Superiors

Sneak Peek

The day's last rays of sunshine streamed through the tall window, casting long jets of fire across the room's polished floorboards. Charlotte Hobson sat rigid in a cushioned chair across from the institution's executive director, a thick fog of tension hanging low in the air and nipping hungrily at her ankles as he spoke.

"You can't cut our funding," she fumed when he fell silent, her face red with fury.

The executive director sighed. "Show me some results, Charlotte, and I won't have to," he said, fixing her with a level stare and clasping his hands atop his desk. It was varnished oak and very expensive; probably chosen because it suited everything else about the man seated behind it. He was a hard man who seldom seemed to smile and while he had been extremely successful, he had always seemed less than content.

He, like most, had first joined the Australian Centre of Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity because of an insatiable thirst for knowledge and deep passion for this particular field of science. In the time between then and now, though, it seemed that the fire inside him had simmered and burnt out.

Charlotte, however, was the institute's leading evolutionary biologist, and the flame in her still burned as bright as it had ten years ago when she'd first taken the job at the ACEBB.

Now, she watched the executive director from across his desk, that same fire raging fiercely in her eyes.

"If you bothered to come down to the testing areas," she challenged, "I would be more than happy to show you the progress our experiment has made. You know this project is too big to be reduced to a simple report. If you want to see results, you'll have to get out of that chair of yours and give me the opportunity to show you properly."

When she didn't get an immediate response, she took a breath, slowly massaging her temples, and added, "Greg, you've known me for years; you know what I can do. Just let me show you. Give me this one chance."

Greg considered her for a moment. Charlotte had never lost an ounce of the passion she felt towards her line of work and, headstrong as she was, he knew she would put up a damn good fight to keep the experiment running. Her mother, Joanne, had been a part of it for years before Charlotte had and it was for that sole reason that she had ever developed an interest in evolutionary biology at all. After Joanne died of cancer, Charlotte had thrown herself into her work with a fervor, trying, Greg guessed, to hold on to the one thing that had brought them closest together.

Unsure as to why—perhaps it was because he wished he had been able to hold onto his own passion the same way Charlotte had—Greg bowed his head to her in reluctant assent.

"Be here at five-thirty tomorrow morning to show me your progress. I want all the paperwork you have on the experiment ready and waiting for me when I get there," he said, rising from his seat and circling his varnished oak desk to open his office door.

Charlotte took the hint. As she passed him, the director caught her eye.

"This is the only chance you'll get, Charlotte" he warned quietly. "Don't waste it."