Chapter Text
Dr. John Smith adjusts his tie nervously. He's in his best suit, the brown pinstriped one, but he'd be much more comfortable if he could only loosen the tie a bit. He doesn't, because he can't bollocks this up. He's arrived early for once at what is the third most important meeting of his life. He still can't figure out how it happened, but he managed to miss his first two proposals by, respectively, a day and, incredibly, a month. His joke that at least it hadn't been a year had not earned him a second appointment at Intel, and the frosty response he had received from Apple had ended his hopes of ever working with them in the future.
He's spent years developing a new CPU design, finally perfecting it after a flash of insight. Now he just needs funding to produce it, and those two industry giants had been his first and second choices. Of course he'd gone to Silicon Valley with his pitch, not even considering staying closer to home until those other options were exhausted. Vital Technologies, or Vitex as it's more commonly known, has long been nipping at the heels of the two American companies, and he knows his new methods could revolutionize the industry and propel Vitex ahead of its competitors. The company is based in London so at least he won't have to relocate if the director likes his proposal.
He hardly notices when a blonde woman joins him in the small waiting room outside of the director's office, he's so busy rehearsing his pitch. She sits down across from him without a word and he hears her snicker gently a few minutes later when he nervously flubs a particularly complicated detail. He looks up, finally noticing her; she's younger than him by several years and dressed in a sharp suit. She's also stunningly beautiful, the kind of beauty who never paid any mind to a slightly awkward geek like him, at least. But she's watching him now, a hint of impatience in her gaze suggesting that she was actually interested in the pitch.
He pushes his glasses up on his nose with the tip of one finger. His gob immediately gets away from him as he starts over from the beginning again, driven by an irrational need to impress her. His technical charts, designs, and projected build times are all arranged for maximum impressiveness and he nails every point. He even manages to throw in a few witty jokes for good measure, smiling each time he is rewarded by the sound of her laughter ringing through the room. She claps politely when he finishes, offering him a tongue touched smile that does very peculiar things to his insides.
"Rose?" the receptionist says as he starts to put his charts and designs back in order. The blonde stands and touches him lightly on the shoulder. "You'll do fine," she says as she walks into the director's office.
A long moment passes before the receptionist turns to him, "They're ready for you, Dr. Smith."
He gathers up all of the charts and graphs and walks into the office. There's an easel he assumes is for his use just inside the door and he catches a shared glance between the man behind the big desk and the blonde from before - Rose - as he ignores them to set up his materials just so. His meeting was supposed to be with Pete Tyler, and he is able to attach the name to the man behind the big desk thanks to a recent tech magazine article. The blonde is a surprise.
She is sitting to Mr. Tyler's right and there's something about her being at the director's right hand that piques his curiosity. He thinks that maybe she's a secretary sitting in to take notes, but there is a confidence in her bearing that has him immediately second-guessing that theory. It's a tiny little mystery he'll gladly look into another time.
His materials sorted, he turns to them and smiles his biggest smile. Both of them look back stoically. Tough crowd, he thinks to himself before launching into the pitch.
The whole thing is over in minutes and they're playing it cool, but he can tell they're impressed. At least he hopes that's what them being impressed looks like.
"Very nice, Dr. Smith." The words are barely out of Mr. Tyler's mouth before Rose is sliding her notepad across the desk between them, the tip of her pen pointing to something she's written there. He's too far away to see anything more than the large, neat loops of her handwriting, but Mr. Tyler leans over, reads, and then looks back up. "How do you expect to solve the cooling issue?"
His stomach plummets. "Cooling issue? There's no cooling issue." Did he not explain himself well enough or is it possible his design is flawed? And if there's a flaw in the design, who is this Rose that she could spot it during the course of a ten minute pitch?
The sound of Rose's pen tapping deliberately on the notepad draws the attention of both men. The director leans over to read again. "Your proposal estimates a fifty per cent increase in processing speed. We've had our best minds trying to do the same thing for years, but we keep hitting a wall: adding more power increases the speed but also increases the heat output by an exponential margin. How do you propose to keep the heat at a manageable level?"
In his nervousness, he skipped over the most important part. He jumps back into action, moving to the easel where he flips through several of the designs before he comes to the one he's looking for. "It's a common misconception that you have to have more power in order to have more speed when, in fact, the converse is true. Sure, if you tweak the power up a little bit you'll gain a few percentage points of speed increase, but as you stated, the heat the CPU puts out becomes unmanageable. What we actually need to do is lower the power to the processor. If we're using fewer electrical impulses to tell the processor how much energy to consume, we've got more space to send data."
The two people on the other side of the room exchange a glance, but he can't decide if it's disbelieving or approving. Without a word, Rose flips her notepad closed and stands. She walks out of the office, passing close enough to him that he nearly follows her out of the room like an affection-starved puppy.
Mr. Tyler clears his throat and John turns back to him, a guilty blush rising up his neck. "Sit down, Dr. Smith, we have some details to discuss."
Less than an hour later, he steps out of the director's office, his head still spinning with amazement at how generous Vitex's new hire package is. He'd accepted immediately, of course - he'd have been a fool not to - and then in the same breath promised a working prototype of his design before the end of his first month of employment.
The receptionist chuckles when she sees him. "H.R. is on the third floor, Dr. Smith. I'll let them know you're coming."
He looks down at himself, realizing that in his haze he's left his materials in the director's office. He turns back to the door but the receptionist's voice stops him. "It will all still be there waiting for you in the morning, Dr. Smith."
He nods and moves to the lifts, jumping out of the way a second later when the doors slide open and a blonde woman steps out. His heart speeds up just a touch at the sight of her blonde hair, but he quickly sees that it's not Rose. This woman is older, and she looks him up and down before dismissing him as she moves towards the director's door. She barely slows before opening it, but she does acknowledge the receptionist's polite, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Tyler," with a tiny nod.
He barely suppresses a shiver as he steps into the lift just before the doors close.