Love, Theoretically

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Re: Re: My chinchilla

Hey Doctor H.,

I understand you don’t care about Chewie McChewerton’s gluten allergy, but what about the fact that last night I got a DUI? Does that get me out of the Physics 101 midterm?

Sincerely,

Chad

From: [email protected]

Subject: can’t come to class

pls find attached a pic of my vomit this morning

Emmett

From: [email protected]

Subject: Merchant of Venice reflection paper

Dr Hannaday,

I was wondering if you could quickly give feedback on what I wrote regarding the imagery of the lead casket. Please find the word doc attached.

Sincerely,

Cam

From: [email protected]

Subject: ELSIE CONTACT ME ASAP YOUR BROTHERS ARE BEING UNREASONABLE AGAIN AND I NEED HELP I TRIED TO CALL LAST NIGHT BUT NO ANSWER

[this email has no body]

From: [email protected]

Subject: MIT Interview—Faculty Position

Dear Doctor Hannaway,

I wanted to say once again how excited I am that you’ll be interviewing for a tenure track position in the physics department here at MIT. We are extremely impressed with your CV, and have narrowed down our choice to you and another candidate. The search committee and I are looking forward to getting to know you informally tonight, at dinner at Miel, before your on-campus interview starts tomorrow.

If that’s okay with you, I’d like for the two of us to meet alone a few minutes before the dinner at Miel to chat a bit. There are a few things I’d like to explain.

Best,

Monica Salt, Ph.D.

A.M. Wentworth Professor of Physics

Department of Physics, Chair

MIT

My heart sparks with excitement.

I set my tea on the kitchen table and click Reply, to assure Monica Salt that yes, absolutely, of course: I will meet her whenever and wherever she wants, including the plains of Mordor at two fifteen a.m., because she holds the key to my future. But the second my hand closes around the mouse, excruciating pain stabs my palm and shoots up my arm.

I screech and jump out of my chair. “What the fu—?”

“Where are they? Where are they?” My roommate staggers into the kitchen, wearing onesie pajamas and a Noam Chomsky sleep mask pulled up to her forehead. Also: swinging a plastic baseball bat like a madwoman. “Leave now or I’ll call 911! This is trespassing!”

“Cece—”

“A misdemeanor and a felony! You will be arrested for battery! My cousin is taking the bar this year, and she will sue you for millions of dollars—”

“Cece, no one’s in here.”

“Oh.” She windmills the bat a few more times, blinking owlishly. “Why are we screaming, then?”

“The fact that your porcupine decided to impersonate my mouse might be related.”

“Hedgehog—you know she’s a hedgehog.”

“Do I.”

She yawns, tossing the bat back into her room. It misses, bouncing emptily across the chipped linoleum floor. “Smaller. Cuter. Quillier. Also, Hedgizabeth Bennet? Not a porcupine name.”

“Right. Sorry.” I cradle my hand to my chest. “The searing pain had me a tad out of sorts.”

“It’s okay. Hedgie’s a kind soul—she forgives you.” Cece picks her up. “Do you? Do you forgive Elsie for misspeciesing you, baby?”

I glare at Hedgie, who stares back with beady, triumphant eyes. That malignant sentient pincushion. I’m going to fry you up with scallions, I mouth.

I swear to God, her spines puff up a little.

“Where were you last night?” Cece asks, blessedly unaware of our interspecies war. I wonder what it says of me that my best friend’s best friend is a hedgehog. “Faux? That Greg guy?”

“Yup.”

“How’d it go?”

“Good.” I suddenly recall not crushing Jack Smith like an egg. “Well, fine. Yours?”

Cece and I got into fake dating during the financial and emotional dark ages of our lives: graduate school. I was down to two pairs of non-mismatched socks, living off computational cosmology theorems and instant ramen. In hindsight, I was perilously close to developing scurvy. Then, on a dark and stormy night, as I contemplated selling a heart valve, my former friend J.J. texted me a link to Faux’s recruitment page. The caption was a laughing emoji, the one with tears shooting out of the eyes, and a simple Check this out! It’s like that thing we did in college.

I frowned, like I often do when reminded of J.J.’s existence, and never replied. But I did notice that the hourly rates were high. And in between TA’ing Multivariable Calculus, forming an opinion on loop quantum gravity, and trying not to punch my all-male fellow grads for constantly assuming that I should be the one making their coffee, I found myself making a profile. Then interviewing. Then being matched with my first client—a dorky twenty-year-old who gave me a pleading look and asked, “Can you pretend to be my age? And Canadian? We met in eighth grade at summer camp, and your name is Klarissa, with a K. Also, if anyone asks, I am not a virgin.”

“Are they likely to ask?”

He considered it. “If they don’t, could you casually bring it up?”

It turned out not to be that bad, so I asked Cece if she wanted to try it, too. I swear I don’t secretly hate her. It was just the only thing I could think of upon realizing that we’d both made the stupidest of career choices (i.e., academia). We’re overeducated and too poor to survive—as evidenced by our crappy apartment, full of exposed wiring and scary spiders that look like the love children of murder hornets and coconut crabs. If we had a sitcom-like group of friends, we’d hold an asbestos-removal party. Sadly, it’s just us. And the barely avoided scurvy.

“So.” She steals my tea mug and hops on the counter. I let her: no need for caffeine after the sheer agony of a thousand needles. “They sent me to this guy.”

“What’s his deal?” Meaning: What deep-seated, soul-scorching trauma dragged this poor sap out of the primordial swamp and made him shell out wads of cash to pretend he’s not alone?

“He’s one of yours.”

“Of mine?”

“A scientist.”

Cece is a linguist, finishing up her Ph.D. at Harvard. We first met when her former roommate moved out: apparently, Hedgie had chewed her way through his boxer briefs. Also apparently: blasting “Immigrant Song” while making poached eggs on Saturday mornings is not something normal people put up with. Cece was desperate for someone to help with rent. I felt as if I’d just been skinned alive, and was desperate not to be living with J.J. Two desperate souls, who found each other in desperate times and desperately bonded—over the fact that I could scrape together seven hundred dollars a month, was not attached to my underwear, and owned a set of noise-canceling headphones.

Frankly, I lucked out. Roommate feuds are a pain, what with the passive-aggressive notes and the aggressive-aggressive Windex poisoning. I was ready to bend, twist, and carve my personality a million different ways to get along with Cece. As it turns out, the Elsie that Cece wants is conveniently close to the Elsie I am: someone who’ll companionably pig out on cheese while she complains about academia; who, like her, chooses to use children’s Tylenol because it tastes like grape. I do have to fake an appreciation for avant-garde cinema, but it’s still a surprisingly relaxing friendship.

“What kind of scientist is he?”

“Is there more than one kind?”

I smile.

“Chemist. Or engineer? He was . . . handsome. Funny. He made a joke about mulch. My first mulch joke. Popped my mulch cherry.” Her tone is vaguely dreamy. “He just . . . seems like someone you’d want to date, you know?”

“I’d want to date?”

“Well”—she waves her hand—“not you you. You’d rather walk into the sea with stones in your pockets than date—though that’s because of your basic misconception that human romantic relationships can only succeed if you hide and shape yourself into what you think others want you to be—”

“Not a misconception.”

“—but other people would not ban Kirk from their chambers.”

“Kirk, huh?”

I initially feared that Cece would abysmally fail at fake-girlfriending. For one, she’s way too beautiful. Her wide-apart eyes, pointy chin, and Cupid’s-bowy lips might be unconventional, but she looks like the sexiest, most stunning bug in the universe. Secondly: she’s the opposite of a blank slate. A thing of nature who pees with the door open and eats Chex Mix as cereal, full of lurid anecdotes about dead linguists’ sex lives doled out with a charming lisp. I barely let any of my personality come through, but she bombards people.

And it did turn out to be a problem: clients like her way too much.

“What do you tell them when they ask you to date for real?” she asked me one night. We were splitting a bag of Babybels while watching a Russian silent movie in eight parts.

“Not sure.” I wondered if the guy who offered me seventy bucks to have sex in his nearby parked car qualified. Probably not. “It’s never happened.”

“Wait—really?”

“Nope.” I shrugged. “No one ever asks me out, really.”

“No way.”

I let the cheese melt in my mouth. On-screen, someone had been sobbing for twenty-five minutes. “I don’t think people see me as dating material.”

“They’re intimidated. Because you’re a genius. And pretty. And nice. Hedgie loves you, and she’s the best judge of character. Also, you know lots about the Tadpole Galaxy.”

Fact-check: none of this is true—except for the last bit. Sadly, listing random facts about star clusters four hundred million light-years away is not considered love interest material.

“Kirk the Scientist asked if he could hire me again,” Cece says now. “Next week. I said yes.”

I try to sound casual. “Faux has a one-date policy.”

“I know. But you broke it, too, for Greg.” She shrugs, trying to look casual. Lots of casual going on. Hmm. “Of course, I might cancel, since by next week you’ll have your fancy MIT job, and I shall retire from the fake-dating scene to become your kept BFF.”

I sit back in my chair and—I want it bad, so bad, I moan. My way out of fake-girlfriending. Above all, my way out of the crappiest, lamest circle of academia: the one of adjunct professors.

I know that I sound dramatic. I know that the title conjures lofty images. Professor? Has prestige, nurtures minds, wears tweed jackets. Adjunct? Pretty word, starts with the first letter of the alphabet, reminds one faintly of a sneeze. When I tell people that I’m an adjunct professor of physics at several Boston universities, they think that I made it in life. That I’m adulting. And I let them. Take my mom: she has lots to worry about, between my idiot brother and my other idiot brother. It’s good for her to believe that her daughter is a fully operational human being with access to basic healthcare.

Not good for her? To know that I teach nine courses and commute between three different universities, translating into some five hundred students sending me pics of the weird rash on their crotch to get their absence excused. That I make so little money, it’s almost no money. That I have no long-term contract or benefits.

Cue mournful violin sonata.

It’s not that I don’t like teaching. It’s just that . . . I really dislike teaching. Really, really, really. I’m constantly drowning in the ever-swallowing quicksand of student emails, and I’m way too screwed up to shape young minds into anything that’s not aberrant. My dreams of physics academia always entailed me as a full-time researcher, a blackboard, and long hours spent pondering the theories on the equatorial sections of Schwarzschild wormholes.

And yet here I am. Adjuncting and fake-girlfriending on the side. Teaching load: 100 percent. Despair load: incalculable.

But things might be turning around. Adjuncts are cheap labor, the gig workers of academia, but tenure-track positions . . . oh, tenure tracks. I shiver just thinking about them. If adjuncts float like buoys in the open sea, tenure tracks are oil rigs cemented into the ocean floor. If adjuncts open Nickelback concerts, tenure tracks headline Coachella. If adjuncts are Laughing Cow wedges, tenure tracks are pule cheese, lovingly made from the milk of Serbian Balkan donkeys.

Point is, I’ve been academia’s disposable fake girlfriend for a while now, and I’m exhausted. I’m all done. I’m ready to graduate to a real relationship, ideally something lasting with MIT—who’ll put a 401(k) and a ring on it.

Unless they choose the other physicist they’re interviewing. Oh God. What if they choose the other physicist they’re interviewing?

“Elsie? Are you thinking about whether they’ll hire the other candidate?”

“Don’t read my mind, please.”

Cece laughs. “Listen—they won’t. You’re the shit. All those years in grad school spent thinking about multiverses and binomial equations and . . . protons?” I lift my eyebrow. “Fine, I have no idea what you do. But you forsook a social life—and oftentimes personal hygiene—to elevate yourself above the sea of mediocre white men that is theoretical physics. And now—one job opening this year, one, and out of hundreds of applicants, you’re in the final round—”

“Two job openings. I didn’t get an interview for Duke—”

“Because Duke’s a nepotistic swamp and the position was already earmarked for the chair’s cousin’s son’s girlfriend’s llama, or whatever.” She hops off the counter and sits across from me, reaching out to cup my hand. “You’re going to get the job. I know it. Just be yourself during the interview.” She bites her lip. “Unless you can be Stephen Hawking. Is there any way you could—”

“No.”

“Then yourself will do.” She smiles. “Think of the future. Of your livable salary, which will allow us to hire some brawny lad to come lift the top part of the credenza onto the bottom part of the credenza.” She points at the hutch in the corner of the living room. Cece and I hit a wall mid-assembly. Three years ago. “And of course it will keep me in the cheese lifestyle I am accustomed to.”

It’s easy, with Cece, to smile and let myself believe. “Unlimited pecorino romano.”

“And all the insulin your worthless pancreas desires.”

“Concrete bricks. To squash the Raid-resistant crab-hornet spiders.”

“A little plasma TV for Hedgie’s terrarium.”

“Matching ‘academia sux’ tattoos.”

“A golden toilet.”

“A golden bidet.”

We gasp. Then laugh. Then I sober up. “I just want to be paid to contemplate cosmological models of the observable universe, you know?”

“I know.” Her smile softens. “What does Dr. L. say about your chances?”

Laurendeau—or Dr. L., as I’d never dare to call him to his face—was my Ph.D. advisor and is the person to whom I owe every single bit of my academic success. He’s just as involved in my career as he was before I graduated, and I’m constantly thankful for it. “Optimistic.”

“There you go. How many days is the interview going to be?”

“Three.”

“You start today?”

“Yup. Informal interview dinner tonight.” I think about the chair wanting to meet me early. Is it promising? Inauspicious? Weird? No clue. “Teaching demonstration tomorrow. Research talk and a final reception the day after. Various meetings with faculty members scattered throughout.”

“Did you prep?”

“Is ‘prep’ rocking myself? Contemplating my own mortality? Sacrificing a live creature to the gods of academia?” I glance at Hedgie, who looks dutifully cowed.

“Have you stalked the search committee online?”

“I haven’t been given their names or a detailed itinerary yet. It’s just as well—I need to answer emails. And buy pantyhose. And call my mom.”

“No, no, no.” Cece lifts her hand. “Do not call your mom. She’ll just dump all her problems on you. You need to focus, not listen to her bitch about how your brothers are punching each other over the last hot dog.”

“Woman—they’re considering fratricide over a woman.” The Hannaways: prime Jerry Springer material.

“Doesn’t matter. Promise me that if your mom calls, you’ll tell her about the interview. And that your childhood was mediocre, at best.”

I mull it over. “How about I promise to avoid her for a few days?”

She squints. “Fine. So you’re going out for the pantyhose?”

“Yup.”

“Can you stop by the store to get me cereal?”

I don’t really have time for that. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Or makes you resent your pathological inability to set boundaries, one of the two. “Sure. What kind—”

“No!” She slaps her hand on the table. “Elsie, you have to learn to say no.”

I massage my temple. “Will you please stop testing me?”

“I’ll stop when you stop putting others’ needs in front of yours.” She sets down her—my—empty mug and picks up Hedgie. “Gotta pee. You still want to borrow my red dress for tonight?”

I frown. “I never asked to borrow your—”

“And I’ll also do your makeup, if you insist.”

“I really don’t need—”

“Fine, you win—I’ll pluck your eyebrows, too.” Cece winks. Hedgie glares, parrot-perched on her shoulder. The bathroom door closes after them.

The clock on the wall says six forty-five. I sigh and allow myself a small indulgence: I double-click on the Word doc on the upper left corner of my screen. I scroll to the bottom of the half-written manuscript, then back to the top. The title, A Unified Theory of Two-Dimensional Liquid Crystal, waves wistfully at me. For a handful of seconds I let my imagination run to a near future, one in which I’m able to set aside time to complete it. Maybe even submit it.

I sigh deeply as I close it. Then I self-consciously trace my eyebrows and go back to answering emails.

•   •   •

Academic job interviews are famously optimized to ensure the candidate’s maximum suffering. So I’m not surprised when I get to Miel and find out that it’s a multi-fork, Lego-portioned, May I recommend a 1934 sauvignon blanc type of restaurant.

I observe a minute of silence for the expensive, excellent cheese I’ll order but not enjoy while busy hustling for my future—bleu d’Auvergne; brie; camembert (significantly different from brie, despite what the heathens say). Then I step into the restaurant, newborn-calf wobbly on my high heels.

There were no pantyhose at the store, which means that I’m wearing thigh highs—a fitting tribute to the burlesque that is my life. I’m also 56 percent sure that I shouldn’t have let Cece talk me into her crimson-red sheath dress or her cardinal-red lipstick or her lava-red nail polish.

“You look like Taylor Swift circa 2013,” she told me, pleased, finishing side-curling my hair.

“I was aiming more for AOC circa 2020.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “We all were.”

I reach for my phone. Under the inexplicably vulva-shaped cracks on the screen—the iTwat, Cece calls it—I find a last-minute email from my advisor:

You’ll make a fantastic impression. Remember: more than any other candidate, you are entitled to this position.

His trust is like a hand on my shoulder: reassuringly warm and uncomfortably heavy. I shouldn’t be this nervous. Not because I’ve got the job in the bag—I’ve got nothing in the bag, except death, federal student loans repayment, and three-year-old Mentos crusted in lint. What I do have is lots of practice showing people that I am who they want me to be, and that’s what interviewing is all about. I once convincingly played a lovesick ballerina, kneeling in the middle of a crowded restaurant to propose to a balding middle-aged man who smelled like feet—just so he could refuse me in front of his work archrival. I should be able to convince a handful of MIT professors that I’m a decent physicist. Right?

I don’t know. Maybe. I think so. Yeah.

I’ll just focus on the fake-girlfriending protocol. APE, Cece and I call it. (Well, I call it APE. Cece just shakes her head and asks, “What’s wrong with scientists? Were you all, like, bullied in high school?”) First, assess the need: What is it that the person in front of me wants to see? Then, plan a response: How can I become what they want? And lastly, enact—

“Dr. Hannaway?”

I turn around. A dark-haired woman studies me as I mentally rehearse how to human. “Dr. Salt?”

Her handshake is strong. Businesslike. “It is nice to meet you in person.”

“Likewise.”

“Come—let’s go to the bar.”

I follow her, a little starstruck. Dr. Monica Salt wrote the textbook on theoretical physics—literally. The Salt has been sitting tight on my shelf for over a decade. Nine hundred pages of excellent content. Bonus: it squashes the hornet-crab spiders like a dream.

“Dr. Hannaway?” She sounds assertive. Charismatic. Badass. Like I wish I felt.

“Elsie, please.”

“Monica, then. I’m happy you applied for the position. When I saw your CV, I thought for sure some other university would have snatched you up by now.”

I smile, noncommittal. Yep, that’s me. Beating off job offers with a stick.

“Your dissertation on liquid crystals’ static distortions in biaxial nematics was brilliant, Elsie.”

I feel myself flush. Sex does nothing for me, but maybe this is my kink: being complimented by leading scholars in my field. Hot, huh? “You’re too kind.”

“I can hardly believe how much your work has already affected our understanding of non-equilibrium systems and macroscopic coherent motion. Liquid crystals are a hot topic in theoretical physics, and you’ve positioned yourself as an expert.”

I am thoroughly flattered. Well, almost thoroughly: there is something in her tone that has me on edge. Something odd. Nudging.

“Your discoveries are going to have long-ranging impact on many fields, from displays to optical imaging to drug delivery. Truly impressive.”

Like maybe there’s a but?

“I cannot overstate how impressed I am with the scientific output you’ve produced in such a short period.”

There’s definitely a but.

“You’ll be an asset to whatever institution you choose, and MIT would be the perfect home for you. I want to be honest and admit that based on what I have seen, you should be the person we hire.”

 . . . But?

“But.”

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it, but my heart drops to the bottom of my stomach anyway.

“Elsie, I asked you to meet alone because I feel that it would be better if you knew about the . . . politics that are currently at play.”

“Politics?” I shouldn’t be surprised. STEM academia is 98 percent politics and 1 percent science (the rest, I suspect, “I Should Be Writing” memes). “What do you mean?”

“You might have several job offers, and I want to make sure that you choose us despite . . . whatever might happen during your interview.”

I frown. “Whatever might happen?”

She sighs. “As you know, in the past few years there has been some . . . some acrimony, between theoretical and experimental physicists.”

I hold back a snort. Acrimony is a nice ten-dollar word to say that if the Purge were announced at this very moment, three-quarters of the world’s experimentalists would ring the theorists’ doorbells with their freshly sharpened machetes. Of course it would all be in vain: they’d find the theorists long gone, already swinging their scimitars in the experimentalists’ front yards.

Yes, in this much-visited scenario of mine, we theorists have the cooler weapons.

We’re just different breeds. Apples and oranges. Dwarves and elves. Cool scientists and less-cool scientists. We theorists use math, construct models, explain the whys and hows of nature. We are thinkers. Experimentalists . . . well, they like to fuck around and find out. Build things and get their hands dirty. Like engineers. Or three-year-olds at the sandbox.

Theorists think they’re smarter (spoiler alert: we are), and experimentalists think they’re more useful (re-spoiler re-alert: they are not). It makes for some . . . Yeah. Acrimony.

Monica, thank the universe and the subatomic particles it’s made of, is a theorist. We exchange a long, loaded, understanding look. “I am aware,” I say.

“Good. And you might have heard that Jonathan Smith-Turner has recently joined MIT?”

I stiffen. “I had not.”

“But you are familiar with Jonathan Smith-Turner. And with his . . . article.”

It’s not a question. Monica is wise and fully aware that there is no dimension, no parallel universe, no hypothetical self-contained plane of existence in which a theoretical physicist wouldn’t know who he is.

Because Jonathan Smith-Turner is an experimentalist—no, the experimentalist. And several years ago, when I was in middle school and he was probably a grown-ass man who should have known better, he did something horrible. Something unforgivable. Something abominable.

He made theoretical physicists look dumb.

Driven by what I can only assume was bitterness, an overabundance of free time, and involuntary celibacy, he set out to prove to the world that . . . actually, I don’t know what he wanted to prove. But he wrote a scientific article on quantum mechanics that was just full enough of jargon and math to sound like it was written by a theorist.

Except that the article was completely made up. Bogus. A parody, if you will. That turned into a prank when he submitted it to Annals of Theoretical Physics, our most prestigious journal, and waited. Rubbing his hands together evilly, one can only assume.

And that’s where things went wrong. Because despite undergoing supposedly rigorous peer review, the article was accepted. And published. And it stayed published for several weeks, or at least until shit hit the fan—in the form of a blog post by someone likely affiliated with Smith-Turner, back in the olden times when blogging was a thing.

“Is Theoretical Physics Pseudoscience?” had been the title. The post, which detailed how Smith-Turner had gotten a bunch of nonsense published in the most respected theory journal, was even worse. “Has the field of physics lost its way? . . . Is it all made up?” And my personal favorite: “If theoretical physics is gibberish, is it fair to compensate theorists with federal tax money?”

I’m not being needlessly dramatic when I say that it was a whole thing. On Facebook. On the news, including 60 Minutes. Even Oprah talked about it—the Jonathan Smith-Turner Affair, the Theoretical Hoax, the Physics Scandal. Einstein rolled in his grave. Newton puked up his apple. Feynman quietly stepped in a tank of liquid helium. Young Elsie, who in her early teens already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up, seethed and growled and boycotted all coverage of the topic, declaring a ban on all media in the Hannaway household. (The ban was unheeded, as the Hannaway household tended to forget young Elsie existed; her parents were probably too busy trying to stop her brothers from egging the neighbor’s shed.)

Mainstream interest blew over soon enough. Annals of Theoretical Physics pulled the article and apologized for the oversight, a bunch of theorists in improbable sweaters and spray-on hair took to YouTube to defend their honor, and Jonathan Smith-Turner never spoke publicly on the matter. Thankfully, the amount of mental energy normies like to expend on physics is limited.

But the hoax was a humiliating, devastating blow, and the field never quite recovered—all because of a stupid prank. Over a decade later, theoretical physics funding has been slashed. Theory job openings are decimated. The running joke is still that theoretical physics is akin to creative writing, books have been written on how theorists are exploitative wackjobs, and Google’s main autofills for theoretical physics are: Not real science. Nonsense. Dead.

(Slanderous. Google is slanderous and we should all switch to Bing.)

And yet it gets even worse—for two reasons that make all of this personal to me. First, one of the major downfalls of the article was that the theoretical physics community, needing to save face, quickly found a scapegoat: they formally censured the chief editor of Annals—the academic version of pushing someone into a paddle cactus bed and leaving them for dead.

That editor was Christophe Laurendeau—my mentor.

Yup.

The second reason is that, regrettably, Smith-Turner and I operate in the same subfield of physics. Our work on liquid crystals partially overlaps, and I occasionally wonder if that’s reason enough for me to switch to some other topic. Black holes? Lattices? Quantum supremacy? I’m still debating. In the meantime, I’ve been on a boycott. For years I’ve refused to care about what Jonathan Smith-Turner is doing—I’ve refused to read his papers, to acknowledge his existence, to even mention his name.

In hindsight, I probably should have kept tabs.

“Naturally,” Monica is saying, “Jonathan is a talented experimentalist and an asset to the department. He joined us last year—moved from Caltech with sizable grants to lead the MIT Physics Institute. We’re lucky to have him.” Her expression makes it abundantly clear she believes no such thing. “The position you’re interviewing for is a joint one. Half of your salary will be paid by my department, half from the Physics Institute. Which is headed by Jonathan. Who, in turn, strongly favors the other candidate we are interviewing.” Monica sighs. “I cannot tell you who the other candidate is, for obvious reasons.”

My fingers tighten around the glass. “The other candidate is an experimentalist, I assume.”

“Yes. And a previous collaborator of Jonathan’s.”

I close my eyes, and it sinks into me that—shit.

This interview, it’s a pissing contest. Theorists vs. experimentalists. Physics Department vs. Physics Institute. Monica vs. Jonathan.

Hiring Committee: Civil War.

“If I get the job, would Jonathan Smith-Turner be my superior?” There may be a limit to what I’m willing to compromise for protected research time, health insurance, and bottomless cheese-purchasing power.

Monica shakes her head energetically. “Not in any meaningful way.”

“I see.” Relief warms my belly. Very well. “Thank you for being straightforward with me. I’ll be equally straightforward: Is there anything I can do to be chosen over the other candidate?”

She studies me, serious for a moment. Then her face breaks into a fierce grin, and that—that is my tell. That’s how I know who the me Monica wants is: a champion. Her tribute to the Hunger Games of physics. A gladiator to take on Jonathan Smith-Turner, the entitled STEMlord she despises.

Well, I can do that. Because I happen to despise the very same guy.

“This is what you need to know, Elsie: most of the faculty members you’ll meet during the interview—including Jonathan—have already decided which candidate they’ll recommend for hire, based on whether they prefer a theorist or an experimentalist. They already know whether they’ll vote for you or for George, and there isn’t much we can do to change their minds.”

My eyebrow arches before I can yank it down. I don’t think Monica meant to let slip that Jonathan Smith-Turner’s candidate’s name is George, but I’m the diametrical opposite of surprised. Of course he’d want to hire a man.

“But,” she continues, “there are a handful of professors who straddle the line between theoretical and experimental. Drs. Ikagawa, Alvarez, Voight. They’re part of Volkov’s research team and follow where he leads. Which means that Volkov is going to be the deciding vote. My advice is, talk to him during the dead times of your interview. If possible, tailor your presentations to suit his interests. And . . . I don’t know that Jonathan might try to give his candidate an advantage and make you look bad, but . . . be wary of him. Be very careful.”

I nod slowly. And then I nod again, inhaling deeply, untangling my overwhelmed thoughts.

Yes, academic interviews are optimized to ensure the candidate’s maximum suffering—but this is situation-room-level politicking, more than I prepared for. I’m a simple girl. With simple needs. All I want is to spend my days solving hydrodynamic equations to calculate the large-scale spatiotemporal chaos exhibited by dry active nematics. And maybe, if possible, buy life-compatible levels of pancreatic hormones at reasonable prices.

But—I bite my lower lip, thinking quickly—maybe I can do this. I’m a great physicist, a pro at giving others what they want, and once I get this job, it’ll be just me and my science. And being selected over Smith-Turner’s candidate? It’d be like avenging Dr. L. and theoretical physics, even just a little. What a lovely, heartwarming thought.

“Okay,” I tell Monica. I met her all of ten minutes ago, but we’re looking at each other like lifelong allies. That accelerated camaraderie that comes from plotting a murder together. Jonathan Smith-Turner’s, of course. “I can do that.”

She’s pleased. “I know this is unorthodox. But you’re the ideal candidate. What’s best for the department.”

“Thank you.” I smile, projecting self-assurance I don’t quite feel. “I won’t let you down.”

She smiles back, at once warm and steely. “Very well. Let’s go. The rest of the search committee should be here.” I follow her to the entrance, head spinning with new information, trying not to walk like a T. rex. “Ah, there they all are.”

The people nestled in the waiting area are, it pains me to say, embarrassingly easy to identify as physicists. It’s not the cargo pants or the sweater vests or the widespread uncombable hair syndrome. Not the eyeglass chains, worn unironically. It’s not even that they’re all men, in line with the hyperabundance of dudes in my field.

It’s that they’re having a physics pun-off.

“What’s the best book on quantum gravity?” an elderly gentleman in transition lenses is asking. He looks like a benign version of the Penguin from Batman. “The one that’s impossible to put down! Get it?”

The laughter that follows sounds genuine. Ah, my people.

“Everyone.” Monica clears her throat. “This is Dr. Elsie Hannaway. So pleased that she’s joining us tonight.”

I smile warmly, feeling like I’m auditioning for a reality show. Academia’s Got Talent. Dancing with the Profs. The Bachelor (of Science). I’m greeted by the hesitant, awkward handshakes of those who feel more at home staring at a whiteboard than exchanging physical contact, but I don’t hold it against them. I’m the same; I’ve just learned to hide it a bit better.

Several faculty members are familiar to me, both theorists and experimentalists, some just by name, others from conferences and guest lectures. Penguin turns out to be Sasha Volkov, and he gets a wider smile than the others. “I am a fan of your articles on dark matter,” I say. It’s not a lie—Volkov’s a big deal. I’m familiar enough with his work to kiss his ass a bit. “I’d love to chat about—”

“Dr. Hannaway,” he interrupts me, all sharp consonants and round belly, “I have a very important question.”

Oh? “Of course.”

“Do you know what the formula for a velociraptor is?”

I scowl. The what, now? Is he quizzing me on something? The formula for the—oh.

Oh, right.

I clear my throat. “Is it, by any chance, um, a distanceraptor divided by a timeraptor?”

He regards me icily for a second. Then he breaks into a slow, pleased, belly-deep laugh. “This one”—he points at me, glancing at Monica—“I like this one. Good sense of humor!”

Clearly, the Elsie that Volkov wants doles out physics dad jokes. I’ll have to build a repertoire.

“I think we’re all here. We should head for the table—oh.” Monica stops, staring at someplace high behind my shoulder. Her expression hardens. “There are Jonathan and Andrea. Better late than never.”

I take a deep breath, bracing myself for this meeting. I can be nice to Jonathan Smith-Turner. I can be polite to this waste of academic space. And I can make him cry by getting this job.

My eyes hold Monica’s for a fraction of a second, a silent promise, and then I turn around, ready to be perfectly pleasant, ready to shake the asswipe’s hand without saying Yikes or I hate you or Thank you for ruining physics for us, dick.

And then I stop.

Because the person who just came in—

The person standing in the entrance of the restaurant, snowflakes melting in his light hair—

The person unbuttoning his North Face coat—

—is none other than Jack Smith.