Surley Jacks Son

By Surley Jacks Son • Vol 5, Issue 2 • Jan. 27, 2026

No living creature can exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even lanternflies and cockroaches are supposed, by some, to dream. Gates Hillman, not sane, stood against the canyon, holding insanity within its glass-and-zinc ribcage; it had stood so for twenty years and might stand for twenty more, assuming FMS could keep the HVAC operating.

Dr. Montague had set up camp for the duration of finals week, intending to study the effects of prolonged wakefulness on undergraduate students “in the wild,” a phrase he used with a straight face, as if anything at Carnegie Mellon could plausibly be described …

By Surley Jacks Son • Vol 4, Issue 5 • Oct. 31, 2025

The morning of October 27th was cloudy and overcast, with the cold of a mid-autumn day; the leaves of the trees showed hints of orange, and the dutifully maintained grass was richly green. The students of Carnegie Mellon began to gather on the Cut around ten o’clock; the whole lottery took only about two hours, so it could begin at nine o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the students to get to Revolution Noodles prior to the crowds that would inevitably gather for lunch.

The first-years assembled first, naturally. Most of the students …