I'm Dr Paul Adams. I'm in my mid-twenties and quite fit. I'm a scientist, and good at my work. I have a gift of concentration and can focus on the thing I'm working on to the total exclusion of all else.
If you want to talk to me while I'm at work, don't bother knocking on the door. I won't hear you. I'll also ignore little details like a voice speaking to me or a tap on the shoulder. If you really want my attention, your best bet is to move between me and whatever I'm currently studying.
Just be sure that you really need to talk to me because when I turn to you, you become the focus of my concentration, and you'll find I can learn a lot more than you intended to tell me by reading your body language.
Also, I don't suffer fools gladly. Michelle is a fool, always playing her silly little games. She's officially a secretary at work, a glorified name for an idiot who happens to be the general dogsbody. Very nice figure on her, I will say that much, and she dresses to advertise, if you know what I mean.
-- -
Hi. I'm Michelle. I work as a secretary for an R&D firm. Actually, when I say secretary, I'm more of a general assistant for anyone who needs a hand. A lot of my work seems to involve tracking down old records. This place had a heap of old paper files in one of the store rooms. I keep telling my boss he should get someone to scan the whole lot onto the computer. (Preferably not me.)
I get on well with everyone in the place except for Dr Adams. He's one of the top researchers. A weird guy, about twenty-five, going on seventy-five. He's awfully rude, too. He just ignores everyone while he's working, and he's always working.
The old records are stored on the floor he runs and theoretically he's in charge of them. Because he's officially in charge of the records I make it a point to interrupt him whenever I have to access them to let him know that I'm doing so. He absolutely hates that, but I just smile and act dumb.
-- -
Theoretically it was lunch time, but Michelle had arranged to work through her lunch break so that she could leave an hour early. Her boss didn't mind as, with a bit of luck, she could dig up the old files he needed before he returned from lunch.
Michelle headed up to the records floor and gleefully interrupted Dr Adams. She had just known he'd be working through his lunch break, thinking there'd be no interruptions. Sorry to spoil your day, doc, she laughed to herself.
One of these days when work was slack she was really going to have to come up to this stupid storeroom and start sorting it out. It would be so much easier if the files were in a decent order. She wondered if she could get work to spring for some decent filing cabinets instead of all these dusty old boxes stacked all over the place? Highly unlikely. The only one inconvenienced by it all was her.
The worst files to access were in the boxes under the work-bench. Checking the files she had to locate, Michelle sighed. She had a working knowledge now of where certain types of file were likely to be, and suspected that she knew where these files would be. In short order she was pulling out boxes from beneath the work-bench, leaning over the nearest to reach the ones further back.
