Chapter 2

In his apartment in downtown St.
Louis, Victor Storm woke with a start, gulping breath, heart
pounding. He drew his hands up in front of his face, expecting to
look at the rifle he was holding, but as his eyes adjusted he saw
they were empty.

The studio apartment materialized
from the darkness around him. A rectangle of soft, gray light entered
the room from around the blinds closed across his front window. His
eyes searched the darkness, finding reassurance in the familiar forms
of the lamp on the nightstand next to his queen bed, the wide, low
bookshelf between his bed and the living area, the arch to the
kitchen, the kitchen counter. His ears picked up the distant rumble
of a diesel engine idling somewhere in the parking lot outside, and
this, too, was familiar and reassuring.

For a while he sat on the edge of
the bed. Though it was still before dawn, he didn’t want to go back
to sleep.

In time, he walked to the window,
twisted the blinds open, and stared out at the darkness. His
apartment was too low to the ground and too far away, but he could
imagine he could see the flat black Mississippi River rolling through
the darkness. He could almost see the Arch, rising and falling like
hope, like life.

In the eastern distance, he could
see the first touch of blue beginning to lighten the far horizon.

As soon as Victor Storm walked
into the philosophy class at St. Louis Community College, he thought
he had made a mistake.

A number of things had led him
here. He’d never been to college before. He’d joined the Army
right out of high school. After twenty years, he was thirty-eight and
retired. Wow. A year later, his wife left him, and a year after that
he turned forty. In the year and a half since then he’d been trying
to sort out the big issues of life, the universe, and everything.
He’d looked in a lot of bars, but he hadn’t found any answers, or
insight, or anything but drunks and thugs.

Then, skimming through his junk
mail one day, he’d come across a flyer for the St. Louis Community
College. His eyes fell on the description of a philosophy class: “An
introduction to philosophical inquiry through a study of such
perennial problems as the nature of truth and the possibility of
knowledge, the various conceptions of the mind-body relation; the
nature and basis of morality; the problem of free will and an
analysis of the main arguments for the nature and existence of God.”
Wow.

Reading this, the wheels in his
head had begun to turn. He’d become more introspective in recent
years. His early retirement, and recent divorce, had left him with a
lot of free time, and a lot of uncertainty. Now that he could do what
he wanted, he had no idea what might be the right thing to do. He had
found himself up against the big questions of life: Who am I? Why am
I here? What should I do with my life? And, turning the questions
over in his head, he had found himself not just without answers, but
without an idea of how to figure out the answers. He’d been
absolutely and totally lost. Seeing the flyer for the community
college class, he’d felt the tiniest flicker of hope in his heart.
Maybe, just maybe, a philosophy class would help him to sort things
out. He had decided to give it a shot. Even if it didn’t give him
the answers, it could possibly introduce him to a framework of
thinking about things to let him work out the answers for himself.

He had hoped that by taking an
evening class that he would perhaps have the company of some other
people his own age, and that maybe he would find some other people
with similar issues, similar problems, solutions he hadn’t been
able to think of on his own. Looking around the class now, Victor
began to doubt the whole enterprise.

He saw he was by far the oldest
one there. At ten minutes early, he had been the first one to arrive,
and he’d been able to watch his “classmates” arrive. By ones
and twos they straggled in, took seats, and began talking about
non-issues as if they were important. All of them were kids, none of
them older than early twenties.

When the “instructor” came in
and took a seat at the desk up front, Victor’s dismay was complete.
This guy was barely older than most of the students. What could he
possibly know? The drunks down at Penguin’s Tavern probably knew
more than this guy; they’d certainly seen more of life. If Victor
had been seated near the door, he might have left, but he was in the
far back corner of the room, so he merely sat there and thought about
it.

The instructor glanced at the
clock, then cleared his throat to get the attention of the class.
“Okay, everyone. This is Introduction to Philosophy, so if you were
looking for something else, this would be an excellent time to
leave.”

A general chuckle rose up from
the class. No one left, though Victor thought very seriously about
it.

“My name is Colton Fischer,”
the instructor continued, “and as you have probably figured out,
I’m the instructor for this class. This will be a survey of
philosophy, in which we talk about things like metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and logic.”

“What about truth?” someone
in the middle of the room suggested.

Colton Fischer smiled. “That’s
a good question.”

Again a little laugh rose up from
the room.

“Yes,” Colton Fischer
continued, “truth, knowledge, free will, existence, beauty—we’ll
get to all of that in time. First, though, I’m supposed to start
with something a little less heady: a roll call.”

This introduction actually made
Victor feel a little better. Truth, free will, ethics—even if
nobody here had any real insight on the answers of the world, maybe
he could learn something just by hearing the questions.

While Colton Fischer—Victor
refused to think of him as “Mr.” Fischer—called names off his
roster, Victor watched the students, trying to remember names and
generally occupying himself by observing the students. The skill of
observation was highly prized in the Special Forces, and Victor was
good at it.

Colton Fischer finished his roll
call, then stood up and leaned on his desk. His face showed the
expression of a man formulating a thought. “How many people are
taking this class because it’s required for a degree?” he asked.

Half or more of the hands went
up.

“And people taking it because
they have a real interest in philosophy?”

A few of the remaining hands went
up. Victor saw Colton Fischer sneak a glance at him each time, though
Victor didn’t raise a hand for either answer.

“I think that’s a good mix,”
Colton Fischer continued. “I’ve found that people taking the
class because they have to feel free to
argue whatever points they like, while people taking the class
because they want to really try to apply the
concepts we talk about, and provide a kind of structure to the
debate.” He walked over to the blackboard and picked up a piece of
chalk. “Now, before we begin, I’d like to make a list of the
kinds of questions and concepts that people think of when they think
about philosophy.” He looked back over his shoulder at the class,
hand poised to write on the board. “Anybody? Philosophical question
or concept?”

“Uhm,” said a guy in the
other back corner of the room, “boxers or briefs?”

Everyone but Victor laughed.
Colton Fischer wrote it on the board.

“Abortion?”

Colton wrote it on the board.

“Racism.”

On the board.

The death penalty, war, the legal
system—all on the board.

After the board was sufficiently
scratched with questions and terms, Colton began to address the
points, commenting on how different philosophical concepts addressed
the various issues, and how their studies during the course of the
semester would give them a framework for thinking about these things.

During Colton’s lecture, he
posed questions to the group, solicited answers, then posed more
questions about those answers. Some of the students were more willing
than others to speak up, but all of them eventually became involved
in the discussion. All that is, except for Victor Storm.

Finally the time for the class
was up. As everyone rose to leave, Victor caught the instructor
sneaking a glance at him. The look on his face said he was wondering
what Victor was doing here.

At the beginning of the class,
Victor had wondered that himself. Now he thought he knew: in spite of
the inexperience of the other students and even the instructor, he
thought he just might learn something.