“There’s a hookah bar south of Houston that’s supposed to be good. Follow, boys, follow.” Carmen leads the way. In front Atif is so tall he has to bend underneath the low-hanging crossbars of construction scaffolding. The rain begins to play its small hands against the pavement. Everyone’s hair gets wet as they traverse the glistening pavement, the piles of trash and crushed cans. Alex nudges Kierk and smiles.

“I heard you weren’t in lab today. Or yesterday.”

“Yeah, I was, ah, working on something.”

“Are you okay? Just because, I mean, you did leave the top research lab on consciousness. In the entire world. I heard, well, many rumors. Was it some kind of conflict? Or something else?”

In front of them Carmen has focused her hearing laser-like behind her.

Kierk looks over harshly at Alex. “What you know, you know.”

“So,” Leon interrupts in his thick German accent, “do you find the curriculum of the program appropriate?”

“The required course we have to take on professional development is pointless,” Kierk replies, “if you haven’t noticed already.”

“It is only every other week. You do not believe it will be useful?”

“I don’t believe in professional development.”

Leon smiles an ursine smile. “Yes, it is nice to be younger.”

Now the storm has passed itself off as a mood of the sky. Their speech increases in volume as the sky thunders a bit, as the cars honk off into distances. They all pause at a stoplight, waiting, looking up sporadically. The deep oil spill of a summer storm is spreading over the city. Carmen’s hair flashes around in the warm wind. Atif pulls up his hood, a tall shadow dreaming up rain. The pressure of the air is a vanguard, lifting the hairs on the back of Kierk’s neck. Carmen’s delighted face is upturned, she sticks her tongue out briefly, a quick dart, smiles.

The hookah bar is under a mirror of itself. Two callers yell for them, beckoning north or south. Atif leans his tall frame over the steps and begins a raucous dialogue with them in Hindi. The rest of the group mingles on the concrete until Atif emerges from the conversation and ushers them up to the top hookah bar, the bottom caller now shouting insults, the top caller shouting back.

Inside everyone sits down in a circle. “Pomegranate, let’s get pomegranate!” Jessica says amid the low chatter, to which Carmen rolls her eyes.

Atif orders several rounds of a drink that Carmen doesn’t recognize, but after three her opinion of them becomes quite high. The Crick Scholars quickly begin to amass empty glasses. Eventually they turn to discussing how they ended up in the program, going around the circle. Greg is last.

“I got my PhD in computer science from MIT. But since the brain’s the most complex computer, my principal investigator encouraged me to apply to the Crick Scholarship.”