Marmalade

"Nahbi, this has been a fun lunch."

"You're welcome, Dr. Adatomo. I thought we should meet away from the office so we could better understand each other's motivations."

"Do you know what happened to Dr. Tegsten?"

"No, I do not. If you are worried about changing job directives, I have all of the emails he wrote that determine our goals for the next year. We are ahead of schedule in all team assignments. I speak for the company and say, 'Thank you.' I will make sure you are rewarded handsomely when bonuses are calculated. Dr. Li, can your team pick up where Lyrethia and I left off?"

"I will try. I have no answer at this time."

"That is all I ask."

"Dr. Jones."

"Yes, sir."

"It is my understanding that your team has been overburdened with work. What can I do to make sure this is amended to the company's pleasure?"

"Well, sir, we were running a program that Lyrethia had passed over to us due to a need for computing bandwidth. It's taking up most of my team's time making sure the servers are running at max without overheating. And sir?"

"Yes, Dr. Jones."

"I will say from the outset that you are the best choice for this job. I know everyone here thinks I wanted the promotion but frankly that was just Dr. Tegsten's plan to make us all envious of each other so we'd work harder. I never once wanted to work over you. You are my teammates."

"Thank you, Dr. Jones. Anything else?"

"Well, sir, the results of the testing we've done so far shows us that you're going into politics, sir."

"Politics? Oh, no, that is not my field."

"Sir, we'll gladly show you the test data. We figure that Lyrethia's got more information but since she's gone..."

"Dr. Jones, I have all of the data Lyrethia and I compiled. There is nothing in the data that indicates my changing job careers. Perhaps there is an error in one of your formulas, a rounding error or misplaced variable..."

"I'll check, sir."

"Thank you. Well, time to return to the labs. Let's meet at Tai Pan Palace at the same time again next week. I think you will all agree with me that this is a great ice-tension breaker for the team."

"Yes, sir."

"For instance, my fortune cookie saying is 'Be kind to strangers. You're stranger to them.' Ha-ha. We may all learn valuable life lessons from the dessert!"