Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            What a plan.

            With a sigh, I pull out my 2013 MacBook Pro. (Decrepit, Cece calls it. I prefer vintage. Still, the number of high-performance computing simulations I’ve been able to run in the past year is zero.) In love and war everything’s fair, and this is bloodshed. So I allow myself something not quite kosher: I look up the competition.

            The physics community is weirdly sized: not so small that we’re all bosom friends, not so large that we can overlook someone’s existence. Especially someone good enough to make the final round of an MIT interview. Take me: my claim to fame, what got me on Monica’s radar, is my dissertation—a bunch of mathematical formulas that predict the behavior of two-dimensional liquid crystals. They are special, multitudes-containing materials, with properties of both liquids and solids, of mobility and stasis, of chaos and organization. Like me, basically. And my favorite part about them is that the very multitudes they contain may have led them to play a key role in the origins of life, by helping build the first biomolecules on Earth.

            Riveting, I know. Just wait for the movie adaptation.

            But it did get some buzz, because what Monica said is also true: the possible applications of my research are nearly infinite. For my work, I got one of those Forbes STEM awards that only people not in STEM care about, and I was interviewed on a couple of podcasts downloaded by more than just the host’s extended family. One of my Nature Physics articles was even featured on the cover. The research groups at Northeastern started giving me covetous glances and stopped asking me to make coffee—only fair, since I don’t even drink it. Cece got me a “Great women of science” T-shirt with my portrait sandwiched between Alice Ball’s and Ada Lovelace’s. My parents . . . Well, my family didn’t react to any of it, because they were busy dealing with a tax audit or something. But Dr. L., who’s family in any way that counts, patted me on the back, told me that I was the most promising theorist of my generation, and assured me that I’d have my pick of tenure-track positions out of grad school.

            And any other time, it might have even been true. But these times are unprecedented—hiring freezes, systematic defunding of higher education, adjunctification. And a few weeks ago, when the Forbes journalist contacted me to do a “where are they now” follow-up story, I had to tell her that no, it wasn’t a mistake: I hadn’t published in months, my research had stalled, and I had not been able to get a cool job at a top institution. In fact, I was lucky to find any job. Even one whose description is academia’s little bitch.

            George the Chosen Experimentalist, though . . . I have no idea what his claim to fame is, and he doesn’t ring any bells. So I google the devil I know: Jack. He has a Wikipedia entry—I refuse to give it hits on principle—and a Google Scholar page—which I must click on, but do so while gagging. I try not to notice how much I have to scroll down to get to the bottom of his publication list, mutter “Show-off,” then start combing through his coauthors.

            I find a Gabriel. Gayle. Giovanni. Gunner (really?). Georgina Sepulveda, a physics superstar whose work I’ve been stanning for years (I choose to think she collaborated with Jack under duress and donated all proceedings to the local animal shelter). After a minute, I come across the elusive George—George Green. He’s on two low-impact articles—both recent, both with Jack. There’s next to no online trace of him, but he just finished his postdoc at Harvard and posts on physics subreddits under his real name.

            “Seriously?” This guy’s being interviewed? Whatever strings Jack had to pull, I’m going to cut them one by one with my poultry shears. His mediocre love child doesn’t stand a chance—

            My phone rings. I jolt and immediately pick up—Greg. Finally.

            “Hey! I—”

            “I need your help.”

            I swallow a groan. “Hi, Mom.” I’ve made a lethal mistake.

            “The situation is dire. You need to rein in your brothers.”

            After two and a half decades of APE, I can safely state that the Elsie my mom wants is a droid. She’s powerful, mobile, financially soluble. She successfully quenched her earthly needs and lives in a state of perennial prosperity. Her main purpose is to score prestige points when Aunt Minnie brags about her son who almost finished law school. Her secondary purpose? To intervene when two idiots decide to embark on months-long feuds over stuff that, historically, has included:

                                                  who gets the front seat in the car