“Well, I’d better get home and get my rest then. I’ll need my strength to save our human race from you awful Centaurians!”
“Nooo!” the two young men said together. “The night is young.”
Ell however, got up, checked with Allan to be sure her tab was paid and made for the door. She didn’t want to be walking home after midnight even if her little apartment was only six blocks away. She waved good bye to the group but Jerry got up too, “Let me walk you home,” he called.
“Walk home with an alien?” Ell eyed him suspiciously, “You wouldn’t suck my brains out would you?”
“Of course not! Not on a first walk home! I have to lull your suspicions with insincere niceties for a while first.”
As they left Roger eyed them pensively. With that nose she might not be cute, but there was something about Ellen he really liked. He’d always liked smart women, and the way she calmly took Johnson’s brutal questioning, answering questions about the Donsaii math so unhesitatingly, had really impressed him. If only I weren’t so shy around women, he thought to himself, she’s someone I think I could really get along with.
The heat of the day gone, the evening was pleasant if a little muggy as Ell and Jerry walked the streets to her place. Jerry kept up a witty banter that cheered her up. Seeing a few winos in alleys, Ell realized that her new neighborhood really wasn’t that great a place for a young woman to be out alone at night. It really made her appreciate his gesture in walking her home.
When they arrived at her building, Ell suddenly worried that Jerry might expect to be invited up to her apartment? She realized that if she did invite him up, he would encounter items giving away her disguise. At the main door she turned to him and said, “My suspicions have been significantly lulled. I remain concerned that you just want to suck out my brains, nonetheless I appreciate your protection from all the Rigellians disguised as winos that live in the alleys between here and West 87.”
To Ell’s relief, Jerry said, “Hey, no problem. See you on Monday, if I can avoid those selfsame Rigellians on my walk home.” He gave an exaggerated shiver, then turned and headed back down the street. Ell thumped upstairs and gratefully took off her “fat pants,” as she thought of the silicone padding that enlarged her butt. Then she carefully rearranged her things so that her spare “fat pants,” silicone nose prostheses, dark hair mousse and skin bronzers were hidden away from any but the most determined prying eyes.
In bed, while she tried to think about her testing apparatus, she found herself wondering what was wrong with her that Jerry didn’t ask to come up? Then she chastised herself for worrying because he’d acted like a gentleman. Then, with some self embarrassment, she thought for a while about how she hadn’t thought that her appearance mattered—until she found the opposite sex’s eyes were no longer magnetically drawn to her now that she had a beaky nose and large butt.
***
On Monday Ell asked Emma for help setting up her apparatus and found that the young woman really did have a knack for electronic equipment. They made a good team because Ell had the manuals for the equipment mostly committed to memory and Emma could explain to Ell what the manufacturer meant by some of the obscure directions Ell had read. After her late morning class, Ell spent a couple of hours helping Emma understand the math for her project.
That afternoon at the 3 PM research meeting Johnson was in a real mood. He jumped on everyone about their progress on their projects. Eventually he turned to Ell, “Symonds, have you made any progress at sorting out more easily testable predictions from Donsaii’s mess of a paper?”
“No sir. But I’ve made progress on setting up an apparatus for testing the spin bumping prediction.”
“Oh, that crap!” Johnson rubbed his scalp, “And have you figured out how you are going to deal with the criticisms that are bound to be directed at your apparatus when it doesn’t work and you claim that that disproves the hypothesis?”
In a quiet voice, “No sir.”
He threw up his hands, said, “Don’t waste much more time on that spin bumping crap. I want you spending most of your time on developing other testable predictions from that mess of a paper.” He turned and went on to badger James about his project.
When the meeting broke up Johnson said peremptorily, “Ellen, take me to see your setup.”
Ell’s equipment was set up on a large lab table. Johnson rolled his eyes as soon as he saw the table, pointing out that she needed some form of vibration isolation. He then went on to angrily criticize each section of her apparatus. She felt ignorant and ashamed well before he was done.
After Johnson left Ell sat and stared at her equipment, thinking that she couldn’t possibly figure out how to do this right. Roger came over and put his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, you probably feel pretty dumb right now, huh?”
“Yeah!” Ell said with a disgusted sigh.
“Well, he is an ass, but hey, take comfort that the crap he just rained on you was nothing compared to his first evaluation of my setup. Cheer up, that’s about as good as it gets when you’re working in the Johnson lab!”
“Crap! Is it possible to transfer to another professor?”
“Hah! Sure, if you can find one who’ll take you, but you’ll lose ground.”
“Well, thanks for trying to cheer me up yet somehow leaving me even more depressed.”
Roger wandered back over to his setup and Ell sat, chin in her hands, staring at her setup. The more she looked at it the more she began to realize that, despite Johnson’s brutal assessment of her current setup, his suggestions were right on target. If she did change the things he’d blasted her for, the setup really would be a lot better. If only he could do it without belittling her in the process. She squared her shoulders, gritted her teeth and headed off to the equipment room to get more supplies.
Chapter Five
Weeks had passed while Ell worked on setting up her apparatus. Chief Bowers called to tell her that the prosecution of her kidnappers had fallen into a morass of legal manipulations and diplomatic negotiations. There was no longer any doubt in Bowers’ mind that China itself was involved, not just “protecting their citizens” who’d gotten in trouble. Bowers warned Ell to remain alert because he felt that the organization that the kidnappers were a part of remained active and was probably still searching for her.
She’d become comfortable teaching her beginning physics lab and found it to be a lot of fun. Her classes were a mixture of things she already knew and a few interesting things that she was glad that she had attended the class to pick up. They didn’t waste much of her time because she had become adept at pretending to listen to the stuff she knew, while actually mentally working on her theories. Friday nights at West 87 had become a comfortable routine and pretty much her only social life. A lot of the physics grad students went there regularly and she’d met almost all of the other grads on one night or another.
But today was the day when her theory met its big test. The apparatus was set up and all the different parts had been thoroughly tested and calibrated. She’d given up on buckyballs because it was difficult to position the two buckyballs identically. Now she was now using laser cooled gaseous condensates. She had them entangled and was ready to “spin bump” the first one and see if she could detect the bump at the second entanglement. Taking a deep breath she activated her “bumper” while keeping her eye on the display of the detector.
Nothing happened! She keyed the bumper again, still nothing. She pounded the key…
Ell’s shoulders slumped. She’d told herself that it would be a miracle if it worked the first time she tried it, but she’d been so sure…
Roger’s voice came over her shoulder, “Somebody shoot your dog?”
“No,” Ell was dismayed to hear a quaking in her voice. She cleared her throat. “It just didn’t work, is all…” Her voice trailed off.
“Oh, crap. How many times have you tried it so far?”
“Uh, this is the first time.”
<
br /> “What! And you’re depressed? No! No! No! Consider yourself very, very lucky! If your experiment had worked the first time you tried it, the rest of us would have to take you to the woodshed.”
“The woodshed?”
“For a beating! No ones experiment ever works the first time, if yours had, our jealousy would have demanded we give you a most severe beating!”
“Oh.” Ell felt cheered somewhat. “So the laws of physics were against me?”
“Yup. Murphy’s famous law in full force.”
“So, it’ll work the second time?” She grinned crookedly back at him.
“Hah! The optimism of you young people astonishes me!” He put his hand on his chest and leaned back as if looking down on her from years of wisdom. “I’ll buy you a beer at West 87 to assuage your pain.”
“But it’s Thursday.”
“Tomorrow night, we’ll help you drink your pain away.”
“But I don’t drink.”
“Amend that. We’ll drink your pain away.”
That afternoon Johnson quizzed Ell about her project as usual. His eyebrows went up in mock surprise, “It didn’t work! Really?”
“No sir.” Ell responded in a small voice.
“Of course it didn’t work! The question is; can you prove it wasn’t because of a failure of your apparatus? Do you have evidence that you successfully ‘spin bumped’ the proximate condensate?”
“Uh, no sir.”
“Well for God’s sake, Symonds! You have to show you actually ‘bumped’ the near condensate before anyone is going to worry about whether it might have ‘transmitted’ the bump to the entangled condensate!”
“Yes sir.”
“How are you going to determine that?”
After a pause Ell said, “I guess I could move my detector over and set it up on the near condensate to be sure I can actually detect ‘bumping’ there?”
“Well, of course! I can’t believe you tried to do the final experiment without first making sure of the spin bumping!”
“No sir. I mean, yes sir. I’ll get right on it.”
“OK, but I’ve told you I don’t want you wasting much more time on this spin bumping crap. You need to move on to something with a chance that it might pan out and pronto.” He turned to the next grad student at the table.
Ell felt like an idiot for not considering such a basic step and was working hard on resetting the detector when Johnson came by to look at her setup before leaving for the day. He made some suggestions which were helpful in the extreme but again left her feeling stupid for not recognizing the problems with her setup that he had seen so quickly and clearly.
As Johnson was leaving he turned back to her and rode the same old saw, “You really need to get cracking on other testable predictions in that theory of Donsaii’s. I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to be able to convincingly prove this ‘spin bumping’ crap wrong. You are going to have to attack her theory from a different angle to get a reasonable paper out of this. Think, woman think!”
He walked on out the door, as usual without saying “Goodbye.”
Roger came over and patted her on the shoulder, “You really should have a beer with us tomorrow night.” He walked on over to the coffee machine and filled his cup.
Friday came and went without much progress. Emma helped Ell reset and calibrate her detector but it failed to detect ‘bumping’ at the near condensate which left Ell with the puzzle of whether the ‘bumper’ didn’t work, whether the detector didn’t work, or whether the bumping she’d predicted wasn’t actually physically possible?
At West 87 she moped over her Coke. James sat down next to her, “Why you down in the dumps cute stuff?”
“’Cute stuff?” She looked up at him, musing about how handsome he was. “Didn’t that kinda slang go out about five decades ago?”
James put his hands up, “Just tryin’ to cheer a girl up! Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Besides, aren’t you and Emma an item?”
James’ eyebrows rose, “No way!” He leaned closer and said in a stage whisper, “She’s much too good for me.”
Ell leaned back and looked him over, “Well, that’s certainly true. And,” she arched her eyes, “I assume you’re saying then, that I might be down to your level?”
James put his hands up again, “Damn! Women! Twist everything I say! Let’s go back to, ‘Why you down in the dumps, Ellen?’” To himself he thought that if she didn’t wear so much makeup she might be pretty cute. He wondered if she thought it hid her beaky nose? And of course then there’s also the matter of her huge butt. Taking off the makeup wouldn’t help that.
“Aw, I haven’t been having any luck with my experimental setup. Nothing I’m doing is working at all!”
“Welcome to science! If it was easy, everybody’d be doin’ it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So everyone says. I didn’t think it was supposed to be this hard either. At least something I’m doing should be working correctly shouldn’t it?”
“Nah, remember Murphy! Let me buy you a beer and we’ll toast him!”
“I don’t drink, and I’ve already got a Coke. But thanks.”
“OK, how about I teach you the finer points of pool. A simple game, based on physics. It doesn’t go like you plan it either.”
“Sure.” Ell said, getting up, “It’ll take my mind off my misery. You’ll really have to teach me how to play though.”
They rented a table and James showed her how to pick out a straight cue and rack the balls. After he broke the balls, he took time to explain how the “object ball” was driven directly away from the point where the “cue ball” made contact with it. Ell realized that it really was a game based on common physics and soon became very interested in those mechanics, successfully forgetting about her lab failures. With her phenomenal hand eye coordination, after a few shots she could control the object ball’s direction exactly and was forced to begin missing pockets on purpose so that James wouldn’t be disturbed by how well she played. She began watching how he hit the cue ball low sometimes to put backspin on it so that he could control where it would wind up for his next shot. She experimented with this technique until she could place the cue ball where she wanted, though she purposefully didn’t place it in advantageous locations, again for fear of appearing to be too good.
James, being a moderately good player, was nonetheless astonished by her play. She claimed it was her first game yet she had nearly as many balls in as he did. “Are you sure you’ve never played before?”
“Well, just a few games.” Ell swore to herself, realizing that, despite making many intentional mistakes, she must still be playing better than most beginners do. She let her pool cue strike the cue ball off center with a rattle that sent the cue ball into a corner pocket.
A gruff voice sounded over Ell’s shoulder with a wash of beer breath, “Hey, pretty boy. All the tables are full so we’re challenging you for the table. Well, challenging you if you can beat Girly here? Otherwise we’ll have to challenge her!” He followed this with a guffaw at his own wit.
Ell looked back. A large, grizzly man in jeans, boots and a stained t-shirt stood there, screwing a pool cue together. He seemed out of place in this bar that mostly catered to students from the university, but she’d seen other “working men” and occasional biker types in the bar before. She looked at James who had a pinched look on his face as if the challenge upset him. Wondering if she could defuse the situation she asked, “Maybe you and your partner could challenge the two of us to a game of doubles?”
The man sniggered. “Sure!” he rumbled.
James missed his next two shots, so Ell did too. The man pounded his cue on the floor, “Geez, Pretty Boy, you too scared to make a shot?”
Ell glared at the man, “Take it easy, everyone has a bad run now and then.” He laughed and went to the bar to order another beer. Ell made one shot and then missed the next. She and James both had one ball on the table now, with the ei
ght ball waiting. But, with her miss, Ell’d carefully placed the cue ball with a good line on James’ last ball. James took a deep breath, shook his shoulders out, carefully didn’t look at the two biker types and sunk his last ball, then the eight. Ell turned to the bikers and said, “Hi, I’m Ellen and this is James.”
“Bill,” the man said, then jerked his thumb at his even larger friend who wore a leather vest over his t-shirt, “that’s ‘Silent Joe,’ but most of us just call him Silent.” Silent stood, took the rack and started racking the balls without saying a word.
James said, “Ell, let’s just let them have the table…”
Bill guffawed, “Naw, that wouldn’t be right. Just scarin’ you two away. We’d rather win it.”
James grimaced, obviously feeling insulted, but shrugged his shoulders at Ell.
For her part Ell found herself irritated. She jerked her chin at James and said, “Go ahead and break.”
James’ break was creditable and the nine ball went in, but he missed the easy followup shot.
Bill proceeded to put in five balls, barely missing the sixth, heckling James and Ell on each one, “See, that’s how it’s done pretty boy… Now, what you do is line up your shots and stroke them in… You’ gotta have balls to play this game though… Real men don’ miss shots like this...” Ell thought to herself that it could have been pleasant ribbing, like many guys engage in during games—but it wasn’t. There was a mean edge to it and the emphases on certain words had an insulting sexual connotation to them.
Ell was furious by the time Bill missed a shot, so she paused for a moment to contemplate the table and get her feelings back in control, determined to just miss her shot and let them have the table. She was sorry she hadn’t just let them have it when James suggested it. But, Bill mistook her hesitation. “Come on Girly, just go ahead and miss your shot so we can get this over with.” He grinned.
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