Ариана Баженова – Intertwined Fates (страница 19)

However, this was not the only pleasant event of the day. Having quietly put three liqueur candies, gifts from Moscow, and notes on the project into my bag, I went to the cherished blue door with a joyful premonition. Opening the door for me at the bell, a young man in a white coat did not ask me about anything and shouted into the lab room: «Lev, to you!»

I smiled sheepishly and went to the worn leather sofa in his office. There was Lev – with a light, quick movement, he jumped up and sat down next to me.

– How much time do we have for discussion? «I don’t want to distract you from your work too much,» I asked as peacefully as possible, continuing to show him my respect for his large workload and busy schedule.

«About half an hour, then I have to work, sorry,» he smiled amiably now, and there was no trace of the previous harshness in his tone.

«Okay, let’s get started. I’ve prepared the information for my blocks and thrown together a presentation. Here, look.»

I opened the bright blue slides on my expensive smartphone, the design of which I had spent a long time last week carefully working out the details. Leo, with unceremonious confidence, took the smartphone from my hands and pulled it towards himself.

«It’s more convenient this way,» he explained calmly.

He began to flip through the slides, froze, and carefully ran his finger along a thin crack in the corner of the screen. I laughed as I told him how I once dropped the smartphone from my hands, it flew past, hit the door, and crashed into the wall.

– What a beautiful presentation. You’re doing great! – he noted contentedly. It was obvious that he enjoyed giving praise – from the heights of his experience, and also because of his open, emotional nature. – I wouldn’t bother so much, I’d make a white background, black text, and that’s it.

– Oh, come on! Thank you! I tried, – my face was covered in a thick blush. – Do you want to see what a cool diagram of the brain I drew? Scroll to the last slide.

He stopped his gaze on the carefully drawn diagram of the brain that I explained in a simplified form the features of the psyche. The topic of neuropsychology was one of the most exciting for me, because it combined matter and spirit, body and soul. Leo looked at my drawing, silently picked up a notebook and began to make schematic sketches. – I would draw a diagram of the brain like we studied at the university, – he drew a thin line, – the new cortex is here…

I leaned over, fascinated, to watch his graceful, thin fingers draw a careless diagram. Discussing a suddenly discovered common interesting topic of brain development, we lost the original thread of the conversation – the analysis of the project. And at the same time, the count of time.

As is well known, those in love and happy do not watch the clock. Time is truly an illusion, it can freeze, stretch long and sweetly, like honey, or fly swiftly like a fired bullet. In my presence, Leo never once looked at his watch – only when we simultaneously leaned back on the sofa, laughing heartily about something and looking at each other, I stole a glance at the dial and noted that instead of half an hour, an hour had already flown by. I stretched lazily and began to collect the sheets of paper with notes, and, feeling in my pocket for three candies that had survived the flight from Moscow with me, my eyes sparkled with joy:

– And I have a small present for you. These are for you, – I handed him the sweets, wrapped in red wrappers, slightly worn from the long journey. Winking, I continued: – Just be careful, they have liqueur, don’t eat them at work. I secretly smuggled them past the security at the checkpoint.

– What are you doing! How could you! – he exclaimed and laughed. – What have you done? I’m going to get drunk, burst into Eva Schwein’s office and cause a scandal.

– Just don’t tell her it’s because of me!

We looked at each other and laughed selflessly again, as if by accident moving even closer to each other. I carefully wiped away a tear from the corner of my eye that had appeared from laughter. Usually, I was characterized by calmness and a certain phlegmaticness, restraint, but Leo’s bright emotions immediately found a response in me. I felt as if a bright energy of attraction and joy was sparkling between us.

Noting with warmth how he put three candies on his notebook, I got up from the couch and went to the exit. From formal meetings filled with tension and misunderstanding, our discussions finally began to acquire a shade of spiritual relaxation – as I used to scroll through in my thoughts before going to bed, as if catching pictures from the outside, coming from somewhere in the future. At this hour, we, two people tired from work, could forget about current problems and immerse ourselves in an interesting conversation with each other or funny stories.

Frankly and provocatively, with undisguised interest in each other, we sat in his cramped walk-through office in full view of everyone, although between us there was only conversation, and nothing more.

– I need to go, I still have to do calculations before diagnosing the code, – he sighed a little tiredly and got up from the couch.

– Probably, it is so interesting, – I tilted my head to the side, thinking. – It’s a pity that for me it is all an empty phrase. But I would like to know how you carry out all the stages of code creation, right up to the finished program. After all, I establish contacts with the media to promote your developments. How will I write competent articles and select sites for interviews if I don’t understand anything about your work? – I spread my hands in confusion.

Indeed, what was happening in the labs seemed like real magic to me. Here, in the corporation, they subjugated the laws of logic – and created programs that made life easier for thousands of people. Isn’t that magic?

– So let’s go, I’ll show you!

He beamed and threw a white coat over my shoulders over my strict business gray checkered suit. We stepped into the lab room: light poured from wide windows under the ceiling, the white space was crisscrossed with cabinets and long tables with many devices and modern monitors, at which employees in white coats worked. «Just like in my visions a couple of months ago!» – I thought with a slight shudder, looking around with interest and remembering how I had already seen these pictures once before going to bed: Leo and I in white coats going on an excursion to his lab.

Stopping near one of the cabinets, Leo took out a sheet of paper with sketches of the interface and calculations, chaotically applied by his hand, from the far shelf. Then he put it on the table and motioned for me to come over.

– These are my calculations, which now need to be systematized. Look, what is the principle. Do you see these lines drawn in dotted lines?…

He enthusiastically began to explain to me the principles of working with code and the interface. But seeing that, despite the sincere interest in my look, two deep lines ran between my eyebrows – I frowned, not understanding what he was talking about – he changed the course of his explanation and began to tell me the process of creating a program from scratch, simultaneously sketching out diagrams in a notebook. Then he darted off somewhere and came back, handing me a small metal plate. I carefully took it in my hands and began to examine it in the light, afraid to carelessly touch something with my nails. Leo continued his explanation, after which he carefully took the plate from me – for a couple of seconds our fingers touched, and warmth spread through my hand, quickly taking over my whole body. We turned warm glances of brown eyes on each other and smiled shyly.

I glanced at the laboratory staff: they were sitting at their small sections of the tables, entering something into computers or writing calculations on drawings. Some of them, mostly girls, raised their heads and openly looked at me – incomprehension was read in their gaze. «Well, let them look at me and think who I am, for whom their boss dropped his business and gave a tour.» I knew how quickly rumors spread in the corporation, behind those concrete walls with barbed wire, and I was prepared for the fact that they would start whispering and guessing about us. I was not afraid of gossip – in my life, they had never touched me. And this time, they did not appear even after months of our closeness with Leo. Or the gossip was passed on too secretly and did not touch, did not tarnish us, even when we too openly demonstrated our closeness to each other.

We both looked a little unsociable and strange, kept aloof from everyone, immersed in our thoughts. As it turned out later, a similar fate befell us both in our university years – our peers considered us «too smart» and a little avoided us. It seemed that gossip passed us by now too.

Leo gestured for me to enter a small, cluttered room in the corner of the laboratory. «And this is a centrifuge,» he waved his hand in the direction of a large round apparatus that reached my waist. «It’s needed so that…» I turned around, listening attentively to his explanation. We were alone in this cramped room, and my heart began to pound wildly again.