"That thing can't stay here."

Milo's roommate, Alexei, slammed an open hand down on the mushroom-shaped button, shutting down his air blanket. With a quiet whoosh, the warm gas dispersed into the small boxy room.

"That thing kept me up all night. Does it ever stop crying? I have a test today. "

Sleepy darkness shadowed Alex's face as he climbed from his lofted bed. He studied incessantly, pursuing a degree in quantum brain design, and didn't like Milo much. They hardly ever talked.

"Why are you here if you aren't even going to-"

Alex gasped. His eyes widened as his mouth flew open. He put both his hands up in the air in a fighting stance as if to shield himself from some unseen attacker.

Milo knew why. Bright red welts moved across Milo's body. They appeared at some point during the night when he rose to quiet the baby. They weren't actual welts, of course, they were photonic projections superimposed over his clothes, like red bubbles that moved constantly around in haphazard trajectories.

Alex recoiled backward, covering his open mouth. Milo feared he might hyperventilate. "Why do you have that baby?" He pointed at Milo with his other arm, the one not covering his mouth. "Did you steal it? Are you in some kind of baby-stealing crime ring? Are you going to eat it?"

Milo suspected either Dr. Chocka, Axion, or likely both knew his location, and the welts proved it. Axion knew what he had done. Didn't Axion know everything? Weren't its particles everywhere?

He didn't have a mother or father like some of the wealthier kids. He had been born in a public incubator and raised by robots. With nowhere else to go, he brought Cale Vals to his room in the Atraville dormitory towers. There he washed the infant, fed him from some formula he found in the school cafeteria, and took care of him.

Cale didn't like his compression chamber, though. That's probably how Axion found him. Whenever Milo tried to place him back in the box, the kid reflexed with his arms, screamed, and then cried. He heard the infant even after shutting and fastening the lid. The box made a lot of noise too. Its Higgs mechanism wasn't exactly quiet for sleeping or studying.

He fed him more baby formula, but the infant continued to cry. Even after he added some towels along with his blue blanket to make it more comfortable, the kid still cried and reflexed when he lowered him down. It was only when he held him that the baby quieted for a time.

And he loved to hold him. More precisely, he loved the energy that flowed from the infant through him, like a warm electric current juicing his bones, stimulating his muscles, and exciting his brain. It was the best drug in the world. He never wanted to put the baby down.

So, he wound up sitting with Cale for much of the night, sleeping with the babe in his arms. That was when the welts appeared. Now he sat holding Cale in a chair at the far end of the dorm room he shared with Alexei.

Alexei dressed hurriedly, casting anxious glances over at Milo and Cale. He pulled together a pile of opaque sheets from off his desk, glaring at Milo as he shoved them into a bag he slung over his shoulder.

"When I come back this afternoon, I want that thing gone."

"It's not a thing, Alex, he's a baby and his name is Cale Vals."

Alex glared at Milo again as he rushed out the door. "Whatever."

Cale cried when Milo put him back in his container, but he needed to do it. He had to find a place for him. He couldn't stay in their dorm room; Alex made that clear. Besides, he didn't know what to do with a baby. At least the suitcase-sized box was easy to carry. He picked it up and took the helical escalator down to the ground floor.

The resident hall assistant, Robin Kaunis, was a gorgeous graduate student far out of his league. He felt nervous approaching her even for help with his room lock, much less for something like a baby. He found her rushing from her office with a board in her hands. She nearly took his breath away, literally, because in her hurry, she slammed into him and knocked him over. They both stopped. She jerked back from him and quickly brushed off her trendy jeans and black athletic shirt, as if she needed to wipe his welts off her fashionable clothes.

When she tried to jump on her board and go, he grabbed her shoulder. "Wait."

She squirmed away, her face turning in disgust at his touch. "I'm in a hurry."

"Where am I supposed to take him, then?"

She cocked her head as if he was a crazy dude. Well, he might be. "What?"

He realized she didn't know what was in the box. "There's a baby in there." He pointed at the chamber. "Alex, my roommate, won't let him stay in my room. Can you help me find a place for him?"

She gawked at him. "You put a baby in a containment box? Isn't that for medical stuff, like diseases?"

"Where can I take him? You're supposed to be my dorm assistant."

Robin jumped on her board and sped down the hallway, calling back over her shoulder, "No way, not here."

He wanted to throw something at her, maybe to knock her pretty face off her worthless board. Instead, he sat down on the floor outside her office, dropping the chamber next to him, trying to decide what to do next, despondency setting in again. With no better options, he picked up Cale and took him to his literature class.

It was a beautiful morning, warm and sunny, evident by the proliferation of shorts and athletic fashions. He wore loose-fitting jeans and a black-and-white checkered short-sleeved shirt. He wished he wore red so that the welts wouldn't show so much. People stared and pointed, avoiding him as if he were diseased. Worse yet, he carried a medical containment box around a college campus. Not a good way to meet girls.

He tried out a few lines: "Hi, my name's Milo. All the cool kids carry boxes like this." Or maybe, "I got these welts in my genetic engineering class. Stay away from Professor Prahlad." Perhaps, "Do you want to see my box?" The lines didn't work. Worse yet, people could hear the baby crying inside. Everybody glared at him cross-eyed.

He arrived late for contemporary literature. Professor Sanaja Kielet, a sharp lady who pranced around the front of the room in her perfectly fitting suit, stopped the lecture in the mid-sentence. The class became quiet as Milo pushed his way into a seat in the far back of the room. The Higgs mechanism of the chamber sounded so loud, clicking on and off with an irritating rattle. Everybody heard the baby's muffled cry from inside the chamber. The class glared at him as if he was a hideous criminal. With his photonic red welts, they were probably right.

Professor Sanaja pointed toward the door, "Excuse me, but you will take that somewhere else."

"I'm in this class," he said.

"That can't come in here. It's disturbing to everybody. Furthermore, I teach my class to obey Axion. Nobody with marks is welcome here."

Professor Sanaja resumed her lecture. He couldn't remember what he was supposed to have read for that day's discussion anyway, so he got up, pushed through half of the class again, and carried the box out into the hallway.

He wandered the campus for a while, not knowing where to go. A walkway formed the border between the central campus and the college buildings. The literature class was in Austen Hall, bordered by the Rutherford math building, and further on the Graham business building.

"That's where they learn how to take all your money," he said, talking to the infant while pointing to Graham. "And that's where they teach you how to count all the money you've lost," he said, pointing to Rutherford. Overhead, a group of athletes scrimmaged. Spectators watched, both from floating in the air and gazing up from the ground. "They're playing soccer up there. They'll probably make more money than all the businesspeople and the accountants combined."

Two girls made a wide berth around him.

"Crazy dude is talking to himself," one of them said.

"He's got the marks," the other said. "Stay clear. He's messed up."

Eventually, it came time for his multi-dimensional physics class. Professor Aidan Scelestus was the best proton of the molecule. His lectures were endlessly fascinating.

He cut across the lawn directly toward Newton Hall, climbing the long set of steps and entering through the wide row of glass doors. Afraid of being thrown out of another class, however, Milo took the baby out of the box before the class started and held him quietly. He was very good, but he made gurgling sounds. Other students noticed right away. He spotted angry glances from people in the seats around her.

One whispered to another, "Look, he's got the marks."

"What's he doing with a baby?"

"Why's he here? He could attend in holo."

"They let someone with the welts here?"

As if he understood what they said, Cale began to whimper. Milo tried rocking him, but he only grew louder.

Finally, someone raised a laser, "Professor Aidan?"

The professor stopped in the middle of explaining the difference between a Riemannian and a Calabi-Yau manifold.

"Professor Aidan, someone brought a baby to class back here. It's disturbing me."

Milo stood up to go, wrapping Cale in his blanket to go back in his chamber. As usual, the infant wailed.

Professor Aidan left his podium and strolled down the aisle. It was a large hall, and Milo didn't like being the center of attention. The professor wove his way through the chairs until he stood directly in front of him. Milo desperately tried to quiet the infant as he put him in the chamber, preparing to leave. Everybody in the place stared at them when the professor held out his arms toward the infant.

"May I?"

Nervously, Milo handed the blue bundle over to the professor. The infant quit crying immediately. In fact, his tiny face twitched into a smile.

"This is a powerful baby. Is he your son?"

Milo became flustered with the eyes of the entire lecture hall fixated on him, his spots, and the strange infant.

"No...well...ah...you see..."

He stared down at his feet. He didn't know how to explain about the young mother, about Dr. Chocka, about Sally, and about being an outcast from Axion. But when he looked back up into the professor's steel-gray eyes, he saw hope.

"Professor Aidan, he's not mine, but he doesn't have anybody. I don't know where to take him."

"You don't need to take him away. He can stay here with me. I'd like to take care of him myself." 

Hock note: If you'd like to learn more about Professor Aidan, his background, and how he became a professor, he's one of the main characters in Trust in Axion available on Amazon.