SnarkyQuark64:Hi, DataDominatrix. You commented on a recent post about a Fermilab supervisor to say that you’d worked in SVLAC’s Quantum group under the same man, that he’d published your research on time crystals without correct credit, and that he might’ve falsified your data. Can you verify that this person is Dr. John R. Kramer?
Not that she doubted it. But she needed confirmation.
While waiting for DataDominatrix—for Dr. Laura-Jean Anders—to respond, she switched back to the mother-post and submitted a reply to her own earlier message, where she’d identified herself as an SVLAC employee with data on Kramer.
SnarkyQuark64:If anyone is willing to make a formal claim of scientific misconduct against this man, please either respond here or message me privately.
No ellipses bubbled beneath her comment in immediate, eager response.
She refreshed the page.
Nothing.
“It’s the middle of the workday,” Ethan reminded her.
“It’s lunchtime!” She drummed her fingers against her phone, her impatience almost as loud as the rumbles from her stomach. “Come on…”
“It’s a substantial request. Let them think about it.”
“But—”
“Lunch,” he said. He switched his internet from their hotspot back to SVLAC’s standard connection. “And afterward, if we’re still waiting on responses: quantum gravity in the Sidewinder conference room.”
“Fine. But I don’t have time to eat.” She tucked her phone into her pocket. “I have a call with Nadine.”
“Didn’t she start her maternity leave?”
“Yes. And I can count the days she’s been gone on two hands—which includes her hospital stay, so she might’ve actually stopped to have her daughter on her last commute home—but she already wants to start planning for her return next quarter. Or maybe she’s just craving a conversation about something other than babies. I don’t know.”
“Do you have noon calls tomorrow, too?”
“No. Why?”
“We… maybe we could go somewhere besides the cafeteria or Blue Bottle for lunch.Um.” He passed a palm over the back of his neck. “For research reasons. A place with an internet connection, so you wouldn’t have to use data for a hotspot.”
Oh.
“Good idea.”Was it?She tightened her ponytail, businesslike or just busying her hands so she wouldn’t retrace the path of his fingers over his neck with hers. “How about Stanford’s CoHo? It’s an easy distance and the internet’s free.”
“No.”
“Why not? Their portobello mushroom panini is—”
He pulled up the leg of his jeans in answer, displaying a Berkeley bear on his sock.
She snorted. “Just leave those with Bunsen tomorrow.”
“No,” he repeated.
“Then what about the Moroccan cafe in the university’s engineering quad? Some other grad students in my cohort took bachelor’s degrees at Cal, but no one sniped them there.”
Ethan’s eyebrows rose while he rolled his jeans down again. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Seems like we’ll be testing that academic tolerance tomorrow.”
“Yes, we will.”
Tomorrow.
So she stuck out her tongue at him instead of licking the aftershave from under his jaw or nibbling his smile, returning to the bullpen before she lost her battle with temptation. Fortunately, the floor’s lunchtime exodus meant that no one saw her slip out of his office. She connected her headphones at her desk in the quiet, refreshed STEMinist Online just once before she reconnected to SVLAC’s internet, and waited for Nadine to join their call.
