The Professor

The phone rang incessantly for over a week, but he never answered it. He left his couch as little as possible, rising only to go to the bathroom or heat up a bowl of macaroni and cheese. With every channel on the television dominated by news of the impending black hole and calls for him to help, he was forced to watch and rewatch episodes of House that he had saved on his DVR.

When his eyes grew tired, he cut out newspaper clippings about boys who had the same first name as his, believing with unimaginable certainty that if he’d been born with a different surname, Thomas, Moldavano, Petersen, he’d have the power to change everything.

With an IQ of 217 and unparalleled knowledge of astrophysics, he was the only man who could stop the black hole from destroying the planet, but decades of ridicule from children, teachers and peers had destroyed Professor Booger’s confidence.