“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 fromNational Geographic,Popular Mechanics,Scientific American,Time Magazine, andThe 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 toReports on Progress in Mathematicsand 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 maître 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.”
“—andGalactica’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.”
