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” toGalactica Magazineafter 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.Galacticawasn’tNature Physicsor theJournal 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.Sheliked 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 2 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.
