Fiction

He had tolerated the recent questioning much as he might listen to a graduate student from another lab give their first talk – part of his brain on the lookout for anything intellectually stimulating, but the rest of him detached

it was always trying, visiting Mary’s mother.  Most Saturdays, Slater would rise early and sit in the box room he liked to call his study, with a pile of academic papers, perhaps a lab notebook or two or a student’s thesis, and catch up with everything he hadn’t been able to do during the week.

Henrietta opened the door to the tissue culture incubator. She had stopped by the lab this late in the evening mainly to check on her cells.

The woman slammed the paper down. “Who is this journalist? Why don’t we know about her?”

The lab stretched in all directions like a beach at low tide, its habitat revealed by the passing wave of the daytime rush.

We are pleased to present the most recent update to our list of lab lit…

Unless they happen to you, disasters are initially acknowledged as far-away abstractions. Yes, a terrible…

Dom and Rachel felt like kids again. This camping trip had been almost identical to…

The surveillance video showed her at 2:45 PM in the lobby of the Moscone South Conference Center, sitting on a bench, her face in her hands, sobbing.

Toni suppressed a laugh. Weren’t scientists meant to be observant?

When retelling the story at meetings or parties, I often throw in a few twists and white lies.

Will I be front story news? Will they make me look like a reckless fool, one of those crazy daredevil tourists? Just to satisfy and entertain their readers, so they can feel superior?

“Excuse me, Professor Tsing? I’m really sorry to bother you, but could I ask you a quick question…” Feigned politeness. Smug self-importance disguised as intellectual curiosity and deference.

Sabine checked her watch against the clock over the door. It wasn’t that she and Max ever agreed to meet, but his habit was to be at the lab half an hour after leaving his office.

It’s official – it really does seem as if lab lit, the genre, is finally going mainstream.

In the future, Earth will no longer be habitable, and we will have to go live on Mars. The problem is, we do not know how to get there.

But the thing that I noticed most is the sound. Or the lack of it. There are no birds singing, and no bugs buzzing in my ear. The pesky hum of a mosquito that isn’t there is more concerning than one that is.

It is generally agreed upon that, had his life not ended in shame and obscurity,…

“You’ve done something here, Mike!” Slater shook his head. “I can’t let you leave now, there’s still too much to do. We can find a way through this.”

Slater was headed his way, but not looking where he was going. Why was he so pale?

Because it is Science that will be my chief witness today. Logic shall be my defence. Fact shall be my evidence.

“But she died of chikungunya fever. And you had some in the lab. Is it possible she could have been infected by it?”

Without a word he hands me the document from his lawyer. Even I recognize the high-powered firm.

Max sat on a bench, smoking his fifth cigarette of the morning and keeping his eyes fixed on the main entrance of the Wolfhaven Institute.

As I walked into my new office, I smelled the fresh paint and doughnuts and saw the grey, boring walls that I would be working in.

We are pleased to present the final episode of a new four-part story by Deborah Flusberg, about a lab research project that suddenly gets personal.

Slater watched Brad leave the room. Even after the door had swung shut, anger shot through his veins.

When he opened his eyes, head cradled in his arms at his lab desk, it took him a few moments to realize that what had just happened had been a dream. Or had it?

He sat, slumped, on the flimsy cot of his cell. Surrounded by cold concrete walls, he was a prisoner of the government

That night at his apartment, Robert dreamed of his sister in the cancer ward of the children’s hospital. Her head was bare, hair long gone

When people asked Robert why he wanted to go into biology research, he never mentioned his sister

I still remember when I first saw the wolves.

Slater could tell she was thinking furiously, recognizing she had said the wrong thing.

I pondered my choices as I laid on the moldy cot in my decrepit apartment. My fingers ached. I was out of sleeping pills. Again

Last year, I received an email from Marieclaire Apuli, a Language Arts teacher at Emerson…

Brad stared at the printout in front of him. There it was again, that damned high molecular weight peak he had seen on both previous runs.

Ah, these silly English men, Sabine thought as she drove down Long Road. They are so easily amused – it really wasn’t work at all. All she ever had to do was smile at them and they would do anything she asked.

Dr Bradley Jefferson Walker Pettier III was confused.

Professor Thomas Slater realized that it wasn’t going to be so difficult to be inconspicuous after all.