The Grant Application: Part 3

The deadline arrives

Previously: Part1, Part2.

Professor Ladbrook feared that the research office was empty because no-one had bothered to come into work that day. That was only partly true.

Dr. Hornby and the two PhD students were indeed all sleeping in their beds when Ladbrook arrived at the research office at 11am.

What he didn't know was that they were sleeping because they had left the office at 5am, having finally completed the grant application.

Dr. Rob Grey, who was not at home in his bed, had just arrived at the hospital, to tell Ladbrook what they had achieved, and to get his final approval before submission.

Ladbrook would have known this if he had called Grey, but he did not have his phone. It was plugged into a charger in his office. The phone and its charger had originally been in an obvious location — on top of Ladbrook’s desk — but a cleaner had moved it. A cleaner's idea of the natural location for any object is precisely orthogonal to the owner's.

As a result, Ladbrook wasted two more hours. He rushed — he was still unable to move quickly, so “rushed” in this case was equivalent to a normal person taking a relaxed stroll and pausing every few steps to answer some text messages — down two floors from the research office to the department office, to find out where his phone was. They told him it was in his office. He then went — slowly — back up two floors to his own office, which, to his research team's endless gratitude, was across the corridor from the research office. There he spent an inordinate amount of time searching for his phone, regularly sitting down in his office chair to catch his breath. He could have used a regular office phone, but he had not possessed an office phone ever since the university switched to entirely internet-based communication. And he could not use his laptop to call people because his laptop had been smashed in the accident.

Finally he went — even more slowly, because he was utterly exhausted — back down to the department office to ask them to wait ten minutes, so that he would have time to return to his own, and for them to then call his phone.

The point: all of this took up a lot of time.

To give a stronger impression of its passing, let us catch up on what his research team had been up to.

As Grey had revealed, with refreshing candour, when they received news of Ladbrook’s accident he did indeed give everyone the weekend off. That was around 1pm on Friday afternoon, many hours after the accident.

At the time of the accident all anyone in the meeting room knew was that the call with Ladbrook had ended abruptly. His research team had done what a group of technocratic scientists will always do in that situation, which was to exuberantly explore all plausible (and implausible) technical reasons why the call might have ended. Over the course of the next three hours they succeeded in bringing about a restart of all departmental computer systems, then all university-wide computer systems, then multiple upgrades of university-wide software — that alone took ninety minutes, approximately 500 minutes quicker than anticipated — and finally, in a desperate application of the universal final resort of the tech savvy, they persuaded the head of the university's buildings and estates to switch the entire campus off and on again.

It wasn't until 1am that the hospital, having tried to call every member of Ladbrook’s immediate family, only to be repeatedly hung up on, now decided to call the physics department and deliver the stupendous news that one of their most insufferable professors was immobile in a hospital bed, with at least a week of excruciating pain ahead of him.

That was when Grey performed his first great act of scientific leadership, and announced, “That's it. I'm off to the pub.”

It was his first weekend away from the office in several months. He made sure to enjoy it with an especial intensity.

It was only when he toddled back into the office late on Monday morning that the thought of a single name gripped him with terror: Hornby!

The only thing that had kept her off the pills for the last six weeks had been the intense focus of completing this research project — and nearly 24-hour surveillance from Dr. Rob Grey.

He rounded up the two PhD students, and they spent a fruitless day searching for Lucy Hornby. This included arguing over who would brave a trip to the hospital — haunted by the wounded presence of Professor Ladbrook — to look for her there. Rob drew the short straw, but took the opportunity to retrieve Ladbrook’s phone while he was there; the last thing he needed was Ladbrook requesting updates on his screw-ups. 

Finally, one of the PhD students spotted Lucy on their way to work the next morning, huddled and gibbering at the side of the road.

Revived by coffee, it transpired that she had spent the last three days in the most wild phantasmagorical hallucinogenic delirium, as a result of which she was brimming with suggestions for solving their research problem that were, to put it mildly, indisputably original. Given that they had all been struggling with some of these problems for over a year, the level of her creativity was astounding. Grey and the students were inspired and invigorated.

It took two full days of intense effort on the part of everyone — even poor mediocre Rob Grey — to discover that every single one of her new ideas was batshit crazy.

However, the process had opened their minds to a raft of new approaches, and after two days off the drugs and back into her python notebooks and Mathematica calculations and whiteboard scribblings, Lucy had cracked the problem. By Friday, relieved by the news that Ladbrook would be in hospital for at least one more week, they were all working feverishly on the new approach. The results were clear sometime on Saturday afternoon, and by late Monday they had a draft of their paper.

They were now triumphant and energised. The only way to illustrate just how ecstatically enthusiastic and unstoppable they felt is to say what happened next: they began the grant writing. Did they complain? Did they procrastinate? Did they cower at the prospect of collating references and tables and financial information, and overcoming the most inane of bureaucratic stupidities, not to mention explaining and advocating for their work in terms that would persuade inexpert reviewers who had no clue what they were doing? No! They did not complain, or procrastinate, or cower. They were even content to wrangle with Mrs Ebert in the department office, regardless of how many gushing lectures they had to receive as she worked her way through The Famished Road.

So now we come to Friday. The paper was complete, and submitted; they were sure Ladbrook would not object to being allotted a magisterial location at the end of the author list. The grant application was also ready to submit, they just needed Ladbrook’s final approval. With only a few hours of much-needed sleep, Rob Grey dragged himself out of bed at 10am and made a bleary-eyed journey to the hospital. It was obvious that the prediction of Ladbrook’s one-week recovery was absurdly optimistic, and he would still be there.

He was not.

Grey resisted the extreme temptation to lie down in Ladbrook’s empty hospital bed, and asked where Ladbrook had gone.

“We sent him home.”

“Home? Not to his office?”

“Certainly not! He still needs proper rest. We insisted he go home.”

Grey, still blissfully unaware of his own dim-wittedness, believed them.

He continued to believe them when Ladbrook did not answer his front door. After all, the recovering professor was probably resting! Grey certainly wished he was resting. He made his way around the house, banging on doors and windows. When he got back to the front door he found a key in an obvious hiding place and went inside. Needless to say, Ladbrook was not inside, despite a thorough search, including Rob making absolutely sure that Ladbrook was not in his bed by taking a long nap in it himself.

He was woken by his phone. It was Ladbrook, who had made it back to his office, and had waited for Mrs Ebert to call him, so that he could discover that his phone was at the back of the top drawer of his filing cabinet.

“Professor Ladbrook!” she enthused. “You've found your phone!”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Professor Ladbrook, have you ever read any of Garcia Marquez's short story collections?”

“No, Mrs Ebert, I have not. Goodbye.”

“They’re truly astounding!”

“Goodbye Mrs Ebert.”

Ladbrook then phoned Grey. Grey woke up and was so shocked to discover that he was sleeping in the bed of his boss, whose house he had recently broken in to, and who was now calling him, that Rob could only squawk, “I'll be there in ten minutes”, and hang up, and rush out of the house to his car.

The two finally met in Ladbrook’s office just after 4.30pm.

Ladbrook was slumped over his desk.

“It's too late!” he wailed. “The deadline is 5pm. We haven't written a single word. Even I can't pull this off!”

Rob explained to Ladbrook what they had done. Ladbrook was elated by the scientific results and the paper, then furious about the egregious author list, then grudgingly impressed by the text of the grant application.

“You really wrote all this?”

“Yes.”

“You?” he spat. “And Hornby? I can't believe it!”

Rob was accustomed to praise in this elliptical form. “Yes.”

“What about all the additional material?”

“It's there.”

“The departmental letter of support?”

“Yes.”

“The letters of support from all of our collaborators?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone's CV?”

“Yes.”

“Following the fucked up twisted nonsense CV template that we're forced to use?”

“Yes.”

“The costings and finances?”

“Yes.”

“And checked and approved by the university's research office?”

“Yes. Everything. Even the dreaded Form Z?”

Ladbrook almost looked like he was going to smile and say something complimentary. He did not, but he was clearly flabbergasted. “You were able to complete Form Z?”

“Mrs Ebert was extremely helpful. After I introduced her to several obscure Pacific Island authors.”

Ladbrook was so pleased and grateful that not a single word in his vocabulary was appropriate. He simply beamed in silence.

“The only problem is that you have to approve the grant within the next five minutes.”

“Shit!”

They leaped up and headed in the direction of the department office.

On the way they tried to phone, but, in keeping with the established tradition of this story, no-one answered.

When they reached the department office, the doors were locked and the shutter was down at the reception desk. It was 5.02pm. They were too late. They banged on the doors and shutters nonetheless.

After a minute a door opened. Mrs Ebert emerged, carrying a volume of retrospective essays on the influence of A Passage To India on the literature of the Indian subcontinent.

“It's past the deadline! But there must be some way we can submit the grant.”

Mrs Ebert peered at them. “Relax, boys. I submitted it.”

“But you needed my approval!”

She gave him a withering look. “You have no idea how this place works, do you?”

She came out into the corridor, locked the office door, and left for the weekend.