About the width of the chair, it seemed about right: Contessa deemed that to be acceptable metric for how much space she would occupy on the table. Her books were arranged in a Cartesian plane: The Odyssey; Lord of the Flies; Catcher in the Rye; A Thousand Plateaus.
	Strategies for Rhizomatic Reading was a new course that filled up quickly, owing to the rockstar professor that was set to teach it. Dr. Toothree was a recent PhD who had completed a Comparative Literature dissertation on Relative Mereological Dynamics in Narratology. She was usually late to class.
*
	Contessa scribbled circles in an open notebook, dreading the presence of the only guy in the class. Their Comp Lit cohort had, like, two guys, one of which was a drag and the other a lamentable presence at best. It was the latter who would be showing up. He did show up, of course, and Contessa's gambit had seemed to work: the display of books was too much information to process. He took a seat at the other end of the table, away from her.
*
	"Dr., the Hegelian dialectic is the only philosophical method that we know to be a fully functional model for philosophical progress. The rhizomatic approach cannot even be falsified."
	"Methodology is not what we falsify in science."
*
	After a seven-minute exchange between Contessa and the professor on the possibility of a connectionist approach to Mereological inquiry in Narratology, the professor asked if their attempts at rhizomatic reading was proving to be a success. The cohort was shy, nodding vaguely in unison, to mask the notion that the teaching objectives for the course were founded on a fabrication.
*
	"Dr., if I can just bring up something Contessa said earlier, the connectionist approach might actually be a good idea, but in keeping with the course, we should pursue a line of thinking that permits of rhizomatic connectionism."
	Contessa was vaguely interested, though, as the lamentable young man continued to speak she immediately regretted pandering to the professor's research interests.
*
	"Penelope didn't betray her husband, because she knew, you know, Penelope was a lesbian."
	Contessa wanted to change the subject, interpretation was something for undergraduates- they were beyond that. She traced a sharp line underneath the collection of circles, spirals, and cubes.
*
	“The thing about Mereological Dynamics, Dr., is that when you have varying parts corresponding to a contestable whole, either the whole can function without some of its parts, or the parts are also contestable, which really justifies my interpretive claim about schizophrenic modality in Lord of the Flies.”
	What an idiot, she thought. Mereological Dynamics is about relations between wholes. She checked the clock, it hadn’t even been an hour, she had to say something to him, “Chase, can you elaborate on how your former statement justifies your latter claim?”
	“Of course, basically, if the parts are contestable, then any part of a whole can be argued to be anything.”
	“But what if a whole can function without parts?”
	“It can’t, all the parts are required for a whole.”
	Contessa twisted, emphasizing her lack of a left arm.
*
He must be taking a shit, she figured.