said Michel each time they watched the duplication unfold on-screen. “Plop-plop-plop.”
She consoled herself with the fact that today wouldn’t really be the most important day. It would be tomorrow, when a surface visible to the naked eye would begin to form from all those slow plops. The plops were designed to perform very slowly—growing into a skein of tangible matter. The surface would be translucent at first, shaping itself over the hours into a perfectly symmetrical double wave, like the contour of the roof of a mouth, but impossibly smooth. And so small, conformed perfectly to its given constraints, the shallow dish only 88 millimeters in diameter, the simulated site map of the simulated shelter, the architecture’s designated terrain. By the end of the second day the duplicating cells would have built a delicate little home, rising layer upon parametric layer until it was exactly right, a perfectly circular double-arched roof. Then it would stop. Cartilage in its first official architectural application. A perfect, growable, reproducible, scalable, durable roof, which Finster could send anywhere in the world as a tiny bundle of cells that would sprout on demand. Cells that would be first grown in their lab at RANDI.
She could already see Michel struggling to repress his excitement. She’d mock him, call him Dr. Evil, but they’d both give in to self-congratulation for a few minutes when the thing was finished growing. This week would offer a release valve from the tedious months plugging variables into a giant data sheet and pretending not to give any fucks about their jobs. (On the other hand, they would have to admit to each other with a few uncomfortable glances, the success was a turning point, it made them responsible for what they were doing at RANDI. Until now, the eye rolling and the sarcasm had masked the unease, but soon they’d have to pretend even harder not to care, work even harder not to know where this was all headed. She’d think about that next week, once they had accomplished this small exercise in form, a proof of concept that was surely just a small step in a process that would take years before implementation.)
The stoplight at Jannowitzbrücke gave pause to the pedaling and the imaginary cell growth. A swarm of teenagers in red caps crossed the street, briefly enveloping her. A trio of girls wearing their caps backward—oh, pitiful resistance!—followed closely behind one another. It was easy to spot the popular girl at the front of the pack right away, simply from the geometry of the flock in motion. What was it about the girl, Anja wondered, the homely girl preoccupied with her phone, that made her the focal point, the yolk at the center of attention? What was the factor upon which the self-replicating algorithm turned, that remarkably consistent geometry of popularity? How had Anja still not figured out the answer, the hidden parametric logic to social arrangements, even after all these years, even as an adult scientist?
The light turned yellow, and the group hurried by, ushered forth by a red-shirted chaperone. At the same time, according to the podcast she now zoned back into, jellyfish were taking over the oceans as other species died out in the too-warm water and made way for them to proliferate, spreading across the surface in a thick quilt, clogging the gears of power plants and blocking the flow of oxygen to the depths of the sea.
Howard made her wait two minutes, almost long enough to ring him again, before he buzzed her into the front door of his building. She knew he could see her through the little camera above the buzzer and wondered if he had taken the time to inspect her before pressing the button. She hauled her sticky body up to the top floor, pausing on the landing to wipe the area under her eyes with a tissue from her pocket. A lot of her supposedly waterproof mascara had melted below the lashes. Sweating burns calories, her sister would say.
Howard opened the door and gave each hot cheek a kiss. She noticed a mist on the top of his head—the head was sweating, which she’d somehow never incorporated into the realm of possibility. But, of course, a bald head sweats, just like any other head. She remembered not to stare—men didn’t like that—but then, this was Howard; he was secure. He’d been bald for so long that he wore his skull without the anxiety of a man who it happens to later in life, and so he didn’t associate it with waning virility or whatever else.
He wore most of his distinguishing traits in that way, as incidental and entirely unremarkable. Such as the fact that he was the only Black person in Finster’s upper echelons in Germany, which he never, ever spoke about. He was technically in PR at Finster, but Anja had come to understand that the kind of soft power he’d acquired over the years was much more substantial than his official title accounted for. He would never move back to London, that was clear. He was firmly planted here. His German was impeccable, it sliced you like a paper cut.
Howard led Anja down the corridor past the living room, a mid-century forest of teak and mahogany, to the narrow kitchen where they always sat. Very far from the bed.
“Just water, thanks,” she said to his offer of a mug.
“Detox?”
“A bit jittery. I don’t need caffeine.”
“Busy in the lab lately?”
“Yes, actually. Or we’re about to be. This week is a big one.” She scare-quoted “big one.”
Without asking, he tipped a packet of electrolytes into the glass of water he’d filled and passed it to her with a spoon to stir.
“This is good timing, then. I have big news.” He scare-quoted “big news” in turn. “You probably know this already, but Finster is restructuring some departments at RANDI.” She was silent, then capitulated to admitting she didn’t know, shaking her head slightly. “Oh,” he said. “Well, now you know. They aren’t cutting the whole sector or anything, but they’re consolidating a lot of the subsectors. Most of Alloys is merging into General Futures. And Cartilage is merging back into Biodegradables, where it probably should have stayed in the first place.”
She got a split-second heart palpitation. “Back to Biodegradables? I used to be in that sector, remember, but then we all decided Cartilage should split off, because we were doing construction, not degradation.”
“Right. Your special mission, which you’ve bemoaned so much. But now your mission is complete. Voilá.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and fingered the earbuds in her pocket. Ear buds, she thought. Small lumps of cartilage from which ears will sprout.
“It’s not technically finished, though,” she said slowly. “We still haven’t actually grown the thing in the lab that we were supposed to be making.”
“I don’t know anything about the science,” he said, and laughed, “but think of this as a big high five from the top. Apparently, they think you accomplished what you set out to do.”
“So we’re going back from whence we came. Compost.”
“Nope. That’s the thing. I don’t know about the other guy who you were working with, but they’ve set you free.”
“Free? Am I fired?”
“Why do you always expect the worst?” He paused for drama. “In fact, you’re promoted straight to consultant. Laboratory Knowledge Management Consultant, I think they’re calling it.”
She shook her head. It didn’t make any sense. “No, Howard. I’m just a lab tech. I haven’t done anything they could consult me on.” Consultant was not a title she’d ever associated with her present or future. Louis was the consultant, not her.
He seemed to be following her thoughts. “Oh, and Louis has? You know you don’t need to have any consulting experience to become a consultant.”
She bit back. “Louis is highly qualified
