Tony
watched the other and just smiled softly before he pulled out his
tablet and began to work on some coding as the other sketched. He could
multitask, made a habit of it, so why not work on an Upgrade for Jarvis
while he spoke to the young man in front of him.“Glad to hear you get the time, I’d have paid for a flight home if we
delayed you any way all things considered. I liked what I saw on your
CV, and with your own reports from when you were a student. It’s
interesting to see it all and I like your innovation you got going. Need
more people willing to work like that for us.” Tony smiled softly but
kept his focus on his tablet as he worked. He couldn’t sit still, a bad
habit he always had.“So what brought you to us? Why did you choose to come here, after
Hammer Tech surely you knew of the issues?” Pepper spoke calmly, not
judging just simply wondering what was going through the other person’s
head.Carlos tried not to smile too much at Stark’s comments. He
knew that what he had in regards of paperwork behind him (excepting Hammer) was
pretty good. But hearing someone like Tony Stark say that they liked it… It
could turn a man into an embarrassing pile of mush if he wasn’t careful.But Potts’ questions made it easy for Carlos to return to a
more neutral expression. He realized that while drawing it was a bit harder to
come up with a response other than what he knew to be the absolute truth and
wondered if they planned this. Probably. He didn’t exactly want to straight-up lie, but he didn’t want to over-share his
feelings with them, as well as how desperate and painful his job search had
been.“Well… honestly, I’ve always thought it would be great to
work with Stark Industries,” he said, thinking carefully about his next words. “I…
I understand that what happened was terrible and…” He paused before taking a
breath. He put his pencil down and looked to Miss Potts and Mr Stark somberly. “I
am very sorry for all the problems and danger that Hammer had put you and your
company through, and I deeply regret any part that I had unwittingly played in
it. This is not meant to sound like an excuse, but… I worked in the safety
department. However I didn’t see an entire project myself – tech was only
showed to us in parts. I did small-scale testing with the parts that I was
assigned to, but full-scale testing was not possible with the way that the labs
were run.“When I applied for the engineering position from Stark
Industries I just thought… I just thought that the worst that you could say to
me was ‘no’ or to not even reach out to me at all.”Immediately Carlos started to worry that he’d gotten too wordy and may have just cut off his chances. He knew what happened to those test pilots hadn’t been his fault, but he didn’t think it would be socially proper for him to deny responsibility entirely.
Tony smiled at the honesty from the other and hummed lightly in thought. He wondered about the other, about what brought him to that point, because clearly he had been holding back. “Well at least he’s honest. I knew I’d like him and maybe you’ll finally have someone who’ll tell you what you need to know before it happens.” Tony Chuckled softly to Pepper, who glared at his comment before she looked back over to Carlos with a soft smile.
“It’s okay to be honest. We like it when people are being open and honest about stuff with us. Especially considering everything that’s been going on. We have to be careful so it’s refreshing having someone here who is willing to say what they were thinking.” She smiled softly to him and looked down at the design he was sketching a moment. “Tony found your CV interesting, understanding the position you were put in, and we know many people didn’t see the danger because they couldn’t see the whole picture. That’s how Hammer seemed to work but here, you’ll work with a team on a project together. That way if you think something might go wrong you can fully test it.”
Carlos started to relax slightly. It seemed that that was an
acceptable answer, and he hadn’t messed everything up. That was… that was very
good.
He returned Miss Potts’ smile. “Thank you very much,” he
said. “That’d… it’d be a very nice and welcome change to previous environments
I’d been in.” To actually know when a project was going out, rather than
finding out the day after that it had been presented that it failed
spectacularly…He’d forgotten what a properly functioning lab was like.
Carlos picked up the pencil again and continued with the
drafting. It was starting to take shape finally – it looked like a wheelchair,
but what was immediately different was that the wheels were of a design that he
had been playing with in his head.
The Perfect Scientist 