Lucas Wolfenstein III was a grade-A asshole. Mike Wright wondered what he did to warrant so much bad karma that he’d been assigned roommates with the trust fund prick he called his roommate. He was just.. everything that Mike was not. Rude, entitled, and aggressive. Mike just wanted to chill in college, but living with Lucas (God forbid Mike call him by anything but his full name, that would make him freak out) proved that to be quite difficult.
Lucas had just finished his short emotional burst at Mike, who tried to dissipate the situation by making a stray observation about the sour scent of the room. It was actually very unpleasant, but Mike didn’t have the will to tell Lucas that; it wasn’t worth enduring another one of his frequent spats.
“Hmph,” Lucas responded anyway, “Typical for someone like you to simply register such a fine liquor as ‘sour’. As if people like you could appreciate the finer things in life.”
Mike commented with a chuckle, “I’m happy with beer, personally.” He said as he hopped on his bed and opened his laptop, booting up his word processor.
“Of course you would be.” Lucas responded under his breath, just loudly enough that Mike could hear it. Mike didn’t look, but he was almost certain that Lucas was sneering at him while he said that. It was almost entertaining how fragile Lucas Wolfenstein III’s ego was, being so put off by the mere suggestion that people could be happy with alcohol that wasn’t up to his finicky standards.
Mike entertained the idea of continuing to press his roommate for a bit, but decided it was best to leave him alone. Mike had never met the guy, but Lucas would sometimes shout about how he’d get his father involved in his personal disputes. The line was so classic that it was almost out of a movie, but unfortunately it was Mike’s lived reality. Apparently Lucas Wolfenstein II was some big shot donor for the university, and had enough reputation that his son could throw his name around as a threat.
He started typing away at the lab report he was working on for an analysis class, while listening to music videos on his headphones. He had gotten a few paragraphs in when he heard a loud throat clear on the other side of the room. He turned his head to see Lucas sneering at him.
“Must you do that here?” he asked, unimpressed.
“What, work?” Mike replied. “I mean, this is where I live, so-”
He didn’t get to finish his words as Lucas’ brow furrowed and his words interrupted Mike, “And this is also where I live, and you are being a disturbance. I require some silence so I can relax and decompress before my champagne social tonight, and your presence is very much unwanted here. It’s bad enough that this school would refuse to give me a single room, but dealing with you is quite more trouble than what I ever would like!”
Mike just sat there for a second, staring at the blonde trust fund kid. “I get it, you don’t like me.” He said, calmly, closing his laptop.
“Is that not evident?” Lucas responded.
“Oh no, it’s clear as day, and if I’m being honest, the feeling is mutual,” At this comment, Lucas sneered, insulted that Mike would indicate anything other than gratefulness to be in his mere presence. Mike ignored his roommate and continued, “I’ll go work in the library or something. Give me a few minutes to pack up my things. Might be a bit more of that noise you hate.”
“Hmph, very well. I suppose I can accept this arrangement, if I must.” Lucas replied, snarkily.
“Then it’s settled, it seems.” Mike said, shutting his laptop and putting it on the bed. He got up, watching Lucas stare him down as he made his way to the bathroom.
He entered the room, breathing a sigh. Just being near Lucas was exhausting, so even being alone in the bathroom was a relief in of itself. He took a moment to look around. Mike had been living here for months now, but he’d never really taken the opportunity to see just how much Lucas had done with it – or paid someone else to do, Mike remembered.
It looked gaudy, and clearly far more to Lucas’ taste than his own. It wasn’t as if Mike had any say though, he was practically a guest in his own home. He did count his blessings though, as Lucas’ money was able to hire a maid to regularly come in and take care of the dorm room. The bathroom looked immaculate, everything tucked away in its place, shiny and clean.
Mike pulled open his drawer, going to brush his teeth before he left. He quickly did so, and after finishing put his toothbrush in the drawer. He started to close the drawer, but noticed out of the corner of his eye something black in the far corner, so he pulled it back open. Inspecting it further, it looked like a comb.
Mike fished it out. Was it Lucas’? That didn’t make sense, because Mike’s drawer was the one on top, and Lucas was stringent about making sure that Mike’s things were separate from his. Maybe a maid had put it there, Mike thought, but Lucas would never leave his things around, and the maids didn’t go into their personal belongings.
He held the comb while he looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was kind of a mess. Even if he was just going to the library to sit alone, he figured he might as well try and look nice. And he already had this comb, even if he didn’t know whose it was. He took the comb and started taking it through his hair.
As the teeth touched his scalp, his hairs starting from the roots lightened to a uniform medium brown from their nearly black color before. He kept pulling the comb through his hair, making sure to get them all, as his hands worked as if he had done this a million times before. The hairs on the sides of his head shortened in length as he combed a conservative part in his hair, the front taking on a swoop as the hairs curled to the left and stayed in place.
Satisfied, Mike put the comb back in his drawer and left the bathroom. He grabbed his backpack on the way to his bed and put his laptop in it, as well as a charger and a computer mouse that he liked to use. He slung the bag upon his back, and nodded at Lucas, who was still glaring in disapproval. “Have fun at your champagne party.” Mike said in an attempt to ease the tension.
Lucas just scoffed, to which Mike ignored, heading out. Soon enough he was outside, walking through campus. It was a dull, gray day, but relatively warm at least so that Mike could just wear a t-shirt and jeans. Mike made his way to the library slowly, observing a few people hanging around campus, sitting on the grass eating lunch or going for a stroll. He felt a small sense of disdain overcome him – this was a college campus, a place for working. He chalked it up to jealousy, after all he just had to deal with Lucas and now he was on his way to work himself.
At the library, Mike walked in and quickly found a table to himself. ‘Good,’ he thought, realizing this way he wouldn’t have to deal with anyone. He had work to do. It didn’t seem so important when he was at home, casually working on it, but something was telling him it was pressing now, so he wasted no time pulling his laptop out and putting it on the desk. He booted it up and picked up where he left off, cracking his knuckles before typing more words out on the report.
Time almost seemed to slow around Mike as he quickly entered a flow state, typing away at his report with incredible focus. He had his headphones in and was listening to playlist, as he typed paragraph after paragraph. That’s why he was so thrown off when he heard the pinging sound of a new email enter his ears.
Confused, thinking he’d closed that, he clicked the expand button on the quick start menu only to see that he indeed had a new email. He sighed, opening his email client to check it. He saw the subject title, “Balance Sheets” and raised an eyebrow. Was this for his Lab Methods class? He opened it.
“Hello Mr. W,
Attached is the submission for the monthly balance check, please review and send back.”
It was definitely sent to him by mistake, Mike reasoned, but he was curious. It’s not like the sender would actually be able to tell if he opened the attachment or not. He clicked it, with the excited feeling of eating the forbidden fruit, and found himself rather disappointed at the outcome. It was a template for some.. company with a balance sheet of expenses and revenues.
Boring. Mike wasn’t interested in this, but for some reason he kept scrolling through it, checking the formulas in the boxes and seeing where they fit in the sheet, looking for red numbers against the black ones and summing them. He quickly found himself reentering the state of flow as he focused on the sheet, starting to annotate and enter values in some of the boxes himself.
As he worked, Mike subconsciously started sitting up straighter in his chair as his spine lengthened, and his posture improved. He started to sweat a bit as his body started to thin out, losing the weight he had gained from eating fast food and from the dorm meal hall, switching to a lean and fit figure as his preferences rewired themselves to healthy meats, rice, and vegetables.
He leaned into the computer as it started to change, becoming a higher end model, trying to get a better view of the screen. He grumbled as he squinted, making the characters become blurrier in his eyes. Annoyed, Mike reached into his bag without thinking and rummaged around in there. There didn’t seem to be many of his personal belongings in there, but he wasn’t worried about that, he had to see. After a few moments of searching with his hands, he found what he was looking for.
He pulled his hands out of the bag, now adorned with a graduation ring and a wedding ring, and set his glasses case on the table, opening it and removing a professional looking pair of glasses. He breathed a sigh of relief and put the glasses on his face, his vision restored. As the glasses made contact with his face, a ripple went through his skin, aging it gracefully as a couple of light wrinkles made their appearance on his forehead, his jaw grew outward in a more masculine manner, and a dense, thick stubble grew on his face, a 5 O’Clock shadow already growing in from the morning’s clean shave.
Able to see again, he grinned at the sheet, as he finished a couple more cells and applied a digital signature to the spreadsheet. He paused, for a moment, wondering what he was doing. He didn’t have a digital signature, he thought, but as he looked at the sheet he reasoned that he had to have, obviously, because he could see his own handwriting right there. Or at least some scribble that resembled handwriting.
He tabbed back to his email client, clicking reply and attaching the document. The brief thought ‘What am I doing?!’ crossed his mind only for a moment, as he realized he had spent time on the spreadsheet. It couldn’t be ignored. He typed out a reply,
“The spreadsheet has been corrected and signed. You have made several errors, of which I have corrected. I will not tolerate such sloppy work in the future.
Dr. W”
He clicked Send, and as he did his brain kind of jolted out of his state of hard work. Something felt very off, all of a sudden. He didn’t know why, he had finished his work and sent the email. He reflected upon it, considering that he maybe didn’t have to be so rude. A voice in the back of his head though, haughtily spoke to him, saying that he had to be – being presented with incompetence from an employee was no light matter.
Employee? It was just some email that he was sent by accident. He thought. Mike closed his eyes as he attempted to calm himself and rationalize what was going on. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt for some reason that he wasn’t acting like himself. If anything, he was acting kind of like Lucas. A shudder ran through his spine at the thought. Maybe the antics of his roommate had rub off on him.
“Goddamnit, Lucas Wolfenstein III.” Mike muttered under his breath. The spoiled brat practically lived rent free in his head, and likely rent free on campus, too, Mike figured. Mike found himself wishing that he didn’t have to return to his dorm now that he was finished with his work. Both of their lives would be so much better if Lucas lived alone.
Mike stood up, grabbing the jacket which had materialized on the back of his chair and pulling it over him. As he did, his shirt started to grow lighter and a little less comfortable, becoming a nicely pressed button down work shirt of very high quality. He felt a sense of pride wash over him, only the finest garments would do, of course.
He bent down under the table and found himself confused when he didn’t immediately see his bag there. He turned to look under the chair, thinking maybe he had placed it there instead, but continued to not see anything. This only soured his mood more as he looked under the desk again, sure it was there. How did someone misplace a bag, anyway? Only a fool would do that, and he was no fool.
Under the table he didn’t find his bag, but rather a boxy looking thing. Curious, he pulled it out and set it down next to his laptop. It was very evidently a briefcase, in similar size to his laptop. It was already open, and it was as if the laptop could fit right in it. Curiosity took over, and Mike picked up his computer and set it right in, zipping the briefcase shut. It fit perfectly. He smiled, as he picked up the handle of the briefcase.
He walked away from the table, not bothering to push in the chair. It wasn’t his job, he thought, as he walked away with a stiff and proud posture. As he made his way out of the library, stitching started to appear on the briefcase as a monogram made its appearance by the handle: L.J.W.II, PhD. Mike didn’t see it, but as it appeared he subconsciously sped up his walking pace as a smug smile crossed his face.
Upon exiting the library, his phone buzzed in his pocket. As the phone vibrated, the pocket liner became a soft Cupro fabric which felt nice on his hand as he pulled it out. It was another email. Mike pushed his glasses up as he read the content, his pants changing into a nicer fabric around the pocket making him look more professional.
“Dear Lucas Wolfenstein II, it has come to our attention that your request to . . .”
Lucas?? Crap, he must have grabbed his roommate’s phone by mistake. He thought of just how mad Lucas would be when he found out. He knew that boy well, and how his temper could flare up over the most trivial of things. It reminded him of himself when he was the boy’s age.. Mike shook his head, suddenly confused. They were the same age, right..? That couldn’t possibly be right, he affirmed, as his pants finalized their shift into dress pants as the phone went back into his pocket. It was weird that he was rooming with someone with such a large age gap though.
This entire day was weird. Interacting with Lucas Wolfenstein III was always weird. Mike vaguely remembered something about a comb in the bathroom being weird. The emails and spreadsheet were weird, and now as he entered his dorm, the looks he was getting from other people in the hallway were weird too. As he walked, his steps became more audible as a nice sole formed on his sneakers, replacing the old worn material with sharp-looking leather. The transformation continued up the shoe as the tip expanded and became pointed, and the laces shortened and tightened, leaving him a nice pair of dress shoes.
Mike entered his dorm room and wrinkled his nose at the sour smell of champagne. It permeated the room, so he escaped to the bathroom briefly, where the scent would be weaker. He closed the door behind him and looked in the mirror and gasped.
He looked every part the businessman in his professional attire, complete with glasses, conservative haircut, and the expression of a man who took no shit. All he was missing was a tie, Mike thought, and almost as if his mind was read, a red tie started to fade into appearance on his reflection. Mike reached down in a shocked state and picked the tie up, it was 100% real.
“Holy shit..” he said, in a moment of clarity, not recognizing the man in the mirror. But while he was certain that his mouth was open in shock, the reflection only showed a sneer, similar to the look that Lucas had given him this morning while he was leaving. In fact, he looked pretty similar to Lucas all around in appearance. Sure there were some differences, like the hair color and the fact that he was clearly older, but if Mike didn’t know better, he’d say they were related.
He heard a laugh in his head, and looked at his reflection in the mirror. The eyes of his reflected counterpart seemed sinister, as if you say, ‘you do know better though, don’t you?’. This was too confusing. Mike decided that he’d have to deal with this directly. Maybe he could ask Lucas? That would be completely ridiculous, though, asking a man if you were his kin. And Mike’s ego would not let him lose face to Lucas Wolfenstein III.
He stepped into the main room and brought his briefcase to his bed, setting it by the wall in between the two beds. “You return? I was under the impression that I would be free of seeing you again today.” Lucas said in that said rude and dismissive tone that was typical of him.
Hearing that drummed up a primal rage in Mike. He had had enough of dealing with Lucas’ antics, and decided he’d put a stop to it right now. Expecting a response and not getting one, Lucas looked up from his bed and his eyes went wide, seeing the tall immaculately dressed man standing in his room. “Who the hell are y-”
In a fit, the suited man shouted, “Lucas Wolfenstein III, you will not address your father in such a manner!” as the hair on his temples turned a bright silver, forming streaks that went behind his ears. He looked every part his age of 52 years now.
Lucas was shocked. “Did you just-” he started, but the other man would have none of it.
“Yes I did, son, and if you continue to treat your father in such a disrespectful manner I will halt your allowance!” he threatened, as Lucas’ eyes widened. “There is a time to be aggressive and relentless, but there is also a time to be quiet and obedient. Have I not raised you better than this?”
His stern expression faltered for a moment upon saying that. He had raised this man. And he was thoroughly disappointed in the treatment he was receiving. “I am here to solve one of your problems, and this is how you behave?”
Lucas seemed confused, but he blinked as his shocked expression gave rise to one of someone who looked sorry. “I.. I’m sorry dad. I’m very stressed out with all of this, and I have a champagne party tonight, lashing out was an accident! Please don’t suspend my allowance!”
The older man simply rolled his eyes in response. “I understand your difficulties adapting to campus, especially after the university’s poor handling of the ordeal, but if you snap at me again you will be certain to regret it, son. Now, let me take care of this business.”
He pulled the cell phone out of his pocket, ignoring more emails that were addressed to “Lucas”, and searched a number before clearing his throat and dialing it. He quickly connected with a secretary from the university’s housing office.
“Hello, I am Dr. Lucas Wolfenstein II, do you know why I am calling?” he asked, the tone of his voice rich with privilege and mild irritation, far from the rage he had expressed towards Lucas II.
“Uhh, no, I’m not quite sure.” The secretary on the other side of the line responded.
Dr. Wolfenstein II furrowed his brow. “I will have to excuse you for not understanding the importance of this situation. Surely you know who I am,” he said, smugly, “And surely you know how much I donate to this school to keep it running, yes?”
The secretary played dumb, saying yes even though she had no idea what the pompous man was going on about.
“Excellent. Then I demand an answer to why my son, Lucas Wolfenstein III as you know, is being treated as a second-class citizen on a campus which I am paying a large sum of money to? It is barbaric for him to be given a shared bedroom, do you think the lineage of the Wolfenstein family is beneath you?” He practically spat into the phone, as his son watched on, enjoying watching his father cuss out the plebian on the other end of the line.
The secretary on the other end of the line seemed to be scared, and politely connected him with someone higher up in the department. Lucas Wolfenstein III repeated his angry spiel at the next person, as the room around the father and son started to transform again. The belongings of Mike started to disappear, fading away as if they’d never existed. First, the clothing, all turning into fine garments that compounded themselves with Lucas III’s wardrobe, as a large closet appeared in the room. The books and school supplies simply faded away as if they were never there.
The two Wolfensteins were vividly engaged in the conversation that they didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary going on as Mike’s bed completely disappeared as Lucas III’s expanded to a king sized bed, a luxury in a dorm room. But it was exactly what he deserved, and his father was going to make sure that his son was treated accordingly. “Excellent,” the father said, his tone and mood improving, “I am glad that this has been resolved without dire action. I pray this is the last we have to speak of the matter.”
He hung up and put his phone in his pocket, and smiled at his son. “It is done, you no longer have to worry about sharing your space with a roommate. For the university to even consider such a thing when it is clearly beneath you..”
“Preposterous.” The son finished the thought. “I very much appreciate your time to help me out with this ordeal.” He said.
Lucas Wolfenstein II smiled wolfishly. “Anything for my son. Us Wolfenstein’s only deserve the absolute best.”