Abstraction ➳ Owen Grady

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THIRTEEN KILOMETERS BELOW the Boeing 777 was nothing but a deep unexplored abyss. Alysanne looked out of the small window once while over the Atlantic and felt her stomach fill with dread. Her grip on the armrests of the business class seat had been white-knuckled since then and would be for another hour before the darkness swallowed the plane and the ocean was no longer distinguishable.

The landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport had been a rough, rude awakening at 6:39 a.m. and the cab ride to her lodgings on the edge of Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University had been long and tiresome with the stop and go traffic that never seemed to cease. Her lecture was in a couple hours and like always she wasn't able to sleep as nerves and anxiety got the better of her.

A Cambrian Peak in Morphological Variation Within Trilobite Species was the title of the lecture and recently published paper. She had lost track of how many times she checked her laptop and thumb drive to be sure that the presentation was there during the flight. Alysanne Sattler had already given this lecture a dozen times over in her head and knew the information better than the back of her hand but she still got nervous. Ellie had told her that if she wasn't nervous about telling others her findings then she either hadn't found anything or didn't know the material well enough.

Undergraduates and grad students alike sat side by side in the rotunda lecture hall. The flyers and announcements had even drawn some people that weren't a geoscience major. Dr. Bousquet, one of her colleagues and friend from her time at CalTech, stood in front of the podium. He always had an air of confidence and a polished appearance that demanded respect. Silence fell over the hall as he began with the introductions and formalities, then he extended his hand to where she sat, "I'd like to introduce you all to a good friend and our guest lecturer for today, Dr. Sattler."

The title slide flashed up on the two projection screens and the lights of the rotunda dimmed as she cleared her throat and began. The slides passed by quickly with pictures of the dig sites and fossils, some microscopic, and others more than two feet long. Then came her brief summary that could have spared some from the forty minute talk. "Through ecological and developmental influences on evolutionary tempo, high intraspecific variation may have played a major role in the pronounced Cambrian diversification of trilobites." Dr. Bousquet began the applause and the hall quickly followed, some more genuine than others.

Ally pulled out her phone, checked the time, and set it on the podium along with her lecture notes. "I believe we have time left for questions. No need to raise your hand, just yell them out." This was always the part she dreaded the most, most of the time, the questions were simpler, just repeating tidbits of information from the talk or defining some terms, others were far more complex and left her without a feasible answer, only more questions, and then there was always that one person who asked something along the lines of: "What was Jurassic Park like?"

She didn't know how Ellie or Allan could stand being asked those questions all the time. "You would have to ask my aunt that question," came her monotone and uninterested answer. It was clear then that the lecture and question session was over unless others came afterward with their questions.

Matthis Bousquet sat outside a quiet café that faced the Seine River, a stack of midterm evaluations on the small table. Ally skimmed over those that had already been graded, laughing at some of the obviously wrong answers and silently appreciating those that were correct and well thought out.

When a tray of assorted pastries was delivered, along with two lattes, she absently pulled the crumpled business card from her pocket and began fiddling with it to pass the time. "What's that?" Matthis asked, remembering how in some classes she would fidget with a chewed pen cap. Not realizing what she was doing, Ally handed over the card. "Jurassic World, huh?"