Chapter 11
“Carlie, how did you meet Steven?”, John asks, reading from the book, and Carlie gives her account, speaking sentences as gaunt as her features.
I looked him up on a social network, she remembers, and he accepted my invite to connect. I wasn’t sure about how to strike a conversation after contact was established, but Steven reached out after about a week we had connected. He told me he read some of my publications and enjoyed them. I replied on a similar professional and neutral tone, and few similar messages were bounced back and forth without much more happening. He never mentioned esthanol, and neither did I, but I kept an eye on job postings in his company, Rick Hanson’s Corporation, hoping to find a research opening that could lead me to it. And soon enough I did. I applied, and told Steven about it. After sending him the message I realized for the first time that what I had been doing could be more than a hypothetical reality. Iris Dawson had sent Rob Neilson a letter with a short fiction story I posted on the New Yorker as a cover letter, an improbable attempt to sell myself as a spy able to find out about esthanol. Of course that letter had received no reply, but my logic was that if I showed up with actual material in my hands things could change. When I contacted Steven about the job he diverted the conversation, and told me about a seminar in the city where I lived. He was planning on attending, and said he’d be glad if I joined. The seminar was about ethics in science, I assume it was Steven’s way to warn me about what I was getting into. Perhaps it was just a way to meet me, to know if I was worth helping. Perhaps it was both. Whatever Steven’s reasons, I took a day off work and went to the seminar. I should have guessed at the trouble ahead that first day we met, but I chose to neglect all signs and move on with my plan. Had I dropped it, I could have taken a stance about being an ethical researcher and enjoyed my time with Steven from that first afternoon together. The irony is that if I hadn’t felt for Steven, if I had been truly cold, he would have probably been indifferent to me too. We would have not started meeting every other week, at first using science events as a pretext, then admitting we simply wanted to see each other. We would have not started to date one month after that first seminar, Steven would have not helped me get that position in his company and he would have not trust me with his secrets on esthanol. Too many ifs, but here are the facts. Three months after starting my new job I began to learn about esthanol, and I contacted Rob Neilson again. It took more than one trick to get to speak with him on the phone, but when I finally did I gave out enough detail to make him want for more. We met and he hired me, paying me some money for the information I had given that first time and promising I’d receive the rest when I’d be able to provide him with the full recipe to produce the chemical. And sure enough I did, just few months after our first encounter, but not because of my original plan. I had fallen for Steven, hard and fast. I knew everything about esthanol and the money Rob Neilson would give me were enough for me to dump my apartment keys and take off to some exotic island for many years to come. And yet none of this mattered anymore. The Rick Hanson Corporation had started to commercialize esthanol despite all of Steven’s warnings, and Steven felt responsible for what was happening. They had destroyed Steven and I was ready to do anything to destroy them. That’s why I gave away all the know-how to the competition. Why couldn’t I just admit I was not playing games with Steven when I was still in time? I had started falling in love before making the deal with Rob Neilson, but I couldn’t face the truth. I never realized that what I was doing would change my life in ways I could have never expected. You don’t know how I live now, do you? I will show you when the night comes if you want. The life I’ve chosen for myself is so beautifully symbolic, if only you consider how I’ve wasted the one real love I’ve encountered.