3
He had to beat Erin Monaghan to the Secretary of Energy’s attention—and to the Eischer-Langhoff grant. After a hurried lunch, Ethan stared at the application, flexed his fingers over his keyboard, demanded brilliance from himself, then stalled, wondering whether Erin had already submitted her form. What if the reviewers were nodding over her narrative and her data right now, swayed by the promise of her sole-author publication? What if the hypothetical genius of her proposal impressed them so much that they stopped considering any other submissions?
What if—
He grimaced and rubbed his temples. The earlier microphone screeches from the auditorium continued to ricochet in his ears.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
He snatched up a pen and began to sketch around the margins of his sudoku calendar.
If Erin won the grant, had Fong earmarked a portion of the funds for her own research? Possibly. But possibly not, given her pending maternity leave. Which meant that, if his rival was successful, she’d receive the full amount. She could devote her time to pure science for the duration of the funding cycle, instead of slogging through the administrative bullshit of writing additional applications…
He had to secure funding for his research.
And for Dr. Kramer’s projects, of course.
If he failed—
His pen skidded off the sudoku grid and a pulse of anxiety drove his fingers back to the keyboard, where he began to explain the importance of his and Dr. Kramer’s work in dense, stilted paragraphs. When a familiar set of footsteps strode down the hall, however, he paused his typing to tape a Do Not Disturb sign to his door.
He added his headphones and the lull of white noise soon after.
Outside his office, Erin’s aggressively lively conversation with Nadine Fong and Dr. Marco Rossi about authorship, funding, and the Secretary of Energy’s visit faded to a murmur. I, me, mine, we, us, ours… If she was discussing sources for additional research dollars, she probably hadn’t submitted the Eischer-Langhoff grant yet. He exhaled, and nodded to himself in the quiet.
Realistically—theoretically—it was possible that another physicist from a different National Lab could receive the award. But… no. He knew his competition.
Ethan returned to the application.
He paused again an hour later when his desk elevated to standing height, its rise punctuating the end of his first draft. The grant proposal still required several intensive edit sessions before it went to his supervisor for feedback—but Bunsen would also have feedback in the form of gnawed shoes and shredded pillows if he didn’t return home soon for their evening run. He powered down his computer and headed to his car, calculating how many socks he’d forfeit while sitting in the northbound congestion toward Redwood City. Living in Menlo Park or Palo Alto would be more convenient for his commute to SVLAC, but who could afford privacy there?
He exited the traffic jam onto Farm Hill Boulevard, where the vehicle demographic changed from Teslas to trucks hauling flats of construction stone or piping, and the cattle-dotted hills around Junipero Serra Freeway became light industrial buildings. Passing Stulsaft Park, he pulled into his designated parking space near a cluster of older condominiums. The units weren’t in a good neighborhood, were outfitted with unembellished builder’s grade fixtures, and likely had asbestos in their shingles, but the prices for one-bedroom rentals were affordable. The chirp of his hatchback’s lock roused a crescendo of frenzied howls from his unit as he checked the soles of his shoes for turkey shit.
Well, he had some privacy.
“Hey, buddy.”
Bunsen launched himself at Ethan, wiggling with anticipation and covering him in slobber until he shucked off his sneakers on the interior mud mat. Then the dog dove for the shoes, sniffing hard.
“I didn’t get it all off, did I? Maybe we need a mat outside, too.”
Karen Meyer would be pleased. She hated what he’d done with the place.
Or what he hadn’t.
He scratched Bunsen’s ears with a sour smile, then hung up his vest beside the retriever’s leash, dropped his bag on the second-hand Craigslist couch that he’d somehow managed to cram into his car on pickup several years ago, scanned the floors for vomit—nothing fresh—and changed from his jeans into running clothes. Bunsen abandoned his shoes to seize Ethan’s discarded work socks, carrying them like a prize while he tore around the living room, eager for exercise beyond the confines of the condo’s back patio.
His mother hated that patio even more than she hated his lack of a welcome mat.
She’d planted succulents in the dirt behind his unit one afternoon, and Bunsen had dug them up. He hadn’t let the retriever kill her plants to annoy her—not explicitly. He was just busy, and giving his dig-happy dog access to the patio while he was at SVLAC was easier than hiring a walker.
“But your condo is so—starter home. You need better furniture and art. You need friends, too. Real friends, not the dog. You could share a much nicer place in Palo Alto, and invite your brother’s colleagues on the Peninsula over for dinner once you’re settled. You just need to make the effort.”
When he wasn’t vomiting on the floor, Bunsen was better company than any of Chase Meyer Jr.’s friends.
And maybe even when he was.
“Come on. Frisbee and a run through Stulsaft Park?”
He jammed in his earbuds.
Bunsen’s tail thwacked against the couch, the wall, and his knees.
“Give me the sock, first.”
The retriever paused in an agony of choice between the sock and the leash.
“There might be squirrels in the park.”
Bunsen dropped the sock and leaped for the door, towing Ethan outside and down the street. He kept pace with the galloping dog, the pounding of his strides against the sidewalk timed to the chords of Green Day. They raced traffic to the nearest crosswalk and sped across the boulevard to the edge of the park, where Bunsen halted to sniff at a bollard. He left his scent, staring at Ethan without shame as he tottered on three legs, then loped toward the illicit snack hunting ground under a swing set.
“What did you even find here yesterday? You’ll eat coyote scat with no problem, but vomit up—what, a Lunchable?”
He tugged the retriever away, setting off along Stulsaft Park’s central hiking trail. “We’ll go for an hour, but I have to work when we get back. Get everything out of your system.”
Holding their pace, they jogged past barbecue pits with picnic tables and branching trails before heading for the off-leash paths and open grassy fields south of the creek. Five minutes on the trail became fifteen, then twenty. Ethan’s breath came harder, tiredness dragging at his legs, his face and shirt wet with effort, and Bunsen’s tongue lolled. But it was good, this single-minded focus of stride, stride, stride, the steady motion like a metronome under his ribs, moving with physical purpose and a blank mind while the rock band wailed in his ears, approaching the field now, Bunsen beginning to pull despite his panting, eager to chase the local black squirrels and frisbees.
The phone strapped to his arm vibrated.
Incoming Call: Chase Meyer Jr.
“Damn.”
Wiping sweat from his eyes and mouth, he slowed to a walk. The phone continued to chime over his music while he unclipped Bunsen’s leash. He ordered the dog to sit, to wait, then threw the retriever’s frisbee in a flat, smooth spin across the field. “Release!”
Bunsen exploded from his sit and streaked after the disc.
Incoming Call: Chase Meyer Jr.
He answered on the fourth ring. “Chase.”
“Congratulations are due.”
“Uh.”
He hadn’t said anything about “Hunger”
to his brother, had he? Or about humiliating Erin Monaghan in the auditorium today. “Why?”
“She said yes.”
“Who?”
“Don’t tell me you forgot her name. Bella.”
Right: Bella.
Isabel Wright, Canadian beauty, Chase’s girlfriend… and, apparently, now his fiancée after eleven months of dating? He had forgotten her name. Then again, he’d never actually met her. Chase had introduced Bella to the Meyer family during a ski week last year in Steamboat Springs; Ethan hadn’t been there. He’d had a data set under review for his and Dr. Kramer’s research, and the Meyers had assumed—correctly, if he was being fair—that he wouldn’t leave his numbers half-cleaned to go with them to Colorado over the holidays.
They’d made plans without him.
After Chase mentioned the trip during a family dinner, Ethan had received what was clearly an afterthought invitation to sleep on the pull-out couch of their rental cabin. They’d booked a unit with two bedrooms. They’d all known that he wouldn’t come.
But…
—Bunsen returned his frisbee, and he flung it hard across the field again—
…the fact that they’d just assumed?
It had stung.
He’d been savagely productive on Dr. Kramer’s project during that week, though. His supervisor’s subsequent—and after the Nature Physics debacle, rare—approbation had been more than enough to counter his bruised ego. Dr. Kramer, who only acknowledged excellence, had been pleased with his output.
He’d been pleased today, too.
Well done, Meyer.
Had implying the use of fraudulent research in Erin’s paper crossed a line, though? She’d admitted to employing chunks of public data for her work on the large-scale interactions of astrophysical matter, yes… but in front of Elias Schulz?
Again, however: Well done, Meyer.
That was what mattered. Not her naked shoulder, not her lowered eyes—and not Steamboat Springs with its damn pullout couch—
“Ethan? You there? Did you hear what I—”
He chucked the frisbee a third time, a bit breathless. “Yeah. Uh—Bella. That’s… congratulations.”
“Thanks. The wedding’s next June. Probably at the St. Francis Yacht Club, since she’s a beach babe. But should we already conclude you won’t be bringing a plus one?”
Asking that, like he was sympathetic.
Like he cared that Ethan might have trouble finding dates—when really, he’d just stopped trying. Why bother, when every time he’d asked a girl to a dance or a family function, she’d ended up with Chase by the end of the night? Chase Meyer Jr. was a neurologist—a real doctor like their father, his namesake and colleague at UCSF Medical Center—who didn’t have to get by on a government research scientist’s salary in the Bay Area. Chase wasn’t shy about touting his medical degree from Baylor or his bank account, to Ethan or to any girl that Ethan had ever liked enough to bring home.
Baylor College of Medicine was Chase Meyer Sr.’s alma mater, too.
Yes, he’d stopped trying.
Bunsen’s next frisbee flew off into the undergrowth.
“…Ethan?”
“I had to get Bunsen out of the bushes. Sorry.”
“So, that plus one. Maybe we should hold a spot, just in case. I could probably swing it with Bella. Since you’re my brother. And you never know. I’ll be off the market. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in work.”
“Then why not bring Dr. K?”
Imitating their mother’s voice, Chase said, “We’ve heard so much about him—”
“Shut up.”
“Anyhow. That’s what’s new for me. What’s going on with you these days?”
Galactica Magazine’s acceptance.
Clapping in the auditorium.
Erin Monaghan.
But Chase wasn’t really asking.
He wiped the frisbee on his shirt and clipped on Bunsen’s leash. “Running. Work. Sudoku.”
“Jesus, you always were a loner.”
Loner wasn’t what Chase meant, and they both knew it. He could demand accolades for his research successes and his pending publication of “Hunger,”
of course. But he wouldn’t.
He knew better.
With the historical data documenting Chase’s reactions to his science fair wins and his acceptance to UC Berkeley’s graduate physics program?
No.
“Ethan? Still with me?”
“Bunsen’s trying to eat something disgusting. I have to go.”
Sitting obediently at his side, Bunsen gave him a reproachful look.
“All right. But don’t forget: family dinner next week. Mom will get testy if you miss it a fifth time.”
“Bye, Chase. Congratulations again.”
He jogged back along the trail toward Farm Hill Boulevard with Bunsen heeling and nosing against his thigh in concern. His eyes stung. Frowning, he mopped the sweat away as they crossed the street toward their condo. When the golden retriever paused to relieve himself on a neighbor’s wilted, weedy shrubbery, however, ignoring several signs in the grass that ordered the reader’s dog to Be Respectful!, he couldn’t help smiling just a little.
“I won’t tell them,”
he promised Bunsen, nodding at the condo. He didn’t even know his neighbors’ names.
He hadn’t told Chase about “Hunger.”
He unlocked his door, walking into the quiet, austere space.
But then, he also hadn’t told anyone else.
The apartment kitchen was piled high with pans, the counters streaked with grease, grubby dishcloths draped over the bar on the oven door. A powerful odor of garlic mixed with fish sauce hung in the air. Beside a whiteboard of rotating chore assignments on the refrigerator, a cheery yellow magnet tacked up a note: Sorry for the mess! Will clean everything later.
Kai or Ashley must’ve made an early dinner before heading out for the night.
Two sets of silverware and two plates were stacked in the sink, not quite making it into the dishwasher. Maybe one of them had invited a friend over?
Though, after Ashley’s previous company had been acquired last year by an organization that offered fewer benefits and numerous layoffs, she’d taken a job as a lab tech at Thermo Fisher Scientific, near where Kai worked in full-stack development at Google. They sometimes carpooled for their commute; Thermo Fisher and Kai’s office building were both down in Sunnyvale. Maybe they had dinner sometimes, too. Were Kai and Ashley out together now?
SVLAC was north of Menlo Park, in the opposite direction from the Googleplex and Thermo Fisher. Erin couldn’t have commuted with them, even if she’d wanted to. And when had she last been home for dinner at a normal time?
It had been a while.
But being busy was no excuse to skip the Monaghan family’s regular Monday night call. Leaving the sink and the counters alone, she warmed up a hodgepodge of leftover vegetarian chili and greens from her weekend meal prep, propped her phone on a table crammed behind the living room couch, and video-called the chat.
One by one, Monaghans appeared on the screen, her brothers already talking over each other in a continuation of some earlier conversation that she’d missed.
“—so I explained that I could fly out to Austin on Friday to discuss a proposal for the new university campus infrastructure, but that I had investor pitches booked solid in New York for the rest of the week—”
“Did I tell you about the time I flew in the cargo hold of that seaplane in the Cayman Islands, so I could keep an eye on my equipment—”
“Only twice. Or maybe it was three times—”
“Sweetheart!”
Lori Monaghan interrupted her sons with a smile for Erin, who lifted her spoon in acknowledgment. “What’s for dinner on your special day?”
“I made your veggie chili on Sunday.”
She tilted her bowl into view.
“Good chili,”
from her father, sitting beside his wife at their kitchen table.
“I’ll put on a crock-pot tomorrow before school.”
Lori patted her husband’s arm, then turned back to her screen. “But leftovers aren’t a proper celebration meal, Erin.”
“You should spice it up,”
from Wes with a wink, his eyelashes bleached by Ecuadorian sunshine.
She pointed her spoon at him. “I’m not putting jalape?os in it. That’s sacrilege, and I can’t believe you—”
“We only added the peppers to your bowl,”
Adrian noted. “We didn’t sabotage the whole batch. Besides, you ate it, didn’t you?”
“It’s been fifteen years, and I still have numb patches on my tongue, you jerk!”
Their unapologetic laughter drowned her out. Somewhere in the background of their parents’ house, Cassie—the Monaghans’ aging Australian Shepherd—began to bark. Raising her voice, she continued, “I ate the chili because I wasn’t going to let you win. Then I got you back later. With the Icy Hot.”
Adrian winced. “I couldn’t feel my ass for a week. You were a menace.”
“Still is,”
Wes added.
Shouting at Ethan Meyer in the light of a project beam—data fraud—her sweater slipping off, everyone watching—
“She’s a published author, too,”
Lori redirected them before their conversation and Erin’s attention went completely off the rails. “She should celebrate with more than chili.”
Right. Focus.
“I’m almost published, Mom. ‘Pandora Rising’ will be in Galactica’s next issue, and my paper’s queued for a September printing. Assuming no one sabotages it. Then I’ll celebrate. But I’ve got a late shift on LIGO tonight, and there’s a grant that I need to work on. Adrian, if you think Texans can be hard sells on investing in xeriscaped urban infrastructure, you should try getting research funding out of the Department of Energy. If it’s not something politically expedient, like work on semiconductors, things that create industrial jobs, something for a campaign platform? Forget it. So, if I can’t get my funds from a private grant—”
“When’s the application due?”
“Next month.”
“Then you have time.”
Adrian shrugged and sobered. “You can go out tonight. You’ll get these particular funds, or find some other way. You always do.”
“But—”
Ping.
A message from Martina zipped onto her screen above the Monaghan video squares.
Martina
(Awake now!) Sounds like you’ve had a DAY. Meet at Left Bank to discuss? 6:15 p.m.?
Her fingers hovered over the notification. “It seems like Martina agrees with you. She wants to meet at Left Bank.”
“Martinis with Martina?”
“You know I hate olives.”
Ethan Meyer wouldn’t be out at a brasserie tonight. He was probably hunched over the Eischer-Langhoff application right now. That, or gloating about his digs from the all-hands. Not to mention, she needed a clear head for her research shift…
“Erin,”
Lori recalled her. “Just be happy for yourself tonight, like we’re happy for you.”
“Go see your friend, kiddo,”
from her reclusive father.
“All right, but just for one glass of wine.”
And, despite the pressure of the grant, her midnight lab hours, and her irritation from the workday, her stomach bubbled with joy again. Ethan Meyer’s attempts at torpedoing her research and challenging the validity of her methods notwithstanding, she did always find a way to reach her goal. She’d wanted to see “Pandora Rising”
published and wanted sole authorship of a paper, so she’d put in the time, put in the effort with a thesaurus and data analytics tools, and now—
Her father smiled at her. “Good. Go.”
“No, wait!”
Adrian waved on her screen. “You have to tell me what route you took around the Dish this morning.”
“I’d like nothing more than to detail my runtime win for you,”
she smirked, “but Dad just told me to go to Left Bank with Martina.”
“You can’t avoid me forever—”
“Give Cassie an ear scratch for me, Mom. Bye!”
Leaving Adrian to fume and Wes to laugh him down, she closed the Monaghans’ video call. Then, since her watch showed a half-hour before she was due to meet Martina, she launched a familiar web forum on her screen.
STEMinist Online: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Smashing the Patriarchy
Log in?
SnarkyQuark64 joined the conversation.
A scan through the top posts offered a slant on news from National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, Time Magazine, and The Economist. But instead of breathless profiles of visionary billionaires, alarmist calls for regulation in the financial technology sector, or discussions of the latest Silicon Valley job perks, STEMinist Online provided commentary on the origins of billionaire brilliance—
JustAKeysm@sh0K: There’s a consulting firm under an NDA that comes up with most of his new product ideas. And he’s got a short fuse. You’re probably okay to ride with him in an elevator, though. He’s not handsy.
—and the quiet firing of an analyst at a tech startup, who’d spoken about the professional penalties that parents faced for taking advantage of the organization’s advertised flexible hours:
Doc_Spoc1701: I asked for flex time so I could leave early on Fridays to pick up my daughter from daycare, since all the men were out on the golf course by 2 p.m., but HR told me that the trips were actually strategy meetings. Suddenly, I was on a performance improvement plan…
Twenty-four hours a day around the globe, the network whispered truth to power, challenging and occasionally confirming whatever glossy headline was fueling the media cycle. It dragged back the curtain and showed the emperor naked. STEMinist Online was all the news that wasn’t fit to print.
It was invaluable.
It was also a place to scream into the void, whether in frustration or in triumph.
Leaving the trending headlines for another day, Erin toggled through the site’s menu to a section called “Accomplishments.”
SnarkyQuark64: Just got a paper accepted in the Journal of Supermassive Astronomy and Astrophysics. First time as a sole author! I didn’t even have to pull the first-initial, last-name trick to get past the submission software, either. Can confirm: their review procedures are equitable. I’ll document the process under Journal Reviews—Positive tomorrow.
Instant validation from the forum’s anonymous user handles unfurled beneath her post. She watched the comments and exclamation points bubble, hugging her elbows and grinning. The influx of positivity paused only when a lone user vented her frustration that she’d submitted a paper to Reports on Progress in Mathematics and had it denied by a peer review committee, while a resubmission of that same paper under her male supervisor’s name resulted in immediate acceptance, but the forum moderators quickly moved the poster and her ire to the “Journal Reviews—Negative”
page. The congratulations continued.
The minute hand on her watch did, too, ticking along toward six fifteen.
So she pocketed her phone. She ran a comb through her ponytail, refreshed the hints of iris and juniper perfume behind her ears, dusted loose powder across the freckles and persistent pinkness on her nose, switched out her sweater for a camel-toned suede motorcycle jacket over her jeans (no one who’d lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than a month went out during the evening without layers, even in May), then headed off along Crane Street toward Santa Cruz Avenue.
Martinis with Martina.
Examining a poster outside the French Film Club, Martina quickly pivoted to embrace Erin when she arrived. In the embroidered flats she wore, Martina’s curly brunette bob barely reached Erin’s chin. Her grip was fierce with excitement and weekly Pilates classes, however, and her voice turned heads at the bar when she urged them in through Left Bank’s double doors, exulting, “Congratulations! I knew you could do it, you genius—two acceptances on the same day!—and now everyone else knows, too. We’ll take a corner booth if you’ve got one, Rye.”
Left Bank’s ma?tre d’ nodded, unfazed by her enthusiasm. “Honey, for you? After you got those city assholes and their faux legal shit about a corporate transfer of real estate ownership out of here? Any table you want, any time,”
and he gestured toward a curved leather booth in the cozy, shadowed rear of the brasserie, where Norah Jones crooned from a speaker overhead and a waiter appeared to take their order for Chenin Blanc and truffle fries.
“So.”
Martina leaned forward over the table, her smile bright. “Tell me everything. About your research paper. About your story. All of it.”
Erin luxuriated in resurgent happiness for a few moments. “Well, my paper’s been recommended for publication in September. And my short story will be in next month’s issue of the sci-fi magazine. The editors apparently really enjoyed it—”
“Of course.”
Martina nodded her thanks to the waiter for the swift arrival of their fries and wine. “It’s brilliant. Both are, actually.”
“—and Galactica’s open to future submissions from me. Or from Aaron Forster.”
“Would you ever publish your creative writing under your own name?”
“Someday, maybe. But for science fiction, being ‘Aaron’ is easier than being ‘Erin’. That’s true with the physics journals, too. Though hopefully that won’t always be the case for either industry.”
Martina bit a fry in half. “Having a secret identity must be fun.”
“Not completely secret, since you and my family know about it.”
“But to the public, you’re someone else. You can write anything without real-world repercussions. Say anything.”
“Such as?”
She swirled her own fry in a fragrant puddle of truffle oil.
“I don’t know. Maybe whatever you’d say—or do?—to Ethan Meyer if your colleagues weren’t around.”
“Ugh. Don’t tempt me.”
She took a fortifying sip of Chenin Blanc. “Not only did he castigate me for sleeping through IT’s two o’clock email, but the time slot I finally managed to get on the schedule is right before his, so we’re bound to run into each other. At least you’ll be on duty with me. You’ll have to give a countdown so I can get out of the control room before he arrives.”
Martina hummed in sympathy and crooked a finger for her to continue her rant.
After swallowing another mouthful of fries and alcohol, she talked her friend through her awful morning, culminating in Ethan’s questions about her gravitational wave data sets. Well, ostensibly about her data sets, but she knew—
She went for another gulp of white wine. Her glass was empty. She blinked at it, then refocused.
“And then—Martina. And then. Someone in Maiman Auditorium started clapping. Someone actually started clapping, as if our argument were a… a professional baseball game with a score to count.”
“Really?”
“It started off as a standard debate about research methodology. But he went nuclear with implications about fraudulent numbers in LIGO’s database! I might’ve gotten in his face a bit after that, and then: the clapping. I don’t know if he also heard it, but if he did…”
She reached for a lonely truffle fry, swiping up a last trail of oil.
“I wouldn’t have clapped.”
“I know you wouldn’t.”
“No.”
Martina’s lips tilted into mischief around the rim of her own glass. “I would’ve been too busy with my popcorn.”