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I rushed across the inner garden to the opposite side of the building and got to the conference room right when Bill was about to close the door.

“Hey! What’re you doing here?” I asked him, puzzled.

“Giving the seminar?” he replied, chuckling. “Go grab a sit, we’re about to get started.”

“Yessir!”

A dozen techs from the other shifts were spread all over the room, leaving empty seats between them and the next person in every direction. I was thrilled to spot Tom, waving at me and pointing at a vacant seat to his left.

“Dean! It’s been a while!” he said happily as we bumped fists.

“Hell yeah! How are you? I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Bill Turner was my senior when I started here. I wouldn’t miss his seminars for the world.”

“Seminars, plural?”

“Oh, right, you’re pretty new in the company. He gives them every semester.”

We kept talking as I sat by the windows, leaving an empty seat between us, but we both shut up when Bill pulled up a whiteboard and placed it by the big flat scree