[TW: bad amateur fiction!]
Having started the night in his bed, Gerald awoke the next morning on his couch.
In quick succession he wondered where he was, then how he had gotten there. The first question was much easier to answer than the second.
He fired up the coffeemaker, as he did every morning, and self-administered his daily poll as to whether it was ironic for a tenured professor on sabbatical to be fueling up with caffeine. Today’s answer, he decided, was “B: not especially ironic.” He still had plenty to do, after all.
For a few minutes he checked his email. Amidst the usual stuff was a message from an editor of Advances in Parasite Biochemistry, informing him of his latest manuscript’s near-acceptance. Having apparently won his ridiculous argument with Reviewer #2, he just had a couple of minor wording issues to clean up, and then this paper, nearly four years in the making, would be done.
He rose from the table, packed himself a sack lunch (two sandwiches, grapes, green pepper, cookies), and biked to work. It was easy to get to campus: 3.8 flat miles along a paved rails-to-trails path. Generally quite pleasant, especially during these temperate early-fall days.
He dismounted, entered the Templeton Science Center, and headed toward his second-floor office. His old student was already at the door, five minutes early. In this respect, evidently, she had not changed a bit.
She greeted him with a “Hey!” and a broad it’s-been-too-long smile. Unsure whether to hug her or shake her hand or neither, he simply returned her smile. “Hi, Lois!”
“So, how goes the rat race?”
“Well,” he said, “Paper #20 is almost to the finish line.”
“Hey, that’s great!” She smiled again. “What’s this one about?”
He paused. “How much do you remember about the purine salvage pathway in Plasmodium?”
“Um… I remember that it exists…” She gave an apologetic wince, having once done a senior project on this topic under Gerald’s supervision.
With a gentle wave, he excused her amnesia. “It’s OK. We just characterized another enzyme in the pathway.”
“Does it seem like it would be a good drug target?”
“That’s what we’re suggesting in the paper. But, to be honest, I have no idea. We’re still hoping for a crystal structure, but we don’t have one yet. Anyway, do you want coffee? The new cafe” — he flicked his head in the direction of the student center — “is pretty nice.”
“I suppose I could get a tea.” She looked directly at him. “I’m pregnant again.”
[Update: the story continues with part 2.]
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