Tiona_a sequel to Vaz Read online

  Tiona’s eyes darted over to the new woman. Skinny, bad teeth, she probably had a meth addiction. Giving her money would not do her a favor.

  Shelley said, “Well, if I could drop a couple grand on you, what would you do with it?”

  The woman exhaled a long dreamy sigh. “I’d…” Apparently thinking better of speaking whatever plan she’d had, the woman didn’t finish. After a moment, in a more businesslike tone, she said, “I’d use it to get out of this shithole… somehow.”

  Tiona frowned disappointedly. She’d been hoping for something constructive though she’d known it would be unlikely.

  Shelley leaned forward and said, “Would you like to talk to me after dinner about your situation and the resources available to help you work your way out of the hole you’re in?”

  “Nah,” the woman said, “I’ll take care of myself.”

  Shelley sighed. As she stood up she whispered to Tiona, “Talk to me before you go?”

  Tiona gave a sharp little nod this time. She ate silently, glancing around at the rest of the denizens of the shelter. She’d lost interest in the woman next to her and wished she’d taken a seat near someone else.

  A large man sat down next to her. “Hi, didn’t your hair used to be red?”

  Though she didn’t look at his face, Tiona recognized his jacket from the times he’d taken the seat next to her in the past. Without responding, she stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth and stood, picking up her tray.

  On the other side of the room, Shelley stood as well, heading out the door of the shelter a little bit before Tiona did.

  Outside, Shelley leaned against the rail staring into the night. When Tiona paused briefly next to her, she quietly said, “We’ve got a young mother who needs enough to pay for daycare for her two young daughters. With that she could get back to work. She should be able to work her way back out of the shelter and might even be able to pay back the daycare costs.”

  Tiona nodded.

  Shelly said, “You’ll make a deposit then?”

  Tiona nodded again, then turned to go down the stairs, slipping her hand into her pocket for her pepper spray.

  Shelley said, “Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

  Tiona stopped and turned back, raising an eyebrow.

  Shelley said, “Why do you eat here? With the money you’re spending on these people, you obviously could eat somewhere nice. You could still leave me with a budget to spend on these folks.”

  Tiona narrowed her eyes, and then turned to look off into the distance for a moment. “Eating here… is an education. Because they think I’m like them, I learn things about these people that they don’t tell you.” She turned to look Shelley in the eye, “That’s why I don’t give you money for all of them. Because I’ve learned things about some of them that you don’t know. It’s also why I give you more money than you request for some of them. I appreciate your help in getting it to them though.”

  She continued on down the stairs and out to the street. Two blocks from the shelter she opened her backpack and pulled out her AI. Putting it on, she had it do a search for daycare costs, then began giving instructions for a transfer into the fund Shelley controlled.

  When she got back to her apartment, Ronnie was sitting cross-legged in front of her door, playing his acoustic guitar. He looked up at her and smiled, still picking a gentle melody. “Hey babe,” he said, looking happy to see her.

  Tiona stopped and crossed her arms in front of her. Frowning she said, “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged, “Wanted to see you,” he said, as if it was obvious. “I found a bass player and we’ve been practicing. Been talking to a couple of drummers too. Got a gig lined up for next Thursday, hopefully I’ll have a drummer by then.” After a momentary pause, he said, “These guys are really good!”

  Tiona said, “Good, I hope it works out for you.”

  “Works out for us, Babe. Works out for us. I keep telling you, when I make it, you make it.”

  Tiona shrugged, “I’m pretty happy where I am. Not sure I want to go with you when you ‘make it.’”

  “Aw man, wait till things get going. You’ll change your mind! Listen to this song I’ve been working on.”

  Ronnie looked down at his fret board and started playing. Tiona struggled against the feeling that it was rude to leave him sitting there in front of her door rather than inviting him in. She didn’t want him inside; he might be hard to get rid of again. So she stood outside her apartment and listened to him play.

  The guitar line he was playing was very interesting, but then he started to sing. Tiona realized it was a sappy sweet love song about her. Something about the whole thing was kind of revolting; to say nothing of the fact that Ronnie claimed that he hated love songs. She couldn’t decide whether it was more likely he’d actually decided to do something commercial, or that he thought that he could manipulate her with a song like that?

  When the song wound down he smiled up at her, “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a pretty radical departure from the kind of stuff you usually play.”

  He looked down at his guitar as if he were surprised to find it there. “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot and it just kind of welled up out of me.”

  Tiona wanted to roll her eyes, but she kept a serious look on her face. “That’s nice.”

  “Hey,” Ronnie said, unfolding smoothly to his feet, “can I grab a shower here at your place? I’m headin’ over to talk to one of the drummers in a little bit.”

  And here it comes, Tiona thought to herself. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

  “Aw, come on Babe. I’ve been living in my car for a few days to save some bucks and it sure would be nice to get clean.” He shrugged, “It’d be nice to be clean when I’m trying to recruit someone to my band.”

  After some begging, Tiona finally gave in, based on the promise that he’d be gone in thirty minutes or less.

  ***

  Nolan looked up when Tiona entered the lab. Jeans, too long so the cuffs were rolled up. An oversized T-shirt with a picture of some rock band Nolan hadn’t heard of. Clean clothes, but they looked second hand. She always dressed this way and he guessed it represented her signature, or style… or something, but Nolan couldn’t help but wonder if she wouldn’t look a lot better in something else. “Hey Tiona.”

  “Hey,” she said, tossing her backpack on her desk.

  A moment later music started coming from the small set of speakers she’d brought in. They didn’t look like much, but sounded surprisingly good. Nolan had thought about buying some for his apartment until he’d looked them up. First, he’d asked Tiona what kind they were and she’d shrugged, “Don’t know. My dad was throwing them away so I claimed them.”

  Later, when Tiona had been gone, Nolan had looked at them. Up close he’d seen that they were pretty beat up. The logos had been torn off, so he’d had to look at the fine print on the bottom.

  The speakers cost a lot more than he would have thought. He’d thought to himself, If her dad buys speakers like that, he should buy nicer clothes for his daughter.

  Back in the present he said, “Can you help me with my next run in about 30 minutes?”

  She didn’t look at him, but did shrug, “Sure.”

  When Nolan had his test run ready he let her know. “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m trying this new idea I had for graphene deposition out of solution. I think the problem I’ve had when I’ve tried this before is that the pH of the solution drops as deposition occurs. When the pH gets too low it degrades the graphene deposition so I never get a very good product.”

  Tiona nodded.

  “So, to try this out I’m hoping that you can watch the pH meter and drip in sodium hydroxide to keep the pH above seven.”

  “OK,” she said, picking up the bottle of NaOH. “I assume you can’t buffer the solution.”
r />   Nolan shrugged, “I’m worried that the buffer will screw up the deposition so I want to try it this way first.”

  “OK,” she said doubtfully, “it’s your experiment.”

  Irritated, Nolan could hear the subtext implying that there must be a better way, but he didn’t want to ask her about it. Not someone junior to himself.

  They ran the experiment and Tiona managed to keep the pH within half a point of his target. It would be a day or so before he could test the quality of the graphene disc that had hopefully precipitated.

  She left for her class before he had a chance to thank her.

  ***

  “Yes!” Nolan shouted. He looked around at Tiona, wanting to share his triumph with her.

  Tiona looked up at him curiously, “What happened?”

  “Remember how you helped me control the pH for my graphene deposition a few days ago?”

  Tiona nodded and tilted her head curiously.

  “It worked! Awesomely! I deposited hundreds of monolayers, and based on these measurements, most of them must be nearly flawless!”

  Tiona quirked a small smile, then said, “Cool.” She turned back to whatever she had been doing.

  Nolan had pictured her leaping to her feet and giving him a hug while they leapt up and down with excitement. He’d been finding himself torn between thinking of her as irritating and finding her smart and kinda sexy. Her actual reaction to the success of his experiment was quite the letdown. He blinked a couple of times, and then headed out to see if he could find Dr. Eisner. Eisner will understand how important this is and he’ll be excited, he thought to himself.

  Eisner was excited when he saw the figures Nolan had generated. Instead of a jumping up and down hug, he pumped Nolan’s hand enthusiastically. “You’ve got to replicate. Don’t forget you’ve got to replicate! Make sure you can turn out more of these; then we can publish.” He washed his hands together, “If you can do this reproducibly, industry will be all over us. High volume, high quality production of the next best thing to a superconductor—that also happens to have incredible tensile strength. Wow!”

  Back in the lab, Nolan braced Tiona for help. “I need to replicate my experiment! Can you help me make a few more runs tomorrow afternoon?”

  Tiona blinked at him a couple of times; then glanced up at her HUD. “Okaaay, 1 o’clock?”

  “Sure, that’d be great! I’ll have everything set up so all you need to do is start dripping!”

  Tiona nodded and turned back to her desk.

  Nolan felt vaguely disquieted by her lack of enthusiasm.

  ***

  The next morning, when Nolan arrived in the lab, he found some glassware set up on his part of the lab bench. There was a note next to it saying, “Check your email.” When he checked his email, he found one from Tiona. It said, “Not that I don’t just love dripping sodium hydroxide, but the setup I put on your bench should make precipitating your graphene less labor-intensive.” A diagram showed his reagents in the flasks above, then running through a mixing chamber on the way down to the copper disc where his precipitation would occur. The small dish the copper plate was in would overflow so that the reagents were constantly being refreshed. Thus, precipitation of the carbon out of the reagents wouldn’t have time to change the pH very much before the reagents were replaced.

  Nolan was still looking back and forth from the diagram to the setup when the door to the lab opened and Tiona stepped inside. Her T-shirt had the symbol for pi with a little wedge missing out of it. She didn’t look at him, the setup, or the diagram; she simply went to her desk and set down her backpack. Her screens lit up and her music came on. She turned to study the electronic circuit she’d been building for the past weeks. After a moment more he realized the T-shirt was supposed to symbolize a “slice of pi.”

  Nolan looked at her, then back at his set up. “Tiona, I appreciate what you set up for me here, but it’s going to waste a lot of reagent.”

  She turned to look at him; then raised an eyebrow. “Your reagents are cheap. My time is valuable. Buy some more reagents.” She turned back to her electronics.

  “Come on,” he said, feeling a little frustrated, “I spent a lot of time helping you get up to speed here in the lab. You should be willing to help me a little in return!”

  She turned again and studied him. She shrugged, “You did, and I appreciate it. However, getting me up to speed in the lab was something that couldn’t be done by ten dollars’ worth of reagents. Someday, if you need me to do something that can’t easily be done by a machine, ask me. I’ll be happy to help. I’m sure I’ll need your help again sometime, but I promise not to ask you to do menial tasks for me.” She winked at him, “The two hours you had me dripping lye are a chunk of my life that I’ll never get back.”

  Nolan blinked a couple of times, then grinned, “Come on, it was only an hour and a half!”

  She grinned back, “It felt like three hours.” She glanced at the setup she’d put on his lab bench and lifted her chin at it, “I also spent an hour and a half figuring that out and setting it up for you, but that was a lot more interesting than watching a pH meter and squeezing a bulb.”

  “Okay, okay,” he laughed, “your time is precious. I’ve got it.”

  ***

  Zack and Ralph were out with some of the other astronauts, having a small celebration ahead of their launch date. Zack sat next to Sophie and nudged her, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about how Ralph is going to drive me crazy. Living with him in that little tin can for months at a time, I’ll go absolutely nuts.” He gave her a wink, “Now, you and I would be much more compatible. What say we slip him a Mickey and you fly the mission with me instead?”

  Sophie stared at him for a moment, then said wistfully, “Oh, I would really, really love to go.” She glanced over at Ralph, “But I couldn’t do that to Ralph. He’s such a sweetie.” She turned back to Zack, “Besides, it would mean welching on the deal I have with Ralph to slip you a Mickey.”

  Zack drew back, round eyed, “You couldn’t do that to Ralph, but you could do it to me?!” Theatrically, he let his head sag, “Woe is me. The love of my life hath peddled her soul to a demon and they have calculated my demise.”

  Sophie grinned at him, “Actually, I couldn’t do it to either of you. But I am planning to be the maid of honor at you and Ralph’s wedding when you two lovers get back.”

  Zack blinked at her a couple of times, then grinned back, “Now that I’ve found how dastardly, dishonorable, reprehensible, and devious womankind can be, I may have to seriously consider marrying him.” He looked up at the ceiling as if pondering, “In fact, maybe we should get married before we leave on this trip…?”

  ***

  Nolan and Judy split the tab at Spanky’s like they’d agreed. He’d met Judy online, and after a few messages back and forth they’d chosen Spanky’s to meet in person. On the way to this dinner he’d been thinking that he would pay for the whole meal if he liked her. She’d seemed pleasant enough when he’d been messaging her and he’d thought the possibilities were good. However, in person something about her put him off.

  She spent most of the meal talking about herself, someone who she found quite interesting. She’d been a lot of places and liked talking about famous people she’d encountered or actually met. In fact, as he thought about it, it seemed like the only really interesting things about her were the celebrities she’d somehow come in contact with.

  He could tell she wasn’t that enthused about him either. She didn’t seem to know what physics was and certainly didn’t care a whit that he was getting an advanced degree in it.

  “Well, maybe we can do this again sometime,” he said to be polite even though he didn’t intend to waste his time on another encounter. At least not until I’m famous, then she might want to have an actual conversation instead of just talking at me, he thought to himself.

  As they parted on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, Nolan thought of Tiona. He still found her
irritating much of the time, but was beginning to realize that he liked her dry sense of humor as long as it wasn’t aimed at him. Not that she would ever be interested in him. He realized that he was far too bread-and-butter, middle-of-the-road, and ordinary for her. He’d decided she was looking for someone exotic.

  As he turned toward the parking lot, Nolan was surprised to realize that Tiona was walking on the other side of Columbia Street, going north. For a moment, he raised his hand and thought to call out and wave at her, but then thought again. Somehow, she made him feel like he was back in high school. Just like then, he wasn’t one of the cool kids, but she was. He’d felt the same tension with one of the pretty girls in his high school. She’d responded when he spoke only because his parents and her parents were friends.

  In Tiona’s case, she spoke to him because Dr. Eisner would expect her to.

  Nolan felt frustrated when he had these kinds of thoughts. He had a feeling that he should have grown past them. Tiona was exotic and he was not an exotic kind of guy. He should be looking for a more ordinary girl. Someone like Judy, he should be happy with someone like Judy. He turned and glanced back to see if he could still see Judy, but she was gone.

  Nolan turned and started towards the parking lot, his eyes drifting over to track Tiona as she walked down the other side of the street. She wore her rolled up baggy jeans and some kind of a T-shirt which he felt sure must have either a musical or science theme since that’s what she always wore. She had her backpack on and her hands stuffed in her pockets.

  As Nolan turned the corner into his parking lot he was startled to see Tiona start into the homeless shelter!

  Shocked, he stood and stared at the shelter for a couple of minutes, his mind racing. Maybe she volunteers there? Uncertainly, he started walking that direction, all the while wondering what he was about to do. If she was working in the kitchen he wouldn’t be able to see her. If she was working the serving line, she might see him! How would he explain what he was doing there? Worst of all, what if she was homeless? It didn’t seem possible, but what if it were? She’d be humiliated if she realized he’d seen her there.