Red-faced, Warfield yelled, “Staze needs to step up and—”
Seba waved a hand, a broad smile on his face. When Warfield ground to a stop, Seba pleasantly said, “Please don’t yell. We have no need to come here and be shouted at. There are plenty of other projects we could be working on. We intended to make stazers available to anyone who wished to do this kind of research, but not to fund such research in order to avoid the taint of bias. Dr. Jonas had thought that UVA would be interested. If this is not the case, we’ll simply throw the offer open to some of the other research universities who’ve contacted us.” He turned to Schmidt and Tibbets, pleasantly saying, “Let’s get packed up.”
A dismayed murmur rose in the room. One of the young men from the ED contingent stood, “Excuse me, Mr. Seba?”
Seba turned affably, saying, “Yes?”
“I’m Gerald Horton, another of the emergency physicians. I believe the potential benefits of this technology are immense. Could you give me a few weeks to look into possible funding sources before you throw it open to others?”
Jonas didn’t miss the scathing look Warfield gave Horton. He didn’t think Seba did either, but Seba just said “sure” and told his phone to handshake with Horton’s so they could communicate.
That bit of business concluded; an uneasy silence reigned. Jonas got up and moved forward to talk to the Staze crew. The rest of the people in the room got up and started moving to the doors. Jonas approached Seba and said, “Sorry about that. Warfield’s… hard to get along with. I was worried as soon as I saw him come into the room.”
Seba grinned, “Every institution has its share of cantankerous personalities.” He glanced at Schmidt, “Right Gunnar?”
Schmidt snorted, “I’m proud to serve.” He picked up the entire stazer by himself—suggesting it was made of air Stade to keep the weight low—and swung it around, putting the far end on the floor.
Jonas noticed for the first time that the far end was rounded like a ski. Schmidt started pulling it out of the room. Jonas’ first reaction was that they should’ve put wheels on it, then he thought, But it’s frictionless, so doesn’t need them. When the stazer skidded sideways into the door as Schmidt exited, Jonas thought, It does need wheels. Wheels woulda kept that from happening.
A voice from behind him said, “Um, Mr. Seba?”
Jonas turned and saw a young EMT looking hopefully at Seba.
“Uh-huh?” Seba responded.
“I got a puppy a few days ago and… he’s been chewing everything he can get to while I’m at work. I’ve had to start keeping him in his crate when I’m gone and I hate that. I was wondering where I could buy a stazer to staze him during the day?”
Seba grinned and looked over at Norm. “Talk to him.” Seba turned back to the EMT, “That’s what Norm’s been doing with his dog.”
Norm gave a little laugh, “Stazing isn’t like sleep. If you try to staze him all day, then let him out at night, he’ll sleep with you the first night then be up all night the next one.”
The EMT looked abashed, “Oh.”
“What I do,” Norm elaborated, “is staze my dog Monday morning to Saturday morning. Then he spends the weekend with me.”
Jonas said, “I thought you were stazing him Sunday night till Friday night?”
Norm snorted. “Turns out I like to go out Friday nights. This works better.”
The EMT said, “I could do that. How would I get a stazer?”
Seba said, “We might be able to arrange that if you promised to keep careful records so we could use it as evidence that stasis doesn’t do any harm?”
“Sure!” the young man said enthusiastically.
When they left the room, they found Schmidt and his stazer stopped in the hall, talking to Horton. Schmidt said, “Kaem, Dr. Horton’s wondering if he could keep this prototype stazer for a while. Figure out how to load patients into it. Do some experimental runs. Better understand what he’s writing his grant for. What do you think?”
Seba looked thoughtful. “We could do that. You’d get a limited number of one-time passwords for stasis events. We, uh, don’t want people just stazing things willy-nilly, okay?”
“Sure!” Horton said, looking excited.
***
Sophia got out of the U-Haul and walked up to the little house Emmanuel had picked out for them. He opened the door and took her inside for a walk-through. It was small but significantly larger than the apartment they’d lived in for decades.
And much nicer.
She turned to him. “We can afford this?” she asked, doubtfully, yet hopefully.
He frowned and looked around. “Yes. My salary will cover it and our living expenses. It should even leave us some money to start saving for retirement. If you get a job, we’ll be able to save more.” He shook his head, “We should’ve—”
“I know, I know,” she interrupted. “We should’ve been saving for decades already and money we invest this late won’t grow like it would’ve if we’d put it away when we were younger. Emmanuel, we didn’t have money to invest back then!”
“Yes,” he said resignedly, “you’re right. I’m just trying to make the point that we need to do our best to save now that I finally have a good job. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get a job too and we’ll be able to invest more.” He looked around the little house, “To tell the truth, I agonized about whether this place was too expensive, but the cheaper places…” he shook his head, “they weren’t very nice.” He grasped her shoulders and looked into her eyes, “I’ve wanted for you to be able to live in a
