The Doctoral Deficiency (3/5)
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Rating: PG
Part One * Part Two
Later that night, Sheldon sat at his desk, the ghostly light of the monitor giving his face a bluish-glow in the dimly-lit living room. Zardoz had long finished, Howard and Raj had left before Sheldon could even return from his laundry-night activity, and now Leonard was left alone with his roommate.
Leonard had tried distracting himself with stupid Facebook games to no avail. Before his guilty conscience floated an image of Howard's dejected figure leaving the apartment. Despite the bright bravery of his red and yellow outfit, topped off with a pirate belt-buckle, Howard appeared small(er) and diminished, worn down by fears that his dissertation would never see the light of day.
Wandering aimlessly from his own keyboard to the kitchen, to fill a glass of water, take a sip and pour out the rest, Leonard sighed.
"That's the third time," Sheldon said, never moving his gaze from his screen.
"Third time what?" Leonard responded in some confusion, standing by the kitchen island, holding the empty glass before him as if it were a shield.
Sheldon spared a glance from his computer to rake Leonard from dishevelled head to sneakers-clad feet. "Third time this evening that you've gone to the kitchen, poured yourself a glass of water and then thought better of it. You're either suffering from a strange and transient obsession or you're trying to build up the courage to ask me about something. Howard's thesis, I presume."
Leonard half-collapsed against the kitchen counter at Sheldon's words. "Well, yeah, kind of."
Sheldon's eyebrows rose higher. "As decisive as ever, Leonard."
Sighing slightly, the Texan turned primly in his chair so he was directly facing Leonard. "You have my undivided attention. Fire away."
Leonard felt a little bit like a bug trapped on an entomologist's pin, transfixed by Sheldon's unyielding gaze. "Um, well, you see, it's that, well-"
Sheldon harrumphed. "Get on with it. My patience is not limitless, unlike the queue for Cataclysm Open Beta." This last was said with an accusing look at the Warcraft loading screen on his monitor.
Leonard shook his head abruptly, reminding himself that this was for Howard who, much as he might find him annoyingly smarmy as he tried to talk the pants off of every girl in Pasadena, still was a sort of friend. "It's Howard, yes. He'd like you to step off of the thesis committee. We all would, frankly. Very much."
"I see," Sheldon said.
Leonard waited. Sheldon regarded him unblinkingly.
"Well?" Leonard finally asked, after what had to be a minute of fraught silence.
"Well, what?" Sheldon asked, with an annoyed glance at the still-stagnant loading screen.
"Will you resign from Howard's thesis committee and let us find another physicist or someone from chemistry or geology or something to fill the spot?" Leonard said, his voice rising imploringly on the last part of his request.
"No," Sheldon said. "I will not. And you should thank me for that."
"Why?" Leonard whined in frustration, banging the empty glass on the counter so emphatically that Sheldon winced.
"Careful," Sheldon warned. "It should be childishly obvious, at least if you had greater facility in classical mechanics!, that I am at risk of injury should that glass shatter. I have no wish to end up in emergency with a injury that might reduce my typing speed or gaming efficiency."
Leonard started to apologize, then stifled that sound. "Let's not get off topic, Sheldon," he warned. "Why won't you drop off of Howard's dissertation committee? After all the ways you've avoided service obligations, to be dragging your heels to stay on an engineering grad committee seems more than kinda out of character." In frustration, Leonard raked back the hair from his forehead.
"You're wondering if I've been replaced by a pod person," Sheldon interpreted with a small smile. "The answer to that is, of course, no."
"Suuuuure," Leonard mumbled under his breath.
Sheldon smiled knowingly. "If you'd stop and think for a moment, you'd realize that by staying on Howard's thesis committee, I'm doing him a favour."
"Huh?" Leonard crossed his arms determinedly, pulling his grey hoodie almost closed over his faded penguins t-shirt.
"As usual," Sheldon said with a small, sad sigh, "you fail to follow my clear and obvious logic." He glanced again at the loading screen on his monitor, then turned back to Leonard.
"As scholars, we want our work to be the best that it can be, don't we, Leonard?"
From his perch against the kitchen island, Leonard shrugged slightly. "Sure?"
Sheldon nodded. "All right, then. Now that we've established a minor premise, let's move onto a major premise. Would you let someone you know put out something grossly wrong or inferior?"
Leonard thought on this for a moment. "If I didn't like them, say. Like Kripke. I might then. But, otherwise, no."
Sheldon nodded again, more emphatically. "All right, then. While Howard has been low man on the totem pole of my friendship many a time, he's not in the same category as-" small shudder "-Kripke. I would feel, erm, at least some small regret, were Howard to be humiliated in print."
Leonard nodded. "Okay." He waited while Sheldon regarded him with seeming patience that was, honestly?, mostly unnerving. There was a reason that the grad students all ran screaming from Sheldon's classes, after all.
"So?" Leonard finally asked, fingers of one hand rising to fiddle at his chin as he wilted under Sheldon's relentless regard.
"Isn't it obvious?" Sheldon asked with some surprise. "Do I really have to spell it out explicitly?"
Leonard glared at him. "Okay, consider me a moron. Just tell me, straight out and simply, why you're staying on Howard's doctoral committee?"
"Because I can see the enormous amount of work that Howard needs to put into his dissertation in order to make it a truly worthy project," Sheldon said brightly. "He is my friend, officially and all, so I am, in some way, obligated to see this through. To help him out, as it were."
With that brightly-voiced speech over, Sheldon smoothly rotated his chair back to facing the screen. He peered closely at the information there. "Ah, 28th in the log-in queue. The end is in sight!"
Leonard didn't consider the matter quite so settled as his roommate did, however. He cocked his head to one side, gaze drifting off toward the ceiling as he tried to process Sheldon's statement. "How is it helpful to shoot down his doctorate for years, maybe forever, just so it can be better? It just has to be good enough. And it's an engineering thesis, not a physics degree. How much can you really add to it, anyway?"
Sheldon turned away from the computer screen at the last question. "A silly question, Leonard, really. I, of course, can add volumes to the tiny little tidbits of knowledge that Howard's laughably basic mathematics skills have suggested in the work so far. Furthermore, I have to contest the entire concept behind the SHARAD detection system, in any case. I mean, it's obviously been surpassed by more recent understandings of low-frequency radar detection-"
Leonard interrupted, "But none of those new ideas have been implemented yet, Sheldon. Let alone are they on satellites that are currently in Martian orbit. SHARAD is what they've got and that's why I expect he came up with this topic with Dr. Arlin who's been consulting with the European Space Agency on SHARAD since 2003."
Sheldon glared at his roommate. "Smartypants! Still, given the clear advances of the basic science in the last seven years, I cannot condone going forward to defense with this data alone. Howard should be preparing for the next generation of shallow radar detections with his work, not simply working with what he has!"
Leonard felt his forehead begin to pound in a painful way. "But that's exactly what he's supposed to be doing, Sheldon. That's his topic. That's his parameters. That's his purpose!"
Sheldon's nose wrinkled in obvious distaste. "You say tomato, I say "model improved low-frequency shallow radar data analysis." And, since I'm on the committee, a service obligation that you pointed out I was failing to provide to the university, what I say goes. Howard will deal with it. Don't worry. And now that I'm finally logging into the Closed Beta of Cataclysm with my Undead Warlock, I bid you adieu."
Leonard levered himself away from the counter and retired to his bedroom, muttering in disgust. This was certainly not going to be easy for any of them. The thought of scrawling something on the walls with blood-red paint seemed just a little more appealing than it had a few hours ago.
Knock. Knock-knock-knock. Knock.
"Come in," Leonard said with some exasperation and when nothing happened, he stormed around his desk to open the door. Raj stood in the hallway outside, glancing furtively up and down the hallway.
"I said 'come in'," Leonard reiterated with a touch of bitterness.
"Sorry, man," Raj said. "I was just keeping an eye on for Sheldon."
Howard, already camped out in one of Leonard's office chairs, rolled his eyes at Raj's malapropism. "Keeping an eye out, Raj."
"Whatever," Raj replied dismissively. "I spend three hours on video chat with the family last night and my brain's still processing from the other side of the planet." He tugged down his argyle sweater vest as he grabbed the other guest chair near Howard's.
"Shouldn't you lock that?" Howard asked, with an anxious look toward Leonard's office door. "In case Sheldon, you know. . . ."
Leonard sighed, pushing himself out of his desk chair yet again. He turned the door lock with a heavy click. "There. Happy?"
Howard rolled his eyes. "I may never be. Man, Sheldon is going to be the death of me. We have to come up with some way to get him off the committee or I'll be defending when I'm applying for Social Security."
Raj pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Don't candidates have a right to have a say in who's on their committee?"
Howard bobbed his head. "Well, normally yes."
Leonard leaned forward across his desk. "And your situation isn't normal how?"
Howard look uneasily, left to right. "Okay, well, I was trying to get the attention of Sherry, you know the really hot brunette who works in the grad office? So I was going in there every week with a change to my committee until they, well, banned me from the office and Dr. Arlin made me swear that I would not request any further changes to my graduate committee."
Raj whistled softly. "Whoa. Bad move there!"
Howard turned sharply in his chair. "Wow! And to think I never realized that until now. Thank you, Dr. Obvious."
Raj's brow furrowed angrily. "Look, if you'd kept us all in the loop, we could have helped you out with some of the worst problems. Instead, you had to hide everything and look where that got us!"
Leonard cut in before their argument could get any more heated. "Look, blaming is not the point. We're here to brainstorm a solution to Howard's problem. And if Howard can't get a committee change put through, well, maybe somebody else can? How about your supervisor, Howard?"
Howard shook his head sharply, making his mop of hair slap back and forth with his firm denial. "Nope, right now he only wants to get this done and get me out the door. He has a sabbatical coming up. . . ."
"Does he know about Sheldon's plans for 'significant revision'?" Leonard asked, lifting his fingers to emphasize the scare quotes of the last phrase.
"Even if he did," Howard said, "he's just so ready to be gone, he'd probably put my thesis on the back burner until his sabbatical's done."
Raj leaned forward. "What about if one of us puts the request in. I mean, we're faculty. Certainly we could have a role here."
Leonard appeared impressed, if slightly skeptical. "That's not a bad idea, Raj, it's just, well, how would we do that?"
Howard nodded excitedly and seemed to swell in his seat. "That could work! Leave the organizing to me. I know where all the forms are posted online. There's one for committee changes that I have on my hard drive. If I just get you to fill it in and get one of you to drop it off, we'd be good."
Raj frowned. "I don't know, Howard. Isn't the grad office onto you and all your changes? They might wonder why one of your friends is coming in to change the committee yet again."
Howard grudgingly nodded his agreement. "Yeah, that could be right. We need to get someone they wouldn't pay any attention to. Just take the form from and file the changes."
Leonard leaned back in his chair, staring off into the distance. "One of the staff?"
Howard shook his head again. "No. All the office workers in your department and mine know the grad people really well. And they know about my, erm, status with Sherry. So we couldn't get that by them."
Raj piped up. "We need someone who looks like they could work here, in the office, but doesn't, and is willing to play along."
"An actor?" Howard suggested. "That seems a little over-elaborate, if you know what I mean."
Leonard smiled broadly. "Actually, I think it's exactly right." Looking at the clock on the wall, Leonard nodded decisively.
He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and pressed a few buttons. "Penny? It's Leonard. This is your break, isn't it?"
He nodded slightly, avoiding Howard's and Raj's eye contact as Penny obviously spoke at some length.
"I'm sorry, I didn't think it was stalkerish to just remember your work schedule. Anyway, I was calling to ask if you could do a little favour?"
Again, he paused while Penny responded. Neither Howard or Raj could hear what she was saying, but the volume of garbled sounds piping out of the phone got a bit louder.
Leonard winced and held the phone slightly away from his ear. "Not that kind of favour, Penny. It's a favour where we'd ask you to use your acting skills. All very professional, though."
The volume of Penny's voice, filtered through the phone, dropped dramatically. "It's to help Howard out. We need someone to deliver some forms to the grad office and appear, well, entirely unremarkable. Because, apparently, they're onto Howard."
Leonard nodded again in response to what must have been a long response from Penny's end. "I'll tell him, just a minute."
Putting his hand over the phone's mouthpiece, Leonard leaned across the desk. "Penny says she'll do it-"
Howard shook his fist in triumph.
"Wait," Leonard said. "You haven't heard the terms."
Howard froze. "What does she want?" he asked.
Leonard stared intently at him. "She wants you to pay for six months of her internet bill, set up her own wireless router so she's 'no longer at Sheldon's mercy' and you have to promise that there will be no pinches, no pats and no 'yo mamas' for an entire year."
Howard stared intently into vacant space in front of him for ten seconds, then nodded. "All right, I can do it."
"He's in," Leonard said into the phone. "Look, are you free tomorrow? We can get the paperwork together and you can meet us on campus sometime. We'll show you the rest."
Howard raised a hand. "Wait. Tell her to dress 'frumpy'. Like an office worker. Not to dress like a student or they'll ask for her student ID and we'll be busted."
Leonard repeated the request and, after listening a bit more to Penny, fixed his friend with a stern gaze. "She says it's eight months, now."
"All right, all right," Howard grumbled. "Just let's get this thing done!"
"Hi, guys," Penny's voice carried clearly from the entry to the Holliston parking garage. "That's three dollars you owe me for parking, too, Howard."
Leonard returned her greeting. Raj ducked and ventured a tentative wave. Howard groused under his breath about her picking the two hour parking when one would've done but at Leonard's stern glare, stopped.
"Well, Penny," Howard said approvingly as she stepped out into the sunlight, "you must be a better actress than I thought."
Penny smiled triumphantly. "Why's that, Howard?
"Well, look at you," Howard enthused. "You really look the part. I mean, the brown dress is a bit shapeless, that's so 'academic', and the glasses? Perfect touch. Someone might almost mistake you for a faculty member but you took care of that with those sandals, not Birkenstocks like a prof or grad student would wear."
Penny's grin widened and she gave a mock curtsey. "Nice to know that I've impressed you."
"Yeah," Howard continued, looking her up and down. "I said to myself, 'that Penny, she knows how to do dumpy because, oh!, have you seen her in those sweat pants, and a bit trashy sometimes with the cut-offs and tanks, but frumpy?, now, that might be a stretch."
Leonard covered his eyes with one hand while Raj cringed backward as Penny's expression morphed from flattered to outraged.
"Um," Howard said warily, realizing, too late, the mistake he'd made, "I'm sure those are all just part of your talented acting repertoire, actually, because you're so endlessly fascinating."
"Stuff it, Howard," Penny said sharply. "And it's a full year, now."
"Huh?"
"The internet that you're setting up and paying for. Twelve months. Any more screw-ups and it might be a whole new laptop, so be careful," Penny warned.
Howard mumbled, shaking his head unhappily. Raj slapped him sharply on the back of the shoulder as if to say "shut up!"
Leonard anxiously rolled the folder he was holding, then, realizing this held the paperwork they wanted Penny to smuggle into the grad office, carefully flattened it back out.
"Um, okay Penny, what we need you to do is to take this folder over to the Grad Studies office. It's on the second floor of the Student Services building, right here. Just go up to one of the staff and tell her you have to drop off this form," Leonard explained, shoving the folder toward her.
Penny contemplated the folder briefly. "What if they ask where I'm from and who it's for?"
Leonard had an answer. "Just tell them you're dropping it off for one of the secretaries in engineering and it's for some grad student. They'll assume you're a floating temp. Probably won't even look at it until later which'll be perfect."
Penny nodded. "Okay, sounds easy enough. I'll be right back."
She sashayed toward the entrance deliberately, looking back over her shoulder once with a satisfied smile that seemed to say 'frumpy? In your dreams!' and the three men watched her walk with reflexive fascination. As soon as she disappeared into the doors, Raj slapped Howard really hard on the back.
"Ow!" he wailed. "What was that for?"
Raj glared at him. "You were an asshole, Howard. You hurt her feelings."
Howard looked his buddy up and down. "Who died and made you Mr. Sensitive New Age Guy?"
Leonard chuckled at that, but changed it to a cough when Raj glared at him. Adopting a sober expression, he, too, turned disapprovingly toward Howard. "You had to admit that she got pretty decent revenge there."
"Who?"
Sheldon's voice caused the three to jump.
"What the-?" Leonard squawked. "What are you doing at this part of campus, Sheldon?"
"Oh, I just have some paperwork to drop off at grad studies! Must hurry since I told them I'd have it in before noon," said his roommate, cruising by. "Wolowitz. Koothrappali." He nodded at the other two as he strode rapidly past them.
"Oh, shit," Howard said, glancing at the other guys. "Whadda we do now?"
Raj appeared hunted. "Run?"
Leonard began backing up to the parking garage entrance. "Let's just hang out back here, where it's a bit dark."
"Good idea," Howard said as he and Raj scrambled after Leonard. They waited and waited. And waited some more. And then campus security showed up. And an emergency response vehicle from which two EMTs jogged hurriedly into the center.
"Oh, shit," Leonard breathed, fading further into the background, trying to figure out if he could make an escape but knowing that Penny would hunt him down if he disappeared on her.
Within a few minutes, they saw a flustered Penny exiting the building beside an affable Sheldon. As he walked her toward the parking garage, they could just make out Sheldon's reassurance to the security staffers. "Don't worry, I'll make sure she doesn't cause any more trouble here. You have my word. Now, come along, Penny."
The pair nodded and returned to their vehicle.
Penny, meanwhile, was barrelling straight to the other three as if they showed up on a radar scope. "You, you, YOU!" she snarled, pointing at Howard, who stood as if transfixed by her anger.
"What?" he managed, wilting before the combined force of Penny's wrath and Sheldon's supercilious good humour.
"You know what," Penny said. "I've just been banned, banned, from the Caltech Student Services building for life because, apparently, I was somehow aiding you in breaching a restraining order on behalf of that poor woman in the grad studies office who fainted when she saw the name on your forms."
"Really," Sheldon said, chidingly, "you shouldn't have done that, Howard."
"Done what?" Howard protested. "I’m not supposed to enter the office, sure, but I didn't think that extended to anyone else-"
Penny's angry confirmation earned a strangled laugh from Howard. "Oh, geez, well, I'm really sorry, Penny. If I'd known. . . ."
Sheldon stepped closer, giving Howard a censorious glare. "If you'd known, if you'd thought, Wolowitz, you wouldn't have tried these shenanigans. I heard from Penny what you were trying to do, get me off your graduate committee for some foolish, petty concerns. And you sent that nice young lady in the grad studies office into a fit. The medics were still there when we left. Poor thing. If only you'd been wise enough to leave well enough alone, but with the evidence I've seen in your thesis so far, I think we'd all have to agree that wisdom isn't exactly one of your strong points, either. Now, I have another project to tend to so, good day."
Penny, on the other hand, lingered, with a meaningful glare in Howard's direction. "Why didn't you tell me there was someone in there for whom the words "Howard Wolowitz" is apparently a cue for panic attacks?"
Howard shrugged more in an attempt to make himself smaller than to answer her question. "Um, well, because I hoped you wouldn't see her? Yeah, I used to try to get Sherry to go out with me and maybe I went a bit too far when I rewired the webcam on her work computer to connect directly to mine at the lab but I was just trying to get her to notice me."
Penny snorted. "Well, she knows who you are now. Me, too. Do you have any idea how humiliating it was to be photographed by campus security and then escorted out?"
Howard nodded.
Penny rolled her eyes. Of course he would. "I mean, for me?" she demanded.
"Um, very, very, VERY sorry?" Howard squeaked.
"I want a new laptop and my ISP for a year. Plus cable. HBO. Everything." Penny fixed Howard with a stern glare.
"Coming right up," Howard managed bravely as she shoved past him, heading up into the parking garage to retrieve her car.
"Well, that went badly," he muttered once she was out of sight.
Leonard's laugh was a sad bark. "I don't think there's a word that's strong enough to describe how badly that went."
"Cratered?" Raj offered.
"Deeper," Leonard insisted.
"Molten cored?" Raj countered.
"Maybe," Leonard conceded.
Howard raised his arms to gesture skyward in despair. "Why me?" he implored.
Leonard shrugged. "Why any of us?" At Howard's annoyed glare, he hurriedly added. "So this didn't work. We still have time. And options. We'll figure out something."
"Or you'll spend three years reworking your thesis to Sheldon's satisfaction," Raj added.
"Great," Howard moaned. "Just great."
Part Four
X-posted from Dreamwidth. (
comments there.)
Rating: PG
Part One * Part Two
Later that night, Sheldon sat at his desk, the ghostly light of the monitor giving his face a bluish-glow in the dimly-lit living room. Zardoz had long finished, Howard and Raj had left before Sheldon could even return from his laundry-night activity, and now Leonard was left alone with his roommate.
Leonard had tried distracting himself with stupid Facebook games to no avail. Before his guilty conscience floated an image of Howard's dejected figure leaving the apartment. Despite the bright bravery of his red and yellow outfit, topped off with a pirate belt-buckle, Howard appeared small(er) and diminished, worn down by fears that his dissertation would never see the light of day.
Wandering aimlessly from his own keyboard to the kitchen, to fill a glass of water, take a sip and pour out the rest, Leonard sighed.
"That's the third time," Sheldon said, never moving his gaze from his screen.
"Third time what?" Leonard responded in some confusion, standing by the kitchen island, holding the empty glass before him as if it were a shield.
Sheldon spared a glance from his computer to rake Leonard from dishevelled head to sneakers-clad feet. "Third time this evening that you've gone to the kitchen, poured yourself a glass of water and then thought better of it. You're either suffering from a strange and transient obsession or you're trying to build up the courage to ask me about something. Howard's thesis, I presume."
Leonard half-collapsed against the kitchen counter at Sheldon's words. "Well, yeah, kind of."
Sheldon's eyebrows rose higher. "As decisive as ever, Leonard."
Sighing slightly, the Texan turned primly in his chair so he was directly facing Leonard. "You have my undivided attention. Fire away."
Leonard felt a little bit like a bug trapped on an entomologist's pin, transfixed by Sheldon's unyielding gaze. "Um, well, you see, it's that, well-"
Sheldon harrumphed. "Get on with it. My patience is not limitless, unlike the queue for Cataclysm Open Beta." This last was said with an accusing look at the Warcraft loading screen on his monitor.
Leonard shook his head abruptly, reminding himself that this was for Howard who, much as he might find him annoyingly smarmy as he tried to talk the pants off of every girl in Pasadena, still was a sort of friend. "It's Howard, yes. He'd like you to step off of the thesis committee. We all would, frankly. Very much."
"I see," Sheldon said.
Leonard waited. Sheldon regarded him unblinkingly.
"Well?" Leonard finally asked, after what had to be a minute of fraught silence.
"Well, what?" Sheldon asked, with an annoyed glance at the still-stagnant loading screen.
"Will you resign from Howard's thesis committee and let us find another physicist or someone from chemistry or geology or something to fill the spot?" Leonard said, his voice rising imploringly on the last part of his request.
"No," Sheldon said. "I will not. And you should thank me for that."
"Why?" Leonard whined in frustration, banging the empty glass on the counter so emphatically that Sheldon winced.
"Careful," Sheldon warned. "It should be childishly obvious, at least if you had greater facility in classical mechanics!, that I am at risk of injury should that glass shatter. I have no wish to end up in emergency with a injury that might reduce my typing speed or gaming efficiency."
Leonard started to apologize, then stifled that sound. "Let's not get off topic, Sheldon," he warned. "Why won't you drop off of Howard's dissertation committee? After all the ways you've avoided service obligations, to be dragging your heels to stay on an engineering grad committee seems more than kinda out of character." In frustration, Leonard raked back the hair from his forehead.
"You're wondering if I've been replaced by a pod person," Sheldon interpreted with a small smile. "The answer to that is, of course, no."
"Suuuuure," Leonard mumbled under his breath.
Sheldon smiled knowingly. "If you'd stop and think for a moment, you'd realize that by staying on Howard's thesis committee, I'm doing him a favour."
"Huh?" Leonard crossed his arms determinedly, pulling his grey hoodie almost closed over his faded penguins t-shirt.
"As usual," Sheldon said with a small, sad sigh, "you fail to follow my clear and obvious logic." He glanced again at the loading screen on his monitor, then turned back to Leonard.
"As scholars, we want our work to be the best that it can be, don't we, Leonard?"
From his perch against the kitchen island, Leonard shrugged slightly. "Sure?"
Sheldon nodded. "All right, then. Now that we've established a minor premise, let's move onto a major premise. Would you let someone you know put out something grossly wrong or inferior?"
Leonard thought on this for a moment. "If I didn't like them, say. Like Kripke. I might then. But, otherwise, no."
Sheldon nodded again, more emphatically. "All right, then. While Howard has been low man on the totem pole of my friendship many a time, he's not in the same category as-" small shudder "-Kripke. I would feel, erm, at least some small regret, were Howard to be humiliated in print."
Leonard nodded. "Okay." He waited while Sheldon regarded him with seeming patience that was, honestly?, mostly unnerving. There was a reason that the grad students all ran screaming from Sheldon's classes, after all.
"So?" Leonard finally asked, fingers of one hand rising to fiddle at his chin as he wilted under Sheldon's relentless regard.
"Isn't it obvious?" Sheldon asked with some surprise. "Do I really have to spell it out explicitly?"
Leonard glared at him. "Okay, consider me a moron. Just tell me, straight out and simply, why you're staying on Howard's doctoral committee?"
"Because I can see the enormous amount of work that Howard needs to put into his dissertation in order to make it a truly worthy project," Sheldon said brightly. "He is my friend, officially and all, so I am, in some way, obligated to see this through. To help him out, as it were."
With that brightly-voiced speech over, Sheldon smoothly rotated his chair back to facing the screen. He peered closely at the information there. "Ah, 28th in the log-in queue. The end is in sight!"
Leonard didn't consider the matter quite so settled as his roommate did, however. He cocked his head to one side, gaze drifting off toward the ceiling as he tried to process Sheldon's statement. "How is it helpful to shoot down his doctorate for years, maybe forever, just so it can be better? It just has to be good enough. And it's an engineering thesis, not a physics degree. How much can you really add to it, anyway?"
Sheldon turned away from the computer screen at the last question. "A silly question, Leonard, really. I, of course, can add volumes to the tiny little tidbits of knowledge that Howard's laughably basic mathematics skills have suggested in the work so far. Furthermore, I have to contest the entire concept behind the SHARAD detection system, in any case. I mean, it's obviously been surpassed by more recent understandings of low-frequency radar detection-"
Leonard interrupted, "But none of those new ideas have been implemented yet, Sheldon. Let alone are they on satellites that are currently in Martian orbit. SHARAD is what they've got and that's why I expect he came up with this topic with Dr. Arlin who's been consulting with the European Space Agency on SHARAD since 2003."
Sheldon glared at his roommate. "Smartypants! Still, given the clear advances of the basic science in the last seven years, I cannot condone going forward to defense with this data alone. Howard should be preparing for the next generation of shallow radar detections with his work, not simply working with what he has!"
Leonard felt his forehead begin to pound in a painful way. "But that's exactly what he's supposed to be doing, Sheldon. That's his topic. That's his parameters. That's his purpose!"
Sheldon's nose wrinkled in obvious distaste. "You say tomato, I say "model improved low-frequency shallow radar data analysis." And, since I'm on the committee, a service obligation that you pointed out I was failing to provide to the university, what I say goes. Howard will deal with it. Don't worry. And now that I'm finally logging into the Closed Beta of Cataclysm with my Undead Warlock, I bid you adieu."
Leonard levered himself away from the counter and retired to his bedroom, muttering in disgust. This was certainly not going to be easy for any of them. The thought of scrawling something on the walls with blood-red paint seemed just a little more appealing than it had a few hours ago.
Knock. Knock-knock-knock. Knock.
"Come in," Leonard said with some exasperation and when nothing happened, he stormed around his desk to open the door. Raj stood in the hallway outside, glancing furtively up and down the hallway.
"I said 'come in'," Leonard reiterated with a touch of bitterness.
"Sorry, man," Raj said. "I was just keeping an eye on for Sheldon."
Howard, already camped out in one of Leonard's office chairs, rolled his eyes at Raj's malapropism. "Keeping an eye out, Raj."
"Whatever," Raj replied dismissively. "I spend three hours on video chat with the family last night and my brain's still processing from the other side of the planet." He tugged down his argyle sweater vest as he grabbed the other guest chair near Howard's.
"Shouldn't you lock that?" Howard asked, with an anxious look toward Leonard's office door. "In case Sheldon, you know. . . ."
Leonard sighed, pushing himself out of his desk chair yet again. He turned the door lock with a heavy click. "There. Happy?"
Howard rolled his eyes. "I may never be. Man, Sheldon is going to be the death of me. We have to come up with some way to get him off the committee or I'll be defending when I'm applying for Social Security."
Raj pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Don't candidates have a right to have a say in who's on their committee?"
Howard bobbed his head. "Well, normally yes."
Leonard leaned forward across his desk. "And your situation isn't normal how?"
Howard look uneasily, left to right. "Okay, well, I was trying to get the attention of Sherry, you know the really hot brunette who works in the grad office? So I was going in there every week with a change to my committee until they, well, banned me from the office and Dr. Arlin made me swear that I would not request any further changes to my graduate committee."
Raj whistled softly. "Whoa. Bad move there!"
Howard turned sharply in his chair. "Wow! And to think I never realized that until now. Thank you, Dr. Obvious."
Raj's brow furrowed angrily. "Look, if you'd kept us all in the loop, we could have helped you out with some of the worst problems. Instead, you had to hide everything and look where that got us!"
Leonard cut in before their argument could get any more heated. "Look, blaming is not the point. We're here to brainstorm a solution to Howard's problem. And if Howard can't get a committee change put through, well, maybe somebody else can? How about your supervisor, Howard?"
Howard shook his head sharply, making his mop of hair slap back and forth with his firm denial. "Nope, right now he only wants to get this done and get me out the door. He has a sabbatical coming up. . . ."
"Does he know about Sheldon's plans for 'significant revision'?" Leonard asked, lifting his fingers to emphasize the scare quotes of the last phrase.
"Even if he did," Howard said, "he's just so ready to be gone, he'd probably put my thesis on the back burner until his sabbatical's done."
Raj leaned forward. "What about if one of us puts the request in. I mean, we're faculty. Certainly we could have a role here."
Leonard appeared impressed, if slightly skeptical. "That's not a bad idea, Raj, it's just, well, how would we do that?"
Howard nodded excitedly and seemed to swell in his seat. "That could work! Leave the organizing to me. I know where all the forms are posted online. There's one for committee changes that I have on my hard drive. If I just get you to fill it in and get one of you to drop it off, we'd be good."
Raj frowned. "I don't know, Howard. Isn't the grad office onto you and all your changes? They might wonder why one of your friends is coming in to change the committee yet again."
Howard grudgingly nodded his agreement. "Yeah, that could be right. We need to get someone they wouldn't pay any attention to. Just take the form from and file the changes."
Leonard leaned back in his chair, staring off into the distance. "One of the staff?"
Howard shook his head again. "No. All the office workers in your department and mine know the grad people really well. And they know about my, erm, status with Sherry. So we couldn't get that by them."
Raj piped up. "We need someone who looks like they could work here, in the office, but doesn't, and is willing to play along."
"An actor?" Howard suggested. "That seems a little over-elaborate, if you know what I mean."
Leonard smiled broadly. "Actually, I think it's exactly right." Looking at the clock on the wall, Leonard nodded decisively.
He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and pressed a few buttons. "Penny? It's Leonard. This is your break, isn't it?"
He nodded slightly, avoiding Howard's and Raj's eye contact as Penny obviously spoke at some length.
"I'm sorry, I didn't think it was stalkerish to just remember your work schedule. Anyway, I was calling to ask if you could do a little favour?"
Again, he paused while Penny responded. Neither Howard or Raj could hear what she was saying, but the volume of garbled sounds piping out of the phone got a bit louder.
Leonard winced and held the phone slightly away from his ear. "Not that kind of favour, Penny. It's a favour where we'd ask you to use your acting skills. All very professional, though."
The volume of Penny's voice, filtered through the phone, dropped dramatically. "It's to help Howard out. We need someone to deliver some forms to the grad office and appear, well, entirely unremarkable. Because, apparently, they're onto Howard."
Leonard nodded again in response to what must have been a long response from Penny's end. "I'll tell him, just a minute."
Putting his hand over the phone's mouthpiece, Leonard leaned across the desk. "Penny says she'll do it-"
Howard shook his fist in triumph.
"Wait," Leonard said. "You haven't heard the terms."
Howard froze. "What does she want?" he asked.
Leonard stared intently at him. "She wants you to pay for six months of her internet bill, set up her own wireless router so she's 'no longer at Sheldon's mercy' and you have to promise that there will be no pinches, no pats and no 'yo mamas' for an entire year."
Howard stared intently into vacant space in front of him for ten seconds, then nodded. "All right, I can do it."
"He's in," Leonard said into the phone. "Look, are you free tomorrow? We can get the paperwork together and you can meet us on campus sometime. We'll show you the rest."
Howard raised a hand. "Wait. Tell her to dress 'frumpy'. Like an office worker. Not to dress like a student or they'll ask for her student ID and we'll be busted."
Leonard repeated the request and, after listening a bit more to Penny, fixed his friend with a stern gaze. "She says it's eight months, now."
"All right, all right," Howard grumbled. "Just let's get this thing done!"
"Hi, guys," Penny's voice carried clearly from the entry to the Holliston parking garage. "That's three dollars you owe me for parking, too, Howard."
Leonard returned her greeting. Raj ducked and ventured a tentative wave. Howard groused under his breath about her picking the two hour parking when one would've done but at Leonard's stern glare, stopped.
"Well, Penny," Howard said approvingly as she stepped out into the sunlight, "you must be a better actress than I thought."
Penny smiled triumphantly. "Why's that, Howard?
"Well, look at you," Howard enthused. "You really look the part. I mean, the brown dress is a bit shapeless, that's so 'academic', and the glasses? Perfect touch. Someone might almost mistake you for a faculty member but you took care of that with those sandals, not Birkenstocks like a prof or grad student would wear."
Penny's grin widened and she gave a mock curtsey. "Nice to know that I've impressed you."
"Yeah," Howard continued, looking her up and down. "I said to myself, 'that Penny, she knows how to do dumpy because, oh!, have you seen her in those sweat pants, and a bit trashy sometimes with the cut-offs and tanks, but frumpy?, now, that might be a stretch."
Leonard covered his eyes with one hand while Raj cringed backward as Penny's expression morphed from flattered to outraged.
"Um," Howard said warily, realizing, too late, the mistake he'd made, "I'm sure those are all just part of your talented acting repertoire, actually, because you're so endlessly fascinating."
"Stuff it, Howard," Penny said sharply. "And it's a full year, now."
"Huh?"
"The internet that you're setting up and paying for. Twelve months. Any more screw-ups and it might be a whole new laptop, so be careful," Penny warned.
Howard mumbled, shaking his head unhappily. Raj slapped him sharply on the back of the shoulder as if to say "shut up!"
Leonard anxiously rolled the folder he was holding, then, realizing this held the paperwork they wanted Penny to smuggle into the grad office, carefully flattened it back out.
"Um, okay Penny, what we need you to do is to take this folder over to the Grad Studies office. It's on the second floor of the Student Services building, right here. Just go up to one of the staff and tell her you have to drop off this form," Leonard explained, shoving the folder toward her.
Penny contemplated the folder briefly. "What if they ask where I'm from and who it's for?"
Leonard had an answer. "Just tell them you're dropping it off for one of the secretaries in engineering and it's for some grad student. They'll assume you're a floating temp. Probably won't even look at it until later which'll be perfect."
Penny nodded. "Okay, sounds easy enough. I'll be right back."
She sashayed toward the entrance deliberately, looking back over her shoulder once with a satisfied smile that seemed to say 'frumpy? In your dreams!' and the three men watched her walk with reflexive fascination. As soon as she disappeared into the doors, Raj slapped Howard really hard on the back.
"Ow!" he wailed. "What was that for?"
Raj glared at him. "You were an asshole, Howard. You hurt her feelings."
Howard looked his buddy up and down. "Who died and made you Mr. Sensitive New Age Guy?"
Leonard chuckled at that, but changed it to a cough when Raj glared at him. Adopting a sober expression, he, too, turned disapprovingly toward Howard. "You had to admit that she got pretty decent revenge there."
"Who?"
Sheldon's voice caused the three to jump.
"What the-?" Leonard squawked. "What are you doing at this part of campus, Sheldon?"
"Oh, I just have some paperwork to drop off at grad studies! Must hurry since I told them I'd have it in before noon," said his roommate, cruising by. "Wolowitz. Koothrappali." He nodded at the other two as he strode rapidly past them.
"Oh, shit," Howard said, glancing at the other guys. "Whadda we do now?"
Raj appeared hunted. "Run?"
Leonard began backing up to the parking garage entrance. "Let's just hang out back here, where it's a bit dark."
"Good idea," Howard said as he and Raj scrambled after Leonard. They waited and waited. And waited some more. And then campus security showed up. And an emergency response vehicle from which two EMTs jogged hurriedly into the center.
"Oh, shit," Leonard breathed, fading further into the background, trying to figure out if he could make an escape but knowing that Penny would hunt him down if he disappeared on her.
Within a few minutes, they saw a flustered Penny exiting the building beside an affable Sheldon. As he walked her toward the parking garage, they could just make out Sheldon's reassurance to the security staffers. "Don't worry, I'll make sure she doesn't cause any more trouble here. You have my word. Now, come along, Penny."
The pair nodded and returned to their vehicle.
Penny, meanwhile, was barrelling straight to the other three as if they showed up on a radar scope. "You, you, YOU!" she snarled, pointing at Howard, who stood as if transfixed by her anger.
"What?" he managed, wilting before the combined force of Penny's wrath and Sheldon's supercilious good humour.
"You know what," Penny said. "I've just been banned, banned, from the Caltech Student Services building for life because, apparently, I was somehow aiding you in breaching a restraining order on behalf of that poor woman in the grad studies office who fainted when she saw the name on your forms."
"Really," Sheldon said, chidingly, "you shouldn't have done that, Howard."
"Done what?" Howard protested. "I’m not supposed to enter the office, sure, but I didn't think that extended to anyone else-"
Penny's angry confirmation earned a strangled laugh from Howard. "Oh, geez, well, I'm really sorry, Penny. If I'd known. . . ."
Sheldon stepped closer, giving Howard a censorious glare. "If you'd known, if you'd thought, Wolowitz, you wouldn't have tried these shenanigans. I heard from Penny what you were trying to do, get me off your graduate committee for some foolish, petty concerns. And you sent that nice young lady in the grad studies office into a fit. The medics were still there when we left. Poor thing. If only you'd been wise enough to leave well enough alone, but with the evidence I've seen in your thesis so far, I think we'd all have to agree that wisdom isn't exactly one of your strong points, either. Now, I have another project to tend to so, good day."
Penny, on the other hand, lingered, with a meaningful glare in Howard's direction. "Why didn't you tell me there was someone in there for whom the words "Howard Wolowitz" is apparently a cue for panic attacks?"
Howard shrugged more in an attempt to make himself smaller than to answer her question. "Um, well, because I hoped you wouldn't see her? Yeah, I used to try to get Sherry to go out with me and maybe I went a bit too far when I rewired the webcam on her work computer to connect directly to mine at the lab but I was just trying to get her to notice me."
Penny snorted. "Well, she knows who you are now. Me, too. Do you have any idea how humiliating it was to be photographed by campus security and then escorted out?"
Howard nodded.
Penny rolled her eyes. Of course he would. "I mean, for me?" she demanded.
"Um, very, very, VERY sorry?" Howard squeaked.
"I want a new laptop and my ISP for a year. Plus cable. HBO. Everything." Penny fixed Howard with a stern glare.
"Coming right up," Howard managed bravely as she shoved past him, heading up into the parking garage to retrieve her car.
"Well, that went badly," he muttered once she was out of sight.
Leonard's laugh was a sad bark. "I don't think there's a word that's strong enough to describe how badly that went."
"Cratered?" Raj offered.
"Deeper," Leonard insisted.
"Molten cored?" Raj countered.
"Maybe," Leonard conceded.
Howard raised his arms to gesture skyward in despair. "Why me?" he implored.
Leonard shrugged. "Why any of us?" At Howard's annoyed glare, he hurriedly added. "So this didn't work. We still have time. And options. We'll figure out something."
"Or you'll spend three years reworking your thesis to Sheldon's satisfaction," Raj added.
"Great," Howard moaned. "Just great."
Part Four
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