Mid May

Work Life

"Medium house roast and medium hot chocolate!" Could be heard clearly over the light drone of the coffee shop. Jeremy approached the counter and picked up his and Aelita's drinks. "Enjoy the coffee Jeremy, and have a good day," the barista called out to the young genius while she waved to Aelita, who was holding a table and waved back.

"Thanks Amanda, you too," replied the young genius with a smile before heading back to his fiancé. When he arrived at the table, he sat down after handing off the hot chocolate to his waiting fiancé, who accepted it eagerly.

"Thank you, Jeremy." Aelita took a sip of the sweet beverage and grinned widely. The two of them spent the next little while enjoying their drinks while going over some minor details in their wedding plans. Eventually though, it was time for them to go head out.

"Bye Aelita, have a good day at work," said Jeremy before they left.

"Thanks Jeremy, you too." The tall blond looked at his fiancé skeptically. "At least try to have a good day," Aelita encouraged, eliciting a sigh from Jeremy.

"I'll try..." Aelita kissed his cheek and they went their separate ways.

"Belpois! Have you re-calibrated that ECG simulator yet!?" Shouted a man from behind Jeremy, causing the young genius to scowl. Forcing a neutral expression to his face, he turned around to address a tall, gaunt man in a too-big lab coat and thinning gray hair... his 'mentor.'

"Yes, Dr. Lowell. I also made sure..."

"Good, and it had better be done right!" The older man stormed off and Jeremy glared at the back of his receding head.

"You've only got another two months, Jeremy." Jeremy sighed and turned around to see the small, wiry frame of Paul Lantz, one of the other tech's leaning against the wall. "The way I see it, you're lucky... I've still got over a year left with the jerk!" The tall blond cracked a slight grin.

"Hey, I did my time! Besides, we both signed up for it." He joked.

"Dr. Henry Lowell may be at the top of his field, but if I knew he was like this I'd have made sure to look elsewhere!" The two techs laughed. "Besides, we all know you could run this lab. I think he's extra hard on you because he sees you as a threat."

"Thanks for that, but as soon as I get my PhD, I'm outta here!" Jeremy said with a chuckle.

"Take me with you... please!" Paul said with a pout. His mop of brunette hair and the way he widened his brown eyes strongly reminded Jeremy of a puppy.

"Ok, ok, fine! If I can, I will. Just stop looking at me like that!" The tech's face brightened up for a moment.

"BELPOIS!" Dr Lowell's voice was heard from across the lab making Jeremy groan.

"I guess I see what Dr. Grouchy wants me to calibrate now..."

"Aelita!" The pink haired young woman turned her head toward the excited voice just in time to see her mentor Dr. Aditi Singh, a small, middle aged Indian woman with brown hair and eyes, sliding to a stop.

"What is it Dr. Singh?" Asked Aelita. Dr. Singh took a moment to catch her breath.

"After two years of requisition, and four months of assembly and setbacks, the computer is finally ready!" Aelita turned her body and full attention toward the speaker.

"You mean the quantum supercomputer, right?" The young genius asked excitedly.

"Yes!" The doctor replied with flourish. "We go check it out!" Aelita turned back to the computer console she was working at.

"Yeah! Let me just..."

"You do that later, we go now!" The energetic woman wrapped her arm around Aelita's shoulders and started dragging her away and down the hall. After a short moment of protest, Aelita laughed and followed her mentor.

A few minutes later the two women walked out of the elevator and into the facility's basement.

"Ready?" Asked Dr. Singh, similar to a child showing off a new toy.

"Uh huh!" Aelita exclaimed with a grin and The older woman opened the door and passed through with her protege in tow.

The quantum supercomputer was a large mass of complicated wires, lights, tanks, and other associated hardware. While visually it looked nothing like her fathers, knowing that she finally had easy access to a machine with similar capabilities felt rather surreal to Aelita. The pink haired young woman walked up to the control console and gently placed her hand on top of the display monitor.

"May I?" she asked eagerly.

"Yes, but you break, you buy!" The Indian woman exclaimed with a chuckle.

After fetching a nearby stool, Aelita started rapidly typing in the code for a program to simulate relatively simple Hydrogen Wave Functions with Dr. Singh watching over her shoulder. After around fifteen minutes of programming, she took a minute to look over her work.

"Ok, Finished," she said with a satisfied grin.

"I'm always impressed at how good you at code," replied her mentor.

"Thanks Dr. Singh, I'm going to start now." Aelita booted up the program, and at first it ran flawlessly, and faster than any computer she's ever seen besides her father's. Unfortunately, after a few minutes, a red error flashed on the screen and the program crashed! "What happened!" she exclaimed. "It couldn't have been my program!" Dr. Singh chuckled and pointed out a lit red indicator on a nearby control panel labeled: Maximum Decoherence Limit.

"Looks like it still needs some calibrating. That ok," said Dr Singh, making Aelita frown. While she knew her father had a lot more time to work on his supercomputer, it seemed like it was a lot more stable of a machine. Sighing, she realized that there was still a lot of work to be done before she was anywhere near being able to replicate the work of Waldo Schaeffer. For the rest of the day, she and her mentor spent the rest of the day calibrating qubit entanglement arrays, and testing the associated vacuum chambers.

After work, Jeremy and Aelita happened to arrive at their recently leased apartment at the same time. While they smiled upon seeing each other, they could each tell that the other didn't have a good day.

"Hi Jeremy, you look like you've had quite the day..." Jeremy walked up and kissed her cheek.

"Dr. Lowell was in rare form today..." Aelita groaned as the two of them walked into their front room. She met the man at a couple of Jeremy's work functions, and he wasn't any more charming there than at work. "It's alright. Not much longer then I can leave! How about you? You look like you've had a day yourself..." he added before flopping down on their second-hand couch and putting his feet up on one of the many unpacked boxes littering the floor. Aelita sat down next to him and snuggled into his side.

"The assembly of the quantum supercomputer was finally completed today." Jeremy's face lit up.

"That's amazing!" When he saw that his fiance didn't seem quite so enthusiastic, his excitement fell away. "That's good... right?"

"Yeah, it is," Aelita replied with a sigh. "I was really looking forward to finally being able to run some real tests here, but it needs constant calibration to continue functioning! It seems to have a comparable level of processing power as my father's but in terms of stability, Daddy's makes this one look like a prototype in testing!"

"Really..." groaned Jeremy. "It looks your father wasn't just ahead of his time, but ours as well."

"Uh huh."

The two of them cuddled on the couch for another few minutes, but soon they got up to prepare dinner. Though their days were frustrating and/or disappointing, spending time cooking together had them feeling better by the time their meal was ready, and they were able to enjoy the rest of the evening together.

A/N: I'm really sorry that this one is so late, and for it being so short. The first couple weeks after my last chapter I just felt really burnt out, and I wasn't very excited about this chapter. I meant to finish it last weekend, but I wasn't feeling well. Hopefully, next chapter will be a bit easier to come out. Anyway, I hope you liked the chapter.