You can do this.” I say to myself in the mirror of this small room, even if I can still feel my heavy breathing from moments ago, my hands still sweating at the thought of this, I grab my courage to reassure myself. “I can do this.”

A knock comes to the door as a small framed young man opens it enough so his face can be seen. “Dr. Hildern, it’s your cue” I give a sigh as I turn around to face him “Thanks Philip.” I grab my lab coat on the table next to me and go in his direction as he opens the door for me. My head feels empty but at the same time, the most full I have ever felt in my life, I grab from my pockets some pieces of paper I hastily had written for myself to not totally lose my shit, but everything goes out the window as I hear it from the stage.

“And with that, I would like to introduce you, though you may have already heard of her, to our head physicist: Evellyn Hildern!” The full facility and guests from all over the world clap as my name is said, I look to Philip as he motions over for me to move unto the stage, I gulp as I try to make a friendly face, moving towards the stage as I finally get the courage to look at my boss, the man introducing me, that shows a big smile as I enter.

Mr. Patrick Silverstein, the CEO of the Euler Institute, a huge man that can always be seen with his signature silver suit, greets me as the audience claps and I sweat from my forehead, he gives me a very simple and professional congratulatory hug, I can feel his face next to mine as he says, loud enough so I can hear in the midst of the claps “I’m counting on you” as another sweat drops right next to where he is. He walks off stage after patting my back and smiling at the audience, leaving me all alone in front of the podium.

For the next thirty minutes I feel like a rambling maniac, trying to breathe between the presentation about our latest research into wormholes and how they would theoretically be made, it’s a lot of information for thirty minutes, and a lot more to handle in front of hundreds of scientists that would know if I said anything that didn’t make sense, so of course I spent most of the presentation in pure anxiety as I looked to the faces of my colleagues that ranged from having the same knowledge as me, or an even superior understanding of all this nonsense we call the world we live in. Most of their faces stayed blank as I talked about the intricacies of our studies, as if they themselves were studying what I said, but someone stood out for me in the audience.

A brown haired man with a slightly unshaven face, wearing a similar lab coat to mine, the whole presentation, or at least at the points I looked at him he seemed…Happy? As if my words and the way I said them gave him some sort of solace, as he smiled at me throughout what I felt like was just a pure regurgitation of information, and as he notices my look, he nods positively, as if saying “Go on.” It gave me the power to feel confident about what I was saying, so the last 10 minutes I had to talk, I continued on about our discoveries with the excitement I have to work on this field that I love.

At the very end, I could feel myself sweating, as I raised my hand to praise the research of my crew, the whole auditorium burst in claps as I looked to the side of the stage, Mr. Silverstein is giving me a thumbs up, smiling. I look at the crowd, some are even standing up, one of them being the brown haired man. I smile directly at him, he smiles back, and I feel relieved, as the longest thirty minutes of my life were finally over.

At the end of the presentations we all came to our cafeteria, where we, or at least I, could relax and grab some grub to calm ourselves. I picked up my tray of food and started looking for a table, a lot of scientist that presented today were sitting with large groups, still telling of their research and findings, I myself was called to joining some curious heads, “Tell us about this” “Tell us about that” was all respondent by a, quickly laughing, “Not right now” as I myself was exhausted by this whole ordeal.

Most of the tables were full, as they tend to be after the Annual Euler’s Research Oration or AERO for short, and yes, I also think that they tried too hard to make the acronym look like that, but I am getting off-topic. I walked through huge and small groups of researchers sharing a meal and so much scientific jargon that I didn’t even want to come close, so I ended up looking for a lone table for myself and my head, two seats that needed some peaceful time right now, the lonest table that I found had a single man eating his meal, the same guy that smiled at me in the presentation.

I looked to him, he seemed lost in thought as he looked at his food, so I quietly just sat across the table from him without saying a word. A couple of minutes, we ate in silence, until he finally tilted his head upwards to see my presence there, with my mouth full of food he started saying “Oh.” He looked surprised at me. “Hildern, right?” Right at this moment I felt a chill down my spine, he looked to me with curiosity and I felt like my pursue for a quiet place to eat was over, my fate destined me to have to go through the ordeal of having to talk about it again, I flinched a bit as I tried to swallow the food quickly to be able to respond to his question.

“Great job out there.” I stopped, looking at him as he continued eating his food, breaking the whole expected behavior I was preparing myself to deal with. I felt my soul relieved, as I could finally continue to chew my food with no rush to respond to anything, I smiled instinctively as this small moment made me happy. He seemed to notice as he commented “Great smile too.”

I started to feel my face get warmer, I could only imagine how red I looked at this very moment with a sincere and simple compliment like that, was I not prepared to deal with something like this? I don’t know but, I don’t mind. But he doesn’t seem to notice that, so I quietly regain my composure and try to talk to him a bit.

“Hey.” I quietly mutter to him across the table, he looks up to hear me “Thank you for that.” I smiled at him with a new gained confidence, he smiles back as I can see his nameplate “Dr. Garrison?” He looks to me confused, but as he sees my eye’s trajectory he looks to his lapel and realizes how I knew it, he seems to be quite aloof, maybe a bit trapped in his own mind, but he makes it look cute as he slowly assesses the situation.

“Oh, yeah.” He says as he puts his hand across the table for a handshake “Dr. Jack Garrison, sorry for not introducing myself before.” I shake his hand as we start talking for a bit, he seems to work for the Gaussian Foundation, they work closely with Euler on some projects depending on the area they need researchers for, sort of a collab kind of deal.

As we talk for some time I start looking around and hearing far excerpts of conversations about quantum computers, black holes and every sort of topic of that caliber as I realize we are just talking about our lives, our work and where we came from. So I ask Jack outright as he finished talking about how he came from England to study overseas.

“Hey.” He looks at me “Why aren’t you asking about my research?” He looks confused at me, I explain “Not to glorify myself, I just mean. All of these math heads over here are just spouting about theoretical concepts with the people that talked about it today.” I think a bit before saying this last bit “Do you just want to know me?”

He smiles and laughs a bit “Don’t get me wrong, Evellyn. You did a great job today, you looked so damn inspired talking about the work you guys did and your discoveries.” He spots for a moment, making eye contact with me as he says it “But you came to the only empty table in the middle of these ‘math heads’ as you called them. I don’t think you want to talk about that, right?” 

I felt understood. For someone I thought was aloof he seemed to understand the situation as quickly as he saw me, he was able to literally read the room and realize how I felt, only by a simple action. I liked that about him.

“Besides.” He continued, “You are a good person to talk to.” I felt my face warm again, but this time he was looking straight at me, he smiled as he saw and I gave a nervous smile back. 

We continued talking for a while. I talked about how I came from a very small town and had to mostly study on my own because of the lack of resources we had at my school, so with my good grades I got myself a scholarship to Stanford. He seemed to have come from a more wheatier background, but because of that until he came to college he really felt like he didn’t have to do anything, so he dropped it when he saw he was failing. He took about two years to get his shit together and learn to study, learning his love of physics and all that the universe had to offer, getting his hand on his diploma years after that.

All of this was so enthralling to me, I never felt like I could stay hours here talking about life with anyone, but something about the way he talks, his gestures and speech made me so interested in what he had to say. I didn’t even realize the time passing as we heard Mr. Silverstein rang a glass with a fork on a mic to call over the crowd of people that were all just talking about their work.

“Thank you all for being here for the 23rd Annual Euler’s Research Oration.” Cheering from the crowd started and stopped as he continued talking “It’s always good to see some of the brightest minds in the world here for our meetings. I hope you all enjoyed our food, our discoveries and we hope to see you all again next year.” He holds up the glass, as everyone is given a glass of champagne as well “To Science!” Everyone cheers and drinks their glass as the people start getting up and saying their goodbyes.

I look at Jack as his crew starts calling him over, he motions them to wait and starts writing down in a small piece of paper, he gives it to me. “If you ever want to grab some coffee, here is my number.” He smiles. “See you Later, Hildern.” He starts walking towards his coworkers as Mr. Silverstein pats me on the back again, congratulating me on my good work.

As I see him going out the door, I realize something.

I really want to see him again.

Written And Drawn By Angellek