A deal with the devil

[deardirect0r]

Leonard Church sat at the kitchen table, looking over his research notes and nursing a cooling cup of coffee. How long had he been trying to get the funding to continue his personal research instead of working under someone else? Years. Ever since he'd gotten his doctorate.

His work had helped advance the cognitive mapping that created smart AI but, it was wartime and the funding for 'pure research' was all but dried up. It didn't help that even before the war smart AI were expensive and rare. Now any new ones being produced were all but exclusive to UNSC and any left over went to whoever had the most clout.

Now that could change.

If he was only willing to make a deal with the devil.

He set the pad with his notes down and took off his glasses so he could rub his eyes and think.  Allison would be home soon, he could talk to her about what to do with an offer of funding from ONI.  Hell, given her service record they may have already talked to her about it themselves.    They may have even talked to her about it first for all he knew.

Comments

[a_ghost]

Her eyebrows raise and her jaw drops slightly. "Really?" she says. This had been something he'd been putting years of work into and having it pan out is something she simply had not expected to come home to. She knows from the way he's acting and the expression on his face it's true, so she doesn't wait for an answer before she presses back in toward him and gives him another kiss.