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At exactly 11:59 PM, 13 days after the research proposal was dated and filed, Enigma finally sent it back. For the next hour he knew it would take for the paper to reach its destination, he waited patiently.
1:01, on the dot, the technically-not-late-to-be-returned proposal was slammed back onto his desk.
“What the hell is this,” Ulrich writhed inside his head, twisted into knots that would have a mountaineer nodding in appreciation.
Adler didn’t look up from his desk, “You’ll have to explain what you mean.”
A single sheet of paper was slid overtop the one he was totally paying attention to. Bright red ink instantly drew one’s eye.
“Under the reason for denial you just wrote ‘Nuh uh’ underlined in red ink!” Ulrich’s voice fluctuated at the end, like a cheap speaker being dunked in water.
“Hmm, that’s not right,” Adler tilted his head five degrees to inspect the paper properly, “Let me fix that.”
“… you just underlined it again.”
“Did I? One moment please.”
You wanna take a guess? Wanna take a guess? Take a wild guess what he did next?
That’s right!
Ulrich blew up.
The engineering department would fervently deny installing a self destruct protocol into Ulrich’s prosthetic body. Of course, no one believed them. Ulrich certainly wouldn’t admit he suffered a severe lapse in judgement, which resulted in his prosthetic body spontaneously combusting.
Adler at least learned to maintain ten feet minimum distance between him and Ulrich at all times.
That is to say, he learned nothing.