Conference Collaboration

This story is a contribution to

2024 Literotica Geek Pride Story Event

.

It's a story about scientists enthusiastic about sex. Or in other words, scientists. Yes, it's another story from me about a molecular biology conference -- in this case, how Emily met Richie.

This is a stand-alone story, but it takes place chronologically between the first 'I Say Ass, You Say Arse' story and 'ISAYSA: Again'. I haven't added it to that series as this story doesn't contain transatlantic miscommunication nor anal sex (wait for a sequel for the latter!). Readers may like to read the ISAYSA stories next, for more Emily and Richie and friends. Richie also appears in various other stories in different categories -- see my profile for more info.

____

Conference Collaboration

A month after completing her PhD, Emily emailed to confirm to her old lab colleagues that yes, she would come over to Cambridge for a small specialist conference. She was settling into her new job in the south of France, but still working with the previous colleagues to prepare a paper, to submit for publication in one of the

Nature

journals. If her research was rejected and had to be re-written for somewhere less prestigious, at least the early draft had got her her current post-doctoral position. Not bad, for a twenty-five-year-old Essex girl who'd never had anyone in her family go to university.

She got a reply. Not a helpful one.

'Ooh, do you have a Special Conference Friend you wish to see?'

It was a cliché that many scientists had 'conference friends': people you saw only every few months, perhaps years, if they worked on another continent, but when you did meet up, spectacular sex ensued. Common for cellular and molecular biologists, anyway, which was her field; Emily doubted physicists would find it so easy, simply because of the sex imbalance. On the other hand, she was female...

'It's a shame that nice Bradley had to go back to America...'

'Oh, shut up, Marion!'

Man-eater Marion had indeed encouraged shy exchange-student Bradley to make a move, when Emily had been broken-hearted. He was a sweet boy, and perfect for a conference dalliance. For a permanent relationship, he'd be rather too sweet and nice, pure white-bread middle America, but for the odd night... He'd proven himself an enthusiastic if inexperienced lover. Let's just say Emily was rather looking forward to seeing him in Las Vegas, come the autumn. In the meantime, she was sticking to being free and single and mastering speaking fluent French, thank you. And all the new techniques and everything that went with working on a new project in a new lab.

Adjusting to the new work and a new country was quite enough to deal with. Sexual thoughts had to stay on the back burner, shared only with her trusty vibrator.

By the second evening of the conference, Emily rather wished she did have someone she could just go off and shag. Her PhD supervisor, Verity, had disappeared for dinner with someone. Marion, too, had vanished. Most of the attendees under forty were from Cambridge and its nearby institutions, which meant much talk about DNA sequencing and genomes, less about any cells or proteins.

Emily made her excuses and joined a new group in the bar. She'd overheard a guy mention cell membrane receptors, which was a likely start.

Four of the five young men nodded at her, appreciating the eye candy. She'd made an effort, wearing a flattering suit with a skirt that stopped above the knee, knowing it would help her get attention. Though she'd not wanted to look too dolled up, so her wavy sandy hair was simply tied back, and her only make-up was, as usual, just a touch of lipstick.

The four introduced themselves. Then their long-haired companion, who'd appeared lost in thought, rattled off his name, affiliation, and current research topic. It rang a faint bell in Emily's mind, but not enough to mention. She provided her own info, though the first chap was back explaining his latest experiment even before she'd closed her mouth.

He described his setup. The rest of the quartet nodded, sagely. Emily, however, was confused. Determined never to be left in confusion, she asked, "How do you distinguish between those cadherins, and the others that are naturally present?"

The speaker ignored her, and carried on describing his findings. Which sounded impressive -- proof of a new signalling mechanisms always was. If, indeed, it were proof. "Go on, pick holes in that!" he goaded the group.

"Sure." The closest guy thought. "It's a nice experiment. But you have cadherins there by default, right? How do you tell which are which? Do you radio tag them?"

The first guy winced. "We hadn't thought about that, yet. Good call. We should."

The bored-looking man with the bunch of reddish-blond hair spoke. "

She

asked the same thing, five minutes ago." He jabbed his thumb at Emily. "Why didn't you think of it then?"

An awkward silence hung around for a minute, before the first guy carried on talking. He did, to be fair, listen to the next suggestion Emily made, and to a question from the long-haired one, who wasn't satisfied with the answer. Emily tried to clarify the question, but got the impression the talkative guy didn't care.

The long-haired man had mentally checked out, anyway. He scribbled on a business card, then stood up. "Screw that. Don't blame me when it doesn't fucking work. I'm off." He stood up and left, dropping the card onto Emily's lap on the way.

She read it. The name seemed familiar: Richard Pardoe. Though she didn't know anyone at the prestigious LMB, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, situated a few miles outside Cambridge. On the reverse, a scrawl read, 'You ask good questions. Happy to discuss your work any time. Richie.'

Unsure whether to take the compliment at face value, or to write it off as yet another scientific chat-up line, Emily added the card to the collection she'd acquired. Soon, she moved on, to find a group more interested in talking to her.

Back in the larger bar, she noticed Richie's distinctive pigtail. Now, he was animated, discussing something with two older men and a woman. Almost a smile, even. The others appeared equally enthused by the conversation. Emily went over to join them, wondering if they'd welcome a young stranger. She was, at least, dressed to not look like a student. Even if she had been one two months ago.

Richie raised his eyebrows. "Hello, again. Emily, yeah?" To his companions, he said, "She was making sensible queries of Mike Calcott and a couple of his mates, and they just ignored her! He's a knob, I told you!"

"Easy, Rich." The curly-haired chap in his forties put his hand on Richie's arm in almost paternal fashion. "Don't slag people off in public, remember? You never know who you're talking to." To Emily, he hissed in a comic undertone, "This is where you're meant to say you're Mike Calcott's sister. Teach him a lesson!"

"Oh. Yeah. I'm Mike Calcott's sister!" She joined in the joke.

Utterly deadpan, Richie drawled, "You have my utmost sympathy. Also, he doesn't have one. He's

why

there's a stereotype of the spoilt only child."

Giving up and laughing, the man trying to school Richie in manners pretended to slap him. "And once again, you ram through breaches of etiquette by knowing shit! Emily, I'm Dan Beddington, I run a protein structure lab at the LMB. Richie works for me. Learns science lightning-fast; the social skills are a work in progress. I saw that!" -- as Richie stuck two fingers up at him. "This is Heinz, and Gaby, from the Max Planck in Berlin. What are you working on?"

Back to the usual spiel, Emily succinctly summarised her PhD in a sentence, and explained what she was starting to investigate in Montpellier.

She was nervous about being at an earlier career stage than the others, but they all dived in with ideas about where she could take her new work. A few, she'd already decided against, and explained why. Gaby nodded in approval. "That makes sense. I agree. So, then, perhaps you could try...?"

An hour later, she felt she'd successfully acquired new friends, adding three more business cards to her growing collection. And knowing two new lab heads wouldn't hurt. She knew she needed allies to make a science career happen. Heinz bought one round of drinks, Dan the next. Both insisted it was their role. She wouldn't put it past Richie to be socialising with senior staff partly for the free drinks, but certainly he could hold his own in science. Dan, a relaxed guy, treated Richie as an equal, possibly even a protégé, being groomed to outclass him.

"Back to your previous work," Richie said to Emily. "I gave a lecture at your institute last year, when I was trying to schmooze the Structural Biology department." Emily wondered how that might have gone, with some of the more formal types who worked there. "It worked. Dan was there for a few months, while sorting out his place here."

"Oh! I thought you looked familiar," she said to Dan.

"Yeah, I perched in a corner of Sue Jenkins' lab until Karl Moyser finally agreed to retire and open up space for me!" They all chuckled, knowing that the Nobel Prize winner was pushing 80 and still reluctant to leave the bench to younger scientists. "He still pops in almost every day. He'll end up like D'Arcy Hart at Mill Hill -- still propping up the library at the age of 102!"

"Anyway," Richie interrupted forcefully, "did you work with Alexei Chernov or Verity?"

"Verity was my supervisor," Emily confirmed.

"Ah," Richie nodded. "So what happened with that work they were doing on those receptors? I've not seen it published?"

Emily outlined her results and those of the others. "I'm writing up my bit with some of theirs. Verity said I should aim for NCB," -

Nature Cell Biology

, a high profile publication - "but I'm not sure they'll find it exciting enough for their journal."

Richie shrugged. "You've got some solid stuff there. If you write it well -- like, don't leave it to Alexei -- it's got a chance. They took my PhD work, after all. Do you have a draft?"

She nodded. "On my laptop, upstairs."

"I could take a look, if you like? I'd like a read."

"Go for it," Dan advised. "Just remember that talk the

Nature

editors gave us last year."

Richie quoted, "'First, is it sexy? Exciting. Second, is it plausible? Third -- long way third -- is it true?' Yeah. Got to link it to what they care about." He swallowed the last of his pint. "Can I see? I want to know what gives."

"Yeah, all right." With some men -- many men -- she'd have assumed that Richie just wanted to get into a woman's hotel room. But both he and Dan seemed to be only interested in her work. It was a pleasant surprise.

She was also glad the large business-aimed hotel had desks in each room, so her laptop didn't have to sit on the bed. She opened the text file and the various images she'd spent hours finessing, then gestured to Richie to sit down. Oddly, it was then she noticed he was nearly 6 inches taller than her. She watched him read. He had various hoops and dangling earrings in one ear, with studs and a wooden circle round a large hole in the other lobe. She wondered what had made him decide to pick something so hideous. He didn't seem the type to be desperate to prove allegiance with a counter-culture movement. If he were, he'd have at least one tattoo visible, but his plain black T-shirt revealed no such thing, just strong forearms.

"Mm-hm. Hm...? Oh, uh-huh. Ah!" Richie read through the paper with all the interest she hoped a reviewer would show. She sat on the bed to sift through all the cards and reprints and loot she'd acquired over the day. Ten minutes later, Richie turned round.

"What do you think?" She was nearly as nervous as before her PhD

viva

exam.

"Nice work. You've addressed all the possibilities I could think of. The results are great, all explained well. It's just the intro... That's where you've got to grab them, tell them why this is important. You're too reasonable, and nice! Like this is your first submission to them."

"Funny, that," she muttered.

"Sorry. I'm sure you are very reasonable and very nice. But that doesn't count, here! You want to show off. Hit them with your ego. Be an arrogant wanker, like me."

"What?"

"Oh, my reputation hasn't preceded me? 'That arrogant ginger dickhead at the LMB'? No? You haven't missed much. I like to think, I'm only proud of my science. And will do whatever's needed to push that forward. The rest of the time I'm quite inoffensive, except for not suffering fools gladly. But you're not an arsehole, so we should get on fine."

Emily laughed. "I was briefly worried you wanted up here just to get me into bed. Only briefly, though."

Richie's eyes flickered the bed, back to the computer screen, and back to Emily. He tensed up, visibly. "I hadn't thought about that. I mean, I could, if you want..."

"Chill! Um. Yeah. So, the paper! You think the introduction needs a re-write?"

He explained what and why. Emily tried to pay attention.

The problem was, an idea had now been planted in her mind. That '

If you want'...

She wanted a career, too. In the unlikely event that sleeping with someone would help, she was all for it. Only the men who offered weren't the ones whom she'd ever trust to provide assistance. In the meantime, she really wanted Richie's advice. Possibly, then, him?

"Mm." She tried not to sound too hesitant, asking, "So for the concluding sentence, how about, "We propose a novel mechanism for the selective update of..."

"Present." Richie firmly pronounced the verb's second syllable. "You're not just proposing how it

might

work, you're presenting how it

does

work. Yeah."

Emily waved him aside and amended the abstract. "What would be better here, though?"

"I'm not sure what their current obsessions are. Can you get up a recent issue, so we can check some papers what they've just published?" Emily noted the non-standard grammar -- another lower-middle-class kid done good -- and relaxed further.

Unlike in many careers, a posh school didn't help you much in science, but it was still striking how many plummy accents and private-school types held senior positions. Mostly male, of course. It made her feel more conscious of being female, short, young, and from a very average background. From Essex, too, where girls were still stereotyped as slappers in white stilettos, caked in make-up and fake tan.

It was one reason she was wearing a smart suit, to stand out in a good way. She'd always gone for a more natural look, anyway. And never had much chance to screw around. Until taking advantage of Bradley, the night before he'd returned to America. Perhaps, building another connection via sex wouldn't be such a bad idea?

She answered, "They say there's Wi-Fi in the rooms here, but I've not been able to get anything. Even when it connected, it ran slower than a pregnant snail with heavy shopping."

"Elderly snail. Snails lay eggs." His eye crinkled as he said it; it must be intended as a joke. He relaxed when she laughed. His angular pale face had distinctive enough features that he wasn't bad-looking, at all. She wouldn't have picked long hair or the ear decoration herself, but it was his body, not hers. Besides, his hands and forearms looked nice.

Hands, and what a man could do with them, were more important than earlobes. She liked hands...

She focused back on the conversation. "Good point. We could head to the Business Lounge. That's open all night, apparently?"

"And hang out with businessmen? Ugh. If we're going anywhere, we might as well just hit a library."

"Library? At this time of night? It's nearly eleven!"

"I went to Cambridge." Of course he had. "I've still got some keys. Some should work. Take your pick -- Physiology, Genetics, Zoology..."

"Zoology? What were you doing there?"

He chuckled for the first time. "For historical reasons -- the usual, academics always hating each other -- Cellular and Molecular Biology is a subset of the Zoology department. Someone clearly pissed off both Biochemistry and Genetics, back in the day. So yeah, I have a degree in Zoology, despite having never studied any animals in my entire three years!"

"That must take some explaining on the CV..."

"Not, actually. Because also thanks to being set in its ways since the sixteen-hundreds or whatever, Cambridge don't put your subject on your degree certificate. Or your grade, even. So I just say 'Natural Sciences, Biological', which is what I got admitted for: job done. They're all just down the road. Less than five minutes walk, which is one reason why I picked the college next door..."

They headed down to Pembroke Street. "That's the Downing Site, for pharmacology and physio. Ah. That big metal gate's new. Any security about? No. Right, back across the road... Evening," he nodded to a bowler-hatted chap in a booth by the black wrought-iron gate.

"Oh, you again. Evening, sonny, love." They entered a maze of alleyways, where a courtyard of old limestone buildings had had as many modern ones as possible squeezed inside.

"Did you spend a lot of time here during your undergrad? You were in America for the next five years, weren't you?"

"Yes." Emily realised that was an answer to both questions. "Mind your head, don't walk into the whale."

"What wha...?" The twenty-foot whale skeleton hanging from the overhang of a concrete building could really have done with some lights, she thought, narrowly missing head-butting a rib bone.

"This is where we find my card doesn't work any more... Oh, no? Result! But not on the lift? Obviously. It's only two floors. Come on."

"It's remarkably deserted for a campus. Surely there should be some hard-working PhD students or someone about?"

"Dozens. But the lab end of the building has another door, down there. This is next to the biggest lecture theatre. And the Museum -- I can't get you in there, I'm afraid. There's a cosy wee coffee lounge, and some of the latest journals and newspapers. So the main library is deserted by now. The undergrads aren't meant to have keys."

"Not

meant?

You sound like you did."

"Mm. You could get in with a physical key, then. My supervisor let me copy his. Now I'm at the LMB I have a legit one, because I've been roped into supervising a couple third years. I'm told, they're ones with an attitude problem no-one else wants. They're quite sweet, actually. I tell them what's what."

Emily wondered how much Richie saw of himself in them.

"Here we are. OK, you flip through the most recent bound volume, and I'll skim these loose ones. What do all the cell biologists say?"

"Um. 'Membrane proteins comprise around a third of gene products in most organisms, and research is being revolutionised by the structural analysis of increasingly complex macromolecular systems,'" Emily quoted.

"Not bad. See if you can get anything more specific for your molecules. 'Revolutionised' is good, though."

"Overkill, surely? I've not revolutionised anything," she objected.

"Your work is part of the current revolution! The 'zeitgeist'! Nah, that's too wanky a word. Stick to 'revolution'. Hm. 'It is not known how... We report how...'"

"Mm. I suppose we did. I could say..." She suggested a couple new sentences.

"Hm. 'Specifically and reversibly controlled' -- good, except I'm not sure 'controlled' is the right word."

Emily thought. "'Modulated'?"

"Oh, yeah!" His satisfied expression must be very similar to the one he'd have at orgasm. It might just be her gratitude, but now Emily would rather like to see that...