Chapter Text
Finally his parents had left, he had waved them good-bye and returned to the room that was to be his home for the next year. Nathan Ingram took a deep breath. This was the moment he had been waiting for: to be independent, to do his own thing, and, above all, to have escaped the unceasing vigilance of his parents. He looked around. The room held two beds with nightstands, two desks with chairs, two chests of drawers and a single closet. Nathan’s things were spread over one bed, nightstand and desk, plus a few boxes sitting on the floor. He now faced the task of finding a place for everything. His roommate was nowhere to be seen, but he had left his stuff on the other bed. He hadn’t brought much. There was a small suitcase, probably holding clothes, a cardboard box full of books and another box of what looked like electronics. That was it. Nathan wondered what his roommate would be like. Hopefully someone he could get along with, maybe even be friends. Outside crowds of students were milling about, pushing past the stalls that the various fraternities, clubs and societies had set up. Nathan longed to go and see what he could possibly join, but he decided to be sensible and tidy his things away first. With a sigh he opened one of his suitcases. He was concentrating on pairing up his socks and was so absorbed in his task that he was quite startled when a quiet voice behind him said:
“Hello.”
He turned round and for the first time set eyes on his roommate - a scrawny little guy with thick glasses, a big nose and mad professor hair. Nathan held out his hand and smiled.
“Hi, I’m Nathan Ingram.”
The other boy looked at him, his eye contact lasting only for a fraction of a second. But when he took Nathan’s hand, his grip was assured.
“Harold Wren,” he said in the same quiet voice as before.
“Hey, nice to meet you. What’s your major?”
“Computer science.”
“Great, we’ll have some classes together then. My major is business management, but I’ll be taking some computer science classes, too.”
“That’s an unusual combination.”
“Well, I’m an unusual guy!”
Nathan laughed to indicate that he didn’t mean to show off. Harold didn’t laugh. He just continued to not-quite-look at Nathan. Then he turned round and started to take his books out of the box and put them onto the shelf above his bed.
Nathan shrugged and turned back to his own stuff. Obviously this guy needed a bit more effort, but Nathan was nothing if not good at making friends. He wasn’t discouraged in the least, so after a while he said to Harold:
“I’ve had enough of this. Do you want to have a look at the campus, see what’s going on?”
Harold seemed to think about that for a moment, then he nodded and followed Nathan outside.
They mingled with the crowds, looking at this stall and that. Nathan tried to get some sort of conversation going, but Harold didn’t say anything except “hmm” and “yes”. Eventually Nathan spotted the stall of the basketball team and got talking to the guys. When he remembered to look round for Harold, his roommate had disappeared. Nathan walked on, talking to a few other people here and there, and making a slow tour of the campus. He wasn’t actively looking for Harold, but after a while he spotted him sitting under a tree as far away from the crowds as possible. He decided not to disturb him for now. Harold was probably one of those shy loner types, who wouldn’t be forced to come out of his shell. There was plenty of time to get to know him.
In the next few weeks, however, Nathan learned next to nothing about his roommate. Any questions about him would only elicit curt and evasive answers. What Nathan had learned was that Harold’s parents were dead, that he came from “nowhere, really” (he took that to mean that Harold’s family had moved around a lot) and that he had come to MIT on a scholarship. He earned a bit of extra money by working a few hours a week in the library of the law faculty. How a computer science major had obtained a job in a law library remained unexplained.
Harold was by no means an unpleasant roommate. Most of the time, he wasn’t even there. He went to his classes, worked at the law library, or sat in another library doing his coursework. Most of Nathan’s time was taken up with his business classes, and Harold was taking additional classes in physics, math and electrical engineering. But they both took the introduction to computer science and a class on computer languages and programming. Only a few times Nathan had managed to sit next to Harold. Harold was busily taking notes throughout the lecture, but when Nathan got a glimpse of what he wrote, it bore no relation to what the professor was saying.
Nathan didn’t quite know what to make of him. He was disposed to like Harold, but there was definitely something strange about him. Harold had gotten a bit better at talking to him, and although he rarely showed himself in the communal areas of the dorm, he sometimes had to interact with other students as well. Harold was never rude or unfriendly, but he remained distant and closed. He said all the right things whenever he was forced to have a conversation, but Nathan had noticed that there always seemed to be a slight delay before he said something. It was almost as if Harold had to process the input and then call up the appropriate program before he could react. It had occurred to Nathan more than once that maybe Harold Wren should have an R. in front of his name. He couldn’t explain why, but despite all that something told him that Harold was a guy worth getting to know. Nathan wasn’t going to give up on his project of chipping away at his roommate’s defences just yet.
One evening when Harold was at his library job, Nathan resorted to snooping to find out a bit more. He wasn’t going to look for a secret diary or anything really private, but he was sure that by looking at people’s stuff, you could find out something about the people themselves. Harold’s possessions seemed to consist mainly of books, so Nathan looked first at Harold’s nightstand to see what his roommate has chosen to have close at hand. That’s when he got his first surprise. He had pegged Harold as the typical nerd who was interested in computers and math, but not much beyond that except maybe science fiction and geeky pursuits like chess. The first book he picked up from Harold’s nightstand, however, was “The Happy Prince and other stories” by Oscar Wilde. Well, that was unexpected! There was a second book which likewise he would never have guessed at: collected poems by Robert Frost.
Nathan moved on to the shelf above Harold’s bed, which held most of his books. The first thing he saw was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. There were also writings by Alonzo Church and John von Neumann, whose names had been mentioned in the computer science intro class. These were not digests aimed at college freshmen, however, but the scientists’ original papers. Even so, this was more in line with what he had expected. The next few volumes held more surprises. There were three novels by Charles Dickens (two of which he had never heard of), “Mansfield Park” by Jane Austen, more poetry (“Paradise Lost” – this guy must have loved his English Lit classes at school!), the Feynman Lectures on Physics, “Alice in Wonderland”, a fat volume with the mystifying title “Gödel, Escher, Bach”, and lastly a bird guide. Clearly there was more to Harold than just computer geekery. Nathan moved on to Harold’s desk, where more books were piled up. These were mostly library books, some related to the classes they were both taking, some to Harold’s other subjects, and some about computer science which appeared to be far too advanced for freshman year. In addition Harold had poached in a number of other libraries as well. Nathan could see textbooks on psychology, sociology, law, and even music. This didn’t help him at all in trying to pin Harold down. He had never met anyone whose interests were so wide-ranging. He had to laugh when the thought occurred to him that if Harold really was a robot, this is what he would read to teach himself how to be human. Maybe that’s exactly what Harold was doing. Who knew?
Nathan flopped down on his own bed and grabbed the thriller he had on the go. He had enough of thinking about Harold for the moment. He felt annoyed that Harold was so secretive, but if that’s how he wanted to be – well, Nathan didn’t depend on his friendship. He had already found plenty of other friends, he didn’t need Harold.
Harold stayed away until very late that evening, whereas Nathan went to bed early. He must have been already asleep when Harold returned to their room, because when Nathan woke up during the night, Harold was in his bed. Nathan got up and quietly crept across the room to look at Harold. He remembered an article he had read once about how your sleeping posture revealed your personality. These positions had names like “the pharaoh”, where you would lie straight on your back like a king in his tomb. This supposedly meant that you had a confident and commanding personality. Or “the starfish”, with all limbs sprawling, which indicated that you were open and outgoing. He hadn’t really taken the article seriously, but just for fun he thought he’d try it out on his roommate. Harold had turned his face to the wall and curled up tightly. In addition he had wrapped the comforter around himself so that basically only his hair was sticking out at the top. If Nathan had to give this posture a name, it would have to be “the armadillo”. All his vulnerable parts were protected, and he gave nothing away. Maybe that article wasn’t such nonsense after all.