by ELAD

The banker’s mustache quivered as he looked up to face the young engineer. ”With ideas like this, do you seriously expect to be taken seriously?”

The engineer looked down at his lap, and fiddled with one of the rock=hard chocolate chip cookies that lay on a gilded tray on the bankers elaborately carved oak desk. Just as he had feared. Another rejection.

The banker spoke again, “I said, are you seriously expecting to be taken seriously? We have neither the time nor capital to invest in a crackpot invention as your own.”

The engineer finally looked up and met the banker’s eyes. The banker was a clearly well-fed, rather stout man with a short neck and large, angry, droopy, mustache. Not a very impressive man.

The banker began to show clear signs of stress under the iron gate of the engineer. The silence continued for a few seconds more, till the elegant, gilded rotary telephone on the desk rang abruptly, visibly startling the banker.

He broke off from the engineer’ gaze and motioned for the young engineer to leave the room as he picked up the phone.

The engineer strode purposefully out of the office, through the cathedral like foyer and out of the massive limestone facade. The engineer slumped down on the towering stairs, head in hand, pulling a set of blueprints out of a folder. The engineer’s eyes glanced over the plans. One day, in a more enlightened world, she thought, someone will have use for a device that can solve arithmetic for them.

 

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