14. Wargames
14
Wargames
From Barry Wright’s manifesto :
In the 1980s, the arcade game Polybius was released in Portland, Oregon, in unmarked cabinets. Players reported illness, nightmares, and suicidal thoughts. One of my buddies said men in black monitored the games. Could the Polybius game have been a test of psychological warfare?
TESSA
A tap on the doorframe of my office made me jump like one of the words on the screen, probably Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, had electrocuted me.
West leaned in the doorway. “You look puzzled. Everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically. My dad’s unexpected visit, Savannah’s increasingly messy divorce, and my own stupidity regarding biomedical engineering were all safely put away in separate containers in my brain. They weren’t glowing, ready to explode and contaminate my professionalism. Mostly.
He stepped into my office, hands in the pockets of his jeans. Oliver always wore trousers, sometimes khakis on Fridays, and Dr. Perrell wore skirts with colorfully patterned blouses. I wore my standard uniform of black pants with shirts in neutral colors. But West, like most of the people his age who worked here, always wore jeans and a collared shirt, often with the sleeves rolled up. He didn’t come all the way to my desk, but he came far enough inside that he could’ve closed the door behind him. Like he was offering a tête-à-tête. “You sure?”
“It’s nothing to concern HR, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No.” He took another step toward me. “I’m not asking as the head of human resources. I’m asking as your colleague. As someone who could be a friend. You’ve come into a tough situation with high expectations. Biotech is outside your comfort zone. And Oliver isn’t making things easy for you.”
I winced. There was nothing easy about the status report Oliver had sent me with its esoteric phrases I couldn’t understand, much less summarize for Dr. Perrell. “Am I that transparent?”
He shrugged. “It’s kind of my job to know when people are struggling.”
“I’m not struggling.” Certainly, he could hear the lie too.
“It’s okay to admit you need help,” he said. “You don’t have to do everything alone.”
“Don’t I? They say Steve Jobs personally picked the shade of white used in Apple products.” That was what I’d done wrong all those years ago. I’d let someone else do the due diligence on MuskOx Tech. I’d trusted Harry, and that had led to my biggest mistake.
A tiny crease formed between his eyebrows. “I’m not sure Steve Jobs is the example we want to emulate here.”
Of course he’d say that. Human resources’ role was to ensure everyone played nice and no one had grounds for a lawsuit. MuskOx’s HR team had done a stellar job of that after the buyout. Anonymously, I’d set up a fund to help my former employees. When some of them had used it to bring wrongful termination lawsuits against the new owners, MuskOx Tech had batted each one aside like Hedy with a feather toy.
The memory left a bitter taste in my mouth. I swigged my coffee and shuddered. It was cold and almost as bitter.
“I’m good,” I assured him. I’d dealt with the fallout of my mistake alone for the last fourteen years. I could do this alone too. “Just working through some science here. I don’t suppose you know what an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay—ELISA—is, do you?”
He raised his palms like a shield and chuckled. “Nope. My degree was in sport and performance psychology. You’ll have to ask Oliver or one of the other scientists.”
Hope flared inside me. I could ask Aanya. She was smart. Then the spark faded. If I went around Oliver, I risked word getting back to him. I’d look like a coward.
I was no coward.
“You’re right.” I rolled back my chair and stood. When there was something unpleasant to do, it was best to get it over with as quickly as possible. “Good talk.” Careful not to brush against him, I stepped through the door. “Thanks.”
The crinkle between his eyebrows was back. “Anytime.”
I strode to the lab, where I put on the ridiculous coat and pulled back my hair with an elastic. Might as well go all in with the regulations if I was going to expose my ignorance and beg for help. My stomach soured.
Taking a deep breath, I walked to the bench where Oliver usually worked, next to the sign where I’d posted the number 69 today. It was spotless, as usual. But he wasn’t there. I glanced at the closest computer workstation. No Oliver.
Sadie sat at the bench next to his, her earbuds in as she used a tiny pipette to drop a chemical into a tray with shallow wells, which I’d learned was called a microtiter plate. I waited for her to set down the pipette, then I tapped her shoulder.
She pulled out her earbud and smiled. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Have you seen Oliver? I have a question to ask him.”
“Not for a minute,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll check his office.”
“Check the game room,” she said.
“Game room?” I vaguely remembered the first-floor space near the cafeteria from the tour on my first day, but it seemed like the last place buttoned-up Oliver would hang out during work hours.
She nodded, then dipped her chin like, Is there anything else?
“Thanks.” As I walked toward the exit and hung up my lab coat, a vague sense of disappointment tickled in my belly. Maybe Oliver was the sort of tech bro who played foosball and drank beer on a Monday afternoon. Just because he’d agreed to let Sadie cut back her hours to focus on her graduate degree didn’t necessarily mean he was a good guy. Maybe he had an ulterior motive.
I descended the stairs to the first floor and walked past the cafeteria to the game room.
The room had windows on one end, and, yes, there was a foosball table, plus a ping-pong table and a big square table next to a bookshelf filled with tabletop games. The closer side had no windows and was lined with classic arcade machines. I recognized many of the games I’d played when Dad was at one of his mysterious meetings and I’d sneak out to the local gas station or an arcade if we were near a big city.
The game room was empty, except for Oliver. And he wasn’t playing foosball or Donkey Kong. He bowed his head in front of an open display case in the closest corner to the doorway where I stood. His hands were in his pockets. There was a photo on the shelf of a blond guy laughing. Under its shroud of stubble, the blond man’s chin was the same shape as Sadie’s. Were his eyes the same shade of grayish blue? Was he a relative of hers?
Oliver reached toward the vase of flowers a shelf below the photo and pinched off the wilted head of a daisy. He twirled it between his fingers and murmured something too low for me to hear.
I had enough emotional intelligence to know I should tiptoe out. But the scene fascinated me. Ever since I’d met him, Oliver had given off a sad-boy vibe like the lead singers of the emo bands I’d been obsessed with in my teens. (My god, if he’d ever wear eyeliner, he’d look exactly like Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance.) I’d assumed it was a form of emotional manipulation like Harry’s. But maybe it was real.
Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to hold the door, and it clunked shut, startling Oliver. He whirled to face me. He still held the browned flower in his hand, and I couldn’t interpret the expression on his face. Was the flush on his cheeks from embarrassment or anger?
I held out my hands defensively. “Sorry, I had a question, and they said you were here.”
He shook his head. “It’s fine. I just…I come down here to think sometimes.”
“Who’s that?” I tipped my chin at the photo.
“Simon Grimstone.”
So he and Sadie were related.
“He and I founded the company together,” he said, “while we were still in college. We were best friends for, like, ever.”
“Were?”
“He died two years ago. Two years, one month, and fourteen days ago. Car accident.” He glanced at the photo. “We were like puzzle pieces. He completed me.”
“Oh.” I’d skipped over the company history to focus on the science they were doing. That seemed to have been a mistake. “Were you romantic partners too?”
He whipped his head back to face me. “No, nothing like that. We were good friends. But he made up for my lack of business ability, and I had the deep scientific knowledge. He filled in all my gaps. I miss that. I miss him.”
Shit. So he was a legit sad boy. My scalp prickled as a tiny crack opened in my stony heart. I reached up to rub my head and found I’d left the elastic in it from the lab. I tugged it out and shook out my hair, scrubbing my fingers at the prickly part that told me I’d misjudged Oliver.
When I looked back at him, he was staring at me. At my hair, actually, with his lips parted.
“What?” I asked. “Am I supposed to tie back my hair in here too? Are you afraid I might get it wrapped around the foosball rods?”
“No, I…” He licked his lips. Pouting lips I did not want to kiss. “No.”
“Is there something between you and Sadie?” I asked. He wouldn’t be the first tech bro to date a subordinate.
“No! God, she’s like my little sister. She was so broken up when Simon died she flunked out of her graduate program, so I asked her to work here. We watch out for each other.”
I stepped closer. In the photo, Simon’s eyes looked red around the rims. “Does she come down here too?”
“Nah.” He scuffed the toe of his sneaker on the floor. “She thinks it’s creepy.”
I chuckled. “She’s not wrong.”
He glanced back at the shrine. “I don’t want anyone to forget him. He was such a force here. These are all his favorite games, and this room used to be full of people whenever he came down to play. He’s what made this company great.”
I thought of how Sadie’s blue eyes shone with admiration whenever her boss spoke. “So are you, you know.”
He shrugged. “Anyone can do what I do. Everyone in the lab does the same work.”
“But you’re their leader. They light up when you’re here. Everyone wants to please you.” There was a different energy in the lab when Oliver was there. Couldn’t he see it?
“Sadie idolizes you,” he said.
It was my turn to shrug. “You could use a few more female role models in the lab. Remember, there are only four women in a lab of twenty-five.”
He winced. “I know. Our next five hires will be women or nonbinary people, I promise.”
“Good.” I folded my arms because suddenly, I wanted to reach for him. Dammit! Just because he’d committed to diversifying the lab didn’t mean he wasn’t a roadblock to my plans. It certainly didn’t make touching my colleague a smart move.
“How did you know about Sadie’s endometriosis?” he asked.
“I observe people,” I said carefully. “And I observed that she seemed to be experiencing abdominal pain the day before she called in sick. Then, when she came back, she seemed pale and a bit unsteady.”
“But how did you know it was endometriosis and not a stomach bug and anemia?”
“I…someone close to me has it. I’ve seen the signs before.” My medical conditions were none of his business, but I could admit that much.
He nodded. “Now I get why you spun up the endometriosis project. You’re right. We could use a more diverse perspective in the lab.”
“Of course I’m right,” I said. “You should admit that more often.” I allowed the corner of my mouth to curl up and let him in on the joke.
He chuckled and tossed the spent flower in the trash. “Care to join me for a game of Ms. Pac-Man?”
“No, thanks. I prefer games of the tabletop variety.” He’d probably only invited me to play to be polite. He was like that. Playing one of Simon’s favorite arcade games was another step in his grieving process, and I wouldn’t get in the way of that. “See you later,” I said.
It wasn’t until I sat down at my desk upstairs that I realized I’d forgotten to ask him about ELISA. Well, shit. I’d have to consult my good buddy Google. A search engine was safer than the temptation of Oliver and his sad eyes.