Meeting István

Verna Gardner
So, Verna has been doing inventory these last couple of days. In her love of what others might find tedium, she's been going at some quick pace. Yes, making lists and checking them twice really is her bag.

In fact, she was so confident of her ability to get it done that she fired off an email to Rene saying that the inventory would be ready tomorrow.

Probably a mistake that. Best to fix it by working late, and just not telling him. The concern for her safety was noted, which is why she's got mace in her purse and all. Bad area of the city? Well she's not going to live in fear. Especially not when what brings her to this supposed bad place is all this brilliant equipment.

Right now, she's got most of the rooms completely inventoried, and has been cross-referencing the items on their ordering forms and delivery receipts. She'll know if anything's missing. Already there have been a few pieces that (to her mind) were too damaged by shipping to accept, and those she's noted as well (a computer monitor has a scratch, oh no). All this requires a clipboard holding inordinate amounts of paper, but somehow it all manages to look neat and orderly.

Today, she dressed in gray slacks and a deep cobalt blue sweater. As she walks the basement floor, her heels make those little clicks, followed by the scratching of pen on paper. But other than that, it is so silent down beneath the ground, with the equipment in boxes and not running yet.

Stephen Andrássy
Turns out Carmen Barone is a very nice young man. Very nice and very strong. He works out and plays intramural rugby and is pursuing his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Denver. His advisor has heard of this Dr. Andr ssy but never actually met him. They have had quite a good time these last few days going through all of the boxes of equipment down in the basement and speculating about what could possibly be going on.

But Carmen leaves at four o'clock because Carmen has class from six until nine o'clock twice a week and the rest of the time he has practice or he wants to spend time with his girlfriend. All of the heavy lifting ends when Carmen leaves. That's just as well. Carmen is good at heavy lifting but not so much at tedium. If he wants to be a researcher he's going to have to get used to tedium.

This warehouse is bigger than it looks and René hasn't been by in several days. Not since he managed to stop bustling around long enough to get Verna's tax paperwork sorted out and get her direct deposit set up. Money is important. He can't blame her for wanting to get paid.

Either her mind is playing tricks on her or someone is walking around upstairs.

Verna Gardner
She hears something and stops, head ticking up off of her clipboard. Silence. She continues on the task, until she hears it again, the rhythmic thud of footfalls overhead.

But she didn't hear a door cracking open or a window busting in. It couldn't be burglars, could it? Still, she grabs her purse off of the desk she's claimed as her workstation, so she'll have the mace close. It's probably nothing. Bad area of the city aside, it's probably nothing.

Or, someone who belongs there. Rene perhaps. Maybe he's stopped by to check on things (in which case she has some explaining to do, oh natch).

Then, it is back to the inventory, because work needs done.

Stephen Andrássy
Whoever it is is not aimlessly wandering through the place rummaging through what little presents itself in the entryway upstairs. She hears the footfalls in the area of the warehouse that she has not been in yet. Offices or storage for other things maybe. René didn't bother taking her up the freight elevator to show her what was upstairs.

The footfalls follow the path that hers and Carmen's take after they've already let themselves inside the building. Across the empty space and towards that second locked vestibule that leads into the basement.

This doesn't sound like René. René walks like a man in a huge goddamn hurry.

After a moment of silence the footsteps begin to descend the stairs.

"Hallo?" comes a voice she hasn't heard before. Male, in his thirties perhaps. German is not his native language. The accent is more eastern than that. "René, sind Sie hier?"

Verna Gardner
The only words she recognizes are 'Hello' and 'Rene', but it's enough to set aside the lingering notion that whoever is stomping around upstairs might be an unwelcome visitor. No, judging by the foreign language (and the shop talk with Carmen that suggested that their employer was a Hungarian) she makes a somewhat educated guess at the truth.

"Ahh, no, I'm afraid I am not Rene," she says to the staircase. "I am so sorry I am here late, I just needed to get this inventory done by tomorrow. I hope that's all right?"

He does speak English, she hopes. She certainly does not speak German.

Stephen Andrássy
In the interim between his voice reaching hers and Verna calling out to the entity lurking beyond her range of sight the footfalls cease. With dusk come and gone already the lights are on in the place and she isn't about to find herself facing a grown man skulking around in the shadows.

He's probably shocked to hear a young woman instead of the moody Belgian who's been doing the personnel management. Anyone else would be.

After the initial impact of unfulfilled expectations wears off the visitor comes out of the stairwell. For all they've heard about their employer forming an impression has been difficult. Physicists aren't exactly the most outgoing people on the face of the planet and any time his name was present on a page where they could have scoured for him on a search engine he didn't appear in any of the images they found.

All Carmen has brought to the table is 'Hungarian' and 'not that old.'

So: the man who steps into the basement research laboratory is about the same height and build as the man he's trying to find but his coloration is much lighter and his features are more boyish. He looks to be the same age as he sounds. No older than 35. He's wearing Oxford shoes and dark jeans and a button-down shirt with a tie. His dark blond hair has been carefully combed and he wears his beard closely cropped. His eyes are the color of water.

His accent is more noticeable in English than it is in German but Verna doesn't speak German.

"You are not René," he says and sounds amused for having thought he would find the other man down here. That amusement carries over as he asks: "Which one are you: Carmen or Verna?"

Verna Gardner
She smiles a bit at the amusement in Dr. Andrassy's voice (she's quite certain it is him) and replies, simply, "I'm Verna."

It's her being mistaken for a guy twice now, oh Verna. But then, Carmen could be a woman's name, and this man hasn't been too involved in the business. This is the first time she's seen him since being hired to work on his project.

She walks over to a nearby table and drops off the clipboard. Doesn't want to seem distracted while talking perhaps. She walks over to her boss, and extends a hand, "I assume you are Dr. Andrassy? It's very nice to meet you, sir."

Stephen Andrássy
René is not comfortable in social interactions. Being in the presence of someone like Carmen who is bubbling over with energy and enjoys listening to other people talk has been enough to drive that home. This man who she is just meeting looks as if he's delighted to see the place becoming more like a functioning laboratory than a storage place for all of the boxes and furniture that came with them from Chicago.

After she's freed up her hand the blond man perks. Okay good. Introductions. He smiles and it is a youthful smile that crinkles up the corners of his eyes. His skin as he draws nearer she can see has the vestiges of what may well be last year's tan. Like he likes to spend time out of doors but works too damned much.

His handshake is firm but not for the sake of overcompensating. His palm is warm and dry. He doesn't wear any jewelry on his hands.

"Oh, no, none of this 'sir,'" he says. His face is animated. Humility and maybe a bit of embarrassment at the honorific. "I am not so old as to be called 'sir,' eh? 'Doctor' is good. Or Stephen. My name is Stephen. Very good to meet you, Verna!" With their introductions made he steps back to give her some place and puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I hear you are making inventory." A sympathetic frown. Underneath it that good humor still. "Very boring work, I am sorry for this."

Verna Gardner
Verna smiles, her eyes wandering around to the equipment in its half-unpacked state. "It'll be so much better once we can get everything running, I know... Doctor."

Then, back to Dr. Andrassy again, a person whom she cannot simply call Stephen. "But really, it's not too dull. I honestly just appreciate the chance to be here."

And yes, there is such honesty to her. Such enthusiasm to be doing an inventory of all things. But it's not like it's an inventory of her sock drawer, it's an inventory of precious equipment, the stuff of her dreams.

"May I ask... we've been talking about it, myself and Carmen. What is all this going to be used for? Rene said something about diamond imperfections, and I've just been dying to find out more about the actual research at hand."

Stephen Andrássy
Doctor is better than Sir. He doesn't mind Doctor. Even so he can hear the hesitation before she calls him this the first time and Verna can see that he's charmed by this. His eyes are alight as he listens to her talk about the thrill of the potential down here.

His eyebrows lift when she prefaces her inquiry with another inquiry and then he waits as she goes on to mention René and the twice-removed gist of what they're doing here. He looks as if a circuit completes itself when she asks him to talk about the research they're going to be doing. Like all she had to do was hit a switch.

"Ach," he says as he takes his hands out of his pockets, "he didn't tell you?" Of course he didn't. René has no clue what the hell goes on down here. This sort of thing doesn't get his neurons firing. "Vacancy centers, does this mean anything to you? Spaces in the, ah, the grid that the carbon atoms do make up in diamonds, where something else has found its way into the structure?"

Verna Gardner
"Doping? Specifically introduced impurities? Are we going to be making diamonds?" she grins. Of course she does, because here is a chance to get at the real meat of the work they'll be doing here. Someone who certainly seems to appreciate it.

"Oh, I can't wait."

Grin. Grinning from ear to ear, she is. Effervescent, really. Talking about hitting a switch, the both of them are just simply on. It's a thing one can experience from time to time, that meeting of people with matched passions.

Stephen Andrássy
At the question of whether they're going to be making diamonds he laughs. Or at least it looks as if he laughs. His face lights up with the recognition of a fellow science enthusiast.

One would certainly hope that the research associates coming into this laboratory would have at least an inkling of what it is he's talking about. But she can imagine it's rare that he meets someone young who gets this excited.

Even Carmen doesn't get this excited. He is excited but it's a much more muted sort of excitement. Like he knows when he hangs around his girlfriend's friends he's going to have to dial it back because nobody is going to have a clue what he's talking about.

"Yes," he says. "There are two other teams doing the same thing so what we are doing, with the nitrogen, is to see if we can change the spin of the electrons, yeah? This is what we are doing here. A lot of math at first but if we can show with the math that the nitrogen atoms will stay, how you say, entangled more than a millisecond at room temperature? Get the funding and the equipment? Huge breakthrough."

Verna Gardner
"You're doing quantum entanglement research. For quantum computing, aren't you?" she says and squees. Yes, she actually makes the mouse-like squee noise in the presence of Dr. Andrassy, before she compels herself to stay professional. No, don't completely lose it. Not all scientists are the mad sort.

Some of them, yes. Some of them.

"Oh, my undergrad work was with a professor working on Bose-Einstein condensates, but I never really got to, you know, do much," she sighs. "Inventories. Fact checking, you know. Paper-writing help. But still, just knowing that the coldest thing in miles was right behind the wall? Priceless. I loved it anyway."

Stephen Andrássy
Well that's about the most adorable goddamn noise he's heard all day.

Dr. Andr ssy manages not to burst into laughter in the face of her excitement but he does look as if he has to stifle a similar reaction. No confusion as to why she would respond this way. Quantum computing is exciting shit.

"Yes," he says, "I can remember, the honor of just being there. Not until I did start to teach with the research could I, how you say, get my hands dirty, eh?"

And he knows what he's about to say is bullshit but he says it anyway because there's a kernel of it that isn't bullshit. They're dealing in kernels after all. Very small things happening very fast.

"It's very important though. To have someone to do all of those things. One day you will be doing for yourself the research and you will think, 'Ah, good. My assistant, she is very smart, very fast with the phone calls and the typing of results. I would be lost without her.' This is a thing that happens."

Which brings them to it's after six o'clock at night and she's still here. Andr ssy frowns a playful frown and makes a show of checking his watch.

"You do not have to finish everything tonight, yeah? There is tomorrow also."

Verna Gardner
Verna practically radiates at the praise, look at how it brightens even the brightness already in her.

"Oh, I told Rene I would have this done by tonight. I can't--"

But then, Rene also told her not to stay this late, too. Oh the things she will do to impress people, you see? She looks over at the papers, the almost-finished inventory.



Stephen Andrássy
Verna looks over at the papers. Andr ssy catches her gaze moving and starts to move forward herself.

Her explanation for why she's still here has him stifling that laughter again. It must be refreshing to see someone so willing to work long hours for little recognition. He doesn't exude an air of condescension but Verna's brightness is not something he sees everyday.

Doesn't help that it's lost on her that it's dark outside. Her bubbling enthusiasm is probably brighter than the overhead lights.

"Ah," he says as he picks up the clipboard, "but René only did hire you, huh? He is not your boss. If it does take time to finish, that is just as well."

Whatever he sees on the sheet fails to faze him and he puts it back down. Fingertips resting on the tabletop. He seems friendly but not slimy in his friendliness. Genuine maybe. Like he sees a spark of greatness in her but not a lot of tempering experience.

"Eh... but, if you do wish to stay longer and finish, I will not tell René."

Verna Gardner
He explains that Rene is not actually her boss, he is her boss. Well, yes. Smile, try to hide the fact that you just contradicted your boss.

"Oh, I should probably get going, you are right. It's dangerous after dark," she says, echoing Rene's warning. "It can wait until tomorrow."

But she doesn't seem to want to wait until tomorrow, really. Just that these people just keep telling her to not work so hard.

Stephen Andrássy
"'Dangerous after dark?'"

He sounds like he could laugh at that. Could and yet he's a tall man with a build that could be deceptive. Hard to tell how strong people are just by looking at them. He could either be the same type of weak as every other scientist on the west coast or he could have a wiry strength to him. If he walks alone at night though he does not fear shadows. That much Verna can tell.

"What? Here?" He clicks his tongue. "Nothing dangerous about the dark. You just have to keep your eyes open, yeah?"

Verna Gardner
There's a little sad smile. She wants to say that of course he is not a woman, and thus wouldn't know about the kind of dangers in the dark she fears.

But, let's be honest, she doesn't fear them too awfully much. Perhaps not enough.

"I will try to keep my eyes open, doctor," she says, with a less-sad smile.

Oh, Verna, her eyes could be perpetually blinded, what with the brightness with which she views this place, this underground lair of science.

"I suppose... I could stay. Just to finish up."

Stephen Andrássy
At the sight of that sad smile the tall man cants his head. It's a small movement to go with the small furrow between his brow but he is a keen mind with a fierce intellect. That much she could tell by finding his white papers and his curriculum vitae on the Internet.

And he can tell that he misstepped in his advice to her from the sadness in her gaze. Not a lot of women flock to physics and fewer of them rise to positions of prominence. The women he has met were tough. Probably took no shit. Would recognize the dangers of walking alone at night and do it anyway out of necessity.

Her youth could be enough to keep her safe. But her youth was why René repeated himself. Maybe less to do with her youth and more to do with something he himself survived. He was rambling towards the end of his warning after all.

Andr ssy doesn't look like a rambler.

"Only if you want to stay," he says. Contrition comes upon him now: "Forgive me, Verna, I am sometimes foolish."

The absence of a ring doesn't imply an absence of children but that's a quick enough deduction to make. He's never had to worry about anyone other than himself.

"You are right not to trust the dark. If you want to stay, I'll be upstairs a while. My office does look over the parking. I will keep my eyes open too."

Verna Gardner
"Oh, thank you! It's appreciated, your... eyes." Blink, wince.

"I mean, thank you for your assistance. I don't think I'll be too much longer. I just have the one room left to go," she says, and goes to pick up the clipboard again.

It seems science nerd geeking out time is over. But hey, her boss is amazing, isn't he? So full of, what? Enthusiasm? Certainly unlike Rene. And why is a person who could care less about science doing all the interviewing and hiring she wonders, but does not ask.

Stephen Andrássy
As she picks up the clipboard Andr ssy tamps down a smile that still manages to reach his eyes. This is a professional environment and they are both professional adults and she is now a young woman alone in a building after dark with the man who's going to be serving as her boss for the duration of this project.

And this is not a romance novel. He sees her industrial attitude and her persistence and her intelligence and he decides he's going to leave her to it because he is also industrial and persistent and intelligent and he probably has his own work to do upstairs now that he's investigated the source of the light and the noise in a building that's supposed to be empty this time of night.

"Ohokay!" he says like it's one word. "Very good to meet you, Verna! Goodnight!"

He gives a quick wave whether she's looking over at the stairwell or not and then he's off. So much science to do, so little time.

Stephen Andrássy
[WRAPPAGE]