[fic] Mutually Inclusive
Mar. 7th, 2008 04:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crankyoldmanFandom: Original, Archetypicality
Characters/Pairings: Catty, Audrey, people in Catty's department
Rating: PG-13 (more on the PG side)
Summary: Being a scientist and a mother wasn't mutually exclusive, even if sometimes she could make herself doubt that.
Notes: Oddly, despite being part of a "universe" this story is pretty independent. I adore Catty, because she's a Healer at heart and just an overall kind person and I wish more people were like her.
It was a wonder she was there at all.
"That's not very scientific of you." Her colleague was one of those skinny socially inept types that were drawn to solving the mysteries of the universe because the more natural functions of human existence were denied to them. She didn't often like to think ill of anyone, but she'd always figured he was one of the types that burned ants under a magnifying glass.
"No, not really." The widow Catherine Fitzgerald, as she called herself but Catty to everyone else, was a physicist by profession. Since her area of study was small invisible particles that needed massive amounts of material to prove that they existed at all, she was and would always be in some form of academia. Unlike a lot of her colleagues, she enjoyed the atmosphere, especially being around young people. Middle age had been kind to her thus far, and she attributed it to the energy of her freshmen class and the occasional grad student that managed to hold onto their enthusiasm.
"That's it? You really aren't going to defend this 'intuition' of yours?"
Her colleague made her think of how difficult it had been to potty train her son. She would be patient with him too.
"No. But you're welcome to poke as many holes as you want into my current experiment at the next faculty meeting."
There was a reason she'd never gone into the life sciences or other sorts of typical experimental sciences. She couldn't cut anything apart, couldn't see it as components. Catty held a sort of sympathy with String Theory, which was the current joke of the department. She wanted to believe that things were connected, that it was not the mechanical parts that mattered, but the whole creature. That under the quantum chaos there was, well. Something.
Her husband used to say that the job of particle researchers was to rediscover the natural order of things, to take back quantum mechanics from the nihilistic and give it back to the ordinary people. He had been a scientist but had made a sudden move to sociology after receiving his doctorate. When he spoke everyone felt calmer in the room. He never raised his voice but yet he was heard.
It was very obvious why everyone liked Charles. She missed him terribly on days like this, when she couldn't find the words to explain what they dismissed as intuition.
---
"I still think we should talk to our colleagues up north and see if we can get some accelerator time. This department is losing funding, we won't be taken seriously unless we have some conclusive proof--"
"And I still think we just need to wait a little longer. There's no sense in smashing things up and using up the last of our funding when we have a detector." Mothers knew when to interrupt effectively. Letting children go on and on would mean nothing would change, they would still be shouting with only half their clothes on. Some of the other professors would joke with her about being their den mother, the one to go to when things were rough.
It wasn't as much a joke for her, though. Was it so retrogressive to enjoy helping?
It had been seven years now that she'd been working on this particular project--her son was five when they started. If they were right, it was a step closer to the Theory of Everything, a step closer to finally figuring out why something as evident as gravity would not fit in like the other electromagnetic and atomic forces. They themselves had not seen one of the particles, but they almost had, a year ago.
They were looking for particles that interacted with time.
"It would at least put to rest this ludicrous concept before you all ruin your careers." She didn't dislike him, but he was too impatient. And only looking out for his own career. There was a reason that the faculty here had quite a lot of reputation but very few awards. Charles had helped her originally, in finding a department that would be open to the nebulous sorts of things she was drawn to.
Catty had always believed that she never chose the people in her life, they chose her.
"If you are so worried, we can write you a recommendation for somewhere else," the head of the department replied, a good man that liked how the hours at work let him see his grandchildren. If a member of the faculty or graduate pool didn't have families in this department either he or Catty had a tendency of inviting them over for dinners once in a while. Part of the reason a lot of science was occupied with crackpots was they were lonely.
Dr. Fairchilde and she had done a pretty good job curbing this tendency.
The young and impulsive man left the meeting room in a huff. Hopefully the secretary would be able to locate the transfer papers without too much trouble.
---
"Have you mended the rift in space-time yet?"
Most people would find Audrey's occasional seemingly mind-reading knowingness a little off-putting, but then, Catty had always liked rather unusual people. Her roommate had found her because she suspected the girl had never really had much stability. Even with a twelve year old running around and graduate students in and out at random hours, it was still a sort of nicely put together and ordered machine.
"We don't even know where it is, let alone how to fix it."
Besides, Catty liked to think that people needed more putting together than the universe did. Not that she would ever tell anyone, they'd likely laugh and call her naive.
"Pity." And Audrey went back to reading, likely yet another account of her general. While it was true Catty was drawn to certain things, she never quite understood the singular and obsessive focus of the woman, that ability to just tune out everything else. Or maybe she didn't. She had to wonder.
"Eliezer, dinnertime."
"I'm almost done with this level, Mom!"
---
As she packed up her things after her Physics I lecture, she always felt invigorated. Maybe it was being near all that youth, that enthusiasm, but something always made her feel better about that class. Catty wasn't as humanitarian as she would have liked--sometimes people really just needed to be left alone--but undergraduates were nearly always the exception. They didn't want to be left alone.
Catty liked to think that certain women just had the predisposition to be mothers.
She always caught bits of their conversations, plans for illegal drinking, the occasional dissection of the universe as a whole. It was the philosophical ones that made her want to muss up their hair and pat them on the cheek. They took themselves so seriously.
Have you mended it?
It stuck in her mind, strangely. Audrey had this uncanny way of using words that made her think about what she'd said days after. Not always what she had said, but how. There wasn't any conclusive evidence as to an actual rift in time and space, but the notion that something had to be healed before they could understand it, that there was something fundamentally broken so as they didn't have a glimpse of it as it truly functioned...
Well. It was certainly a mental exercise.
"Still trying to fix it all with a smile and a warm drink?"
She spun on her heel, trying to figure out the source of the voice. But students were still bottlenecked at the door, a slow moving crowd due to inadequate planning of the lecture hall. Whoever had said it must have been either young or short, as they faded into the crowd without hardly any trouble. It wasn't Dr. Fairchilde playing a joke on her, his sense of humor was quite different.
Maybe she was just hearing things. She hoped not, the last thing she needed was any sort of mental illness.
---
"Am I approaching things too optimistically, you think?"
The most relaxed Audrey ever managed to be was in the library. Catty found the place slightly dark and claustrophobic herself, and unsettling for a reason she could never pinpoint. Maybe it was because this was the oldest part of the campus and she could imagine all sorts of things that the building could have witnessed. Or maybe it was that there were parts of it that had been closed down to the public. Catty never liked locked doors.
"Are we talking about your research or your life's philosophy?" Audrey looked down at her slightly, in that way tall women could even when sitting down. If she didn't know how undignified the woman could look--particularly when sleeping, all sprawled out and mouth agape--she would have been slightly intimidated. But that was the point.
"The research, of course."
Audrey had sighed when Catty came to her table, gently closing whatever translation of something far too old to bother with she'd been reading. But at least she had her full attention. If she were in a truly bad mood, she wouldn't have bothered to close it.
"Well, I do not think that you are approaching it scientifically. And I am a historian saying this."
"I know, but... there's this divide in the thinking. We can't keep ripping things apart, even if it's--"
"The scientific method?" She arched a severe eyebrow in almost queenly displeasure. Catty really wondered where a person gained such a naturally imperial attitude without being overwhelming.
"No, I was going to say popular."
Audrey leaned forward a little. "Sounds to me like you need to make peace with your dual nature."
Catty made a face. "What dual nature?"
"The Scientist and the Mother," she replied, sitting back again.
"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. There have been..." She trailed off. There were few examples of female scientists, let alone motherly ones. Maybe Audrey had a point. "Those two things don't have to be at odds, at least. Like religion and science."
"But you believe they are at odds. Or we would not be having this conversation."
It was a shame that most people found Audrey's manner off putting. She would have had a brilliant career as a counselor otherwise.
---
"You know, I think we really should look into accelerator time."
Catty hadn't realize she'd interrupted Dr. Fairchilde until it happened. The man who had insisted upon that idea at the last meeting was well on his way to a transfer. But she had really thought about it, really considered it. If she were to be truly as holistic as possible, to take all things into account, observation wasn't enough.
Like a doctor with a good bedside manner, there were ways not to lose the soul of the research.
"Dr. Fitzgerald, I thought you were opposed to that."
"Well, I thought about it some more, and he was right about our funding. We need to have something with a little more sex appeal to it. And smashing things up does tend to help with the investors." Some of the less worldly ones turned a little pink at the word 'sex', which was somewhat humorous. Giving birth pretty much removed any embarrassment that she had in anything related to any of her private parts.
"So, you're saying..."
"I'm not saying give up on the detectors, I'm saying that we could use a little more than them. We may have to alternate our resources on both, or partner up with another group, but we can't just sit and wait. We wouldn't be any better than those poor SETI fools."
Traditionally, her type would automatically be labeled as passive. But anyone that had raised a child as far as the age of twelve knew that there could be no passivity in that role. And maybe not aggression either, but action at the very least.
"Well, I suppose if you could draft a letter to our contacts, we could at least get a better look at what this would take."
She smiled. Dr. Fairchilde always took her input more seriously than others. They were looking after a whole department, after all. Couldn't let the children see too much dissent, or else it was chaos.
"I'll get right on that."
Characters/Pairings: Catty, Audrey, people in Catty's department
Rating: PG-13 (more on the PG side)
Summary: Being a scientist and a mother wasn't mutually exclusive, even if sometimes she could make herself doubt that.
Notes: Oddly, despite being part of a "universe" this story is pretty independent. I adore Catty, because she's a Healer at heart and just an overall kind person and I wish more people were like her.
It was a wonder she was there at all.
"That's not very scientific of you." Her colleague was one of those skinny socially inept types that were drawn to solving the mysteries of the universe because the more natural functions of human existence were denied to them. She didn't often like to think ill of anyone, but she'd always figured he was one of the types that burned ants under a magnifying glass.
"No, not really." The widow Catherine Fitzgerald, as she called herself but Catty to everyone else, was a physicist by profession. Since her area of study was small invisible particles that needed massive amounts of material to prove that they existed at all, she was and would always be in some form of academia. Unlike a lot of her colleagues, she enjoyed the atmosphere, especially being around young people. Middle age had been kind to her thus far, and she attributed it to the energy of her freshmen class and the occasional grad student that managed to hold onto their enthusiasm.
"That's it? You really aren't going to defend this 'intuition' of yours?"
Her colleague made her think of how difficult it had been to potty train her son. She would be patient with him too.
"No. But you're welcome to poke as many holes as you want into my current experiment at the next faculty meeting."
There was a reason she'd never gone into the life sciences or other sorts of typical experimental sciences. She couldn't cut anything apart, couldn't see it as components. Catty held a sort of sympathy with String Theory, which was the current joke of the department. She wanted to believe that things were connected, that it was not the mechanical parts that mattered, but the whole creature. That under the quantum chaos there was, well. Something.
Her husband used to say that the job of particle researchers was to rediscover the natural order of things, to take back quantum mechanics from the nihilistic and give it back to the ordinary people. He had been a scientist but had made a sudden move to sociology after receiving his doctorate. When he spoke everyone felt calmer in the room. He never raised his voice but yet he was heard.
It was very obvious why everyone liked Charles. She missed him terribly on days like this, when she couldn't find the words to explain what they dismissed as intuition.
---
"I still think we should talk to our colleagues up north and see if we can get some accelerator time. This department is losing funding, we won't be taken seriously unless we have some conclusive proof--"
"And I still think we just need to wait a little longer. There's no sense in smashing things up and using up the last of our funding when we have a detector." Mothers knew when to interrupt effectively. Letting children go on and on would mean nothing would change, they would still be shouting with only half their clothes on. Some of the other professors would joke with her about being their den mother, the one to go to when things were rough.
It wasn't as much a joke for her, though. Was it so retrogressive to enjoy helping?
It had been seven years now that she'd been working on this particular project--her son was five when they started. If they were right, it was a step closer to the Theory of Everything, a step closer to finally figuring out why something as evident as gravity would not fit in like the other electromagnetic and atomic forces. They themselves had not seen one of the particles, but they almost had, a year ago.
They were looking for particles that interacted with time.
"It would at least put to rest this ludicrous concept before you all ruin your careers." She didn't dislike him, but he was too impatient. And only looking out for his own career. There was a reason that the faculty here had quite a lot of reputation but very few awards. Charles had helped her originally, in finding a department that would be open to the nebulous sorts of things she was drawn to.
Catty had always believed that she never chose the people in her life, they chose her.
"If you are so worried, we can write you a recommendation for somewhere else," the head of the department replied, a good man that liked how the hours at work let him see his grandchildren. If a member of the faculty or graduate pool didn't have families in this department either he or Catty had a tendency of inviting them over for dinners once in a while. Part of the reason a lot of science was occupied with crackpots was they were lonely.
Dr. Fairchilde and she had done a pretty good job curbing this tendency.
The young and impulsive man left the meeting room in a huff. Hopefully the secretary would be able to locate the transfer papers without too much trouble.
---
"Have you mended the rift in space-time yet?"
Most people would find Audrey's occasional seemingly mind-reading knowingness a little off-putting, but then, Catty had always liked rather unusual people. Her roommate had found her because she suspected the girl had never really had much stability. Even with a twelve year old running around and graduate students in and out at random hours, it was still a sort of nicely put together and ordered machine.
"We don't even know where it is, let alone how to fix it."
Besides, Catty liked to think that people needed more putting together than the universe did. Not that she would ever tell anyone, they'd likely laugh and call her naive.
"Pity." And Audrey went back to reading, likely yet another account of her general. While it was true Catty was drawn to certain things, she never quite understood the singular and obsessive focus of the woman, that ability to just tune out everything else. Or maybe she didn't. She had to wonder.
"Eliezer, dinnertime."
"I'm almost done with this level, Mom!"
---
As she packed up her things after her Physics I lecture, she always felt invigorated. Maybe it was being near all that youth, that enthusiasm, but something always made her feel better about that class. Catty wasn't as humanitarian as she would have liked--sometimes people really just needed to be left alone--but undergraduates were nearly always the exception. They didn't want to be left alone.
Catty liked to think that certain women just had the predisposition to be mothers.
She always caught bits of their conversations, plans for illegal drinking, the occasional dissection of the universe as a whole. It was the philosophical ones that made her want to muss up their hair and pat them on the cheek. They took themselves so seriously.
Have you mended it?
It stuck in her mind, strangely. Audrey had this uncanny way of using words that made her think about what she'd said days after. Not always what she had said, but how. There wasn't any conclusive evidence as to an actual rift in time and space, but the notion that something had to be healed before they could understand it, that there was something fundamentally broken so as they didn't have a glimpse of it as it truly functioned...
Well. It was certainly a mental exercise.
"Still trying to fix it all with a smile and a warm drink?"
She spun on her heel, trying to figure out the source of the voice. But students were still bottlenecked at the door, a slow moving crowd due to inadequate planning of the lecture hall. Whoever had said it must have been either young or short, as they faded into the crowd without hardly any trouble. It wasn't Dr. Fairchilde playing a joke on her, his sense of humor was quite different.
Maybe she was just hearing things. She hoped not, the last thing she needed was any sort of mental illness.
---
"Am I approaching things too optimistically, you think?"
The most relaxed Audrey ever managed to be was in the library. Catty found the place slightly dark and claustrophobic herself, and unsettling for a reason she could never pinpoint. Maybe it was because this was the oldest part of the campus and she could imagine all sorts of things that the building could have witnessed. Or maybe it was that there were parts of it that had been closed down to the public. Catty never liked locked doors.
"Are we talking about your research or your life's philosophy?" Audrey looked down at her slightly, in that way tall women could even when sitting down. If she didn't know how undignified the woman could look--particularly when sleeping, all sprawled out and mouth agape--she would have been slightly intimidated. But that was the point.
"The research, of course."
Audrey had sighed when Catty came to her table, gently closing whatever translation of something far too old to bother with she'd been reading. But at least she had her full attention. If she were in a truly bad mood, she wouldn't have bothered to close it.
"Well, I do not think that you are approaching it scientifically. And I am a historian saying this."
"I know, but... there's this divide in the thinking. We can't keep ripping things apart, even if it's--"
"The scientific method?" She arched a severe eyebrow in almost queenly displeasure. Catty really wondered where a person gained such a naturally imperial attitude without being overwhelming.
"No, I was going to say popular."
Audrey leaned forward a little. "Sounds to me like you need to make peace with your dual nature."
Catty made a face. "What dual nature?"
"The Scientist and the Mother," she replied, sitting back again.
"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. There have been..." She trailed off. There were few examples of female scientists, let alone motherly ones. Maybe Audrey had a point. "Those two things don't have to be at odds, at least. Like religion and science."
"But you believe they are at odds. Or we would not be having this conversation."
It was a shame that most people found Audrey's manner off putting. She would have had a brilliant career as a counselor otherwise.
---
"You know, I think we really should look into accelerator time."
Catty hadn't realize she'd interrupted Dr. Fairchilde until it happened. The man who had insisted upon that idea at the last meeting was well on his way to a transfer. But she had really thought about it, really considered it. If she were to be truly as holistic as possible, to take all things into account, observation wasn't enough.
Like a doctor with a good bedside manner, there were ways not to lose the soul of the research.
"Dr. Fitzgerald, I thought you were opposed to that."
"Well, I thought about it some more, and he was right about our funding. We need to have something with a little more sex appeal to it. And smashing things up does tend to help with the investors." Some of the less worldly ones turned a little pink at the word 'sex', which was somewhat humorous. Giving birth pretty much removed any embarrassment that she had in anything related to any of her private parts.
"So, you're saying..."
"I'm not saying give up on the detectors, I'm saying that we could use a little more than them. We may have to alternate our resources on both, or partner up with another group, but we can't just sit and wait. We wouldn't be any better than those poor SETI fools."
Traditionally, her type would automatically be labeled as passive. But anyone that had raised a child as far as the age of twelve knew that there could be no passivity in that role. And maybe not aggression either, but action at the very least.
"Well, I suppose if you could draft a letter to our contacts, we could at least get a better look at what this would take."
She smiled. Dr. Fairchilde always took her input more seriously than others. They were looking after a whole department, after all. Couldn't let the children see too much dissent, or else it was chaos.
"I'll get right on that."