[TBBT] Ch: 9 [Meet Howard and Raj] (Patreon)

[Bob's Big Boy]

Bob's Big Boy was already fairly busy when we arrived, although Sheldon barely acknowledged the crowd. His attention immediately locked onto one particular booth where Howard and Raj were waiting, and the tension in his shoulders disappeared when he confirmed nobody had taken his preferred seat. I tried to keep a neutral face. Well, I got enough practice, so it won't be a problem. But inside, I was really excited to meet them.

Sheldon slid into his usual spot and shifted comfortably with a satisfied smile. "Excellent. Howard and Raj arrived early enough to preserve the proper seating arrangement."

Howard lowered the menu he was holding. "You're welcome, Your Majesty."

Raj smiled from beside him. "We actually had to fight off a family of five. The little girl was surprisingly strong."

Sheldon glanced toward him. "Since your clothing shows no evidence of physical confrontation, I'm going to assume that was sarcasm."

Leonard sat down while I tried not to laugh. "Karl, these are Howard Wolowitz and Raj Koothrappali. Howard's an aerospace engineer and Raj is an astrophysicist."

I shook Howard's hand first, then Raj's. "Karl Peterson. Nice to meet you both."

"Raj Koothrappali," Raj replied as we shook hands. "It's nice meeting someone who voluntarily spends time with Sheldon before contractual obligation becomes involved."

Sheldon frowned across the table. "Our roommate agreement isn't an obligation. It's a mutually beneficial regulatory framework."

Leonard sat beside him. "Written entirely by one of the two people being regulated."

Howard had gone strangely quiet.

He was staring at me with his eyebrows slightly drawn together, and I recognized the expression almost immediately. I'd seen it often enough at conferences whenever somebody knew my name but hadn't expected the face attached to it.

Then recognition landed.

"Wait, you're Karl Peterson?" He asked.

I sat down beside Leonard. "Unless my parents have been lying to me for twenty-one years."

Howard pointed at me with the edge of his menu. "I've read about you. You developed that short-radius centrifuge system at MIT."

"That was one of my projects."

"The adaptive loading system?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

Howard's expression immediately became more interested. It made sense considering his own field. We weren't doing the same work, although aerospace engineering gave us enough overlap that he'd naturally run across some of mine. Apparently he kept up with the science and engineering magazines too, because another memory suddenly crossed his face.

His eyes widened.

"So, I heard you refused NASA."

There it was.

"Yeah, I did."

Howard stared at me for two seconds before his voice suddenly rose across the booth. "Are you insane?"

Several people at the nearby tables looked over.

Leonard sighed while opening his menu. "And we've officially begun dinner."

I rested my arms against the table. "You're surprisingly passionate about my employment decisions for somebody I met thirty seconds ago."

"NASA offered you a job," Howard replied as if those five words settled the entire argument. "You specialize in keeping human beings alive in space. NASA is where the human beings going into space come from."

Raj leaned toward me with an amused smile. "You need to understand something about Howard. Space is basically his dream. He designs aerospace hardware, and if he ever gets the chance to send something important into orbit, we'll probably have to listen to him talk about it until one of us dies."

Howard looked offended. "If I design something that goes into space, I've earned the right to mention it occasionally."

Sheldon picked up his menu. "Based on your existing definition of occasionally, that would mean approximately every fourteen minutes."

Howard ignored him and returned his attention toward me. "Seriously, why would you refuse them?"

Before I could answer, a waitress approached the table with a small order pad in her hand. She looked like a college student, doing a part-time job. 

Raj immediately went quiet.

I noticed the change because he'd been perfectly comfortable seconds earlier, then suddenly became intensely interested in his menu.

The waitress smiled at Sheldon first. "Ready to order?"

Sheldon nodded. "I'll have the Big Boy, cooked medium-well. The pickle slices must be dill rather than sweet, and I'd like the relish provided separately in individual packets. I'll also have onion rings, preferably with enough breading to maintain an appropriate ratio between exterior crunch and onion."

The waitress stared at him for a moment. "Big Boy with onion rings."

Sheldon looked mildly dissatisfied. "That summary omitted several important variables." 

Leonard quickly gave his order before Sheldon could begin explaining pickle taxonomy.

Howard ordered next, although he somehow managed to turn asking for a Big Boy and fries into an opportunity to smile at the waitress like they'd met at a nightclub. 

When she turned toward Raj, he simply pointed at the Big Boy on the menu and then toward the fries.

Howard looked at her. "He'll have the Big Boy with fries."

She nodded without questioning why the grown man beside him had suddenly lost the ability to speak.

Then she turned toward me. "And for you?"

"I'll take the Big Boy too, medium, no pickles, fries instead of onion rings, and a vanilla shake."

Sheldon slowly lowered his menu.

I looked toward him. "Something wrong?"

"You've removed the pickles."

"That's usually what 'no pickles' means."

Sheldon ignored that. "The dill pickle provides acidity that balances the richness of the burger. Removing it makes the flavor profile less structurally coherent."

"I don't like pickles in my burger," I replied. 

His expression tightened. "Your personal preference doesn't alter their culinary function."

"It alters whether they're going inside my mouth."

Leonard smiled into his water while Howard looked between us.

Sheldon continued studying me with visible disappointment. "You possess two doctoral degrees and yet apparently allow irrational childhood food preferences to override basic sensory balance."

I handed the waitress my menu. "I also ordered fries instead of your structurally optimized onion rings."

Sheldon stared at me like I'd deliberately damaged laboratory equipment.

The waitress walked away, and Raj immediately relaxed again.

I looked toward him. "You okay?"

Raj nodded awkwardly. "I can't talk around women."

I waited for the punchline.

None arrived.

Howard casually picked up his water. "Which works out great for me. While he’s playing the tragic, silent poet, I step in and deliver the real magic."

Raj gave him an irritated look. "Thank you for making that sound much worse than it already does."

I nodded slowly. "Okay. Everybody has something."

Leonard looked toward Sheldon. "Some people have several things."

Sheldon ignored him and returned to the subject Howard had been forced to abandon. "Although I share very little of Howard's emotional attachment to NASA, I admit that rejecting access to their research infrastructure seems inefficient."

Howard immediately pointed toward Sheldon. "Thank you. That's what I'm saying."

"That doesn't mean I agree with you," Sheldon replied. "Your argument appears to be based primarily on your childish desire to become an astronaut."

"My childish desire involves leaving the planet. Yours involves winning a Swedish medal so other physicists finally tell you you're special."

Sheldon stared at him. "The Nobel Prize represents recognition of extraordinary intellectual contribution."

Howard smiled. "Sure, buddy." He looked toward me. "So, what's your deal?"

I leaned back against the booth.

There wasn't much point making it complicated.

"I wanted a break from laboratories," I said. "I've spent most of my childhood studying, and I don't want to spend the rest of my twenties doing exactly the same thing inside a different building. More importantly, if I create something groundbreaking using NASA's money and facilities, I don't necessarily control what happens afterward. My work would belong to them; management could move the project somewhere else, or another team could end up developing something I started."

Howard's expression lost some of its disbelief.

I continued before anyone interrupted. "I want ownership of my work. I also want to enjoy being twenty-one for a while, make serious money, become famous outside academic circles, and eventually fund my own research. NASA could've given me prestige, but prestige isn't the same thing as wealth or control. At the end of the day, money gives me both."

That was it.

Howard stared at me.

Raj looked thoughtful.

Leonard simply nodded as though the explanation made considerably more sense now that he'd heard the short version.

Sheldon looked unimpressed.

Howard finally leaned back. "Okay, I still think refusing NASA is insane."

Raj smiled. "But now you think it's organized insanity."

"Pretty much."

Leonard looked toward me. "I can understand the break part. You finished two PhDs before you were old enough to rent a car without somebody charging you extra."

Sheldon folded his hands on the table. "The desire for fame is intellectually shallow, although accumulating sufficient capital to independently finance research has practical merit. Your methodology, however, remains unnecessarily indirect."

I raised an eyebrow. "You think becoming rich is inefficient?"

"I think abandoning productive scientific work so you can pursue celebrity is inefficient," Sheldon replied. "If Isaac Newton had paused development of calculus because he wanted people to recognize him in taverns, mathematics would've suffered considerably."

Howard stared at him. "Newton also spent years studying alchemy."

Sheldon immediately frowned. "Even exceptional minds occasionally make embarrassing decisions."

Raj smiled. "Like Karl ordering a hamburger without pickles?"

Sheldon considered that far more seriously than the question deserved. "The comparison isn't entirely unreasonable."

I laughed just as the waitress returned carrying our drinks.

Raj instantly stopped talking again.

Howard watched him go silent, then looked toward me and nodded at the vanilla shake being placed in front of me.

"Just so we're clear, if NASA ever offers me your rejected job, I'm taking it."

I picked up the shake. "I'll write them a recommendation."

Howard actually looked pleased for half a second before suspicion replaced it. But he quickly shook it off. "Really?" He said with a little smile. "We've known each other for five minutes."

"Then you've still got time to make a good impression," I said.

Sheldon adjusted his water glass and looked toward Howard. "Given your current performance, I wouldn't become optimistic."

Howard glared across the table. "Nobody asked you."

Sheldon smiled pleasantly. "That's never prevented me before."

Watching the four of them immediately fall into another argument, I took a drink of my shake and leaned comfortably against the booth.

Big Boy night was turning out considerably better than working through equations alone upstairs.

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Next: Enter Penny