The Academic Shield: Taking the Plagiarism Charge

My name is Viktor, and I am an exile from the world of ideas.

In Berlin, academic integrity is the bedrock of your reputation. Lara was my lab partner. She was brilliant but scattered. For her final dissertation, she accidentally included three pages of uncredited text from a rare journal. It was an honest mistake born of exhaustion, but the university didn't see it that way. They called us both in.

"This is plagiarism," the Dean said, looking at the shared draft. "Unless someone takes responsibility, you both lose your doctorates and are blacklisted from the European research community."

Lara looked at me, her eyes filled with a terror so deep it broke me. She had a job waiting for her at a top research firm. I had... nothing but her. "It was me," I said. "I inserted those pages without telling her. She had no idea."

I was expelled. My academic career ended that day. I work as a warehouse clerk now, moving boxes of books i'll never be allowed to contribute to. Lara is a lead scientist now. She sends me a card every Christmas. It always says the same thing: "I’ll never forget what you did for me." I keep the cards in a shoebox. They are the only "degrees" I have left. I destroyed my mind’s future to keep her reputation intact, and as I watch her being interviewed on the news for her latest discovery, I tell myself that my silence was the greatest contribution I ever made to science.