Page 41 of Technical Advances

To Benji, I added, “If you or your dad thinks there’s an issue, I want to make it right.” My chest constricted, my heart arguing with me that it wanted to go and live inside Benji’s chest. I hoped Benji knew that I was talking about more than a stupid business agreement, about so much more than Project Orthos.

“See, Dad!” Benji pointed his hand at me. “It’s a favorable agreement! You have nothing to worry about. You don’t need to fret over some stupid legal document when … you have your own business to take care of, and when”—he looked at me, and there was an apology in the tilt of his head—“this is everything I’ve ever dreamed of.” It was a reminder to us both that Benji had been a fan long before he’d ever stepped foot in my lab.

Benji nodded encouragingly at his father, his eyes pleading. Ben gave me one last stern look before finally letting out a small, cautious chuckle. It didn’t seem as if we’d convinced him that Benji wasn’t being taken advantage of, but I hoped Ben realized that there was no reason to make a scene or ruin Benji’s celebratory dinner.

It was important to me that Ben knew his son wasn’t being fleeced, but it was imperative that Benji knew. If I could convince the son, I hoped the father would eventually come around.

Ben looked my way with a cautious smile and shared, “Benji was always creating something. One summer, he didn’t come out of his room for a whole week. We had to drag him out every night just to have dinner with us,” Ben began. Benji picked up the story, visibly relaxing at the change in Ben’s demeanor.

“At the other end of it, I’d created a simple video game!”

“He was eight.” Ben laughed. “After he showed it to me …”

“After I made him play it …”

“I was blown away at what he’d accomplished. I had no idea …”

“He told me he was proud of me.” I could tell that Benji cherished the memory as much as Ben did. “But as soon as we had played for a while, my grandparents showed up.”

“He’d really holed up for, like, a whole week, and he looked so pale. My parents took one look at him and gave Ash and me such shit about it. I grabbed two fishing rods and took him down to the creek. Benji tried to explain to me how he’d created the game the whole time we were out there.

“We went to touch some grass, as the kids say these days. Or, well, we went to touch some fish, I guess.”

“Touch grass,” I repeated, and Benji and I couldn’t help but share a knowing smile.

Ben looked between us before repeating, “Fish. We caught some fish.”

Simultaneously, the smiles we were sharing turned to disgusted faces. My stomach swooped as Benji pointed at me. “The worms, right?”

“Well, that. And the hooks and the poor fish! It’s like I can hear their little voices when you catch one. No. Noooo!”

“Exactly!” Benji’s eyes were dancing again in the candlelight.

I really loved making Benji laugh and loved that we’d found another thing we had in common. In an effort to stop myself from staring at Benji as much as to further the conversation, I asked Ben, “The creek behind our houses?”

Ben nodded, and I think we all sighed in relief that the topic of conversation was now much lighter. “Anson may not have liked to fish, but I’d find him down by that creek when we were young. Usually with a book in his hand.”

“I sketched my first robot sitting against a tree in our fort, with that creek behind me. I found the gurgle of it soothing, and to your father’s point, I was not opposed to touching grass every once in a while. I really liked it out there.”

Ben chuckled, shaking his head. “That’s true. As a matter of fact, I used to have to drag him back to our houses when it started to get dark. He would stay out there doodling all night. I had no idea you were doing more than doodling, Anson. To think, years later my kid would have a picture of you hugging a robot. I found that picture online when Benji told me about his interview. I swear you looked like some time-machine-building mad scientist in it, Ani.”

“Dad!” Benji scolded, sounding a bit like a teenager. His cheeks pinked up adorably for the second time that evening.

“What? It’s true! It was quite the shock when Benji mentioned interviewing for Anson Day’s company. The Anson Day, he said, like his general contractor dad should have known who that was! Like he was talking about the King of England or something.”

“Dad.” Benji tried again to get his father to stop. He looked nervously at me, and I couldn’t help but smile in return, hoping to put him at ease. He’d told me about that picture. I knew he was worried that I saw him as some overzealous fan, but I was convinced our connection was real and was determined to convince Benji of that too.

After fretting for a bit when Benji had left the lab that day, I’d treated the problem like any other that I’d tackled in my work over the years. Research, trial and error, and a little bit of the problem-solving for which I’d become famous. If I had stayed up all night to figure it out, that was all just part of my process.

So what if, until that point, I’d mainly used that problem-solving for writing code and managing mechanical issues? That didn’t mean I couldn’t apply it to matters of the heart. Because that was what our relationship was. The work was secondary, a mere component of the overall project. It may have brought us together, but it brought us together for a bigger reason. I was confident of that, and I was confident that my research would succeed, Benji would be convinced, and he and I would find a way to be together.

As the night continued, it became apparent that convincing Ben would be a whole other project.

Instead of talking more about our work, Ben and I spent time catching up. I told him a bit about my teenage years, moving to New York and attending Hampstead University. Ben seemed genuinely interested and relieved when I shared that I was mostly accepted by the older students at the university, where the professor who had sponsored me made it her mission to look out for me. Taking classes at the high school had proven more challenging. I didn’t have the luxury of two of the most popular kids in class as my childhood friends when I moved to New York.

“That’s where I met Beck, though, and he always looked out for me. We were neighbors as well.”

“Then you two went to college together?” Ben asked, confused.