March 22nd, 2024 

They did not talk about December 22nd.

Professor Artom was worried she’d want to, but come January, the two returned to school and Sofia had said absolutely nothing. Neither had he.

Which was plenty fine with him. Winter break hadn’t been much of one. What he’d hoped would be a welcome respite from the temptation of her presence turned out to be sheer torture. He laid in bed at night mind racing, loins surging at the figments of her vulnerable, aroused self. At least until that point, the professor’s bedtime fantasies had been just that. Now, he no longer had to settle for distant, fanciful impressions, he had in his arsenal hard facts, vivid reminiscences, sensory memories teeming with substance of not merely what could’ve happened, but what did.

Now, they exchanged pleasantries and shop talk as though nothing had transpired at all. It was for the best, of course; he’d decided as much. Though he typically appreciated the way she challenged him, he was glad she’d seemed to tacitly follow his lead on this one thing, no matter what her feelings were. She hadn’t even broached the subject, simply respected the distance, engaging with him in this new tone of politeness sans intimate familiarity. It gave him much-needed relief, room to ignore the elephant, to feel not as though he were being boiled alive. His focus was freed, his neglected projects benefiting from his attention.

Of course, it was now crystal clear she returned his attraction in spades. It was exactly what he’d wanted and yet it complicated things so. He noticed a creeping hum of anxiety around her—not overtly, he was a big boy, but in other ways. It wouldn’t do to keep enduring butterflies around someone sitting in his office as much as she did.

At the very least, he considered his plan of resisting all distracting stimuli a resounding success, great difficulty of the task aside. He was polite to her, cordial even, but he’d done his best to avoid engaging her in the lively, affable banter that’d colored their relationship until that point. And doors remained wide open.

Things were better this way. This was the right thing to do.

Professor Artom kicked a small lump of dirty snow on the pathway to the life science building. The day was sunny and warm, unseasonably so. The winter’s snow had nearly melted.

But alas, so had he. Yes, the plan had actually seemed to help—to a point. But January had turned into February had turned into March, and as April drew near, Professor Artom realized Sofia Bezzina had slowly but surely begun to worm her way back into his heart. She had started tricking him into those long, warm, fuzzy conversations he was precisely trying to avoid, showering him with enthusiastic questions she knew he couldn’t help but answer with equal enthusiasm: about his current research topic (positive growth effects of a certain strain of fungi on tomato plants), his latest photographic subjects (nightshades), his black cat (Nightshade), and more. She did little favors for him. She cracked jokes, wore tight shirts, even the odd sensible skirt. She smiled more.

Damn her. Her nature disarmed him, her presence always putting him simultaneously at ease and unease. Despite the fact that it’d seemed, he’d hoped, that they’d both silently agreed to delude themselves into thinking nothing had happened, something had clearly, indelibly, happened. He was once more at risk of being trampled by the perpetual uphill boulder called Sofia.

Sometimes, when he felt particularly uncharitable and wary, an intrusive thought flashed in his head: was she trying to rope him into scandal? Was this some sort of revenge? He doubted it rationally, but it wouldn’t be difficult for her. Not that she’d even be wrong to do so. The professor found his own behavior abhorrent. Ghastly, utterly unlike him. Like a degenerate animal in heat, drawing up the genius “plan” of getting to know an attractive student naturally, like any two human beings would, and before long spiraling with not a whit of dignity, suddenly faced with ostensibly the most difficult task in the world: not yanking his own pud as she lay next to him, ripe for the taking.

He grimaced at his own thought. Ripe for the taking, as though she were mere fruit. He’d always rolled his eyes seeing horndog colleagues step in it over the years, getting involved in sticky situations of fraternization with students and other faculty alike. Always he shook his head, quietly thinking himself above the fray, not only handily avoiding such pitfalls but not even sensing temptation.

Now, he wasn’t above anyone. A disheartening place to be. He supposed he deserved it.

He wondered what he should have for dinner. Maybe chicken.

Meanwhile, cross-legged in Professor Artom’s chair, in Professor Artom’s office, sat Sofia, scrawling in the notebook of one of his Intro to Biology students, Jake. He and his other classmate Alyssa peered across the desk at the notebook in question.

“Then the oxaloacetate is regenerated once again by…” Sofia trailed off encouragingly.

“The…uhh…”

“…carboxylation of the pyruvate molecule,” she continued, over their underscored mumbles that tried to sound as though they knew that’s what she was going to say.

“Ohh. That’s why it’s a cycle.” said Alyssa.

“Right. You can use a—well, pretty crude, but funny, I think—mnemonic, ‘Can I Keep Selling Sex For Money, Officer?’ or ‘Officer, Can I Keep Selling Sex For Money?’”

“What?” Jake chuckled.

“I know. But they both work because oxaloacetate both kicks off and concludes the cycle. Guarantee you won’t forget that.”

“And this is all happening in the, uh…mitochondria?” Jake said slowly.

“That’s right. They don’t call it the powerhouse of the cell for nothing.”

“Wow,” said Alyssa.

“So yeah, guys, just keep focusing on the metabolic cycles and you’ll crush this midterm.”

“Thank you sooo much,” Alyssa said with an upwards inflection. “You, like, really know the basics.”

“I’d hope so,” Sofia said with a polite laugh.

“No, but like, seriously though, Professor Artom is so like…no offense, but with stuff like this, I think he kinda, like, assumes we know everything already? So he moves really fast.”

“Bet,” Jake chimed in, hand on the back of his neck. “You actually make it make sooo much sense.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that,” Sofia said, her gaze flitting towards the doorway behind them. The students tensed.

“H-he is hella ripped though,” Jake said, “to go with his massive brain—”

“Thanks, Jake,” Professor Artom said, entering and setting down his briefcase bag. “The gains don’t come easy.”

“Bye, Professor. Thanks again, Sofia,” Alyssa said quickly as they arose and left with a wave.

“No problem, guys. Good luck,” Sofia called back, rising from Professor Artom’s desk chair with a stretch. Her striped knit polo rode up a bit as she did so, giving him a peek of the soft, tan curves of her midsection.

They shared a look of greeting as she walked to the couch and he walked to his chair, eager to sit after seeing her stretch.

“You know,” she said, sucking air through her teeth, “you should slow down with your intro classes.”

“Oh, gimme a break,” he grumbled, setting himself down with a sigh and signing into his computer. “The rest of the class doesn’t complain.”

“Those two weren’t the only ones who needed Krebs help today. It can seem a little complicated if it’s not your area of interest,” Sofia replied, sitting on the couch and opening her own laptop.

“Spare me. I know for a fact these kids were taught this stuff in high school.”

“Not everyone remembers.”

“Not my fault they’re on Tic Tac so much they can’t retain their own zip codes.”

“That’s TikTok, grandpa,” she replied. “You gotta have a little perspective. And empathy. Some of them are business majors, you know.”

“Yeah, same kids who actually have to write down, with a pen and paper, that profit equals revenue minus cost. If I slowed down my lessons for all the Jakes and Alyssas in my classes, we’d barely cover photosynthesis,” he said, brow knit. “That’s what my office hours are for.”

“You mean, that’s what I’m for.”

“You said it, not me. Take it as a compliment. You’re more patient than I am with that sort of thing.”

Slightly irked, Sofia pivoted. The research trip was finally coming into view on the horizon.

“How was the trip meeting?”

“Uh…surprisingly productive, actually. I struck a deal on the van rental, finalized the itinerary, booked the cabins where available. Everything should get the final stamp by next week. I just need to get a motel.”

“Great. Wait, motel?”

“We’ll need a motel on the drive back from our camp in Maryland, since we’ll be out of the woods on our home stretch.”

Sofia pursed her lips. A motel. Tantalizing; as tantalizing as the hazy memories of the looks he’d given her on that cold, rainy night. Those tender looks, that tender touch, the fact that he’d even—well. A major miscalculation on her part, she’d concede. All she’d wanted was to break their silly tension like an adult. Maybe she’d been too adult. Understandable, sure. She’d grant him his pound of space. She really had thought such a confluence of variables would act as a catalyst for their consummation. That it hadn’t, coupled with the severity of his pullback, had left her shaken. Surely her assessment of his feelings for her couldn’t have been so wrong. Those twinkling moments; those lingering looks.

Overthinking, overanalyzing as she often did, Sofia spent too much time in those dark, wintry months doubting everything she knew.

But with a little more time and little more evidence, she regained confidence in her stance. She’d learned his language.

Or…so she thought. Sometimes people could be so difficult to read.

But still, the nerve of him. To think she’d worried back in September that the extent of his nerve laid in merely taking umbrage with her correcting him. No, his real nerve was purposely entangling her in his work to nurse his little crush, then leaving the kitchen when the heat got too hot.

Luckily, he’d given her plenty of time to coward-proof the doors before he wandered right back in.

“Good choice for lunch,” Professor Artom said suddenly, noticing the grease-stained bag on his desk from Give-A-Cluck.

“Hm? Oh no, that one’s yours.”

“Mine?”

“I got one for you, too. You brought it into a class for dinner a while back and you seemed to enjoy it. I wasn’t sure if you wanted spicy or regular so I went with regular and got the sauce on the side.”

He suppressed a smile.

“You’ve got a little brown on your nose there.”

Sofia’s mouth fell open.

“Well, excuse me. See if I ever do anything nice for you again.”

“Sorry. It’s been a grueling day. I do appreciate it,” he said, eyes flicking toward the closed door. Wretched thing. “Mind opening the door?”

She grunted in response, opening it and sitting down. “It’s gonna be nice out, they said. High of 72. If you open the window, we’ll get a nice cross breeze.”

He turned around in his chair and obliged single-handedly. Before he could get to work himself, he noticed her intently focused on her laptop.

He nodded towards it. “What’re you working on?”

“The ol’ ’tation. That’s short for dissertation.”

The professor wrinkled his nose.

“Try ‘sertaysh’ next time.”

It was Sofia’s turn to wrinkle her nose.

“Mm. We’ll workshop it. Here, I’m just tightening up some of the finer parameters, seeing which regression I’m going to use to interpret the data. I finished the first round of tests.”

“Right, I was going to ask if you had all the results.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to say anything just yet, but I am excited. Placebo group is booked for April 1st.”

At least her dissertation was coming along rather nicely, if Professor Artom said so himself. Naturally, an intriguing subject picks an intriguing subject. Barring all other messy relations between them, she was at least a candidate with research that didn’t bore him to tears.

“Giving them shaving cream in the IV drip?” he asked.

“Was thinking something more subtle. Pie to the face.”

“Better. I’m almost shocked you got funded.”

“Usually, material expenses don’t include banana cream.”

“That, and that extract.” He punctuated his words with a wolf whistle. Solanum somnum had better be worth it.

“I know. Rare is rare. But I think I spun it in an interesting enough way, made it something I could leverage to make the department look cutting edge. And now I have everything set—over a hundred subjects handing me their bodies. A decent sample size.”

“More so an affordable sample size.”

“Considering it’s the first of its kind for Somnum, I’m not getting greedy. After that, all that’s left is the trip. Observation, extraction, compound analysis, yadda yadda. I can do it while we travel, and by—”

“Whoa, you can’t just yadda-yadda extraction,” he said, swiveling in his chair to face her head-on. “On the trip? What’re you, lugging a distillery with you? Got a pocket chromatograph?”

“It’s not difficult to distill by hand. We’ll see if I even find anything, let alone enough to extract. But if I do…maybe I’ll even give it a whirl myself,” she said.

He raised his brows. “Ballsy move, Paracelsus.”

“Taken orally, I do reckon it functions quite the same as intravenous,” Sofia said. “I figure who better to provide an informed and unfiltered point of view?”

“Probably not one high on their own supply.”

“Maybe we can get that there truth serum, if the CIA was onto anything.”

“They weren’t onto anything, remember? We delved into it,” Professor Artom said with an air dangerously close to condescension. “The CIA admitted it themselves in declassified documents. Which is saying something, considering how badly they wanted that stuff to work.”

“Mostly. But there are ways to get what you want out of them. You can trick the subject into thinking they’ve divulged more than they have.”

“That’s trickery, not truth,” he said, turning back towards his computer. “We’ve got plenty of that.”

“One doesn’t preclude the other. It just so happens people are more easily tricked under the influence. In vino veritas and all.”

In vino veritas. For the umpteenth time, his mind flashed with the image of this very same woman limp and touching herself next to him. Then his eyes met hers, bright and sharp as always, and the image of the lazy lady vanished, replaced by her doppelganger sitting on that very same couch, her legs not spread open in a short skirt but crossed in jeans and boots.

“Which is why none of it is admissible in court,” he retorted, now a bit quieter.

“Not the only bar for usefulness,” she replied with a pointed index finger.

“Maybe. Look, maybe I’m too deep inside this box to think outside it. Your thesis scope being the efficacy of the substance as a sedative, I wholeheartedly espouse. But as a truth serum…I mean, I’m no expert in dang ol’ neuro-whatchamacallit, but…”

“But?”

“It seems highly unlikely.”

“But not impossible?” she said, her eyes glinting. “The concept? In general?”

“What? Mind control via substance?”

She hummed, glad he’d gotten there quickly.

“Lot of variables at play,” he said, lips in a thoughtful pout. “Possible, yes. Probable, as of what we know now? No.”

“I don’t mean like, a Manchurian Candidate.”

“Yeah, no. I mean, obviously you know what the research concluded with scopolamine, thiopental, et cetera.”

“Yes.”

“Well, like you say, you get someone half-conscious, he talks, maybe he does choke and give you the truth. But that’s a big maybe. And how do you know? You don’t. More often than not, half of it is garbled nonsense and the other half isn’t even true. And, like you say, at best, you trick him into thinking he gave you his Social Security number so that you can get his life story later. Which, just…”

The professor trailed off in amused thought, leaned back in his chair, and exhaled, hands steepled. Sofia sat silently, waiting with bated breath for him to continue.

“It’s just so much effort, I think, compared to what can be accomplished with mere…manipulation, deprivation…abuse,” he said, hands now folded in his lap. “Because people aren’t that hard to manipulate. Once you find that weak spot, be it physical or mental, and you press on it, a person’s own mind does most of the work for you. At that point, why go for brute force?”

Having never heard him speak so candidly about the subject, there was a beat of thrilled silence as Sofia basked in his thoughts.

“Right. Make them feel as though they’re acting of their own accord,” she murmured. He nodded.

“Precisely. Much more valuable in any case.”

“Far more satisfying,” she said, voice taking on a husky quality. He nodded again, this time a bit more unsurely.

“I…suppose, if that were your end goal.”

“Satisfaction? I imagine, for some. The means are sometimes more fun than the ends.”

His brow furrowed.

“I don’t know if ‘fun’ is the word for it.”

She knew it was, certainly, but decided to err on the side of caution at the risk of tipping her freakish hand.

“Fun in a, a sick, sadistic sort of way. For some,” she said. He looked away towards the wall; she got the impression the discussion was now making him somewhat uncomfortable. She continued, her voice again level.

“Anyway, Somnum’s extract acts on GABA receptors in a different way than other drugs of its class, so I thought maybe it’d offer a commensurately different result in that respect.”

“It’s valid reasoning, I just doubt it’s your silver bullet. Not really something that would pop up out of the woodwork with no warning.”

“Hm. Say, Ben,” she started, wearing the expression of one who’d just thought of an idea. She rose from the couch and stepped towards him, gaze fixed to his. “How would you like to make this conjecture of yours a little more interesting?”

He stiffened in apprehension, eyes following her as she moved closer.

“…How would I?”

She took a deep breath.

“A hundred bucks says I can use it to get some truth outta you.”

He stared at her blankly, almost unsure of what he’d just heard.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Utterly inappropriate. Out of the question.

“And just how the hell do you intend on going about that?”

“I’ll find a way. What do you think?”

His heartbeat quickened. He broke their staring contest, eyes resting on his telephone.

“Well, now I think you’re nuts.”

“The burden of proof is on me.”

True. But it was ridiculous. Impossible.

“If—if you can think of a way of going about this that is even remotely safe, ethical, and scientific—a massive if, because that would be impossible—then fine. You just let me know and I’ll be your null.”

And yet.

“You’re on.”

They shook.