Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. – attributed to Mike Tyson
Report VIII. Filed from the top tier of the Anatomical Theatre. The Theatre was built in 1911 for the medical faculty, after the one at Padua: six elliptical tiers of dark walnut around a floor so small that the top rail hangs almost over it, and a round oculus in the roof through which the white falls straight down. The dissection table was taken out in 1964. Where it stood there is a circle of chalk on pine boards, and every afternoon at four a paper is fought in it. Three hundred people stand at the rails, as students of anatomy once stood to watch a body opened. It costs one cite. I have not missed an afternoon. Two officers run it. The Proctor, Wei Rota, chalks the circle, asks both parties the same question, do you stand by it, starts each round with a silver stopwatch and decides, when a heel touches the chalk, whether it was in or out. They wear a long silk stole round the neck, white at one end and black at the other, with half a twist in it, so that you can never say where ...
From the lore of The Möbius Academy.