Chapter 11: Academic Collapse
The lecture hall was a sanctuary of mundane noise. Scattered chatter, the rustle of notebooks, the thud of backpacks hitting the floor. Li Wei took a seat near the back, where the fluorescent lights buzzed loudest. The sound matched the static in his head.
He tried to focus on arranging his pen and notebook, a ritual of normalcy. But the collar’s weight was a cold, insistent anchor. He’d re-buttoned his shirt to the top, but the stiff fabric chafed the metal with every swallow. He could still taste it. Not the memory of a flavor, but the ghost of the act itself, a phantom bitterness at the back of his throat that water couldn’t erase.
“Alright, settle down.” Professor Lan, a man with perpetually ink-stained fingers, adjusted his glasses. “Last week we ended with Descartes. ‘I think, therefore I am.’ A foundation of the self. Today, we dismantle it. We talk about the illusion of agency. Nietzsche, then a jump to modern cognitive science. The idea that your conscious will is not the author, but the… publicity agent, post-rationalizing what your brain has already decided.”
Li Wei’s pen hovered over the page. The words slithered into his ears, twisting meaning.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
A jolt went through him, a physical spasm that tightened the collar. He clenched his jaw, trying to ignore it. He stared at the professor’s moving lips.
“We believe we choose,” Professor Lan said, pacing. “This tea over that coffee. This major. This person to love. But what if the choice is a biological script, running on hardware built by genetics and experience? What is ‘free will’ then but a story we tell ourselves?”
The phone vibrated again. A double pulse. A second message.
Li Wei’s breath shallowed. On the back of his notebook, he’d unconsciously drawn a single, jagged line, over and over, digging the pen into the paper. It looked like the spiking heartbeat from the tablet screen.
He had to look. The not-knowing was worse.
Under the desk, he angled the phone. The screen glowed.
Unknown Number: Physiological data indicates elevated cortisol. Breathe. You are observed.
Unknown Number: Tomorrow, 10 AM. The suite. Wear the uniform. Nothing else.
The words swam. Nothing else. The classroom, with its hundred warm bodies, its smell of dust and cheap perfume, suddenly felt like a vacuum. The air was too thin. He saw Zhao’s sharp eyes watching the tablet, heard his calm voice dissecting the lines. Your body cannot lie.
“Consider the famous Libet experiments,” the professor continued, his voice cheerful, oblivious. A student in front of Li Wei raised a hand.
“But if we don’t have free will, what’s the point of anything? Like, why be good?”
“Ah!” Professor Lan smiled. “The perennial question. Does morality require a ghost in the machine? Or can it be another programmed imperative? Social cohesion as an evolutionary advantage.”
Laughter rippled through the hall. A light, academic debate. A puzzle.
Li Wei’s skin was crawling. The collar wasn’t just on his neck; it was in his head, a schematic wiring his thoughts. Every concept of self, choice, autonomy that Professor Lan so cleverly deconstructed wasn’t an abstract theory. It was an operating manual for what was happening to him. He was a living experiment. His body had betrayed him with its data. His mind was being rewired with each text, each command.
He was proving the lecture’s thesis in real time.
The phone vibrated a third time.
Unknown Number: Your heart rate is accelerating. Quiet it.
He dropped the phone as if it had burned him. It clattered against the leg of his chair. A girl two seats over glanced at him, eyebrows raised. He mouthed sorry, his face hot.
He couldn’t quiet it. His heart was a frantic animal in a cage of bone. He saw the number 145 glowing in the dark. He felt the weight on his head. The taste.
“So, is the self just a narrative?” Professor Lan was wrapping up, gathering his notes. “A story the brain tells to make sense of the chaos of stimuli and pre-determined neural firing? Perhaps. For Wednesday, read the Dennett chapter. He’s a bit more cheerful about the whole mess. Thinks the story itself has value.”
The class erupted into the noise of departure. Chairs scraped. Conversations resumed. The world moved on.
Li Wei didn’t move. He sat staring at the notebook, at the frantic, etched line. The professor’s words echoed. A story the brain tells.
What was his story now? The eager student. The good son. The diligent concierge. That story was obsolete, a discarded draft. A new narrative was being written with every vibration against his thigh, every digitized command. He was becoming a document of responses. A will broken down into data points.
He slowly put his pen away. He stood, his legs unsteady. He walked out of the lecture hall, blending into the stream of students. Their conversations swirled around him—plans for dinner, complaints about workload, a funny thing a roommate said. A universe of small, free choices.
He walked past the library, past the buzzing student union, towards his cramped apartment. The collar was a cold, precise knot. The commands were a new syllabus.
He understood now, with a clarity that was utterly chilling. The philosophy wasn’t abstract. It was preparation. It was Zhao, through some cruel, twisted pedagogy, teaching him the language of his own dissolution. Making him an accomplice in his unraveling.
The story of Li Wei was being revised. And he was being forced to read every draft.