TheDarkestShinobi: Next!

He had gotten an email about accepting a research assistant. There was a program in the school under NSF that had extra funding and claimed to have a student interested in working with him. This was the same place that had sent him Ramona, and Kyle even more years back. He sighed. Gabelhouser would make him take the student unless he had one or a very good reason, and he had neither at the moment.

He had to write his String theory paper now; there was no time for anyone else in his lab. He looked to his whiteboard. He couldn't imagine anyone in his classes being acceptable. Maybe Andy.

She made it a point to be around. Unlike the few before her, she respected all his boundaries and got his food order right. She wouldn't leave it at that though, for everything she did there was something she demanded to know. He liked that thirst for knowledge and he should give her some, after all, who could possibly teach her more than he could. He could ask her if he fell into desperation.

The knock on the door was unexpected. Most of the faculty had left, Andy never came on Fridays and Penny isn't due for another 20 minutes.

"Come in." He announced as he shifted the paper in his hands. He hoped it wasn't someone from the program. He glanced down to the paper; this one didn't have anything else he could quote for his new paper. He placed it to the side as he looked up to see Andy standing by the door.

"Andy, how unexpected."

"Dr. Cooper, may I sit." She gestured to the chair nervously and he nodded.

"You may, I trust you didn't find the new assignment too difficult."

"A bit," she laughed as she sat, the man's assignments were always close to impossible. "but I came here for a different reason."

"Well come on, spit it out." She let out a breath.

"I want to do research with you." She blurted and he waved his hand.

"Oh course you do, no one in their right mind wouldn't."

"I have funding, and you don't have a student" she continued, "and I know a mind such as yourself could use help in papers or verifying mathematical data."

"Interesting." He paused before continuing "NSF."

"Yes." She scratched her neck. "I just received it."

"Do you drive?" She nodded. "and would you be opposed to dropping me off at my apartment whenever we finish here?"

"No. Does that mean you'll take me?" She couldn't contain her excitement and he put up a hand.

"No. That just means I'll consider it. Now I'll expect you here when you are not having class from 9-5 on Monday, excluding 12-1 for lunch or 1-2 if you have class from 12-1." He closed his laptop screen. "Next week is a test period where neither of us will commit to each other." He held up a finger.

"If I accept you then you will be here for the duration of the semester, and possibly longer, so that means that I need to be able to trust you to be honest about commitments, experiments and data."

'You tampered with my experiments!'

He shook his head. "I need to know you will be able to stay no matter what happens between us or how difficult we become to each other. You are encouraged to voice concerns and obligated to double check, but my decisions on papers and experiments and conferences and so on are final."

"I understand."

"Make sure you do." He said rudely. "because I will be investing time into this, and you better prove that you are worth more time than that first week."

"I will." He pulled out his second draw and grabbed the stabled bundle on the top.

"This is a prospective student form. Fill it out and return it to me as soon as possible." She took it and looked to it. "on your own time, I'm not done." Her head snapped up.

"At the end of the first week, should you prove yourself, I'll have us both sign a contract about your workings here including time, NSF payments, confidentially, which professors you are not allowed to work with after me, what you can and cannot say about the lab and research and so on, but we will handle that item when we come across it."

He heard another knock. Boy was he popular.

"Now get out, I'll see you on Monday."

.-.

"Carbon." She whispered after reading the chemical properties on the board. Thomas nodded as he tapped his pencil on the table.

It had been a week and a half since Sheldon actually started teaching her and she had started coming to this class whenever she wasn't working. She had taken a test on Monday from Sheldon and went through it with him on Wednesday. He didn't give her a score, but she could tell he wasn't impressed, even if she did do better than he expected.

This class had offered her more information each day and it helped her understand some electrony things Sheldon spoke on about. Plus Thomas was really smart and she could ask him some things Sheldon said that she couldn't understand. Thomas sat in the same seat every day and she had taken to sitting next to him. When she was done with this class she'd run down the hall to find the whackadoodle waiting with a short lesson plan.

She was right, she learned with joy, it was a Carbon atom, a Carbon 14 which was different than a Carbon 12, she didn't really know why but she got that far.

The professor let them out early, told them to enjoy their weekend and Penny made her way to Sheldon's office. She wondered what he would teach her today. He usually had the door open by now. She knocked.

"Now get out, I'll see you on Monday." Oops. She didn't want anyone to be cutoff. The door opened to reveal a brunette.

"Excuse me," She brushed past her and down the hall and Penny pointed after her.

"Who's that?"

"A potential research assistant. Now sit."

Last time she had learned about the energy states of electrons. Electrons whizzed about the neutrons and protons at different distances in the electron cloud. The reason that different dimensions thoughts came about was the "jump." She understood it like this. Each electron space was like a block and the farther the block was from, let's say the mall, the more energy it had. Electrons existed on blocks, and they could cross streets. Whenever they went to cross a street though, they would appear on the other side. They were never in the street.

"Do you remember what I said before about electrons transitioning between orbitals?" He winced at her explanation but conceded that she did get the key points.

"Today we're going to learn how the shells are filled."

"Well, the 1s is first and then the 2s." She remembered the magnetic balls swirling around.

"then the 2p." She closed her eyes and he turned to watch her. She threw her hands up "That's it, that's all I know."

He drew a diagram, there were different ones other than s and p, there was also a d and f. She also learned that the guy who made the periodic table was a genius.

"So the guy who made this knew all the stuff to organize it that way." Sheldon turned to her

"No. No, these are patterns in nature. This is in order numerically; everything else falls into place." He seemed enamored and for the first time she could understand why. Science was beautiful.

She nodded, there was definitely a crater missing from the top of it then but she wouldn't say anything. Something clicked on the way home.

"Sheldon, are you trying to say that the little transition points are in other dimensions?"

"Yes. I thought that was-"

"So do you know which dimension each shell jumps into?"

"Well, that's hard to say." No it wasn't, she watched his hand twitch out of the corner of her eye. "It's-"

"Sheldon," She interrupted, "you don't have to tell me if you don't trust me or are uncomfortable."

"Oh, thank you." He said in relief and she glanced at him. Really? Not even a 'I trust you I just want to keep my work a secret' or something? She twisted her lip and looked at the road.

"You really know how to make someone feel good." He paused and tilted his head to look at her.

"Sarcasm?" She tapped her nose and he smiled giddily stating his monthly score. She shook her head in response but couldn't help but smile.

.-.

"We'd have to teach the children loop theory." She said as she stretched. He looked over to her from his spot on the bed and grinned.

"You are still stuck on that?"

"Of course." She pulled the blanket up to cover her breasts as she sat up. He sat up as well and nodded.

"If no one proves anything before we have kids, then teach them about the loopy universe to your heart's content."

"I'm glad we agree."

End: Reviews and motivation are proportional!