"Who ate my yogurt?!" An annoyed voice roars across the hallway. I quickly put on my headset to give the impression that I am very busy and ignore Elena's angry fists at my lab door.  She is one of the doctoral students from another working group in my hallway. I'm not worried about the door. It is closed anyway, so that as few human disturbances as possible burst in here. I hung the small glass pane on the door with a miniature curtain so that I would not be constantly watched. I bet I could fill an entire book with the violations of the lab requirements here.

When their shouts finally stop, I turn around and look for Watson. He curls up relaxed on the sofa before stretching and yawning. Then he marches to his bowl, which I always have here just in case. I open the closet box where his litter box is hidden. After I replace the granules, there is a knock on my door.

Knock – knock – knock.

Ah, okay.  Henry's knocking signal. The tapping rituals have made my laboratory life many times easier. Apart from me, there are only two other people who know about Watson, and that he is a constant resident here. One is Henry, and the other is our funky lab assistant Alani. It has its own knocking signal. But she is currently on holiday in the Canary Islands. I open the door to my lab colleague and sit down on the sofa with Watson.

"Boy, you shouldn't always get Elena's stuff out of the fridge!" He scolds. "Every time I have to hold my head for you!"

"I'll buy her some new ones." I'll give it back. I have no nerve to discuss such trivialities with anyone. Not on a day like today.
Henry crows Watson behind his ear and shakes his head. 
"It's not about that. It sucks if you think after a night of work, you still have something to eat, but then you come and always snatch everything away. That's really annoying, dude!"

I don't answer, but close my eyes, lean back and take a deep breath.

"What?" asks Henry suspiciously.

When I don't answer, but just shake my head, he gets up again and leaves my lab without a word.
That's what I think is so great about Henry. He always speaks unfiltered plain text to me. I know exactly where I stand. No hidden messages, no offended liver sausages and above all no manipulation. Our cooperation here has ensured that we understand each other wordlessly. With just a single glance, he knows when I want to have my peace without being offended.

The rest of the day I spend with Watson and a big delivery pizza in my lab in front of the computer and create a new script for my program. Thanks to a few new cans of energy, I lasted a few more hours until I fell asleep on the sofa.

A familiar knock rouses me from my sleep. Watson stretches out his limbs next to me and disappears into the corner of the room behind the closet. I sit up and look tiredly at my watch. Half past seven in the evening. Still half asleep, I drag myself to the door and open it for Henry, who enters the room with a large crate of beer.

"You look even shittier than you did this morning." He says. "I thought it was time for the emergency kit." He puts down the crate of beer and drops down on the sofa next to me. He immediately opens a beer bottle with a second one before handing me the open one. I accept them gratefully.

"Come on, spit it out." He says curtly and opens a bottle himself.

I let myself fall backwards with a sigh and put the back of my hand over my eyes.

"As you lie there, you look like a virgin in distress." Henry scoffs, laughing. He has no idea how much he hit the bull's eye...

"You wouldn't understand..." I say with a sigh. I know it sounds antisocial, but I know Henry himself has never had a girlfriend and the way he's been following Alani for at least a year and still hasn't made any progress proves to me that I can't expect any world-improving tips from him.

"How do you know? Do you think I can't follow you mentally because you're such a genius and have more PhDs than I do?"

Ouch. Does he have to rub his doctorate under my nose like that?

"If it were something that could be solved with logic or chemistry, I wouldn't have the problem!" I counter. "As long as you don't have a doctor of psychology, you're of no use to me."

Henry raises an eyebrow. Immediately I have a guilty conscience.

"Okay, it shouldn't sound as shit as it might have come across..." I add meekly.

What should I do just because of Valerie? Even if I wanted to look for her, I wouldn't even know where to start. Does she study here at our university? The university is huge! The individual buildings are practically spread over half the city! Or maybe she is studying at one of the city's other major universities. There are quite a few here! Or she is learning some other profession, or even already has one? Frustrated, I sigh long and deep.

Henry groans annoyed and leans back. "So it's about a woman?" He glances carefully out of the corner of his eye at me. I just shrug my shoulders and take another sip in frustration. "That's a resounding yes." Henry also takes a big sip. Then he inspects his bottle suspiciously and empties it in one go.

"How far have you come with the new module?" he asks, probably to change the unpleasant subject.

"Done. It's already running." I point over to Meinolf, our self-programmed, small laboratory robot. Since the daily basic research became too monotonous for us, we did what we could to set up automatic workflows, so that we have our hands free for other things. In this way, many more reaction steps can be carried out in less time, and much more precisely than by hand. The part stood around as a donated device for years in the basement, because no one had bothered to try to understand how it works and how it can be used for everyday laboratory use.

New scientists always bring new wind into old institutes. Since I write all my programs myself, I'm here pretty much every day and monitor Meinolf so that everything goes according to plan. After all, if you want to be the first to publish your results, the working group has to be faster than all the others. Meinolf is a great help to us.

"It was quick." Henry says appreciatively. "I didn't think you'd be able to do the new script in three days." He leans down to look through the robot's glass pane, behind which the chemical reactions take place in many small individual glass vessels. Chemical substances are drawn up by several needles on movable arms and distributed to the individual glass-cups according to pre-programmed instructions.

Shrugging my shoulders, I empty my beer bottle. "I’m finally getting the hang of it."

After Henry has turned on music, we sit in the laboratory for the rest of the evening and the empty beer bottles multiply at a rapid pace.