“Hi, sorry I’m late. I had to go out and buy clothing that would be cool on a date. How do you like it?” he asked as he lifted his arms and spun in front of the table.
“You look marvelous, but the sticker on the shirt tipped your hand anyway. Sit. You hungry?” she asked.
“Sort of. I’m getting to know this place pretty well. It’s on my way home,” he said as he started sitting next to Michelle. She again was so surprised, she moved over instinctively, and again felt a mild degree of irritation that her guard seemed to be down.
Colin ordered for them both soon after. “So, Michelle, I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a long time, and now seems to be a pretty good time to ask you.”
Michelle’s guard was now up, so she said, “Well, I don’t know. Guess now’s as good of a time as any. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, you know that jazzy chair you have in your cubicle, the yellow one? Where’d you get it?” he said in all sincerity.
Michelle laughed, “I stole it from the guys in the record section years ago. They all know where it is, and as a matter of fact, one guy comes by every couple months just to make sure it is still there. Hell, they don’t even have those same chairs in their section anymore, and he comes around every few months looking for it. Swear it is just a joke. Why you want it?”
“Yeah, I like it, but I thought you’d bought it, and I could find one to buy, too. If you stole it, well heck, I can’t do that until it goes up for auction when that records guy gets rid of it.”
“You can have it when I’m done with it,” Michelle said as the rice and plates arrived.
“Thanks,” Colin said. “Miss, may I have chopsticks?” he asked the waitress.
“Sure,” the waitress answered.
When they arrived, Colin did not take the chopsticks like an American would. He did not stab or dig at his plate, but instead moved his food onto a smaller plate and lifted the plate to his mouth and started shoving food in with the chopsticks. He did this so causally that Michelle could not help but stare.
“What’s wrong?” Colin asked as he checked his shirt and chin for food.
“Nothing. I mean, Colin, you eat like someone that is on National Geographic or something. Where did you learn to eat with chopsticks like that?”
“When I was in Nepal, I ate that way for two years. Chop sticks were a lot easier to carry and clean that the local stuff. I was stationed there in the Peace Corps couple of years ago. Now I can’t break the habit. Sorry,” he said sheepishly as he put the bowl down.
Michelle sensed his embarrassment and picked up her small plate, loaded it with food and attempted to eat the same way. It was a disaster for her to try, though, as food spilled off the side of her plate.
“You don’t shove like that,” Colin said. “You can’t get the food to funnel in, you just grab what you want and shovel a bit of what is in front into your mouth, like this,” he said as he demonstrated again.
Other customers were smiling while they both ate as the natives would.
Michelle’s fortune cookie read, “Your lucky numbers are 3, 4, 6, 23, 36. You will find something you have been missing for many months.”
Colin’s read his, “Your lucky numbers are 1, 3, 6, 7, 15, 16. Your memory will fail an important test soon.”
“How can that happen?” Colin asked in mock disgust. “I don’t have a memory to fail.”
“I’m not sure, maybe you’re supposed to remember what I am missing, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to find.”
“So why are you in the lab?” he suddenly asked Michelle.
Michelle was off guard again. It was only then that she noticed Colin’s glasses were not the nerdy glasses he wore at work, but a stylish pair she was certain he had not purchased on the way to Chop Stix. She thought for a minute, and said, “I thought it would lead to a more advanced job in Crime Scene Investigations, and I’m sure it will, but just a lot slower than I expected.”
Before Michelle could politely ask Colin why he was in the lab, he volunteered the information. “It was either CSI or medical school for pathology. I found out you couldn’t be a pathologist unless you went to a residency after you went to medical school, and I didn’t want to waste all that time, so I went CSI. Now I’m not so sure. I run the same stuff all the time and do the same work while the senior analysts go to conferences. Seems like I am at a dead end, and I’m thirty-three. Choices are running thin. I know we’ll get to be senior sometime, but it is disheartening to see the others getting to do the fun stuff. I’ve been looking for a smaller lab somewhere. How about you? You must have had a dozen choices when you came out of college. Why CSI?”
“I guess I’m happy with it. I was in a smaller lab for a year, and it really sucks there, too. Every time a delivery truck comes by, it dumps the low-end junk work on you from a bigger lab, and there are no funds to go to conferences, and there are no advances. So I came here. At least I do get one conference a year out of it. Maybe there will be an early retirement or something. Where have you been looking?” she asked as the waitress came with the bill.
“New Mexico just opened up another lab, and they are staffing it right now. Seems like the Sandia Labs just furloughed a bunch of science types, and now there are not as many slots open, so that plan got dashed a bit. That’s all I’ve done so far. I’m getting real tired of the LA basin. How many homeless people can you try to help before you realize there must be nothing there for them? What can we do to change their lives unless there is more to having a homeless population that it appears?”
Michelle furrowed her eyebrows and asked, “What do you mean, something more to it?”
Colin rubbed his head with his fingers and said, “Sorry, I’m taking a class in economic theory, and for my analysis project, I tried to prove that homelessness and uninsured people have economic benefit from their vulnerability in our society, and my bias comes through when I start talking about it.”
“Classes in advanced economics? You are a surprise. What else is the Neutronic Nerd up too?” Michelle asked with a smile.
Colin looked up and said, “That’s not a big deal, Michelle. I’m supposed to learn how to run the books for a lab, and they said I could charge the tuition for it if it worked toward that goal. State is paying me to become an MBA. What a joke. Anyway, enough about me. What are you doing with all your time?”
“Nothing as cool as you’re doing,” she said. “How’d you get to Nepal?”
Colin looked at her and said, “We took a plane most of the way.”
Michelle looked at him for a few seconds, trying to see if he was teasing her.
“Got you there,” he said. “I was sent to Nepal to work with reforestation. I worked in some small villages around Kathmandu. Of course, there are no large villages around there, but we tried to do our best. Peace Corps noted that I was a biology major, and so there I went.”
“So what’s the big deal about forests in Nepal? I don’t recall there being all that many to begin with,” Michelle asked as she wiped her chopsticks off and tucked them into her purse.
“The locals in Kathmandu got electricity several years ago, and they started burning more wood. The guy I replaced figured out why, and they sent me in to fix it. It seems that now that they can stay up all night reading, they need to heat their houses more, so more firewood is used, and more trees are cut down. I learned chopsticks there because it was easier to clean chopsticks than it was to find a clean a spoon. Then I came home, picked up another major in analytical chemistry, and here I am.”
“That’s amazing. What a story. There must be more. You single?” Michelle asked.
“You know I am. I married a girl from Nepal, and we were here for six months before she felt she had to go back. I was afraid she had just married me for her citizenship, but her oldest brother died, and she had to go back for her parents. Missu had a good job, too. Sure did miss her, but she was determined to stay there. I tried to send money and keep together, but it wasn’t wor
king very well anyway. She filed, and I sent her a check to finish it off a couple months ago. So, I’m newly single. How about you?” he asked, lifting the saltshaker with his chopsticks.
Michelle felt it was only polite to share her story as well. “I lived with an organic farmer from Olympia, Washington. I thought it would be cool to live on an organic farm, and it really was beautiful. It lasted three years, and then he got too organic. Wanted kids, and I didn’t feel I wanted to raise them barefoot in the manure. Told him so, and he kicked me out. Went to Portland and worked for the homeless shelter until it became an embarrassment to have a homeless shelter, and they turned them back out on the streets. I got let go and had nothing more to do than go to college, so here I am with a mid–five- figure loan package that I’ll be paying on until I’m in my fifties. We never divorced because I never married the guy. I planned to look into common law marriages to see if three years has any economic or legal consequences to that clod buster organic farmer,” she said as she leaned on her hand, watching Colin, “but I did his books long enough to know you can’t get blood out of an organic turnip.”
“Wow. That’s almost as interesting as watching people die of tuberculosis in Nepal,” he said.
“Well, I’m not sure I agree there, but yes, it was different. Colin, do you ever get bored with what we’re doing? I mean, I’ve run samples, and I’ve done some analytic background work, but we’re never in on any action. Hell, I’ve worked here for four years and never even been subpoenaed once.”
Colin rubbed his chin, scratched his nose and said, “Michelle, I’ve been so bored, I’ve created a computer game on the station’s mainframe. It will likely get me fired some day, but yes, it is tough. Why, you going crazy? What will you do?”
“I’m getting into trouble. I’ve been doing some research on a sample I pulled off of one of my inventories, and it will get me fired if I get too deep. Guy was found with a bottle of a chemical that puts you to sleep. He was killed by a gunshot, so I don’t know if he was giving it to someone or someone gave it to him. Looks like he either took it himself or was given a dose of it. Bottle’s contaminated, and I don’t know what it is. I’m trying to figure out what to do. So anyway, I’ll get caught because of the money I’m spending. Don’t know where to go with the curiosity, so guess I ought to just let it go,” Michelle mused as she pushed rice together on her plate.
“You said he had some in his system when he died. You suppose he was drugged? Did he take it himself and then shoot himself when he figured he was out of it? That doesn’t make any sense at all?”
“I don’t know, either. My brother-in-law told me the bottle likely came from an anesthesiology department at a hospital because of how large the bottle was. So how did it get into this bar?” she asked.
“Search me. You can do a search on the mainframe for things like this. I have a friend in the data end, and he uses something called Diamond Data Mine to do pattern analysis. He says he can nail a guy with as few as three points of reference, whatever that means. We could use the drug name and see if there are trends. Can I call him in on this?” Colin asked.
Michelle looked over to him. His eager look told her that she had just stumbled across an accomplice. “Yes, call him in. We’ll need to do some more scratching, and maybe he has the tools. Let’s talk here tomorrow.”
“Can’t, I have class late. Next night’s my class in martial arts. Night after that’s open, but it’s Friday.”
“Works for me,” Michelle said.
“I’ll call Marvin and see if he is interested,” Colin said as he began collecting things.
“You said Marvin? I don’t know anyone named Marvin in the department,” she said.
“Well, I was keeping some things less obvious in case you were not interested. Marvin is in another department. I’ll let him know you’ll be calling. I’ll send you an e-mail tomorrow, and you can call him.”
“OK,” Michelle said as she stood. Her concern and guard began to rise again as she anticipated Colin might ask to extend the date. She was somewhat relieved when he did not.
Instead, Colin simply squeezed her elbow and said, “Best date I’ve had in ten years. See you in the morning.”
Chapter 12
Hank Helps
Michelle opened her office computer and was greeted by an idiotic cartoon character parading across the screen with a banner floating behind it, “Pod meeting at noon, all sections.” Her first thought was how difficult it had been to get out of the office over her lunch hour. The next thing she saw was Colin walking by with his lab coat on inside out. It was going to be one of those days.
The pod meeting included all sections. It was usually held in the conference center on the first floor. They sat in groups within their sections. Colin wondered in with his lab coat on correctly. He also was wearing a flaming red and orange shirt and shorts. The look was comical to Michelle, but obviously not to her supervisor. In addition to Colin, her section contained Geech, a wildly red-headed technician who had been in the lab for as long as anyone could remember. Geech kept to himself but was always willing to lend a helping hand to any project. His long and moderately attended hair would wave in the wind as he walked the halls at all hours. Geech was not fully trusted by most of the staff, and for reasons that none of them could exactly identify. Michelle felt it was because he wore a key ring on his belt that had more keys on it than she had ever seen anyone carry. It was widely known that in the many years Geech had been in the department, he had either borrowed or been assigned every key available, and that he made duplicates of the keys whenever he had them. This fact was supported by the fact that Geech had never failed the dictum, “If you’re locked out, go find Geech.” In addition to Geech, Colin, and Michelle, there was Barbara. Barbara worked as the director’s assistant, but for obscure reasons, she was assigned to their same pod. Michelle thought it was to spy on them, but the truth was far more simple than spying. Barbara was allocated to the pod as an assistant to Michelle for standardization record keeping, a job that had been replaced twelve years prior by computers, but the department chairman did not want to lose the manpower slot, so Barbara’s spot had been tucked safely away as an assistant technician.
The meeting began with the usually awkward introductions of a guest speaker, this time a representative from the retirement board. After a few minutes, it was obvious this was a “fill the checkbox” meeting that meant little to day-to-day operation, but would fill yet another requirement in the yearly schedule of the administrative types. Colin slipped a science fiction book into his stock options portfolio and appeared to the entire world to be the most studious of listeners. Geech began cleaning his enormous wallet of the most frayed, discolored, and distorted collection of calling cards, while Barbara took enough notes to fill three yellow pages. Michelle wished she had a wallet to go through or had thought of bringing a book. Two studious members of the audience from the same section, though, would likely have raised an eyebrow. She counted the number of windows in the building that was the mirror image of her own. She estimated there were 164 windows, if the other side was symmetrical.
As the pod meeting broke up, Colin and Geech walked with Michelle, Barbara having taken the earliest opportunity to distance herself from technicians. Colin asked Geech, “What are you up to these days, Geech?”
Geech walked loosely in formation, all his body parts somehow gaining a vector that took him in one direction. He thought for a few minutes and said, “Oh, nothing much. I’m supposed to be giving the interfaces to our systems a federal-level firewall so that the Feds will share data with us. When we’re up to that standard, the other section will send their alpha geek to see what I’ve done, and then it goes to committee to see if it is set up as a standard for…”
“OK, Geech, take it easy on me. I’m the three finger salute guy on a computer, and don’t follow much. Michelle, what is it you’re up to these days?” Colin asked as they all hit the stairs.
Michelle smil
ed mildly at Colin, knowing that he was pretty well aware of what she was doing, having again gone out the night before for an evening of watching a sporting event. “Well, Colin, I’m trying to make gold from the stuff they serve to us in the cafeteria. So far I’ve made several toxin-eating bacteria evolve from the green stuff, and there’s hope for the red sauce becoming useful in radioactive transmutation.”
Geech looked at Michelle over his ancient, horned-rimmed glasses and said, “I’ve always had my suspicions of that master chef they have down there. He’s from the navy and has a tattoo that is ridiculous. I saw it at the company picnic last summer. Get him to show that to you sometime, Michelle.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Geech. When’s the picnic this year?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Maybe a few days after Memorial Day. Seems like it got too late last year, so they’re trying to make it too early this year to make up for it.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Colin said as they reached their sixth floor.
“Where are you off too, Geech?” Michelle asked as she and Colin headed into the sixth floor.
“I’m still doing my work in the data hub. That’s on the next floor. I’ll be back down soon,” Geech said as he started skipping steps up the next flight.
“Later,” Michelle called.
“Michelle, what are you doing on the problem of the Acozil that was found in that body?” Colin asked as they started heading to the pod.
“I’m getting nowhere on it. Why?”
“I was trying to find time to run some analysis of the contaminant. We had talked of doing that, and I have a few hours here. Do you have any idea where to start?” he asked while they entered the little cubicle Michelle called home.
“None. I’ve got the data on digital, here, this has it all,” she said, passing a bulky disk to Colin. “The Acozil is on the file listed called ‘standard.’ The sample is also listed; you’ll be able to date them from the data. Do you have any ideas on how to find out what it is?”
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