Buffer? I hardly even know 'er!

Britt chose to break the news to Lev behind the dumpsters, just after the gates clanked shut. Lev was struggling with the spigot, and didn't see her grin.

Aghast, he turned to her. "Are you sure--sure--that she was nicking my buffers?"

Nod. Britt's electric-purple hair bobbled in the cascading fog as she screamed the news. "Last Tuesday! I took a nap after the Margarita Mixer, and I guess she didn't notice me on the gel room floor...."

"Well, that's the last time she...wait, I think it's done." Lev screwed the valve closed on the liquid nitrogen, and silence crashed down, disturbed only by the burble of the full dewar and the squeak of their now-frozen sneaker soles on the concrete floor.

"Where was I? Right! Revenge...or at least introducing a bit of responsibility here. Perhaps it's time to put some tequila in her buffer ingredients..."

And thus began the buffer wars of 2012.

Sex-lethal

"...so you can imagine our delight that this seemingly innocuous mutation has in fact induced a dramatic shift in the helix..."

Jim held back a grin as Rosealia droned through her poster. She had shown him the missing data to confirm his new theory, just 48 hours before his keynote talk. And so Jim flirted, fawned, and slept his way into her good graces. Nothing was going to stop him from getting those results, decency be damned.

For weeks afterwards, Jim was still getting congratulations by email. Perhaps his actions were indiscreet--and Rosealia's furious glare from the front row suggested that she agreed--but he had just guaranteed his future career. And he had never placed much value on friendship.