Chapter 22

The alarm woke us the next day and we all started getting ready. Lana seemed to be particularly nervous about the meeting today and I finally took her hands and looked in her eyes. “Relax,” I told her. “I’ll do my best. If it’s not good enough, then nothing lost. If it’s good, then I’ll have to work my ass off to keep up.”

She nodded and we finished getting ready in near silence. Breakfast was a subdued affair too. I seemed to be the only person who wasn’t emotionally invested in the outcome of the meeting. “We have our phones,” I assured them. “As soon as we know, we’ll call.”

The three of us piled in the car at the same time Dan was leaving for work and we went our separate ways, him to the Garden and us to Harvard. I had directions to the building and we had budgeted enough time that we could afford a wrong turn or two.

We arrived about fifteen minutes early and I saw Dr. Spencer speaking with someone. We stood and waited for her to say hello. She saw us and smiled, leading her companion over to us. “Carl Saddler, this is Matthew Russell,” she said, introducing us.

“Dr. Saddler,” I said, shaking his hand. “Thank you for considering me for your research. I hope I don’t disappoint today.”

“If you really wrote that paper a couple of hours after holding a copy of Grey’s Anatomy for the first time, I don’t think disappointment is going to be the opening act today.”

I decided I liked him. My first impression was that he was laid-back and approachable.

“I see you’re traveling with your harem today,” Dr. Spencer observed with a smile.

“Well, someone has to protect me from you and your X-ray tech temptresses,” I fired back playfully.

“‘X-ray tech temptresses’?” Dr. Saddler repeated. “I’ll ask you for the rest of that story later, Victoria.”

“So will I,” Lana said, sounding surprised but cautiously amused.

“Sorry Dr. Saddler. This is my girlfriend Lana and my girlfriend Beck,” I said, introducing them.

“Dating two girls at once?” he asked, looking at the three of us together. “You’re right, Victoria, he IS ready for university.”

Lana laughed, but held her tongue. Beck on the other hand liked to shock people. “His other two girlfriends couldn’t be here this morning, but I’m sure you’ll get a chance to meet them once Matt’s taking classes here.”

“Good lord! When do you have time to study?” he asked.

“And that, Your Honor, is why I learned to speed-read,” I said with a shrug. “All joking aside, I’ll do my best not to disappoint you both.”

He nodded and told me to just do my best and he’d put the best face on it that was possible.

We were called into the meeting and I took Lana and Beck’s hands, leading them in with me since there wasn’t really a place to sit and wait outside. No one gave me a disapproving look or objected, so I took a seat and they sat with me.

The proceedings were fairly dull and most of it was related to budgetary matters. Once the board members were finished with rehashing old business, Dr. Saddler was called upon to discuss his research proposal. There were a few different groups here, each of them waiting for a chance to address the board for a chance at a grant to pursue their own research. A few of them looked at me curiously, wondering what science experiment would be performed on me.

Dr. Saddler was refreshingly succinct. He asked for $3,750,000 per year to cover lab equipment and tests, staff salaries, tuition and books for the test subject and other related costs.

The board reviewed the proposal in detail, asking questions. I was introduced and asked questions about how long I’d been able to read and comprehend at a greater level of skill.

“I’ve always read quickly,” I said, “but about a month ago, I suffered a concussion and afterwards, I noticed that I was reading faster and retaining more information. I taught myself the basics of programming in C++ in a day, took a crash course in Japanese and in Spanish, learned some home repair, read Grey’s Anatomy and found that I’m not losing the information over time like I’d expect.”

I was given an excerpt from a book and asked if I could read it. It was about 30 pages and I had it finished in under three minutes. I answered questions about it and then was asked to take a different test based on the material in Grey’s Anatomy, asked to write out the text for a simple program in C++ and generally quizzed into a numb stupor.

Finally the board seemed to be satisfied. “So your research is to determine exactly how Mr. Russell is able to absorb all this information, how he handles more complex information, the extent to which he can process information and whether the concussion caused a physical change in the brain structure or if he’s simply now exhibiting a talent that’s lain dormant until now?” one of the members asked.

“Yes. We feel that there may be significant evolution of Mr. Russell’s abilities over the next several years as pubescent changes fundamentally alter his brain chemistry. That is why we’ve applied for a grant of a modest amount with a commitment of five years and an option to revisit continuing funding if the research is still viable at that time.”

The board seemed to confer mostly by looks. “I notice you attached a request to expedite the process. Why is that, Carl?” the same member asked.

“In order to prevent any emotional distress on the part of Mr. Russell, we’re looking to keep him in high school to audit his classes there at the normal pace and supplement them with carefully selected courses from our own curriculum that have no participation requirement and for which the lectures can be recorded for him to attend remotely as his other schedule allows. We’ll require some time before semester begins to select courses, arrange to record lectures, speak with professors and obviously register Mr. Russell. We have just over a month before we need to have him ready to go if the project is approved.”

“Very well,” the same member who appeared to be chairing the board said. “If the members are in agreement, we’ll adjourn briefly to discuss the proposal and render a decision.” He glanced up and down the table and banged his gavel. “We’ll reconvene in 1 hour.”

They filed out of the room, but no one really moved. They just turned in their seats to talk to each other. I leaned forward from where I was sitting behind the two doctors and asked how I did.

“You were exactly what they were hoping to see,” Dr. Saddler said smugly. “I presented the initial proposal on Friday and explained everything already, so the accounting knit-picking is out of the way. They mostly wanted to make sure this wasn’t a traveling medicine show.”

I asked if he had a copy of the full proposal and he handed me one, watching expectantly as I zipped through it. I didn’t fully understand all the terminology or the science, but that was a matter of not having a background in those disciplines. It was the accounting work that I wanted to go over. THAT knit-picking I knew.

“You have $80,000 a year budgeted for research assistants to review and summarize the raw data?” I asked.

He nodded. “I estimated that it would take 4 assistants to crunch all the numbers.”

“I could probably do it in half the time for half the price alone,” I said. “All I’d need would be direction on how to comb the data. It’d save you $200,000 over five years and shrink the number of people you have to have wandering in and out of the project. My dad’s an accountant. He taught me numbers.”

Dr. Spencer was smirking at me from behind Dr. Saddler. “Not enough to impress a Harvard Board of Review, now you have to show off, Matthew?”

“Well, it’s not magic if there’s no pizzazz,” I pointed out and got some laughter from my girls.

Dr. Saddler smiled and nodded. “If we’re approved, which I think we will be, we’ll review some similar data and see whether you can pick it up or if it’s best to leave it to some of the actual research assistants. They are doctorate candidates after all.”

“Fair enough,” I allowed. “I just figured it might help. I know large budgets are a game of give and take. Shortcomings in one account can often be balanced by surpluses in another.”

“God help us all, he IS an accountant,” he laughed.

“Well, the raw data is just statistics and statistics is just accounting without the dollar signs.”

“It’s a little more complicated than just adding up columns against each other. Depending on the statistical model used, the same data can have very different meanings.”

“That, Dr. Saddler, is the definition of accounting during tax season,” I told him with a smile.

“Victoria, where did you find this boy?!” He asked incredulously.

“By the time I got him, he was half-dead, electrocuted and drugged out of his mind,” she laughed.

“See,” I said to her. “It’s all in the pizzazz. When you say it like that, it’s like something out of Greek mythology.”

I noticed that the girls had been mostly bored by the banter and I dialed it back a bit and chatted with them while we waited for the board to return. By the time the door to their closed session opened, the three of us were giggling teenagers in love. They each took one of my hands and kissed my cheeks while we waited for the decision.

The chairman had noticed the gesture. “Mr. Russell. You brought your own cheering section?”

“No sir,” I said with a crooked grin. “Personal assassins. If things turn ugly, they’ve sworn to carve me a path to freedom.”

That got a chuckle from a few of the members and a little levity from the other groups waiting for their turn to beg for money.

“Well, you’re certainly suited to working with Dr. Saddler,” he said with a smile. “Alright Carl. You’ve got your pound of flesh. You’re approved for $3,750,000 per year for five years with viability review at that time. Good luck.”

Dr. Saddler thanked the board and we gathered our things and left the room quietly while they turned their attention to another grant request.

Outside in the hall, he extended his hand. “Welcome to Harvard, my boy!” he said enthusiastically.

I took it in something of a daze. “Just like that? No interviews, no admissions board, no essay to convince them I’m Harvard material?”

“You just did it. Six of those men and women are on the admissions board. They approved your admission as part of the project,” he laughed. “Let’s take a walk. We’ll show you around campus a little and then I think we ought to go to lunch to celebrate.”

We were all ecstatic. It was one of the most prestigious schools in the world and I was attending. I excused myself for a moment to make the call we knew they were waiting for.

“Well?” they answered the phone and I could tell I was on speaker.

“I’m in!” I told them and there was screaming from the other end of the phone. I told them that we were taking a tour of the campus and we’d fill them in when we got home.

We spent the rest of the morning seeing different parts of campus and then had lunch and Dr. Saddler had to return to his office to start the paperwork.

Dr. Spencer led the tour to the campus bookstore. I’d get my actual books when I had courses to get them for, but for now I wanted to do some of my fall shopping getting all Harvard everything. We didn’t care that the Harvard notebooks were more expensive, we bought them for all of us and Lilly too. Everything that we’d need that we could get with the Harvard logo came with us to the check-out. We each bought sweatshirts, t-shirts, shorts, sweatpants and generally everything we could. The total would have been staggering, but I paid cash and we left burdened down with shopping bags.

We all hugged Dr. Spencer and thanked her. She was the architect of this moment as much as Dr. Saddler

She smiled and asked me to speak with her for a moment before we went our separate ways.