“No!” Peyton insisted.
Amber blinked at his vehemence.
Peyton gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, just really not into the whole start-up thing. I spend a lot of time doing research, and I develop specialty centers on natural language processing and filtering heuristics for autonomous internet research.”
“That sounds interesting. I messed around with some of that in my undergraduate research, but it’s not something I really have much need to do for the job I have now.”
Peyton shrugged. “It can be interesting, but it’s not like helping with physics research. I was reading the other day how the rise of magic resurrected string theory. Now everyone’s saying it’s the strongest chance we have, not only as a grand unification theory, but also as a magic and physics unification theory.”
Amber nodded. “Yeah, one of the guys in my department is working on a unification theory centered around thirty-two dimensions.”
“Thirty-two dimensions? I thought a lot of the string stuff centered around much lower numbers, like eleven.” Peyton let out a nervous chuckle. “I’ll be honest, though…a lot of that is way over my head. I read a book about Calabi-Yau manifolds, and I was glad I chose to go into computers instead of physics.”
“Most people don’t even know what a Calabi-Yau manifold is.”
“I’m still not sure I do, other than a bunch of dimensions folded up.”
“Kind of.” Amber shrugged. “But that solution was to explain things before magic. Now a lot of scientists are focusing on magical and normal physics unification. It’s exciting because now they have a whole new frontier to understand.”
“I can imagine. People used to talk about how we were at the edge of new discovery, and now we know there’s so much more out there.”
Amber grinned. “Exactly. After all, you can’t claim you understand the fundamental structure of the universe and then ignore the fact that you have witches and elves running around casting spells.” She slapped a hand on the table, her face alight with excitement. “Kind of like this project I worked on.”
“I’d love to hear about it.”
“I helped the guy in my department with some simulations last year that suggested that you can account for the effects of some types of magic via lower-order strings that are way shorter than Planck Length. Some of the topological spaces he’s proposing make Calabi-Yau manifolds look like something a five-year-old thought up.”
“A damned smart five-year-old.”
Amber laughed.
Peyton allowed himself a cocky grin. Things were going well. Very well. “So magic is just physics that hasn’t been explained?”
“Sure. It’s not like it’s that random. It still seems to obey rules and has limits and that sort of thing, even if the rules are kind of weird sometimes. Just because it breaks the rules of the physics we know doesn’t make it that mysterious. Many branches of physics are weird, like quantum mechanics, and they seemed almost beyond reason at first.”
The waitress arrived with their cocktails. They thanked her, and both took a few sips before continuing their conversation.
Peyton rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I guess it’s like Newtonian physics was true enough for what we could see and experience, and then with relativity and quantum mechanics, we realized what we thought we understood wasn’t the case. They explain stuff that we’re just not used to encountering on a daily basis, so it’s hard to wrap our minds around it. Our common sense fails us.
“Now, we have a whole planet of people coming with things that they take for granted, but we always thought were kid’s stories.”
“Exactly!” Amber looked down, her cheeks reddening.
Peyton gave a look of concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to get geek out so much.”
“I’m wearing a cat-skull shirt. I’m more on the geek side than anything.”
Amber laughed. “I like the shirt.”
“Thanks.”
She sighed. “I just really like this sort of thing. I talk to people at work about it, but it’s hard to find people outside the department who want to talk about it, and it doesn’t help that I double-majored in physics and CS back in college. I only didn’t go into physics because I’m just not that creative.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Woah. I wasn’t even trying to be smooth, but that was totally smooth. Good job, me!
Amber smiled softly. “The problem is I kind of need to have a concrete problem set in front of me, and then I can go about solving it. I’m not a good theorist.”
“Not every scientist is a good theorist. Just think of yourself as an experimentalist.” Peyton shrugged. “I’m the same way.” He took another sip of his drink. “But don’t you think that’s where creativity can shine?”
“What do you mean?”
“If it were so easy to do what you do, all those physicists would be able to do it, and you’d be out of a job.” He reached over and put his hand atop hers. “You’re applying creativity to problem-solving. That’s the way I look at it.” Peyton removed his hand and leaned back in his chair, not sure if he was relaxed because of the booze or because of how well the conversation was unfolding. “I’ve always been good with computers. It may sound arrogant, but I’m a natural. I develop new algorithms and techniques all the time. I think it’s creative, and I’m helping push knowledge by using those creatively developed tools, even if I’m not the guy actually thinking up what questions to ask.”
Amber stared at Peyton, wide-eyed. “Just…wow. I can’t believe this.”
“What?”
Peyton’s stomach tightened. Had he screwed up somewhere? Did he sound too arrogant?
“Most of the time I go out with guys and start talking about this sort of thing, and their eyes glaze over. If it’s not the computers, it’s the physics.”
“I consider myself a bit of a Renaissance Man.” Peyton winced. “Did I just sound like a douchebag? Be honest.”
Amber let out a quiet laugh. “I don’t think so. I think you’re pretty interesting.”
