Professor X was just about to retire from the local community college when he was fired after his next-to-the-last lecture–the lecture in which he argued that Socrates was a fiction, a mere character in some rather badly written dialogues by a mediocre Greek writer named Plato: “There is no historical proof such a person ever existed. We do have several similar characters named Socrates in various texts by different authors at about the same time, but we have nothing from his own hand.” Professor X was under the assumption that all great thinkers were necessarily writers; how else explain all the unpublished manuscripts that filled his office, closets, and garage? If Socrates was so damn great, per the Delphic oracle’s declaration that he was the wisest man of all, then he mustn’t have been great enough to write his own thoughts down on paper. Or papyrus. Or whatever it was that Greeks were writing on in the 5th century BCE. He thought, why that would be like me not existing except within the text of one of my students,” Tom Yest penned, snapping his notebook closed as he headed for the cafeteria to join his study group. So, you see: Tom Yest really was guilty of murder. No, worse: causing a person not to have ever existed after creating him from nothing.