The stylus, warm again in Leo’s pocket, hummed, waiting for the next sleepless student to find it.
“Whoa,” he whispered.
It was his final molecule for the advanced organic synthesis assignment. If he got this right, the pathway was elegant. If he got it wrong, his supervisor, Professor Albright, would unleash a disappointed sigh that could curdle milk from twenty paces. chemdraw unsw
He worked furiously for the next hour. The stylus was an extension of his mind. He drew a novel catalyst, and the program animated its electron-pushing mechanism in a shower of golden arrows. He drew a complex natural product, and the stylus whispered the IUPAC name in his ear. He even saw the yellow and red warning flags of ‘Undefined Stereochemistry’ appear like caution signs on a road.
He slid it into his pocket.
Leo’s weapon of choice was ChemDraw. To an outsider, it looked like a glorified coloring book of lines and hexagons. To Leo, it was a battlefield. He was trying to force a stubborn cyclopentane ring into a chair conformation it hated taking.
“That’s the answer,” Leo breathed. The stylus, warm again in Leo’s pocket, hummed,
Finally, he was done. Compound 47 was perfect. The synthesis was a masterpiece of brevity. He saved the file as Albright_Final.cdx .
He was alone in his struggle.
He put the stylus down. The moment it left his hand, the 3D world collapsed back into the flat, black-and-white lines of standard ChemDraw. The screen was quiet. The library was still asleep.