Clara woke up to the screeching fan. It was particularly noisy today, never mind that was the hang over from the bar. What a wasted nighted, the only entertaining conversation was from the first man she’d talked with, the rest had been more interested in her than her work. She picked up the mobile and looked at the notifications, new contact with Olly.

  She sat down at the table with a cup of coffee and started dusting off her resume. By the afternoon, with a quarter of a cup of cold coffee left, she had rewritten the resume a dozen times. She went with the shotgun approach and sent it out to all the biotech companies she could think of. The rapid rejection letters that came back she tried to blame on spam filters and decided a break to mull on this would be warranted.

  She opened her inbox to review the latest messages and scanned the two new messages, again rejection letters. Why did these always return so quickly? Did anyone even read them? I’ve sent these out for weeks now. Disappointed she pulled up her contacts and sent a quick text message to Olly. ‘Enjoyed meeting you. You were right I had no luck meeting any of the biotech reps there. I was wondering if you had a moment?’

  An address popped up on her messages along with. ‘Sorry about your luck. Please stop by, I have something to show you. Check in with the front desk.”

  Bringing up the address, she was relieved to see it wasn’t his house. That would have been too creepy, why not what else to do today. She took a rideshare to the cluster of technology and research facilities located near the airbase.

  The entire block of building looked to be built at the same time, simple concrete office buildings that would have clashed with the modern skyscrapers of downtown. Half of the buildings looked empty or hardly used. She entered the correct building and paused at the little placard.

  Built during the mini space boom of the late twenties, lead up for the asteroid mining rush of the thirties, this block of the city skipped on exterior polish during its rapid development. Once a booming sector providing technology services to the airbase, the market crash and collapse of the asteroid mining companies left this sector depressed. T enterprises hopes to restore the surrounding block to its bustling days of the past.

  So far she had seen only the entrance, but it looked to her to be primarily robotics and electronics. The front desk assistant signed Clara in, handed her a badge and escorted her back. The room was full of work benches with an area for 3D printing and machining. The next section had a soldering station and various test equipment. She scanned all the printers and machines looking for a sign that some of the equipment might be biotech related. The assistant interrupted her snooping and motioned her to the back lab. When she entered the lab, she saw Olly looking into a microscope. The door closed behind her. Olly stood up and looked at her. She stood there waiting. It took the briefest of moments but the moment of realization sparked. “Oh, yes. Clara Blaire, you accepted my invitation.”

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  “That was an invitation, never mind. I must admit I’m confused why am I here?”

  Olly skipped past her questions as he pulled up a 3D model on the large display. She looked at it for a moment until it dawned on her, that was her work. Well it was, but this, it was the same but completely different. A complete overhaul.

  “I made some minor modifications.”, Olly said.

  “Was that just today? You call that minor?”, Clara said.

  Olly looked into the microscope and made some adjustments . “Yes, don’t be modest your work was very complete. It probably worked as is, this is just a stream lined version. View it in the microscope, I just got some samples in today.” He moved out of the way and motioned her over.

  “So not just today, how long have you been working on this?” She said.

  “This has been a bit of a side project since I met you. Your work intrigued me. You said it must have been the mechanical side that gave you problems. There’s no doubt in my mind. I combed over every part of your design. Functionally your design works, at least the mechanical parts.” He motioned again towards the microscope. “This will just be a faster and is a bit more polished. I’m not sure what issue has you stuck but its not the micro-machines.”, Olly said.

  She looked into the microscope and observed the marvel staring back at her. “I don’t see how you can say that, this is a remarkable design. Mine was just a collection of other designs bolted together.”

  “No this is mostly your design. You might not see it. There was a lot of the pieces that could be dropped and this is a pipeline, it’s your machine just copied a few times.” Olly motioned to the display again where a section of the design was highlighted and the rest fell away. Now she could see her original design, at least enough of it to see all the sections.

  “Pipelining, I think you cut the processing time down from four days to one.”, She said.

  “As I said, this is your design, I only applied the assembly line to it.”, Olly said.

  “I was hoping you’d consider hiring me here?”

  Olly looked away from the design, at her, then at the electronics lab behind her. His solemn face was enough of an answer. “I’m sorry, we really are not the right business. This is mostly R and D, but not with biotech. And a recent expansion did no go well. I can’t be much more help than I have already done.”

  He handed her a small black box with a sensitive electronics sticker on it. “Here’s the MEMs samples be careful with them. You’re free to keep them and try them. I don’t expect them to solve your thesis. Keep in touch and let me know if they helped.”