September 8th, 2036

In an orchard owned by UMass Amherst but several miles away from the main campus, two women are pacing along a row of immature apple trees.

"Three point six, three point two, and mmm... call it twenty-five centimeters deep," says the older one, resting her hand on a trunk and closing her eyes.  She's in flowy linen trousers, a loose pale blue top and matching hijab with a sunhat over it, and has a soft ice pack draped around the back of her neck, despite the late-summer heat threatening to give way to autumn.  "So did your advisor ever get back to you about those revisions?"

"Yeah."  The other woman heaves a sigh- maybe in her mid-twenties, she's in cargo shorts and a t-shirt, with a flannel tied around her waist.  "No dice.  I'm gonna have to redo the whole chapter unless I can get ahold of Kulkarni and get him to send me his raw data."

"Oh, that is a shame.  ...Remind me, is he at UChicago?  I think Dani might know someone in their biomed engineering faculty."  She moves on to the next tree.  "Three point three, two point eight, thirty-five, and something's hinky about the leaves...  might need more phosphorus."

"Northwestern, actually, but you really shouldn't lean on them for my sake-"  she makes a note on her pad.

"I'm not planning to lean on anybody, it's just networking.  And if you can't network with your coworker's wife, academia would've ground to a halt decades ago.  Besides, you're doing important work, and he should've used a public repository in the first place if he didn't want to be bothered with people building on his experiments."  She shakes her left wrist to wake up her smartwatch and check her temperature.  "Mm, speaking of, I'm going to want a break at the end of this row.  You're all right waiting a bit?"

"Yeah, 'course-"

Three trees later, a sleek minivan pulls up the access road exactly as they reach it, and the grad student peels off to head for her camp chair and books, waiting in the shade of one of the full-grown trees in the field opposite.  Nadiya pulls off hat and scarf and top all together with one hand as she opens the door with the other, flopping onto her wife who's already in just sports bra and shorts but still finishing up a call.

"Mm-hmm.  Yes, I understand."  Dani mutes the call with a jerk of her chin so she can hum contentedly into the guiding contact, shoving her laptop over to the opposite seat with her good arm before wrapping it around her wife.  "Well, you'll still have my personal vote, but I can't say I'm not disappointed.  No, no of course not.  Mm-hmm.  Are the Girl Scouts still expecting you at their Gold Award luncheon?  Good, I'll see you there, then.  No, I'm afraid I can't talk further right now, something's just come up.  Give Brittany my best?  All right, bye now."  She yanks the headset off with a sigh and returns her hand to its important job rubbing Nadiya's back.  "Ugh, politicians.  How're the trees?"

"Refreshingly unpolitical," Nadiya murmurs cozily into the crook of her wife's neck and shoulder.  "The root systems are staying shallow, all right, and so far as I can tell they're not any less stable.  I think they've really got something here."

"Mmm.  Good for them, I'm glad."

They don't talk for several minutes after that, but a little after Nadiya's backlash zeroes out, Dani does the deep breath and sigh that means she's about to bring up the thing neither of them has been saying.

"It's been quiet for a couple months now."

"Yeah.  Confluence is coming up."  Nadiya shifts position slightly to get a better angle on petting her hair.

"Yeah.  You're going to work it?"  It's not actually quite a question. 

"Mmhmm.  I know you'll worry."

"I know you'll be careful, just-"

"I know."