Science  Write  Now

Outside, the trees rustle. Inside, the apartment is still, except for a light tapping of nails on the keyboard and the digital chime of channels being flicked through monotonously on the TV. Cassidy and Jen are sprawled across the large couch in the living room. Cassidy—tall, pale and dark haired—is focused on the laptop sitting in her lap. Jen—short, red haired and dark eyed—lazes on the cushions, legs stretched out and resting on the back of the couch, and fiddles with a hair tie in one hand.

“How much longer are you going to drive yourself crazy with whatever you’re working on?” she asks, flicking the hair tie up at the ceiling and barely managing to catch it when it falls.

Cassidy sighs. “I don’t know. I have a tonne of data, and none of it’s helpful.” She glances across, eyes slightly narrowed, though Jen is too preoccupied to notice. She knows it’s only a matter of time before the hair tie comes flying towards her.

“You were just telling me yesterday that these data were going to fix like…all of your crazy physics problems?”

Jen sees all physics like that. Crazy. And at the present moment, Cassidy has to admit she might be onto something.

“Well, it didn’t,” she says. “And I don’t know why.” Jen flicks over a particularly loud channel that pulls her focus away for a short moment.

“You'll be fine Cass, you always are. And besides, isn't physics meant to be hard? If it wasn't, people like you wouldn't have anything fun to prove and experiment with and whatever.”

Jen always has that same air of confidence. The same air of confidence she’d had when she missed her flight to Europe to see her family. She’d told Cassidy she’d just ‘catch the next one.’ No big deal. Not stressful at all. “Just don't forget we have to eat at some point tonight.”

At this, Cassidy huffs quietly. She probably should take a break and cook something, but on the other hand, she has to keep going if she wants to achieve anything meaningful. Jen can cook if she really wants.

“I kind of have other things to do,” Cassidy says, calmly. “I was just gonna order takeout, but if you would like to cook you are more than welcome to do so.”

Jen rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll order something later. Since you’re so busy.”

Cassidy forces a laugh. “Look at you being all self sufficient. Gold star, Jen!”

Jen shoots her a dirty look, but then they fall back into the same easy rhythm they’ve had for years—Jen half watching the TV and flicking her hair tie up at the roof, and Cassidy continues madly typing and pretending that her roommate isn’t driving her insane.

“Dr Verity?” Cassidy leans her head around the door to look into his office. It had to be at least three times bigger than the one she shared with five other students, and had dozens of shiny awards and certificates plastered across its walls.

“Yes, Cassidy?” He glances up from his computer for a second, long hair framing his face and glasses perched on the end of his nose.

“Do you have a moment? I really need to talk to you about the results from our last experiment.” But Dr Verity shakes his head, drawing a breath through gritted teeth. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I have a meeting in a few minutes. But Dr Connors is in his office. If it’s really me you need to speak to though, you can come find me tomorrow.” He looks back at the screen in front of him.

He clearly has better things to be doing. And maybe it isn’t really that important. Maybe she just has to keep working until she finds something that makes it important.

“Okay thank you.” She leaves, but it’s him she needs to speak to. Dr Connors is barely aware of the existence of her project. He also isn’t impossible to get a few minutes with.

The 4th floor is quiet, which isn’t unusual, but it’s the first time Cassidy has bothered to take note of it in the last few weeks. She’s been too busy to notice. At the end of the hall, a woman sits at a desk with a computer, a lot of paper and a focused expression that doesn’t look easily broken.

“Good morning,” she says, keeping her eyes trained on the computer, “Who are you looking for?”

“Dr Verity?”

“He’s not here today. Symposium, should be back tomorrow. Have a great day.” The woman barely looks at Cassidy for more than a second.

As Cassidy walks back to her own office, she wonders—how long this is going to take?

Bright fluorescent lights illuminate Cassidy’s small office as she stands with Dr Verity. After she tried and failed to hunt him down yesterday, she had come back to work even more determined. Had she resorted to…questionable methods to find him? Maybe, but that’s not what’s important in this moment.

“Something about this data just isn’t adding up,” she says. “It doesn’t even come close to having a logical explanation.” She picks up a pile of papers in front of her and flicks through them rapidly, doesn’t have time to waste—this conversation has taken almost a week to organise…and a lot of lurking in hallways in desperate hopes of catching Dr Verity at the right time.

“And you’re sure it’s not a mistake?” Dr Verity says, too politely.

“Well I don’t even know where to start, that’s the problem. I know something’s not right, but I don’t know what. In all fairness it could absolutely be something trivial or a random error, but it doesn’t seem like that. If there was a mistake it would be…like…” she trails off, shifting her weight onto one leg and scuffing at the carpet with the other. “It’d just be different. I don’t think I’m really making sense.”

Dr Verity smiles and crosses his arms. “Sadly I do have to agree with you there, Cassidy.” He laughs lightly as he speaks. “You’re not really making sense right now, but that’s what this is about isn’t it? Figuring stuff out?”

Cassidy nods. The papers are suddenly heavy, and she drops them back onto the desk in front of her. “I guess so.”

“Keep at it Cass, and come find me when you’ve got some answers, or even if you just need a bit of help,” Dr Verity says cheerfully, patting her shoulder lightly as he walks away.

She needs help now, but also … she doesn’t. She needs to prove herself. She needs answers, but finding them feels like more of an if than a when at this point. What else is she supposed to do? She can’t go without an explanation. She can’t let people think she’s failed.

“I just don’t want this whole thing to turn into a massive waste of time. What if I never figure it out?”

“Cass I think you just need to take a break and come back to it when you’re not…you know…” her sister trails off.

“What, crazy?”

“No…I just think you need some fresh perspective. You could always ask Dad to—”

“Absolutely not,” Cassidy cuts her off, probably too harshly. “That would only make this worse.”

“I know you think that, but he is a quantum physicist—”

“I don’t care what he is, Lana. I don’t need his advice and I don’t need people thinking that I can’t do my job without my dad’s help.”

“Okay fine, but just think about at least?”

“Not a chance.” Cassidy looks around her office and realises how late it’s getting. The sun has long gone and the lights of the surrounding city have slowly started flickering to life. “Sorry, I’ve really got to go.”

“Okay, talk soon,” Lana says, gently. “Bye Cass.”

Cassidy ends the call quickly and shoves her phone in her pocket. She thought getting someone else’s opinion on all of this would help, but it really hasn’t. She should know better at this point. Anytime she so much as mentions her job or physics or research it’s always the same. Your dad wrote a paper about that you know. Why don’t you get your dad to look over that report? Your dad’s been doing this a lot longer than you, Cassidy. She doesn’t need his help and she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want people thinking she’s only gotten this job because her father pulled some strings. She just wants to prove that she can be successful herself. That she can contribute to this field just as much as he has. She just wants to show she can do it.

The piles of paper and folders that Cassidy has surrounded herself with keep her hidden from the outside world. Almost. She wonders if this project will be the end of her. It can’t be, she so desperately wants it to be something amazing but…how is she supposed to make that happen? The more days that she doesn’t make progress, the more her anxiety builds. The nagging in her stomach, guilt eating away at her, ideas tormenting her and dragging her back to her work at all hours of the day. She knows it’s not that serious. It’s just anxiety making her feel like nothing else is even remotely important. But even being aware of it doesn’t seem to matter.

A shuffle from outside her office door and a flicker of light from the gap below it grabs at her attention. By the time she looks up, it’s gone. Almost as if someone was about to knock. Just another distraction.

The outside world faded away some time ago. Cassidy feels her entire body aching as she sits at what has become more of a mountain of documents, sketches and calculations than a workspace. Her phone had buzzed a few times but she couldn’t quite remember what pile it was under. It couldn’t have been that important. Despite the noisy bustle of the physics department, Cassidy's cramped office is morbidly quiet. Endless screens of numbers make her eyes burn and she's only vaguely aware of the hunger that pangs her stomach. It’s 2pm or 5pm or maybe 6:30 when there’s a loud tap at the door.

“Come in.” Her voice is hardly louder than a whisper, she hasn’t had much use for it today.

A tall young man comes in. “Hey, Cass,” he says, lifting up a paper to skim over it. “How’s the project coming along?” His floppy brown hair half covers his eyes and probably isn’t particularly workplace health and safety compliant. Especially in a lab.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Is the world ending?”

“No, Tyler, it is not.” Her voice is bitter and she rolls her eyes but both of them know the other is joking…mostly. “My last experiment produced all of these data, but nothing makes any sense.”

“Tell me.” He leans forward against the desk.

“Well I mean I was in the room when we started the experiment and I saw, with my own eyes, that all of these numbers were elevated,” she explains, spinning her laptop around to show him. “But now all of the data from the monitoring devices are completely different, and I have no idea why! I’ve been trying to find literally anything to explain the data but it’s been stable and completely untouched for the last 4 days. I think I’m driving Jen insane. She’s banned me from talking about physics at all.”

“So she’s torturing you?”

Cassidy has to laugh.

“Look Cass,” says Tyler, “I know you’re frustrated but you’ll get there eventually. In the whole three years I’ve known you, there’s never been a problem you haven’t been able to explain. I’m sure this time’s no different.”

“Thanks, man.”

“I do have to admit though, your thing kind of sounds like one of those paradoxes they used to try and teach us about, like time dilation and the observer effect. Kind of like Schrodinger's cat…but less fun.”

“And what part of Schrodinger's cat is meant to be fun? It's a dead cat.”

“Well, none of it really…it just seems better than whatever you’ve got going on here.” Tyler motions to her desk and the general chaos that envelops it. “And the cat wasn't entirely dead…maybe.”

“Hey, thanks for the pep talk.”

Tyler pushes himself back up from leaning against the desk and flashes a smile at her. “Anytime. I'll see you around,” he said.

“Maybe.” She smiles, and he slips out of her office and back into the busy hallway.

Cassidy sits at the small table outside Dr Verity’s office. Her heart races and her hands tremble—sleepless nights and far too much caffeine—and she barely has more information than she had a week ago. What comes next will all depend on how crazy Dr Verity thinks she is. Two minutes till the meeting.

Her fate rests on this, her mind on a loop, the experiment, the reading, the notes and numbers, and she’s finally made peace with one thing at least. She needs help. If she wants to prove something, prove herself, she needs help.

One minute till the meeting.

She can’t fail, can’t let people think she isn’t good enough to finish this research. If she has to walk away from this project, without an answer, never being able to know if she proved something incredible…then what’s the point? The project will sit unfinished in a drawer for days, months, years, completely forgotten because she hasn’t been able to—

“Cassidy?”

She snaps her head up to find Dr Verity at his office door. “Ready to show me what you've found?”

There’s only one answer now. “Yes.”

Cassidy smiles shakily as she stands, collects her things and follows Dr Verity into his office, and pulls the door closed with a decisive click.

Clancy was a 2025 Young Writers Fellow sponsored by Engaging Science Queensland.