2. Vaughn
TWO
VAUGHN
The notes don’t need to be adjusted—I’ve worked on this presentation for weeks. But I adjust them anyway; it gives me something to do while I wait for the room to settle.
Dr. Ghupta walks onto the stage and stands behind the lectern to introduce me as the next speaker.
“Good morning. Yesterday was filled with the best in agronomy science and biotechnology, but there is one presentation I’ve been looking forward to in particular. Of course, I’d say that since I’m the one who’s spent the best part of a year trying to convince him to come here.”
The audience erupts in laughter. My heartbeat kicks up a notch.
“He doesn’t need further introductions because everyone here is familiar with his work. Please welcome Dr. Vaughn Reeves.”
I walk onto the stage and shake Dr. Ghupta’s hand.
He leaves me on the podium, and I clear my throat.
“Good morning, everyone,” I say. “Dr. Ghupta is correct. He is the reason I am here today, and not because I had to upgrade the storage space on my answering machine from his endless calls. It was his early work on soil regeneration in India that inspired me to study ways to feed people in places that would otherwise seem impossible.”
The audience is approximately two hundred and twenty researchers, agronomists, and policy people, along with a handful of journalists who understand perhaps sixty percent of what they’ll hear today.
I take a breath. My notes are forgotten as practice, experience, and conviction take me forward.
The first slides cover the problem. Dead soil—compacted, chemically exhausted, or simply overtaxed—representing a third of the arable land globally. The number lands in the room with a quiet collective intake of attention.
Then I move to the mechanism. The specific consortium of microorganisms I’ve been developing, the way they interact with depleted mineral structures, the smart sensor system that adjusts conditions in real time.
The graphs are clean, and the before-and-after samples from the pilot plots speak for themselves.
The Q and A runs longer than expected, but the questions are good, and thankfully I have my research to back me up on each of the points challenged.
And then it’s done. People applaud, and I collect my notes and step back from the lectern, knowing that after this high, I’m due for a crash.
I’m a hermit married to my farm and my research facility. My team is small and like a family. I love the research, being outside on the land, and being home. Everything that a conference center building in Warsaw isn’t.
The coffee station is in the wide corridor of the conference center, where the networking happens afterward. I navigate toward it because it’s expected and because a coffee would genuinely not be unwelcome.
People approach. A researcher from Wageningen tells me my sensor calibration approach is very similar to something they’re developing, so we talk about common challenges and how we’re trying to overcome them.
A soil scientist from Kenya is interested in the practical implementation timeline, and I give him more attention than I’ve given most people in the last hour because he’s asking questions that matter outside this room. He’s the literal living reason why I do the work I do.
But then he moves on, and I’m left standing with a paper cup in my hand.
A corporate agriculture representative is already at my elbow with a card and a sentence about partnership opportunities I recognize on the first word and am done with by the fourth.
He’s tall. Expensive suit. The kind of smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s something calculated about the way he positions himself, and his grip when he shakes my hand is firm. It feels more like a statement rather than a greeting.
I take the card without looking at it because I have no intension of using it.
But he doesn’t move away like the others do. “Your work is impressive, Dr. Reeves. Really impressive.” He pauses, and I glance around the room for an exit strategy. “The kind of work that some people would very much like to be involved in. Or control.”
That’s … an odd thing to say.
I shift my weight to create a little distance. “I’m still in the research phase. Years away from implementation,” I lie.
“Of course. Whenever you’re ready.” He smiles again, that same smile that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. “Enjoy the rest of the conference,” he says. And then, “I hope you make it home safely.”
He moves away before I can respond, disappearing into the crowd.
The remainder of my coffee has gone cold. I set the cup down on the nearest surface and go find the men’s restroom.
The one farthest away from the conference hall is empty, which is exactly what I need it to be.
I stand at the sink for a moment with the water running cold over my hands. The mirror gives me back the usual. The silver in my hair has been there long enough now that I’ve typically stopped noticing it. There are lines in my face I didn’t have ten years ago, but they’re earned lines.
For forty-eight, I don’t look bad.
The tension in my shoulders reminds me it’s been a while since I’ve treated myself to a massage, although I’m not going to lie to myself and believe it’s not a different kind of touch I’ve been craving for a while.
But my work is important, and living in a small town makes it really hard to find someone willing to have some fun between the sheets but who won’t stay long enough to warm them up.
I dry my hands and check my phone because I’ve been unable to do it since before breakfast. There are fourteen emails and a text from Rowan.
Rowan:
How’d it go?
It’s followed by a selfie of him giving a thumbs-up.
Only one thing in my life is more important than my work, and that’s my son.
Vaughn:
All good. Looking forward to seeing you when I’m back home.
Then I scroll through my emails, ignoring anything that isn’t important, and go straight to one from Priya, who runs my lab team back in Colorado.
The email gets straight to the point, and it’s the best news I could have had today.
I open the attached photos of the K-series trays showing germination. All twelve. Her note says that soil batches #7 and #9 both show root development as of this morning.
The time on my phone shows it’s too early in the day to call her, even though she sent the email an hour ago. I know both Priya and the team will be way too excited about this development. Answering the phone, even if it’s the boss, will be the last thing they’ll do.
Instead, I go back to the photos and enlarge each one. Small green shoots in trays of dark soil that three months ago was, by every metric we had, completely dead. The kind of land that grows nothing.
Batch #7 is particularly striking, with a dense cluster of seedlings in the upper-right quadrant where I’d concentrated the modified microbial solution. The green color against the brown looks aggressively alive. Impossibly alive.
That’s the point. It’s almost impossible, but we’ve done it.
I put the phone away with reluctance, wishing I was in my lab right now, and walk out of the restroom.
The next session has already started, so the corridor is emptier now.
A few people are still clustered near the tables, but most of the networking crowd has dispersed.
I’m heading for the conference room when someone falls into step beside me.
“Excuse me, Dr. Reeves?”
I turn. He’s young—probably early thirties, dark hair, glasses that suit him, and a curious glint in his eyes.
He’s a good foot shorter than me so he has to look up. “Your slide with the mineral exchange rate data across the pH gradient,” he says, slightly breathless. “Was that— Were those figures from a single site or aggregate?”
His Australian accent takes me by surprise, but it’s the question that really impresses me. “Single site,” I say. “High-altitude Colorado, roughly nine thousand feet. The pH variation there is naturally significant because of the granite substrate, which is part of why we chose it.”
His face opens up with genuine excitement. “Because the stress conditions—”
“Accelerated the response curves, yes.”
He’s nodding now. “That’s— Yes, that’s what I thought. I wasn’t sure if I was reading it right.” He holds out his hand. “I’m Seth. I’m a researcher at the Institute of Soil Research at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna.”
“There’s very interesting research coming out of there. Do you work with Dr. Weisz by any chance?”
His face opens up even more. “Yes. She’s amazing. I study soil chemistry, and I’m three years into a project on degraded agricultural land in central Europe.”
We talk for another ten or twenty minutes about overlapping methodology, and it’s one of the best conversations I’ve had at this conference.
I don’t know if it’s the fact he knows his stuff, the accent, or how he seems to have gravitated closer, but I notice how attractive he is.
The glasses don’t quite hide his big brown eyes, and his hair is messy, but not because he styled it that way.
During our conversation, he keeps running his hands through it.
Then there’s a small pause. He clears his throat and licks his lips.
I shouldn’t notice, but I do.
His eyes are on my chest as he seems to think about what to say next, but then they move up to meet mine. “I’d love to discuss your work further over dinner tonight,” he says. “If you’re free?”
“Dinner,” I repeat, and there’s a fraction of a pause in the middle of the word I didn’t intend.
“If you’re not busy. I mean, everyone has to eat, right?
” he says, and he has enough grace to say it lightly, without pressure, which makes it somehow more difficult to deflect than if he’d pushed.
“But … I think we have a lot in common, and I’d hate to go back home without shooting my shot, if you know what I mean. ”
I open my mouth to say something, but I don’t know what, because it’s clear to me my research isn’t everything he’s interested in.
He takes another step forward, coming close enough I can smell his cologne. “Dr. Reeves,” he says, his voice dripping with intention.
I’m forty-eight years old, and the last time someone looked at me with this kind of attention, I was standing in a different country and in a different decade of my life.
Plants are growing in twelve trays of dead soil in Colorado, which means at least one impossible thing is true today, so before my responsible brain tries to stop my mouth, I say, “I’d love to have dinner with you.”
He smiles, an uncomplicated expression, no architecture to it, just the smile of someone who, as he put it, shot his shot and hit the target.
We agree to meet at eight in the restaurant of my hotel after he tells me a lot of the conference attendees are staying in and around his hotel.
I don’t give a fuck about anyone seeing us together, but after a long flight, three days of a busy conference and my own talk, I’m more than ready to give Dr. Reeves the night off and just be Vaughn.