2
“How’s your work on the grant coming, now that you can cite your pending paper as evidence for the funding req—ugh, she’s kicking.”
Nadine eased down into a chair, one hand splayed against her spine and the other cupping the swell of her belly. She grimaced at Erin across her desk. “Sorry. Staying until the end of the quarter’s funding cycle seemed like a solid choice when I was still early in this pregnancy, but now…”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No. Just take my congratulations on your paper, then update me on our latest binary pulsar data and your grant progress before I have to run for the bathroom.”
“I’ll make it quick.”
Erin enlarged a summary table and turned her laptop toward her supervisor. “Our current group research is on two compact neutron stars orbiting each other in a star system. One of them is a pulsar, which emits a tight beam of radio waves. Here’s the exciting part: our newest batch of data shows that we can replicate the exact frequency of the pulsar’s waves in the lab. Instead of needing to locate and measure other neutron stars in the wild, we can model different levels of gravitational force coming off them and test our theories about their radio waves functioning as an interstellar energy source—all in-house.”
“That’s excellent news. Good work.”
“The credit goes to the department. I made these tables, but since I’ve been busy with LIGO, it was Dr. Rossi and Dr. O’Connor-Young who ran the labs. You’ve attracted top talent, Nadine.”
“I headhunted you. Sole author,”
with a nod. “That’s made all the difference. I promise you’ll have support on LIGO soon, too. When there’s funding for more staff, anyway. But the existing group will be in good hands while I’m out.”
Thank God Ethan wasn’t under Nadine’s departmental jurisdiction. He never would’ve submitted to Erin’s leadership, however temporary. Those snide comments about her research history, his easy dismissal of her paper’s acceptance by a publication that he considered too esoteric to be a threat, his laughter when she’d taken her gulp of espresso shots—
Opening her work on the Eischer-Langhoff grant, she jammed a finger against the laptop’s trackpad. Her knuckle cracked. “Now, the grant.”
“How’s the application this year? Horrible like always?”
“No, it’s fine. Or it will be, since I can cite the experimental methods in my paper to justify my funding needs.”
If only she could be so certain of besting her rival.
She reviewed her progress—the form wasn’t due for more than a month, and she was ahead of schedule—and noted the areas where she’d reference her own work on methods and cost breakdowns, then waved Nadine off to the bathroom. Rubbing her finger, she returned to her desk and ran through a data collection plan for her obnoxious Tuesday lab time with the interferometer. At least Martina was scheduled to be the operating technician for her shift. And given the hour, maybe there wouldn’t be as much signal interference from the Bay Area’s ubiquitous traffic to scrub from her exports.
But her knuckle hurt, and she couldn’t call up much excitement at this silver lining.
The lab time scheduling fiasco had been bad, but running into Ethan had been much worse. Today, of all days!
That publication has a readership of—what? A hundred people?
Ethan Meyer wasn’t human. He couldn’t be. With his insanely productive publication history and his evidently equally insane sleep habits?
He was an automaton, all inputs and outputs.
So many outputs.
It seemed impossible that she’d once hallucinated him as human and even attractive, that he’d once left her breathless.
Before—everything.
She glowered at a neglected air plant hanging from the wall of her cubicle. It was shedding fronds into a mug filled with pencils and emblazoned with the slogan “It Ain’t Easy Being Write.”
Her brothers had given it to her after a heated Monaghan family trivia tournament, which she’d lost at the age of twelve after being asked to name the winner of the 1953 Hugo Award: Alfred Bester. She’d kept it on display all these years in defiance…
Well, she could dismiss Ethan to the ranks of artificial intelligence easily enough, but the truth was that she’d only submitted “Pandora Rising”
to Galactica Magazine after one too many taunts about her continued failure to match his publication record. She hadn’t known at the time that her paper on tidal disruption events would be accepted, and even now that it was: You still have six papers to my seven. Galactica wasn’t Nature Physics or the Journal of Supermassive Astronomy and Astrophysics. But a science fiction magazine was adjacent to their field, and having “Pandora Rising”
in print would settle their score—if only in her mind, because it wasn’t as if she could ever tout her triumph around him. His ridicule for any output as subjective as fiction would be unendurable. He probably never read anything except scientific journals.
He drank his coffee with oat milk, however. Which was odd. She liked oat milk. For him, a plain black brew—or diesel—would’ve been more fitting.
Hours later, she could still taste the bite of this morning’s espresso shots.
His fault.
There was only one thing to do about that. She swiped past her phone’s photoshopped graphic of the Monaghans at a Michigan theme park and opened her text thread with Martina.
Erin
I ran into him in the kitchenette today. He actually chastised me for not being online at a.m. to schedule my lab time, after IT had a security meltdown and rebooted the calendar system!
No typing bubbles appeared with sympathy.
Erin
But, of course, he was awake. I don’t think he’s human. Just an advanced research robot prototype that Dr. Kramer’s developed.
She drummed her fingers on her screen, opening a calculator, the latest panel of XKCD comics, a list of trending STEMinist Online posts, Galactica Magazine’s front page, and her search history for astronaut ice cream. Martina’s thread remained stubbornly static.
Erin
(Ethan Meyer, obviously.)
But equally obviously, Martina would be asleep now after her night shift. She wouldn’t see Erin’s griping for hours.
Erin
Sorry to bug you after your shift. Talk later.
When she pulled up her presentation for the Modern Physics group’s monthly research all-hands meeting, though, she continued to fidget. The irritating sound in her ears was her own teeth grinding. She shifted position. She stared at the slides. She attempted a few rows of digital sudoku, and failed. She scrolled through her reference spreadsheets. The data on creating laboratory models for pulsars was visual white noise.
She checked her phone.
Nothing from sleeping Martina.
She changed position again.
The door to Ethan’s office opened, then closed. She knew its scrape against the carpet. She glared at the data exports on her monitor, refusing to look up as her rival’s footsteps receded down the hall.
Another coffee? She resisted the urge to peer over her cubicle.
Nadine’s office was also just across the way. But she wouldn’t complain to her supervisor about petty interpersonal problems with a colleague. Nadine was leaving the management of their department to Erin during her maternity leave, which meant wrangling both projects and people, and if she couldn’t handle herself with a single annoying coworker, who wasn’t even in her research group—
Adrian and Wes would never ignore an urgent message from her, unless Adrian was in the middle of pitching his sustainable urban planning proposals to investors, or if Wes was underwater in search of marine iguanas off the coast of Ecuador. They’d answer her complaints with immediate suggestions for either juvenile or outright dangerous pranks. SVLAC’s air horns would likely be mentioned, as would plastic rattlesnakes, real turkey droppings, or even the rewiring of turn signal directions in Ethan’s car. That, or promises to break his arms. They’d never given her an easy victory during childhood baseball games or board game tournaments—winning had been all the sweeter for that—but both could and would fly out to California without hesitation if they thought she needed them.
She didn’t.
A kindergarten bully had once pushed her off the swing set. He’d lost two front teeth that day. Only one of those had been her brothers’ work.
As for her parents?
In a volunteer aide’s apron covered with finger paint, mucus, or glued bits of pasta and beads, Lori Monaghan’s Monday afternoons were busy shepherding Grand Arbor’s first graders on their weekly field trip to the library; apparently, it had taken the energy of twenty-five six-year-olds to replace Erin, Adrian, and Wes after they’d left home. She’d always make time for her daughter, of course, but then she’d offer the same simple, sensible advice that she gave her students: treat others as you’d like to be treated, and they’ll return the favor. Sensible, yes, and useless in Erin’s situation. Her father would just nod at his wife’s wisdom, smiling over his glasses before returning to his model train project. Retired from a soulless job in corporate law, he now spent his days figuring out timetables for maneuvering around the backyard sprinklers…
Timetables: time.
The Modern Physics all-hands kicked off in an hour.
She hadn’t finished adding the new data to her slides. Good data. Interesting data. It warranted a paper and several conference talks. She was proud of it, and proud of her department’s contributions to the field—even if she wasn’t proud of her run-in with Ethan this morning.
She began to type.
Nadine would have a polished presentation ready for their all-hands. A concise one, too, since today’s agenda also included time for an announcement from SVLAC’s director, Dr. Elias Schulz. Hopefully, it concerned some miraculous resurgence in research funding, because whatever she’d told Nadine, the Eischer-Langhoff application really was nasty, sole-author paper citations or no.
Ethan parked an SVLAC scooter outside the Science and Public Support building, glad to set both feet on solid ground, despite having to sidestep a minefield of turkey shit. His trip along Ring Road had been precarious. He was still off kilter from his two conversations in the kitchenette this morning.
Could Erin have somehow slipped an espresso shot into his coffee? The jangling of his nerves suggested a maybe. Blaming her was so easy. A habit, like sudoku and caffeine.
Hitching his shoulders against the weight of a messenger bag dragging on his arm, he badged through the doors. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead; he’d arrived early at Maiman Auditorium, and the meeting rooms and small public exhibits of interactive touch tables and klystron models on the ground floor were quiet except for the scuff of his shoes. This peaceful place was better than his office, with its proximity to the noisy Modern Physics bullpen. He exhaled his relief, shoulders settling.
Then another badge swiped and beeped for entry.
It was hers. He knew it.
Her footsteps hesitated on the threshold. She’d seen him. But she didn’t retreat back to the parking lot. She didn’t speak. Fine, let her lurk by the klystron model. Passing one hand quickly over a wash of heat on his neck, he extracted his laptop from his bag and hunched toward its screen. He had data to check. Dr. Kramer’s data to check.
For the fourth time, he clicked through his department’s slides, reviewing their numbers and speaker notes. His supervisor wouldn’t tolerate another error from him, not after the Nature Physics situation. If he got himself fired and blacklisted by one of the premier scientists in the quantum field, every future opportunity for research, funding, or recognition that he could’ve received by association with Dr. Kramer’s name would vanish.
That, and more.
Ignoring Erin’s percussive typing on her own computer, ignoring the squeak of her sneakers shifting on the floor, he added a few transition phrases to his speaker notes.
He’d meant to run his final check on the presentation last night, until Bunsen had started heaving up whatever he’d eaten in the park on Sunday, and maybe he could’ve finished his review this morning, but then he’d run into Erin’s wrath and Tomasz Szymanski’s commentary before he’d even reached his desk.
So, here he was.
Soon enough, other badges began to swipe in at the building’s main entrance. The hall outside Maiman Auditorium filled with his colleagues, all carrying laptops and glancing longingly toward the cafeteria upstairs. A buzz of conversation eddied through the corridor as they congregated near the auditorium, their reluctance to enter the stuffy, windowless room and their speculations about Dr. Elias Schulz’s announcement making them circle in indecisive fractals on the threshold.
“These meetings always take so much longer than they need to.”
“I’m already starving. The cafeteria’s serving curry again today. Can you smell it?”
“Any takers for a bet on whether there’ll be some left by the time we get out of here?”
“No point. Not when Dr. Schulz is making a speech.”
“We’ll be here until five,”
with a groan.
“Yes. Plus, there’s also…”
“Uh-huh.”
A bubble of unspoken communication expanded between a group of particle physicists chattering near Ethan’s station against the wall. He felt it, a prickle on his spine.
They were watching him.
He elbowed his way into the auditorium.
He nodded at Szymanski when his coworker joined him at the room’s tiered rows of tables but continued to add punctuation to his speaker notes. No other colleagues taking their seats for the all-hands were still working on their slides. Well, no other colleagues had lost Dr. Kramer a collaborative opportunity with Lawrence Livermore, either—
“You’re finished with the presentation? Good.”
Dr. Kramer set his briefcase on the table beside Ethan’s laptop. He leaned into the adjacent microphone and depressed the speaker button without waiting for either an administrative speech to open the meeting or a confirmation from Ethan.
Dr. Kramer knew he’d deliver.
“I have a one o’clock call with Fermilab. Quantum will present first.”
He took Ethan’s laptop down to the podium—just don’t let the hardware crash—and gestured for IT to connect the presentation cables. Immaculate slides flickered into focus on a descending projector screen behind the stage. “Quantum Mechanics is currently running another cycle of data collection on SVLAC’s prototype holometer, following upgrades last month to the quality of the laser beam.”
A cross-section of the holometer’s design appeared on his click. “The instrument’s dual mirrors bounce a laser, which a half-reflective surface splits into two perpendicular beams, along a pair of thirty-meter tunnels. The beams are calibrated to register the exact locations of the mirrors. If space can be measured in defined quantum units, the mirrors will move slightly during the laser bounces—on a technical level, space itself is moving, rather than the mirrors—to create a constant, random variation in their positions. When the beams are recombined after bouncing between the mirrors, I hypothesize that the twin lasers will be consistently out of sync by a statistically significant percentage. This discrepancy will reveal the scale of units of space.
“Preliminary results will be available by the end of the year, and collaborative and individual papers in progress shortly afterward, likely in partnership with Dr. Greg Logan, Fermilab, and the University of Chicago. Meyer will assist with analyzing any subsequent practical applications from the quantum measurement. Beyond work on the holometer, the department is also conducting experiments to stabilize LED performance in medical equipment under extreme temperatures, with Szymanski leading the project.”
A pause. Then, “Questions?”
Ethan had drafted answers to the inquiries that he’d anticipated might come from his slides. But Dr. Kramer gave a pointed glance at his Patek Philippe wristwatch, and no microphones crackled in challenge.
“Good.”
Dr. Kramer removed the presentation cables from Ethan’s laptop. The projector screen shone white and blank as he left the stage.
It was done.
He inhaled deeply while pressing his palms against the table. The prints were slick and damp. So were his underarms. Although Dr. Kramer gave a short nod when he handed back the computer—a positive data point, isolated but unambiguous—Ethan only exhaled that breath again after his supervisor’s focus moved away to a colleague’s Optics presentation. He lost the first half of the group’s research review in his relief. Then Nadine Fong shuffled up to the stage.
Erin Monaghan sat at attention in the front row of the auditorium while her department head presented the group’s data on a new binary pulsar model and the recent impact on space-time that the interactions of distant astrophysical bodies had made, via undulating gravitational waves. Her glasses reflected shards of color gleaming from the projector screen as she nodded along to the diagrams, her ponytail swishing lightly between her shoulder blades. Her lips moved, timed to the animation transitions. She’d designed this presentation.
Fong’s maternity leave was scheduled to start soon, wasn’t it?
Erin was primed to manage the Relativistic Mechanics group in her supervisor’s absence.
“…which we can confirm with telescope images from Kitt Peak National Observatory. Questions?”
Smiling, Fong concluded her talk and scanned the room for raised hands.
Dr. Kramer’s index finger tapped the table.
Another isolated data point, but Ethan also knew the meaning of this one.
He forced himself to concentrate and turned on his microphone. Though he had no specific objection to Fong’s presentation prepared, Dr. Kramer now expected him to challenge their rival department over the validity of its research aims, or its latest data, or its methods—something. Anything to prove the superiority of the Quantum Mechanics group and his work. Ethan’s work, too. He had to speak. “Dr. Fong, I have a question.”
“Go ahead, Dr. Meyer.”
“Your department’s research presupposes that you can identify when space-time ripples originate from the movement of black holes or stars, rather than from any other localized source.”
“That’s correct.”
“There must be a large amount of noise in the data. The Relativistic Mechanics group’s machinery measures micro-vibrations, and SVLAC’s interferometer is in the middle of Silicon Valley traffic and the airspace from NASA Ames.”
“Yes. Differentiating signals from noise is Dr. Monaghan’s wheelhouse.”
Fong motioned for him to continue—then grimaced. Her hand fluttered to her stomach, and a harsh exhale rattled across her microphone. “Ugh. Excuse me. Erin, could you—”
“Of course.”
His rival made way for her supervisor to rejoin their grouping, then wheeled her chair around to face Ethan’s quantum colleagues seated several tiers higher in the auditorium. Leaning sideways onto an elbow, she spoke into her tabletop microphone rather than moving to the podium, sarcastically earnest when she asked, “What can I help you to understand about my work, Meyer?”
“How do you prove that you’re analyzing signals, rather than noise?”
“Right.”
A cynical smile angled her mouth. His hurried question was clearly too trivial to merit her upright attention; she shrugged and tilted farther onto her forearm. Her sweater slouched with her. Its neckline slid off her collarbones to reveal the narrow strap of a camisole. “I understand your confusion. This can be difficult for non-specialists to understand. And also for people who don’t make their data publicly available.”
“I’m not confused, Monaghan. I’m asking—”
“Yes, thank you for your interest. I separate the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s signals from local noise by transforming the positive and negative deviances of my data into frequencies. Prior data points in the public research pool from LIGO’s branches in southeastern Washington State and Livingston, Louisiana—which are already confirmed as originating from astrophysical movements—indicate the Hertz frequencies that I should expect to see from colliding black holes and their destruction of nearby stars. Once I’ve run a Fourier transform on my data to configure its deviances as frequencies, any valid signals are clear from the noise.”
She adjusted her glasses, eyebrows raised, daring him to continue when she’d closed the subject.
But he hadn’t finished.
Dr. Kramer was watching.
And she’d given him an opening.
“You’re using data that you haven’t generated yourself. How do you verify its accuracy? If the data at LIGO’s other sites is incorrect, your own analysis will be faulty.”
“My analyses are perfect.”
“Is the data in your analyses perfect? Not just SVLAC’s measurements, but the database where you’re pulling your controls?”
“Well, I don’t check my colleagues’ research like we’re still in graduate school,”
and now she straightened. Her second shrug was more of a jerk. “But when possible, I verify my own signal observations with telescope data. Maybe you’ve heard of multimessenger astronomy?”
“So you rely on fallible visuals.”
“Visuals from specialized telescopic astrophotography cameras.”
“Which are maintained by someone else. Manned by someone else. Generating images taken by someone else. You’re relying on this, and public data.”
“Fine, yes. But are we discussing science right now? Or philosophy? Because your questions aren’t really about my methodology. Are they? This is about whether I trust my colleagues in the field—”
“Science isn’t based on trust.”
“—and about whether I believe that anyone else is using brain cells while they work!”
Color pinched over her cheekbones.
“Science is based on facts,”
he retorted, calm and logical under Dr. Kramer’s eyes. It didn’t matter that his ears were warm. “Justifications for sloppy, unempirical processes like trust become justifications for sloppy research. Dirty results.”
“Except that my research and results are obviously acceptable, because my sole-author paper on tidal disruption events is—”
“—based on inputs that you haven’t independently verified. I’d consider a retraction before it goes to print. Publishing fraudulent data, Monaghan? That’s career suicide, even for—”
“Excuse me. What?”
Her amplified words and the screeching pivot of her chair reverberated across the auditorium. Erin stood, sweater falling down the exposed curve of her shoulder when she abandoned her microphone to face him head on. “Fraud? What are you—”
“Um! That’s all the time we have for departmental updates today!”
An administrative assistant at the podium gave an awkward wave, attempting to redirect the room’s focus from Erin, breathing hard under the slanted projector beam with a glittering nimbus of pixels and dust in her hair. “Thank you, Dr. Kramer, Dr. Van Buskirk, and Dr. Fong. We’ll close today with an announcement from Dr. Schulz. Dr. Schulz, if you’d come to the stage?”
As Erin sank slowly back into her seat, static from the assistant’s adjustment of the microphone almost muffled the noise of a pair of hands clapping somewhere in the auditorium.
Almost.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Heat crept from Ethan’s ears into his neck. Chafing at the discomfort, he turned away from Dr. Kramer’s encore nod and Szymanski’s watchful frown—to Erin again, who was pulling her sweater back into place, cramming her laptop into her backpack with her head bowed, ponytail falling over her shoulder. She swept it away in irritation. She was biting her lip.
Had she also heard the clapping?
And his accusation: fraudulent data.
She’d definitely heard that…
“Well done, Meyer.”
Dr. Kramer.
“Uh—thank you.”
Erin wrenched at the zipper on her bag. Her jaw twitched. Her eyes were downcast.
Rubbing harder at his nape, Ethan was grateful for Schulz’s arrival at the podium and even for the next hellish microphone shriek, which signaled the director’s readiness to speak.
“Thank you, Marcie. Now: I’m pleased to announce that both the Secretary of Energy for the United States and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science will be visiting SVLAC this quarter. Secretary McCandless will tour our departments and our research facilities and attend a presentation by Dr. Helena Quarles on SVLAC’s contributions to American science education. I don’t need to tell you that this is an honor for the lab—and an important event.”
He didn’t. At his mention of a government visit, anticipatory murmuring swelled through Maiman Auditorium. The Department of Energy’s on-site presence afforded opportunities to angle for additional research funding by speaking directly with federal officials, unimpeded by the usual paper bureaucracy.
Funds were tight this year and competition for the Secretary’s attention would be fierce.
Erin was already in consultation with Nadine Fong, her gaze up again, quickly refocused, and presumably discussing the best way to present their research proposals to the government representatives. Plotting revenge, too. Though he couldn’t hear her words through the crowd, Ethan knew this about her.
But there was only so much capital to go around, and his field needed those funds. Dr. Kramer needed those funds.
He needed those funds.
“Security will perform a building sweep on Thursday, and Secretary McCandless will arrive on Friday. Staff must display identification badges at all times—”
He couldn’t let her win.