Jason stared at the cryptic comment on his phone screen.
The words pulsed in his mind like the ripples he had watched earlier in the water:
"You're onto something big. Water remembers more than you think. Keep going."
There was no username, no profile picture, just an empty gray icon. He clicked on it, but nothing happened—it was as if the commenter had vanished into the digital ether.
His heart raced, a mix of curiosity and unease flooding through him. Was this a joke? A hoax? Or something else entirely?"Focus, Jason," he muttered, shaking his head. "It's just someone messing with me."Still, the seed of curiosity was planted. He opened the video again, scrolling through the thousands of comments.
Many were lighthearted jokes:
"Does my tap water know how many times I cried over finals?"
"If water remembers, I'm doomed. My shower heard me singing Taylor Swift last night!"
Others, however, showed genuine intrigue:
"This experiment is amazing! Do more like this!"
"Is there any scientific proof behind water memory? Or is this just pseudoscience?"
Jason's brows furrowed at one particularly thoughtful question:
"If water really can store information, could it retain environmental changes, like pollution or sound vibrations from centuries ago?"
"This is an idea that needs to be explored."Jason replied.
The Next Morning
Jason arrived at his cramped campus office, the scent of stale coffee lingering in the air. His desk was its usual chaotic mess—papers stacked haphazardly, a half-eaten granola bar perched precariously on a physics textbook, and his laptop open to a paused lecture slide. But his eyes were drawn to a coffee-stained note taped to his chair.
"Welt, what are you doing on TikTok? Leave the entertainment to influencers and get back to actual teaching. – Dr. Emery"
Jason sighed, crumpling the note in his hand. Dr. Emery, the department chair, had always looked down on anything that strayed from her narrow definition of "academic respectability." Her disapproval was predictable but no less irritating.
He tossed the paper into the trash and sank into his chair, rubbing his temples. "Actual teaching," he muttered. "As if the students care about Newtonian physics lectures anymore."
His phone buzzed on the desk, and he glanced at the screen. Notifications from the TikTok video continued to flood in. Hundreds of new comments, dozens of shares. Despite himself, a small smile tugged at his lips. The video had sparked something, even if it was just curiosity.
Later that morning, Jason stood in front of his Physics 101 class, a sea of blank stares and glowing phone screens reflecting back at him. The projector displayed a slide about kinetic energy, but few students seemed interested.
"Alright, team," Jason said, clapping his hands. "Pop quiz time. Who can tell me what happens to energy when a rubber ball bounces off the floor?"
A murmur spread through the room. One student raised her hand tentatively. "Doesn't some of it... like, disappear?"
Jason raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Disappears? No, Emily, energy doesn't vanish into thin air. It transforms. Some of it turns into heat, sound, or deformation energy. Physics law number one: energy is never wasted—it just changes form."
Another student in the back called out, "But isn't it just boring numbers, though? Like, who cares what energy does?"
The room chuckled, and Jason fought the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he grabbed a tennis ball from his desk and bounced it hard against the floor. The smack echoed through the room, drawing some attention.
"Numbers might be boring, but experiments aren't," Jason said, tossing the ball up and catching it again. "Physics is everywhere. It's in how you hit a three-pointer in basketball. It's in why your phone battery dies faster when you leave it in the sun. And if you're not paying attention, you're going to miss how it shapes your life."
The chatter quieted slightly, and a few students sat up straighter. Jason let the silence linger before setting the ball down.
"Now," he continued, pointing at the slide, "let's talk about how energy keeps the universe from falling apart."
After class, Jason was packing up his notes when Emily approached, a hesitant look on her face.
"Professor Welt?" she said. "That TikTok you posted... was it real? The water patterns?"
Jason blinked, surprised. "You watched it?"
Emily nodded, holding up her phone. "Everyone in class saw it. Some people think it's fake, but I thought it was... cool."
Jason rubbed the back of his neck, unsure how to respond. "Well, it wasn't fake. Just a simple vibration experiment."
Emily hesitated. "Do you think water really remembers things? Like, actually?"
Jason opened his mouth to brush off the question but stopped. He thought about the patterns, the symmetry, the mysterious comment. "I don't know," he admitted. "But isn't that the fun part? Figuring it out?"
Emily smiled. "I think you should keep doing them."
Jason watched as she walked away, his mind turning over her words. The class had been disengaged for weeks, yet one TikTok experiment had sparked curiosity in a way his lectures never had. Maybe there was something here—something worth pursuing.