit out of someone who decided human experimentation was a good research project, then that's what it took. Lesser Lord Kusanali didn't seem to have any gripes with it either. Apparently she saw the wisdom in striking fear and disgust into people's hearts in order to keep them from walking down the same path as others. Really, he shouldn't be surprised from such a revelation, but it still did strike him just how much freedom he was being granted in running this class.
"I just don't see how The Doctor's actions can be compared to someone like Siraj. All Siraj was trying to do was make a peaceful community of like minded people! That's nothing like The Doctor and his gross treatment of people!" Wanderer appeared in front of the person who spoke up, moving so fast through the air it looked like he teleported. Grabbing the collar of their uniform, he heaved them out of their seat and chucked them out the already-opened-window, making sure to not let them hit anything too hard in their tumble through the air.
Of course, these actions had consequences as everyone started screaming in fear and Lesser Lord Kusanali was giving him two big thumbs down. Unbothered, he flew back down to the podium and also brought the now fear ridden student back up through the window, dropping them like a sack of vegetables onto the ground of the classroom.
"You want to know why what Siraj did was bad? You see no harm in just a little collective consciousness experimentation? Fine, let me explain to you the intricacies of the stupidity that was Siraj. Think of the Collective as a battery operated machine. It runs perfectly fine and the gears turn and circuits do whatever circuits do. That is, as long as the battery is charged. The problem with the Collective is what quantifies as the battery. You want to know what the battery was?" He paused, looking across the room, waiting for the looks of shock and horror as the truth was beginning to dawn on a few brighter individuals. "The people of the consciousness acted as the battery. The Collective sucked the energy of people into itself to continue to operate, similar to how Delusions used by members of The Fatui operate. Perhaps it wasn't torture like Dottore's experiments, after all, the process of The Collective harvesting energy wasn't painful and none of the people would know anything about it. But, that falls back to lack of informed consent. After all, do you think Siraj really, truly informed the participants what would be happening to them when they joined The Collective? No! He! Didn't!" He turned back to the still shell shocked student. "Well? Go back to your seat! You people clearly need another lesson on what exactly informed consent it."
Apparently a controlled defenestration still had consequences a regular defenestration probably would have had because when Wanderer walked into his classroom, already dreading another day of teaching Siraj apologists, the blonde Traveler was sitting on the windowsill, a notepad and pen in hand, smiling eerily his way. "Buer, why is your personal sage in my classroom?" He accused, turning to see the small God sitting in her regular seat in the back corner.
"To prevent another incident like the last one! Just pretend like no one's there!" He wanted to slam his head through a wall just so very badly, but something told him even a grade three concussion wouldn't give him an excuse to not continue teaching this dumb class.
All things considered, the class did go fairly smoothly. He threatened to kick anyone out of the class and force them to retake it another semester if they tried to be a Siraj apologist, and/or if they asked about the new person by the window, and then he continued the next lesson of Don't Steal Other People's Work.
"You're a good teacher." The Traveler told him after the class ended and he was preparing to defenestrate himself again. "You show passion."
"If you're going to interact with me, it better be you shoving your sword through my chest. Otherwise, don't." And then he threw himself out the window. The last thing he needed was for people to actually think he was qualified to continue teaching this farce of a class! It had been almost a month and he hadn't even seen an inkling of a paycheck! This had to be breaking so many labor laws.
Eventually the end of the semester came around, and Wanderer was doing an internal celebratory dance the entire week of finals because he was free from teaching! All he had to do was tell everyone who took the class "congrats you got an A" and then he would be free from his eternal hell. He could also probably check some of the reviews that supposedly he would be getting. Hopefully everyone would give him no stars and Lesser Lord Kusanali would be forced to hire someone else.
RateThatProfessor! Professor Hat Guy
Quality: 4.0
Difficulty: 1.0
Would take again? Yes. Attendance: Optional. For Credit: Yes. Grade: A. Textbook: No
Professor Hat Guy was actually pretty passionate about the whole ethics in research thing? Very unconventional and did throw a student out of a window, but he showed passion in the idea of creating a safe research environment for the testers and participants. Also he literally gave no assignments or tests, the most he did was go around and ask "do you think human experimentation is bad? Do you support Siraj. Will you steal other people's research?" And if you answered them you got an automatic A. But even without the homework he still left such an impression that it was hard to forget his words.
Quality: 5.0
Difficulty: 1.0
Would take again? Yes. Attendance: Optional. For Credit: Yes. Grade: A. Textbook: No
I don't think there's a single other person who could have done such a spectacular job in teaching ethics than this man. He kept things real and it was almost impossible to forget what he taught you. I'm still not convinced he actually has a PhD in anything or that he wasn't being held there and forced to teach against his will. But hey, I think we're going to have a whole lot less Siraj's on our hands after people take his course.
Quality: 3.5
Difficulty: 1.0
Would take again? Yes. Attendance: Optional. For Credit: Yes. Grade: A. Textbook: No
He threw me out a window. But like, he kept me from dying. All around good teacher, though not sure what Lesser Lord Kusanali was thinking when she hired him.
The reviews went on and on staggering mostly between 4.0s and 5.0s for him. What the fuck! Why was he getting good reviews?! He called them idiots on numerous occasions and barely did anything besides tell them why human experimentation was bad! He should've assigned them all ten page essays after every lecture and not even bother to grade them! That would show them!
"Oh good! You've seen the reviews!" Oh no. He didn't like that tone. "I was thinking we should make your position more permanent and start developing a new ethics department! You'll be teaching another introductory course next semester and perhaps even an optional research based class looking into the ethical dilemma of multiple unethical experiments that led to greater innovations!"
Archons why couldn't Traveler have just finished the job and kill him when he took his Gnosis?!