I.e., Google.

As it turns out, when you’re one of NASA’s top engineers, people write shit about you. I swear I don’t look up “Ian + Floyd” twice a week or anything like that, but I do get curious every once in a while, and the Internet offers so much information in exchange for so little effort. That’s how I found out that when the former chief resigned for health reasons, Ian was chosen as head of engineering for Tenacity, the rover that landed safely in the de Vaucouleurs Crater just last year. He even gave 60 Minutes an interview, in which he mostly came across as serious, competent, handsome, humble, reserved.

For some reason, it made me think of the way he’d groaned into my skin. His viselike grip on my hips, his thigh moving between my legs. It made me remember that he’d wanted to take me to dinner, and that I’d actually—appallingly, unfathomably—been tempted to say yes. I watched the entire thing on YouTube. Then I scrolled down to read the comments and realized that a good two thirds were from users who’d noticed exactly how serious, competent, handsome, humble, reserved, and likely well-endowed Ian was. I hastened to click out, feeling caught with my entire torso in the cookie jar.

Whatever.

I think I expected my Google search to lead to more personal stuff, too. Maybe a Facebook account with pictures of adorable ginger toddlers. Or one of those wedding websites with overproduced pictures and the story of how the couple met. But no. The closest was a triathlon he did about two years ago near Houston. He didn’t place particularly well, but he did finish it. As far as Google is concerned, that’s the only non-work-related activity Ian has partaken in during the last four years.

But that’s really beside the point, which is: I know quite a bit about Ian Floyd’s career accomplishments, and I am well aware that he’s still at NASA. Therefore, it makes no sense for me to be shocked to see him. And I’m not. I’m really not.

It’s just that with over three thousand people working at the Johnson Space Center, I figured I’d run into him around my third week on the job. Maybe even during my third month. I definitely did not expect to see him on my first day, in the middle of the freaking new-employee orientation. And I definitely didn’t anticipate that he’d spot me immediately and stare for a long, long time, as though remembering exactly who I am, as though not wondering why I look familiar or struggling to place me.

Which . . . he isn’t. He clearly isn’t. Ian appears at the entrance of the conference room where the new hires have been parked to wait for the next speaker; with a slightly aggravated expression he looks around for someone, notices me, chatting with Alexis, about a millisecond after I notice him.

He pauses for a moment, wide-eyed. Then weaves through the clusters of people chatting around the table, marching toward me with long strides. His eyes stay fixed on mine and he looks confident and pleasantly surprised, like a guy picking up his girlfriend at the airport after she spent four months abroad studying the courtship habits of the humpback whale. But it has nothing to do with me. It’s not because of me.