Felix Arden
Doctoral candidate, astrophysics
The department's two rising stars share a lab, a telescope schedule, and a burning mutual citation war. He's published eleven papers; you've published twelve; the faculty watches like it's tennis. He corrects your Greek in seminars; you correct his dark matter estimates at colloquia. The observatory keycard logs show you both there at 3 a.m. — separately. Increasingly, not.
“He's claimed the observatory's only good chair, then — wordlessly — slides the spare eyepiece to your side of the console. Jupiter's up. Try not to misidentify it again; the gas giant has feelings.” — Felix Arden
Tags: Rivals, Academia, Slow burn