Page 7 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
Her brow furrowed the way it did whenever she had to think through a difficult problem. “What’s the catch?”
Reaching for another measuring cup, I moved to the sink. “What do you mean?”
“Well, even if someone could give me anything I wanted, why would they? What’s in it for them?”
I considered this question as I poured cold water into the rice cooker. “Maybe they want something in return. Something small.”
Picking up a pestle, she started pounding the spices in the mortar. “And you don’t know what that thing is?” At a small shake of my head, she frowned. “Forget it. No way.”
“Why?”
She gave me a wry look. “How many fairy tales involve some idiot making a deal that seems too good to be true and then regretting it later?”
I hid a wince by busying myself with the cooker. “But what if you didn’t have a choice? Like, what if this was your only way to escape certain death?”
“This hypothetical is getting awfully dark, Colin.”
“I know. But would you risk it?”
She considered this in silence as she reached for a small, round stainless-steel container sitting in the masala dabba on the counter. “Maybe,” she said slowly as she shook the pounded spice mixture into the katori, leaving a little bit in the mortar. She’d made enough that the leftovers would last us for a month at least. “Though this mysterious someone might want something in return that’s even worse than my death. What if they made me hurt someone else? Is my life worth that?”
Adding the rice to the cooker, I closed and locked the lid before turning it on. “Now you’re the one dabbling in dark hypotheticals.”
Replacing the katori in the masala dabba, Amira pressed the lid down before turning to look at me. “Why are you asking all these questions? Did you find a magic lamp or something?”
I smiled weakly. “No, of course not. Just something I’ve been thinking about.”
Standing on tiptoe, she opened a cupboard and reached for the canned tomatoes. “Well, if you do find a magic lamp, ask the genie inside to make me three inches taller,” she grumped. “Can you grab those? I’m going to turn on some music.”
We ate at the batteredold dining table while Bollywood songs played from the wireless speakers in the kitchen. Amira’s mom had grown up in New Delhi, and her Spotify playlist was a regular feature of our domestic life. “So what amazing things are you working on these days?” I asked around a mouthful of curried chicken, desperate to talk about something that didn’t remind me of my impending demise—even if that something was particle physics.
“I’ve started collaborating with some people in the mathematics department. We want to model how fundamental particles might behave in non-Euclidean topologies as well as in dimensions beyond conventional spacetime.”
I stared blankly at her. “Non-Yukon what now?”
She gave me a long-suffering look. “We’re trying to figure out how particles move in more than the standard four dimensions.”
“Uh-huh. Great. Are any of these math nerds cute?”
Throwing a solitary grain of rice at me, Amira said loftily, “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Why not? Maybe one of them is packing a lot of area under their curve, if you get my drift.”
“Colin!”
I grinned at her outraged expression. “Oh, c’mon. You deserve to have some fun with a big integral or two.”
Shaking her head disapprovingly, she said, “I’m not going to become the youngest woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics if I’m distracted by…integrals.”
“At this rate, you’ll be the loneliest Nobel laureate in history.”
She lifted her eyebrows at me. “You’re one to talk. Not exactly frolicking in the dating pool, are you?”
“I’m choosy.”
“Maybe you need a change of scenery. Like, I don’t know, a new job.”
And just like that, I was reminded of the grim fate awaiting me in the not-so-distant future. My good mood vanished, and shortly thereafter I invented a headache and escaped to my bedroom, where that ominous black card waited for me.
