Poster time in the garden of good and evil

"Candy-ass eukaryotes can't even organize their shiz without putting a membrane around it. Prokaryotes are the way to go, my friend."

Allie's left foot edged itself another ten centimeters away from Jim's wobbly toupee and Bermuda shorts. If she stayed in his presence any longer, her limbs would soon take her screaming out of the tropical conference hall.

Allie daydreamed about the value of things, and decided that an opportunity to schmooze with an award donor wasn't worth the odor wafting from this living fossil. It was even worse to consider that he was the guy who had derailed her aunt Rosealia's career forty years earlier. Still, Allie had busted her butt getting her presentation together, and she'd be damned if she didn't collect on the prize at the end of the conference.

It took her ears fifteen seconds to register that the droning had paused. It took her eyes five more seconds to conclude that the bluish tinge of her ex-conversation-mate's forehead was not a good thing--and about three milliseconds to realize that she had planted her foot on his oxygen hose during his monologue.

It seemed like as good an opportunity as any to make her exit.

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.