9
The swish of an activating lightsaber sounded from her desk.
Looping an elastic band around her hair, Erin hopped over to her phone on alternating feet while she pulled up her socks, smiling despite the itch of her sunburned arms and the early Monday hour. After a weekend spent messaging… flirting?… with Bannister in between stints of preparation for the Department of Energy’s visit, tracking a few trending STEMinist Online posts, finishing another Murderbot novella, and battling several sudoku grids, she’d switched out his generic text tone for the iconic combination of a thirty-five millimeter projector and a 170s tube television from Star Wars.
Bannister
(New Photo Message)
Bannister
Before the running shoes come out.
She opened the picture, shouldering into both the sleeves of her utility jacket and the refrigerator to grab her breakfast Tupperware, then paused in the apartment’s entry with her bicycle helmet perched on her head, the latch swinging loose under her chin, distracted and delighted.
The photo was of Bunsen. The golden retriever stretched in indolent ease over a familiar gray quilt, ears flopped forward to cover his eyes. From nose to tail, he sprawled across the entire length of the bed and the pillow, too, scavenging the heat from another body that had either already hauled itself up off the mattress or been kicked out onto the floor.
Cassie played the same game whenever she visited Michigan.
Erin
If you lie down with dogs…
Swish.
Bannister
…you’ll wake up with no room in bed.
Laughing, she latched her chin clip, zipped up her jacket, and hefted her bicycle down to the pavement.
Erin
That’s probably more on the mark than the original quote.
Then she braced a sneaker against its pedal and typed out one more comment.
Erin
Because bed-sharing leads to plenty of things besides fleas.
Pocketing her phone before she could second-guess herself, she kicked off from the curb and rolled onto Live Oak Avenue. But she did check her screen again at the traffic light leading toward Sand Hill Road.
He’d responded.
Bannister
Not all bad things, either.
Giddy heat suffused her stomach. Somewhere in Silicon Valley’s crush of grifters, dreamers, and gridlock, Bannister and Bunsen were up and alert to the beauty of the morning, just like she was. Had they gone jogging through a neighborhood in the Peninsula, or in the urban sprawl of the East Bay? Maybe they’d run past San Francisco’s Sunset District to Fort Funston, where Bunsen could frolic off leash. Or they could’ve gone back to Crissy Field.
Pulse thudding, legs and lungs straining with effort and exhilaration at the summit of every sand dune, the rich glisten of sun on sweat—
Red light.
She skidded into the crosswalk at Innovation Drive, weight pitching forward against her handlebars. She caught herself before she ended up spreadeagled in the middle of the intersection, but only just.
Focus. Monday. SVLAC.
She gave an awkward wave to a driver in the next lane when the light flipped to green for her turn. At least the guard at the campus security booth was too far away to have seen her nearwipeout. Both the effort of pedaling up Sand Hill Road and the wind chill from her ride were legitimate excuses for her rapid breathing and her hot cheeks, too. She locked up her bicycle—no damage done to its frame or tires, just to her pride—and swiped into the Modern Physics building, heading to the coffee station for a stabilizing dose of caffeine.
Careful to avoid the espresso button, she prodded the machine to life, then warmed up her overnight oats and sliced apples. She stirred creamer into her cereal when it began to smoke in the kitchenette’s fire hazard of a microwave, and kept an eye on the hallway while her coffee brewed. Most of her colleagues wouldn’t arrive at the office for another hour.
Most.
She also watched her muted phone.
Erin
Did you know that the easiest time of day to identify a psychopath is before a.m.?
Bannister
I didn’t. Why?
Erin
Because people with psychopathic traits have a taste for black coffee, and you’re most likely to spot that tell in the morning. So the studies say.
Bannister
The “they” who say.
Erin
Infallible sociology wisdom. Anyhow…
She left the message dangling, retrieving her mug and pouring a healthy stream of oat milk into it, swirling the liquids together in irreversible thermalization.
Bannister
Are you trying to guess how I drink my coffee?
Erin
Maybe. Unless you drink it black. Then—don’t tell me.
She took a sip and waited…
Bannister
No. Definitely not black.
Bannister
You?
She added a second splash of oat milk.
Erin
I sometimes spike my creamer with coffee.
Bannister
Lawless.
Erin
My brothers tell me I’m a menace.
Bannister
I’d guess that you wear their warning with pride.
Erin
Absolutely right.
She crunched an apple at that, considering her next move until a new conversation arrived to yank her focus from her screen.
“Any good fishing this weekend?”
She spun around. “Fish—what—oh. Martina.”
She exhaled.
Her friend shambled into the kitchenette, yawning a greeting. Despite being ringed with deep lavender shadows from a Sunday night shift, Martina’s eyes shone with mischief. She bumped her hip against Erin’s while she slotted a mug into the coffee machine. “Or maybe I should ask: any more good fishing?”
“I’m vegetarian.”
She returned the hip check a bit harder than necessary.
“Shame. No raw… sushi… for you—”
“Martina!”
Hot coffee went straight up her nose. She sputtered and grabbed a napkin. “Ugh—that’s—that’s just… no, but wait: why are you here? If you’ve finished your shift in the control room, shouldn’t you be heading home to a date with your bed?”
Undeterred, Martina handed her another tissue. “Why am I getting an espresso shot? Aside from the joy of seeing you snort coffee at sexual innuendos? Because I do have a date this morning. But it’s with the Menlo Park city council. They’re trying to bulldoze the pocket park by our house to make room for some pricey outdoor exercise studio.”
“Do you ever really sleep?”
She dabbed her chin.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I—”
“So. You were grinning at your phone a minute ago.”
Wiggling her eyebrows, Martina leaned back against the counter with her brew, displacing a bowl of wilting fruit left over from Friday afternoon. “Which means that even though you refuse to eat seafood—did you know that oysters are a powerful aphrodisiac?—you must’ve had a good time.”
“Um. Well…”
“I thought so. After those pictures?”
Erin’s smile widened past the boundaries of her napkin. “We’re still talking about books—we might read This Is How You Lose the Time War together—and dogs—he has to keep his paperbacks on a high shelf so his golden retriever can’t chew on them. Also, about what it’s like to operate as clandestine creatives in the Bay Area. Some people here apparently claim that coding is art.”
“You’ve said that before about data sets.”
“That’s because they elicit an emotional response. Who wouldn’t be amazed by new information on the behavior of black holes and how we can track their movement through ripples in space-time?”
“Amazed by a plain data export? Honestly? Almost no one outside your field would spot artistry in all those numbers.”
“Not helpful.”
She swatted at Martina with her tissue. “An emotional response—wonder, anger, awe, frustration, or anything else—is what makes art art. That’s why it’s subjective, because it’s based on feeling more than logic. But art isn’t that subjective. Python and Ruby on Rails are out.”
“Maybe code does elicit an emotional response from software developers. They might disagree with you.”
“Bannister agrees with me.”
She took a smug sip of coffee.
“That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“Yes—and his graphics absolutely elicit an emotional response.”
She scrolled through the photos on her phone, past an influx of golden retrievers and books—arranged alphabetically by author and series order—lining the shelves of a house or apartment somewhere in the greater Bay Area, then back to the image of “Hunger”
that she’d snapped from the magazine. Its compelling imagery—the sharp, edgy turbulence depicting the gravity of Bannister’s black hole—and its authority to compel and consume its viewer were undiminished even by the low-grade resolution of her screen. It was time to share it, now. “Isn’t he incredible?”
Martina hummed over her shoulder. “All right, I see the appeal. Especially for you. It has narrative power. Plus, astrophysics.”
“‘Hunger’ is the backpiece for my story in Galactica’s June issue. The editors must’ve paired them together.”
“He’s certainly a skilled artist.”
“…but you don’t like his work?”
“I like color. The murals in Oakland. Buildings in the Mission District. Sidewalk chalk art in the parking lots behind Santa Cruz Avenue on farmers’ market days.”
Martina shrugged down at the tapestried arabesque of threads patterning the hems of her jeans above her work boots. “But I can admire his talent. And I like him for you, because he’s distracted you enough from your spreadsheets to have a cup of coffee and a conversation right here, instead of at your desk. You haven’t mentioned the Eischer-Langhoff grant once today—”
“I finished it on Friday—”
“—and you’re smiling.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. So, keep me updated on your mystery artist. But for now,”
she rinsed her mug in the sink, “I have to head off. Those planning commissioners won’t heckle themselves.”
“Take that microphone with all the confidence of a mediocre white man.”
“Always,”
and Martina waved herself out of the kitchenette.
Erin returned to her photos in the quiet, still smiling. Bannister’s finished piece wasn’t the only item she’d saved in a digital album. He’d also sent images of more recent sketches to her on Sunday afternoon: a kaleidoscopic play of light on the lens of a telescope reflecting a planet from one end and a human eye from the other, and an abstract rendering of a mug with a spoon miraculously un-swirling a muddle of coffee and milk back to their discrete components. The edge of his left thumb was visible in the second sketch, a glimpse of the hand that articulated ideas from a brilliant, visionary mind—a mind with such gorgeous forearms.
Those definitely elicited an emotional response.
Also, the sleek cut of a runner’s abdomen.
Why shouldn’t she smile?
It didn’t last, though.
Because the next person to enter the kitchenette was Ethan Meyer.
Both her mood and her smile dropped. She squared up in front of the coffee machine, chin raised with three years of habit, instinctive vitriol already rising—but then the main doors into the Modern Physics building swung open, admitting a group of colleagues who’d carpooled together down the congested freeway from San Francisco, and she bit her tongue hard with her newer and less pleasant habit of silence.
Popcorn.
Easy, Monaghan.
Except…
Today, now, with Bannister’s messages clutched in her hand, it suddenly didn’t matter what her colleagues overheard, saw, or even said about their rivalry.
Whatever they thought, they were wrong.
Her hallucination-dream? Also wrong.
And what was right?
This.
As the coffee machine belched out a cloud of steam, as Ethan stepped toward the counter in his fleece vest, as their carpooling colleagues filed down the hall, she moved defiantly to meet him while sweeping her ponytail off her neck. Straggles of helmet hair flicked into his face, across his mouth.
“Argh—”
“Sorry, I didn’t see you there, Meyer. I was thinking about how submitting the Eischer-Langhoff grant last Friday would have pushed my email to the top of the reviewers’ inboxes today. Obviously, this—plus the citations from my sole-author paper, of course—gives my odds a boost, and it’ll be interesting to see how the award process plays out. More interesting than watching the doorway. But if you can optimize your programming for good time management this week, maybe you can use the same strategy. Minus the authorship part.”
Then she left him, a hand frozen on his cheek, unexpectedly mute. Good. She nodded a greeting to her arriving colleagues and an intern poking at a copy machine in the hallway—“Morning, Dr. Rossi and Dr. O’Connor-Young. Hi Leah, how are you?”—as she strode off to her desk, triumphant, mind already spinning with ideas for the workday ahead. Plus, an older post in the STEMinist Online forums had gained traction on Sunday with new commentary about a Fermilab scientist from the early aughts (anonymized to protect the poster, not the man) who’d allegedly published his subordinate’s research on the use of quantum effects for navigation by migrating birds under his own name; SnarkyQuark64 had thoughts to share.
It was a busy Monday. A good Monday.
She was gone, and her vicious ponytail with her.
If you can optimize your programming.
He scowled. He didn’t still have her hair in his mouth, did he?
Maybe you can use the same strategy. Minus the authorship part.
He didn’t, but his lower lip tingled, and a distracting, irritating hint of subtle sweetness continued to chafe his nose. The reason that he glowered after his rival rather than making a clever rebuttal to her dig about the grant—and he definitely would’ve made it clever, even something about her paper’s data again—was because his jaw was clenched too hard to spit out the words.
Forster would’ve known what to say.
He extracted his phone, abandoning the kitchenette and shouldering past a crowd of his coworkers in the hall, exchanging a brief nod with Szymanski by the water dispenser as he retreated to the safety of his office. Just a nod. He didn’t say anything about his run-in with Erin. Not this time. They were only colleagues. But…
Ping.
Forster
Have you ever tried sudoku? I just beat my best time!
He breathed.
Ethan
I have a daily calendar. I like the cleanliness of the numbers. It gives order to the start of my day. Better than caffeine for clearing brain fog.
Which was good, since his confrontation with Erin had left him with a stinging lip and no coffee.
Ethan
What’s your best time?
He uncapped a pen and reached for the calendar on his desk. Instead of listing numbers for each cell that wouldn’t contradict the simple, difficult rules of the game, however, he rubbed a thumb over his mouth and watched for Forster’s response. It didn’t take long.
Forster
4:17. In my defense, though, I only started a few years ago. And I haven’t been very consistent with my practice.
Ethan
That’s a good time. Especially if you’re not working on it every day.
Forster
Maybe. What’s your record?
He couldn’t help smiling a little.
Ethan
3:18.
Forster
You’re 5 seconds faster than I am.
Her typing ellipsis bubbled. Then:
Forster
I could catch you.
Ethan
You’d have to reduce your time by almost 30%.
Forster
You think I can’t do it?
Ethan
You think you can?
Forster
I’m not going to admit it now if I have doubts! Just give me until Friday morning.
Ethan
What’s happening on Friday morning?
The Department of Energy’s visit was scheduled for Friday. But he didn’t volunteer that information. It wasn’t the sort of thing they shared, not when they each valued a hard line between their professional and creative work. They’d both said so. He wouldn’t breach that limit.
Probably.
Forster
Our race. Pencils at dawn. I have a major work event, and sudoku will be my brain warm-up.
Ethan
Deal.
He’d certainly need a way to condition his own brain and stabilize his anxiety on the morning of the visit, too. Yes, he’d spent weeks assembling white papers and holometer data displays for the occasion, and he knew his numbers inside and out. Those preparations had been made with Bunsen at his feet and Ted Chiang’s short stories at his elbow, though. Neither would be with him at SVLAC on Friday. But Dr. Kramer would be. Dr. Kramer, who expected nothing but excellence from him because he knew what Ethan was capable of, if only he applied himself to their research—
Ping.
Forster
You’d better get yourself a Big Game training regimen.
Again, he breathed. Despite her dare, the knots in his stomach eased.
Ethan
Making good on the Stanford–Berkeley rivalry.
Forster
Yes. Be warned: I show no mercy to my rivals.
Ethan
A menace.
Forster
To my enemies and my brothers. But I’ll always go to bat for my friends. Pick your strategy wisely.
Ethan
I will.
Forster
It’s probably for the best that we’ve never met in the real world. We’d be enemies on principle.
…oh.
Probably for the best.
Probably.
She’d mentioned a work event on Friday, toeing their lines of separation…
Could they meet…?
Brrrriiinng!
His desktop phone shrilled.
Incoming Call: Dr. John Kramer
Hurriedly closing his personal messages, he opened a spreadsheet on his monitor and reached for the phone. Fortunately, the holometer data set for Table 5 in the grant application was the random file that expanded across his screen. Not that Dr. Kramer could see it. But he stared at the numerical cells and graphs anyhow—focus—as he picked up the receiver, standing at attention when his desk chose that moment to vacillate between heights. “Dr.—”
“You’re late. Check your inbox, Meyer.”
Dr. Kramer had sent over Finance’s accounting reconciliation needs for the department’s quarterly expenses (including his networking dinners, golf rounds with journal editors, and a series of upcoming flights to Switzerland), along with a marked-up draft of Tomasz Szymanski’s latest paper on LED performance stabilization in extreme heat, and edits for Ethan’s weekend updates to the grant.
Table 5 had simply been reformatted. His supervisor had made no comment on the unaltered data.
“Finance wants the report by five o’clock.”
Despite the administrative drudgery now set to eclipse any work time that he could’ve had around today’s multi-hour in-person meeting, his shoulders settled. “They’ll have it by one o’clock.”
“Good.”
Tracking down receipts and typing up cost memorandums took the better part of his morning. He forwarded Dr. Kramer’s notes to Szymanski—almost supplementing his usual salutation with a hope that Szymanski had enjoyed his weekend, before quickly deleting the personal words and sending over their supervisor’s amendments without comment—and updated the Eischer-Langhoff application again.
He wasn’t distracted. He wasn’t.
His phone remained quiet beneath its blur of white noise.
Clearly, Forster was also busy.
But Erin Monaghan was discussing her plans for the Department of Energy’s visit with Nadine Fong in one of the corridors fringing the bullpen. The one outside his office, to be exact.
“I’ve improvised some graphics from my last International Conference on Physics poster to highlight our department’s work. It’s a simplified explanation of relativistic mechanics operating in extreme gravitational and astrophysical conditions, but we might only have a few minutes with the officials. For non-specialists, narrative is more important than data.”
“That’s the poster from the Burlingame conference?”
“The one where I had six hours with a designer, instead of an intern still learning Adobe Illustrator. Since the graphics are turning out to be reusable, arguing the expense with Finance was worth it.”
“Back when I had energy for that sort of thing,”
with a groan from Fong. “But yes, simpler is better for the government. Good work. No edits, just—ugh, never mind, nature calls again—”
His rival’s supervisor shuffled off toward the bathroom. It had to be her, because those weren’t Erin’s strides. She lingered in the hall outside his office, like the sweet, fresh scent still clinging in his sinuses, likely flushed with triumph at Fong’s approval.
Or maybe not. Maybe receiving praise from the head of Relativistic Mechanics was just part of her Monday agenda. Maybe she didn’t value it, because she didn’t have to work for it. Maybe Fong doled out approval like other people doled out and then discarded tennis balls at a dog park: casually, thoughtlessly, because they were cheap, plentiful, and ordinary. Dr. Kramer’s approbation meant more. Ethan’s supervisor didn’t offer praise just because he had to piss.
Clamping his headphones over his ears, he focused back on the Finance report. Being forced to eavesdrop on Erin’s conversation had cost him minutes in an already tight schedule. He’d have to skip lunch to finish the form now.
As usual, it was her fault.
His irritation continued during the afternoon’s all-hands meeting, sitting among his fellow engineers and SVLAC’s administrative staff with a growling stomach while a projector beam warmed the top of his head and Schulz’s assistant read out a schedule for the Department of Energy’s visit.
“…and then the tour will conclude with a presentation by Dr. Helena Quarles on the contributions of SVLAC to American science education. Dr. Quarles’ talk will be here in Maiman Auditorium. Space is limited,”—someone in the room’s front row of swivel chairs gave a quiet but distinct snort; recognizing Erin’s laugh, Ethan swallowed his guffaw and frowned at his table—“but staff can reserve seats through a sign-up form sent out at the start of this meeting.”
The assistant clicked forward to her next slide.
“Now, dress code: unless engaged in structural work on the accelerators, staff are to wear suits. Neutral colors and trousers are appropriate for all genders, but skirts may be worn if desired. Open-toed shoes are not acceptable. Hats that aren’t baseball caps are subject to approval by—”
A collective groan rippled across the room at Marcie’s specifications. This time, both Ethan and his stomach joined in. Accustomed to a seasonless uniform of jeans and work boots, a significant percentage of the audience would be making a run on the local thrift stores this week. Some might even brave the Stanford Shopping Center. He’d been forced into a pilgrimage to Jos. A. Bank several years ago in preparation for Chase’s thirtieth birthday dinner at The French Laundry, so he’d be spared the rush, at least.
But.
The shopping center sold more than suits.
Lingerie, Forster’s freckles under the soft golden glow of a dressing room’s lights, the toned obliques of a runner or cyclist narrowing the dip of her waist—but though the picture was indelibly seared in his mind, her backdrop was anonymous. She could’ve been in any Bay Area mall. However, just maybe…
His groan lasted a second too long. He shifted in his chair.
“Stomach,”
he muttered to Szymanski’s sideways look.
Down in the front row, Erin was conspiring again with Nadine Fong while Marcie finished delineating acceptable versus unacceptable fedoras and explained Friday’s parking restrictions. Dust in the projector beam swirled above a medley of digital colors in her hair, pulled tight at her neck into that lethal ponytail.
To himself, he added: focus.