Chapter 3: The One Where Size Apparently Matters
The biology department at Columbia University had a particular smell — old paper, chemical reagent, and the specific brand of ambition that accumulates when very smart people spend too many hours in small rooms.
Ethan had come to love it. He was sitting across from his doctoral advisor, Professor Aldridge, a wiry man in his sixties with steel-gray hair and the kind of eyes that made you feel like he was reading a footnote nobody else could see.
"You're almost there, Ethan." Aldridge set down the data printout he'd been reviewing and leaned back in his chair. "One year out, give or take. So. What does the other side look like to you?"
Ethan had been thinking about this for months — not anxiously, but the way you think about something you genuinely can't stop thinking about. "The Human Genome Project," he said. "Venter and Smith are already into the Haemophilus influenzae sequencing. Watson's running point on the broader project. The whole field is about to crack open." He paused. "I want to be in that room when it does."
Aldridge studied him for a moment, the way he always did before saying something that landed. "You know it won't be clean," he said finally. "Politics, funding fights, credit disputes — it gets messy fast."
"I know."
"And you still want in."
"More because of that, honestly," Ethan said.
Something shifted in Aldridge's expression — not quite a smile, but the version of approval he reserved for students who'd stopped trying to impress him. "Good," he said simply, and picked up the data printout again.
Afterward, Ethan crossed the main quad with his jacket open, not in any particular hurry. It was one of those October afternoons that felt like the city was showing off — crisp air, the trees doing their full autumn thing, the kind of light that made even the law school look picturesque.
He almost walked past the poster without registering it. Then something made him stop.
It was a flyer for a Friday evening lecture series — Constitutional Law and the Evolving Civil Rights Framework — hosted by the law school. The faculty photo in the corner showed a clean-cut man in his early thirties, sharp eyes, easy smile. The name underneath read: Barack Obama, Visiting Lecturer.
Ethan stood there for a moment, looking at the poster.
Then he pulled out his planner and wrote down Friday.
Purely academic interest, he told himself. Completely normal thing to want to attend. No particular reason.
He kept walking.
He drove down to Central Perk afterward, running the mental arithmetic of the next twelve months as he went. Papers to publish, committees to satisfy, tenure-track positions to quietly start researching. Academic publishing had its own ecosystem — half merit, half knowing the right people to get your name on the right correspondence. Ethan was under no illusions about that. He just needed to navigate it without losing either his integrity or his mind.
By the time he pushed through the door of Central Perk, the group had already reached the kind of conversation that happened when everyone had been there long enough to stop filtering themselves. Rachel and Monica were on one side of the debate; Ross and Chandler, inexplicably unified, were on the other; and Joey appeared to be somewhere in between, mostly because he wasn't entirely sure what was being debated.
Ethan dropped into the open seat. "What did I miss?"
"We're discussing whether kissing counts," Monica said.
"Counts as what?"
"The main event," Rachel said, as if this were obvious.
"Kissing," Chandler announced, with the gravity of a man delivering a verdict, "is the opening act. It's the local band they put on before the headliner to give people time to find their seats. Appreciated? Sure. The reason you bought the ticket? Absolutely not."
Ross nodded slowly. "I want to be clear that I don't dislike the opening act. I just think everyone in the building knows what they came for."
"And by the time the concert's actually over," Chandler continued, "and the girls want to go back and see the opening act again — we've already burned through all our energy doing crowd work during the headliner. At that point, we're basically mouthing the words."
Rachel set down her coffee with precision. "I want you both to understand something. If you don't learn to appreciate the opening act, you're going to end up staying home listening to the album alone."
"What are you guys talking about?" Joey asked.
"Concert metaphors," Ethan said.
"Oh." Joey considered this. "I like concerts."
"We know, buddy."
Monica, who had been waiting for a natural opening, leaned forward with the expression of someone sharing genuinely important information. "Okay, speaking of things that matter — I heard somewhere that the distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your index finger is supposed to be, you know." She raised her eyebrows.
It took about one second before all three men instinctively looked at their own hands and spread their fingers.
Ross held his up, studied it, and then — with the carefully offhand delivery of a man who had thought of something and could not not say it — asked: "Can I use the index finger of one hand and the thumb of the other?"
Ethan looked at him with profound sympathy. "Why stop there, Ross? Use your index finger and Chandler's thumb. Between the two of you, you might get somewhere." He paused. "You study large prehistoric animals for a living. I'd hope for some transference."
The table dissolved.
Ross pointed at him. "That was—"
"Accurate," Chandler said, wiping his eyes.
Monica was still laughing when she turned slightly toward the door. "Oh — speaking of which, there's actually someone I want you all to meet."
She waved, and a man standing near the counter came over. He was tall, relaxed, with an easy smile and an accent that landed somewhere in the Pacific and then took a left turn. His name was Alan, and within approximately ninety seconds of sitting down, everyone at the table had decided they liked him.
"Where's the accent from?" Ethan asked, genuinely curious.
"New Zealand," Alan said.
"I was going to say Australia," Chandler said.
"Everyone says Australia."
"Are you offended?"
"I've made my peace with it," Alan said pleasantly.
"That," Chandler said, "is a very healthy attitude."
They were all still there an hour later when Ross reached into his jacket pocket and carefully produced a small black-and-white photograph, handling it with the reverent delicacy of someone who had been waiting for the right moment to bring it out.
"So," he said, setting it on the table. "Carol's sonogram."
Everyone leaned in. The photograph was a landscape of gray and white shapes that resolved into something almost recognizable if you stared long enough — or at least that was the theory.
Joey tilted his head. "What am I looking at?"
"That," Ross said patiently, pointing, "is the head."
"That's a head?"
"That's the head."
Chandler squinted. "It looks like it's about to attack a starship."
Ethan sat up. "Star Trek reference. Okay. Which series? Because if you're going Original Series, that's a very different energy than Next Generation."
"Does it matter?" Rachel asked.
"Always matters," Ethan and Ross said simultaneously, then looked at each other.
"Enterprise," Chandler said definitively. "It looks like it's about to attack the Enterprise."
Monica set her coffee down firmly. "I would like to point out that I am this child's aunt. So if everyone could refrain from comparing my future niece or nephew to something that's about to engage in intergalactic combat—"
"Absolutely," Ethan said, making a small zip motion across his lips.
"Done," Chandler agreed, doing the same.
Monica looked between them with suspicion. They held expressions of complete, angelic innocence for approximately four seconds.
Ross, meanwhile, had been circling back to something he'd been turning over all day. "Carol and I talked about names," he said, in the tone of someone reporting battlefield conditions. "She wants something that works with Willick-Bunch." He paused. "Which is Susan's last name. Hyphenated."
"So the baby gets three last names?" Rachel asked.
"Potentially."
"Geller-Willick-Bunch," Chandler said slowly, testing it out. "That kid is going to have opinions about standardized testing."
"I just want Geller in there somewhere," Ross said quietly.
Ethan looked at him. There wasn't much to add to that, so he just nodded, and the table let it sit for a moment without piling on.
Monica eventually walked Alan to the door, said goodbye in the particular way that people say goodbye when they're hoping it won't actually be goodbye for long, and came back to the table braced for commentary.
The commentary, for once, was entirely positive.
"He's great," Rachel said immediately.
"Genuinely great," Ross agreed.
"And the accent," Chandler said, "is somehow both completely comprehensible and extremely charming. I don't know how he does it."
Monica sat down trying not to look too pleased and failing entirely. Then Rachel, with the timing of someone who had been holding it for exactly the right moment, caught Monica's eye, glanced toward the door Alan had just walked through, and very slowly held up her thumb and index finger.
Monica covered her face with both hands. The table erupted.
Okay, Ethan thought, watching Rachel deliver the callback with perfect comic timing while simultaneously refilling Joey's coffee without spilling a drop. For someone who was wearing a wedding dress and crying in this exact spot three weeks ago, she's adapting extremely well.
Phoebe gathered up her massage kit and announced she had a client, kissing everyone on the cheek in the particular order she always did. Joey watched her go, then turned back to the group with the barely-contained energy of someone who had been waiting for the right window.
"Okay. My play opens tomorrow night," he said. "I need everyone there."
"What kind of play?" Ethan asked.
"It's a drama. Very serious. Very intense. I have a monologue in the second act that is — honestly, I don't want to oversell it, but it might make people cry."
The group exchanged glances with the involuntary synchronization of people who had sat on this couch together long enough to share a nervous system.
"Will there be anything in it," Chandler asked carefully, "that could be described as frightening?"
"What? No!" Joey said. "Why does everyone keep asking that?"
"Previous experience," Ross said diplomatically.
"This is completely different from the dinner theater thing," Joey said. "That was one specific incident and I have grown significantly as a performer since then."
"Is the character the one from the jail cell?" Ethan asked.
"Act two, yes."
"And you're comfortable with the cigarette now?"
"I decided not to use a real cigarette," Joey said, with the dignity of a man who had made this decision himself and not at all because he'd coughed for twenty minutes during rehearsal. "I'm going to suggest it through the physicality. It's more interesting that way."
Ethan nodded seriously. "That's actually the right call."
Joey pointed at him. "See? Ethan gets it. The rest of you — tomorrow night, eight o'clock. I'm putting your names on the list."
One by one, the group began gathering their things, pulling on jackets, checking wallets — all moving a little too efficiently, with a little too much eye contact with each other and not quite enough with Joey.
"Hey," Joey called after them as they funneled toward the door. "That means you're coming. I'm serious. I will know if you don't show up."
Chandler, already halfway out the door, called back: "We'll be there!"
"All of us!" Rachel added, with just slightly too much brightness.
The door swung shut. Joey sat alone for a moment, the late afternoon light catching the coffee rings on the table.
"They're not coming," he said to Gunther.
Gunther, polishing a cup he had polished four times already, said nothing.
"I'm putting their names on the list anyway," Joey said.
[500 PS unlocks 1 Extra Chapter]
[10 Reviews unlock 1 Extra Chapter]
Thanks for reading—reviews are appreciated.
P1treon Soulforger has 20+advance chapters