Page 41 of Under Story

Eli made a noise that suggested this was generous. “It’s a measure of energy. How aggressive a particle is—how likely it is to interact with the matter we can see. I think this might be the energy signature for the particle that makes up dark matter.”

Laurel came to stand behind him. “WIMPs?”

Eli leaned into her, and she ran her fingers over his scalp. It was one of his favorite sensations, something his mother did when he was a boy.

“It could be,” he said. “I hope so. I just have to prove it.”

Two weeks after bowling in Building 63, Miles touches Laurel’s back in the kitchen.

“Some guy looking for you,” he says. “Tall? Curly hair? Not quite as handsome as I am?”

Laurel carries a tray of pasta salad into the galley. Eli intercepts her at the buffet.

“Have you been to Southern?” he asks.

Gallagher’s is not the only bar at McMurdo. Southern Exposure is a small beige building with the atmosphere of a seventies ski lodge: beamed ceilings, card tables with swivel chairs, a counter hung with Christmas lights. Laurel casts Eli a look to remind him that she isn’t the newbie on station, but she agrees to meet him there after work.

In the summer, Southern is cleaned and staffed by volunteer bartenders. During winter, it runs on a slightly feral honor system. Tonight an OAE works the espresso machine. At the bar, a tub of New Zealand beer sits beside an empty Cheese Balls barrel full of bills.

Eli sits at the end of the counter, near a wall-mounted dartboard. In his eyes, Laurel sees restrained intensity. The beer tempts her, but Eli is drinking a shot of espresso. She hands a bill to the OAE and asks for the same.

Eli doesn’t bother with small talk.

“The tests were good,” he says.

“Oh,” Laurel whispers, inflating.

There are no scientists here: Southern is favored by military veterans and heavy-equipment operators, which must be why Eli chose it. Even so, they speak quietly.

“Do you remember the dark matter dilemma?” he asks.

“Of course. You were looking for WIMPs.”

“It was brutal: combing the data, searching for something that didn’t show itself, or didn’t exist. After the separation, I left the Tevatron.”

The separation, he said, not our, as though it had happened to someone else. Or perhaps it still felt too painful—too shameful—to address directly.

“I felt so much like a failure,” Eli said. “I thought I might take a sabbatical or apply for jobs out of state. But first, I went back to the seed: the asymmetry between matter and antimatter. Every particle in the Standard Model comes in both left- and right-handed versions. Every one, that is, except neutrinos, which only spin to the left.”

Fuelies approach the dartboard. Eli lowers his voice.

“Neutrinos have always been a dark matter candidate,” he says, “just not a very good one. They interact with gravity—that’s good—and they pass straight through solid matter: good again. But there are too few of them to account for more than a small portion of dark matter. A right-handed neutrino, though, would have different properties. It would have more mass, for one thing. More energy, too.”

“Which is what ANITA thinks they might have found,” says Laurel. She thinks of her early conversation with Eli in the lounge. “But you didn’t believe them.”

“It felt so conjectural. And I remembered the WIMPs. I was afraid to bet big again and be wrong.”

“How do you feel now?”

A dart meets the center of the board with a rubbery thunk, and the fuelies celebrate. Eli shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be saying any of this.”

“Who would I tell?”

“It’s not about that. It’s about confidentiality. Ethics.”

Her first instinct is to ask: How can I not be someone you trust? Then she realizes that she might not want to hear the answer.

The OAE behind the bar brings Laurel’s espresso. When he leaves, Eli sighs, relenting.