The scientist broke out into a cold sweat, eyes shifting back and forth from the monitor to the keyboard. Kevin pretended to not hear the conversation from his desk across the room but he kept peering over the monitor at them.

“That’s ridiculous. There’s obviously a transcription error in there,” he said as he wiped his palms on his pants for the third time.

“We ran the data 6 times. I even rewrote the analysis script from scratch to be sure it wasn’t a logic bug.”

“What? We got some ghost in the machine? Is that what you’re saying? ” he laughed a mirthless laugh while running his fingers through his hair – his trademark nervous tic.

“I’m not saying…”

“Enough!” he blasted as he ripped the printout from the assistant’s hand. “This is absurd. Out, both of you. I’ll handle the experiment’s results.”

Kevin quickly banged something on the keyboard, grabbed his jacket off his chair and scooted out the door. The assistant watched him leave helplessly, then followed but not before picking up a red folder.