Stole My Thesis, I Chose Overseas Study

Chapter 2

After flunking the interview at Maple University, I had no choice but to wrap up my graduation project while looking for a new job.

The next day, right after I sent off my graduation project, I was poring over job listings.

All of a sudden, my advisor called, "Chelsea, what's going on here? The graduation project you submitted is identical to Ramona's, and she turned hers in yesterday."

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. "That can't be right, Professor. Give me a minute to check this out."

I booted up my computer, only to find that every last trace of my project's creation history had been tampered with, all changed to yesterday's date.

A terrible thought popped into my head, but I didn't dare to believe it.

"Professor, please trust me. I completed this project entirely on my own. Give me a couple of days, and I'll definitely give you and the department a proper explanation."

My fingers shaking, I dialed Daniel's number, but it kept going straight to voicemail.

Meanwhile, a post accusing me of plagiarizing Ramona's graduation project popped up on the campus confession page. In just half an hour, it had racked up over a thousand comments.

A: [No way, isn't Chelsea Langford the top student in their major?]

B: [Who knows how she got those grades in the first place?]

C: [Ramona apparently has proof of her edit history. Doesn't that prove Chelsea copied her?]

I hacked into the confession page system to take the post down, only to get hit with a counter-hack. It looked like someone was actively guarding that post.

I gave up on deleting the original post and made a new one instead. I posted all my past grades and awards, laid out my entire thought process for the graduation project, and promised I would produce hard evidence of my creation history within a few days.

I hit post successfully, but just a few minutes later, my entire post got taken down, poof, gone without a trace.

I tracked down the forum admin, who told me vaguely that he wasn't the one who deleted it. He also said there was no point in posting again, because the people backing her clearly didn't want me to set the record straight.

It clicked. Someone was definitely covering for Ramona, and whoever it was had skills that are every bit as sharp as mine.

Looking across the entire school, among all the students and graduates, barely anyone had technical ability that matched mine. Daniel was one of the only exceptions.

My blood ran cold.

I ran straight to campus, only to find Ramona standing in a classroom, walking her classmates through her so-called graduation project.

"This is a cutting-edge AI prototype I built..."

Staring at the graduation project on the screen, the one I'd slaved over for two whole months, pulling all-nighter after all-nighter, I snarled, "Ramona, that's my final project!"

She looked up at me, her eyes glistening with fake hurt. "What are you talking about? You can't just claim my work is yours just because I let you glance at it a couple of times before."

I snapped, "You say it's yours? Then prove it!"

She didn't even flinch. She calmly pulled up her creation timestamps, and the timestamps matched the exact date I'd started the project two months earlier.

My classmates started chiming in, trying to talk me down.

"Chelsea, we know you're super talented, but Ramona has proof she made this. Just apologize to her, okay?"

"Yeah, if word gets out that you plagiarized, it'll ruin your reputation. The department's already looking into it. Hurry up and say sorry, so Ramona will drop the whole thing," another one told me.

Their stares felt like they were boring straight through me, but I stood my ground, jaw set.

"Ramona, I will prove this project is mine."

Little did anyone know, I'd installed a bunch of secret tracking and backup tools on my laptop a while back, just in case something went wrong with my files. Not even Daniel knew about them. Lucky for me, they'd come in handy right when I needed them most. This whole mess would be cleared up soon enough.

But until the truth came out, I was stuck with the label of a plagiarist.