Free From Filth & Mud by J. Manuel

helmet over her fiery red hair, tightened her chinstrap, hoisted her featherweight carbon-fiber road bike over her shoulder, and jogged out of her office, past several lab-techs who were busily huddled around their benches. Karen hit the stairwell in stride, prancing down the stairs as she went. Her endorphins were already kicking into overdrive at the thought of the pain to come. She had planned a trip around the Charles River, nothing too strenuous by her standards, but she’d push it anyways. She liked to ride fast even in the not-so-bike-friendly confines of Boston’s ever-changing, winding streets, which prominently featured their colonial idiosyncrasies with endless one-ways, rotaries, and dead-ends. The rush of danger excited her tingly bits as she straddled her bike and peddled those first few miles. Her muscular legs pounded the pedals, and the motion of the gears belted a rhythm harmonious with her allegro tempo. They danced, each gear handing off to another, partner to partner, in quickstep, sweeping swiftly across the dance floor.
     
    Karen peddled faster, yet the dance remained constant, as effortless and serene as before. Then, the moment came, like the ones before, always amid a trance. The ideas would spark from the darkness, then burn like an all-consuming conflagration to the detriment of family, friends, hobbies, time, and her sanity. She was on fire! The endorphins coursing through her body soothed the physical and mental anguish. She had to get back. Karen nearly sideswiped a couple of cabs, a Transit bus on Mass Ave., and pedestrians on her way back to the lab. She didn’t bother with a shower. Karen threw her bike against the wall of her office and headed for her inner sanctum. It would be hours before Christine informed her that she still had her bike helmet on.
     
    Back in her lab, Karen fanned the faint ember that had flickered into existence in the vacuum of her exercising mind. She was giddy, excited, and scared all at once. These moments were getting rarer as she neared her thirtieth birthday. In fact, she would never admit that she had not had one for the last two years. Karen was keenly aware that true genius seemed to extinguish itself somewhere in the mid-thirties. Her mother’s oft-repeated, Einsteinian quote was tattooed on her consciousness: ‘A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.’ What was her contribution? Though successful by anyone else’s standards, she felt lacking. Where was her one irrefutable contribution to science? How would she cement herself in the pantheon of scientific greats to which she belonged? She had received numerous professional accolades, but deep down, she resented the adoration. She knew that hers was the incestuous world of academia. She could not help but feel that her work was overly lauded because she was a young woman achieving in a field dominated by men. It did not escape her that her life in the academic circles of ultra-progressive, politically-correct Boston was an artificial construct of ivory-towered elites. Her discord rang loudest when she was compelled by her patrons to enjoy the aristocratic trappings of the unending, exclusive galas that masqueraded as science symposia. Oh, how they loved exchanging adulation for ground-breaking achievements , being neither ground-breaking nor achievements. Genius , was a word bandied about to the point where it had become devoid of its true meaning, much like wicked in New England parlance.
     
    Her mother, a child of the sixties and women’s lib veteran, had often warned her about being one of the few female scientists in her field. The barriers that she would surely face from the male-dominated, patriarchal institution that was scientific research would be nearly insurmountable. Her mother had prepared her to fight against the inevitable condescension by her colleagues and the university boards that would attempt to put her in support roles