Spruance Del Curtin had not intended to spy on Dr. Doorne’s communications. In fact, he was planning to just slip in and get some extra work done, and maybe get ahead of the game for a change.
But this batch of data was more boring than usual, and the longer he worked at it, the more his mind began to wander. Nearby voices became more interesting than the rows and columns on the screen in front of him.
Something about sigmoid functions and limits to growth. Dr. Doorne had talked about sigmoid functions in class a couple of sessions ago, and had used several examples, including one from biology, of a new species colonizing a new habitat its population and initially showing an exponential growth curve before hitting the limits of the environment and leveling off to a stable population.
Except that didn’t sound like what she was talking about now. For that matter, it didn’t exactly sound like she was talking to one of her students. No, that sounded more like she was talking to someone closer to her own level.
Even as he wondered just what she was talking about, he realized he was listening in on a conversation in which he had no part. A major breach of courtesy, although as long as he wasn’t obvious about it, calling attention to it would be an equally grave matter.
Which meant that if he wanted to find out what she was talking about, he would have to be extremely discreet about it. Which was not easy when he had only caught part of her conversation, and didn’t have a whole lot of context to work with.
In the meantime, he’d better get his mind back on the work that he was supposed to be doing. The last thing he needed right now was for her to walk in and find him clearly not paying attention to his work.