As it turned out, she didn’t need to meet Aiden at the office, after all. Nor did she have to make the trek back up to his penthouse. Instead, the wealthy businessman picked her up at the corner, in a black stretch limousine, which seemed to glitter in the sun.
When the chauffeur opened the back door for her, she found Aiden Carmichael sitting in a perfectly tailored suit, offering her a warm smile before slipping his smartphone in his pocket. He slid over and patted the seat next to him, inviting her inside. Melanie took a deep breath and ducked inside the limo, opting to take the seat across from him instead, facing the back of the limo. She had always preferred looking backwards in a car, anyway. For some reason, it calmed her.
Melanie, too, was dressed in a suit. It wasn’t nearly as expensive or well-tailored as Aiden’s, of course, but she had chosen it from the store with care, and had practiced that same care when it came to choosing it to wear to work that morning.
While they weren’t heading towards the office right, at that moment, it was important for Melanie to look professional. Especially, since they were on their way to meet the founder of Vet Robotics, at his own, recently-acquired tech laboratories. According to Aiden, he always wanted to see the work environment and business plan put into action before he made his final decisions about investing.
“I thought we were going to be signing contracts today,” Melanie pointed out.
“We are,” Aiden said. “Just not right away. I need to meet with the founder first and go over a few things before the final decisions are made.” At Melanie’s uneasy look, he reached out and placed a gentle hand on her knee. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just a formality. I am ninety-five percent certain that I want to pursue this opportunity.”
“And the other five percent?” she asked.
“I just want to make sure that this guy is as passionate about his company as you are.” There was no jest in his voice or the expression on his face. Melanie blushed.
The rest of the ride was silent, with Aiden looking out the window and Melanie trying to, as well, though every now and then she found her attention drawn back to him. His position on the bench seat was relaxed and he had a glass of water in his hand, which he sipped from every few moments. He was wearing a well-fitted suit and had a pair of sunglasses tucked into his pocket. His face was freshly-shaven and his hair was gelled back.
Before Melanie knew it, she felt the limousine stop and the screen behind her head rolled down.
“We’ve arrived, Mr. Carmichael,” said the driver.
“Thank you, Henry,” Aiden replied, sliding toward the door. He opened it for himself and stepped out, and then held out his hand for Melanie’s. She hesitated, for only a second, before placing her palm delicately against his and wrapping her slender fingers around his hand. She allowed him to pull her out onto the street and barely registered their fingers beginning to tangle together, all on their own.
Aiden didn’t appear to notice either, and it wasn’t until they had to dig through their pockets for the proper identification that Melanie even registered the warmth surrounding her digits. She pulled away from him with a blush, trying to play it off, as she reached into her pocket for her driver’s license and handed it to the guard at the security desk.
The building wasn’t the largest in New York, by far, and the directory by the elevator let them know that Vet Robotics was currently operating from the basement. When the doors opened on the bottom floor; both Aiden and Melanie were impressed by what they saw.
The entire area was open, with small sections of engineers working on different kinds of prosthetics, from feet to hands to individual fingers, which all moved with the help of computer programs. Aiden and Melanie glanced around the large room with wide eyes, until a young woman in a lab coat and thick turtle-shell glasses approached them with a welcoming smile.
“Hello,” she said, with a slight croak in her throat, “My name is Megan Alonso. You must be Mr. Carmichael and Miss Brunswick, correct? Hawk told me that you would be coming by.”
“Hawk?” Aiden asked, tilting his head.
“Oh, sorry. I meant Dr. Hawkins. We don’t typically use prefixes around the lab, so everybody has a nickname, you know?” Aiden nodded. “Dr. Hawkins is currently working on one of his devices, but he has asked me to show you around until he’s able to join us. It should only take a couple of minutes. Would you like to follow me?”
Melanie and Aiden nodded and took off after Megan, who began talking at a thousand miles per second. She showed them all the different sections, which were separated out by body parts, and had teams of about two to three people working on each appendage. There were empty takeout containers littering their individual desks—which weren’t very large to begin with—but Aiden’s eyes lit up with interest as he watched mechanical knees bend and individual fingers form into a fist with the simple press of a button.
They asked Megan questions about how they might make the appendages work on a person’s body if said person couldn’t use buttons to work them and Megan explained that they hadn’t gotten quite that far yet (that required human test trials with willing participants) but that they planned to use brain waves and possibly connect to muscles in an individual’s body, where they could possibly be flexed for control.
Most of the tech talk went straight over Melanie’s head, but she found herself getting more and more excited, the more Megan told them about their mission. She had done plenty of research on the company but there were things that Google couldn’t explain as well as somebody who was actively working on the project itself. She was certain, now, that this was a worthy investment and one look at Aiden’s face told her that he must have been thinking the same thing. He was nodding along with Megan’s speech, as if he actually understood what she was saying.
Something told Melanie that he really did.
When Dr. Arnold Hawkins finally met up with them, Melanie saw that he had messy brown hair and a lab coat that might have once been white, but was now a light gray, with a few scorch marks here and there and the monogram starting to peel off.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, chuckling, as he held out a hand to first Aiden, then Melanie. “One of my engineers was having an issue with a rather stubborn hip.”
“A hip?” Aiden asked. “How, exactly, does that work as a prosthetic?”
“Well, it’s just one part of a whole picture, you see,” Dr. Hawkins began to explain. “It will attach to a full leg and foot—possibly two—and will make it easier for those that have lost the motion in their groin to move around. You’d be surprised how many come back from war with two legs missing and completely unable to even sit properly, because part of their hip was so completely destroyed during battle. Come; I’ll show you what we’re working on.” He motioned for them to follow him, before he turned and made his way towards the back of the room, where there was a curtain set up in a corner.
When he pulled back the corner, another young woman blinked up at him from behind a pair of yellow-tinted goggles. She had a wide gap between her teeth, when she smiled and she almost immediately jumped to her feet and offered her hand.
“Mr. Carmichael!” she said. “Dr. Amari Michaels. It is so nice to finally meet you.”
“Finally?” Melanie asked. “Have you two been in contact?” She looked between her boss and the woman, who couldn’t have been much older than herself.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Aiden replied, casually. His face was a stone wall.
“Oh, of course not!” Amari chuckled, snorting slightly. “But my father was an associate of yours a while back. Well, an associate of your associate, Mr. Brunswick. He spoke quite highly of you both, so when Hawk told us that you were interested in investing in our little company, well, I was just delighted!” She turned to her boss. “James Brunswick was always an intelligent investor and Mr. Carmichael here was his protégé!”
“I know, Amari,” Dr. Hawkins chuckled. “We’ve already discussed this.”
“Oh.” Amari blushed. “Of course.”
“Would you like to show Mr. Carmichael and his associate here what you’ve been working on?”
“Would I?!” Amari was practically bouncing with excitement as she turned the screen on her computer for them to see the digital design of a hip joint that was sitting in a harness just a couple feet away on a table. Melanie listened with interest as she went over all the different functions of the experimental hip joint and how it would lend full range of motion to the wearer, but all the while she was thinking about Aiden’s relationship with her father.
Her father had been a charitable man, but his goal was always to turn whatever wealth he had into even more wealth, by any means necessary. She had watched, as he turned respectable businesses into simple cash grabs, insisting that he was doing what was best. She feared that he had taught Aiden this same technique and that this incredibly humble tech company would be his next target.
And it would all be because of her. She would hate to see the light go out of Amari’s eyes, if she ever found out that the man she thought was so great was filled with such greed. Especially if it meant that Amari would be forced to work for profit and might even lose her job to machines that could manufacture dozens of her own designed in a fraction of the time.
She barely even noticed Aiden and Dr. Hawkins shaking hands, until she felt the latter’s hand close around hers, as he thanked her for her visit and their generous investment.
“You’ll be moving upstairs in no time,” Aiden assured Arnold. “Or, who knows? Maybe even uptown.”
“That would be incredible,” Dr. Hawkins said, with Amari nodding in agreement. “Thank you, Mr. Carmichael. Thank you so much!”
Aiden just nodded, before saying his final goodbye and motioning for Melanie to follow him back to the elevator, leaving the pair of smiling scientists. Melanie looked back at them over her shoulder and sighed.
*****