"It's ridiculous," Meade is saying, his face flushed. "They turned down the thermostat two degrees. Two degrees! I can't grade papers in these conditions. My fingers are freezing."
I look at his hands. They are pink, soft, and holding a warm ceramic mug.
I look at my own hands. A healing scab crosses one knuckle from the antenna repair. My cuticles are ragged. A deep bruise circles my wrist where Nash grabbed me on the slope.
"Freezing," I repeat, the word slipping out before I can stop it.
Meade turns, seeing me for the first time. "Aris! You're back! Good god, you look …"
"Wind-burned?" I suggest.
"Intense," he decides. "How was the … camping trip?"
"It wasn't camping," I say, walking over to the printer. "It was fieldwork."
"Right, right. The caribou thing." He waves a dismissive hand. "Did you hear about the parking situation? They're repaving Lot B. I had to walk three blocks from Lot C this morning. In this slush! It's inhumane."
I stare at him. Inhumane.
"Three blocks," I say flatly.
"Uphill," Gupta adds sympathetically. "It's a nightmare."
I think about the box canyon, the scree slope, the six-mile hike back to the snowmobile on legs that were shaking so hard I thought they would snap.
And suddenly, I want to laugh. I want to laugh until I cry.
I think of Thaddeus. His office down the hall, empty now, reorganized for a visiting lecturer who doesn't know what the sticky note on the left drawer means.Progress over pride, kiddo.His handwriting.
He died last January. Alone, on a Saturday, at his desk in the university lab, while I was presenting a paper at a conference in Seattle near my own family that he had pushed me to attend. I have been carrying that for a year. The timing. The distance. The idea that I should have known somehow—should have been there.
But he was the one who sent me to that conference. He signed me up for it and told me to stop stalling. He died doing what he loved, which was making sure his work didn't die with him.
The timing wasn't wrong. I was exactly where he put me.
"You know," I say, picking up my printouts of Waldo. "I think you'll survive, Greg. Just … dig your toes in."
"What?"
"Physics," I say, heading for the door. "Use your toes."
I leave them gaping at me. I walk down the hallway, my boots clicking on the linoleum. It's a sound of authority. A sound of purpose.
Something clarified back there. I used to be them, complaining about the parking lot, worrying about the thermostat.
I'm not them anymore. I'm not sure what I am, but I know I don't fit in this lounge.
Dean Reynolds' office is designed to intimidate. It has mahogany bookshelves filled with books that have never been opened, a desk the size of an aircraft carrier, and a thermostat set to "tropical."
Reynolds sits behind the desk, looking exactly like I remember: a man whose greatest outdoor achievement was likely mowing a lawn on a riding tractor.
"Dr. Thorne," he says, not standing up. He peers at me over his glasses. "You're … early."
"I took the first flight out of Port Promise," I say, dropping my heavy laptop bag onto his desk with a loud thud.
He flinches. "I see. And the data?"
"It's uploading to the server now," I say, taking a seat without being asked. "But I brought the raw files. And the visuals."
