So... right up front, this one got away from me in the worst of ways. Apologies for the year absence. This one is a slow burn, and hopefully you enjoy the journey with me. Cheers!
***
Breakfast was cold again. Not the meal, but the mood. Hayden's gourmet feast of Wildlicious Wild Berry Pop-Tarts were warm right out of the toaster. Leaning over the table, he chomped them down, his wild mop of black hair dangling down over his eyes.
One seat to the right, his older sister Hadley did likewise. Her straight black hair dangled over the sides of her pale face while she ate, head down, looking at her phone.
Neither spoke while they ate.
Across the table sat their mom, Harper. Dressed for work at her lab, she wore black slacks and a slate-gray blouse. Her onyx hair pulled back into a taut bun; her icy blue eyes, complemented by her porcelain complexion, stared at the phone in her hands, scanning the morning headlines and news stories.
Going for the hat trick, Hayden had his phone out, as well, scrolling through the various social media apps and Reddit posts of the morning. His mom's phone rang, startling him; the ringtone of an old school landline phone, befitting her personality perfectly: boring, annoying, and shrill.
She held her phone to her ear. "Yes?"
Hayden and Hadley both froze mid-chew.
Stealing a glance at the matriarch of the home, anxiety burst within Hayden when his mom began to grind her teeth, her jaw muscles clenching.
"I'll be right in," she sighed, setting the phone back onto the table in its proper place.
"Gotta go in early?" Hadley asked their mom.
"Yes, can you drive--"
"I'll drive him to class," Hadley said.
"Thank you," she said, her tone deepening. Then she looked at Hayden. "If you ever got your driver's license, you could drive yourself."
"I'm working on it," he said.
She raised a bleak eyebrow at him. "I'd hate to see your pace if you were slacking."
"What's the emergency at the lab?" Hayden asked, hoping to change the subject away from his failed driver's courses. It wasn't like he'd done it on purpose. At 19 years old, "Hey there, my mom or sister will pick me up in an hour" was, not shockingly, a poor pickup line.
Her lips tightened. "The Board is being the Board," she said. "So I'm going to have to go back up there and explain that our $50 million super computer is running simulations faster than those dimwitted assholes can bat away HR complaints."
"Jeez, mom, tell us how you really feel," Hayden said, smiling.
She frowned at him. "I just did, Hayden. Weren't you listening?"
Just as his smile disappeared, his sister spoke up. "Mom, I got him. Go. Remind those jerks why it's you running the lab and not them."
"Thank you, Harper, I will," she said, getting up from the table. "I'll see you both tonight." Turning around, she made a beeline for the garage door.
A minute later, after two roars of the garage motor, Hayden blew out the breath he'd been holding. "Jesus Christ."
"I know," Harper said.
"Why do I even try?" he asked. "I mean, where's the fucking
in
with her?"
"It doesn't exist anymore," she said, placing her hand on his arm.
"Dad bailing was bad enough," Hayden said. "But it's bullshit that we lost mom, too."
"We didn't lose her," Hadley said.
Hayden pointed an angry finger at the garage. "That genderswapped Ebenezer Scrooge is not our mom, sis. Not anymore."
"I know," Hadley said, drooping her head. "But she made her choice. All we can do is make ours."
Hayden chewed at the inside of his cheek.
"Stop that," Hadley said, playfully slapping his hand. Then, standing from her chair, "And right now, I'm choosing to drive your ass to school."
"Thank you," he said in a defeated voice.
"I'll even park far enough away so the girls don't see you getting dropped off," she said.
Hayden brightened up, shoving what remained of his Pop-Tarts into his mouth. "Promise?" he asked, his mouth full.
***
I'm not sure what these idiots don't understand about "billions of possible permutations,"
Harper thought. Not even the dulcet tones of NPR kept her brain from frowning.
It's fine, it's fine, it's fine,
she told herself.
You'll go in and save the whole goddamn project just like the last half dozen times.
There it was. Bubbling up inside her. Threatening to get out. Absolutely not.
Years.
Years she'd sacrificed to get where she was. Where her team was. And now, on the precipice of victory, she would not let her emotions win.
Moving her thumb on the steering wheel, Harper turned up the radio.
***
Harper irritably slapped her badge at the door to the lab. After a moment, the screen lit up blue and displayed her ID photo.
P E P P E R, H A R P E R.
With a light-hearted
ping
, the locking mechanism unlatched, and she stormed her way into the lab.
"Angie! What the fuck are they doing to our project?"
"Oh, thank God. You're here." Angie raced toward her. As she did, her black-rimmed glasses threatened to bounce right off her face, and her gray ponytail flailed behind her.
"How many failed simulations?" Harper asked.
"After running for three weeks straight, we hit 1.8 million this morning," Angie said. Re-adjusting her glasses, she blew an errant strand of graying hair out of her face.
Harper shook her head. "And I told them there were billions to cycle through."
"It could be running for another six months and still not find it," Angie said.
The large monitor in the middle of their lab showcased the results of simulation after simulation, each one a failure. All they had to do was get one right.
Formulas, molecules, and graphics flew into action, only to stop briefly as an incomprehensible series of equations were calculated. And almost as quickly as they popped up on the screen, they disappeared, replaced by a different graphic.
F A I L U R E
it read. Then again. And again.
Harper pulled out her phone and texted away. To say the Board disliked her would be an understatement, but she did have one friend there.
>How bad?< she texted her contact.
Three dots jumped on her phone.
>bad<
Shaking her head, she texted out her response.
>I told them it could be months.<
>you did<
>Then why don't I have months?<
>because they don't want to wait months<
Behind her, Angie gasped. Not bothering to ask why, Harper was furiously texting back her contact.
"Doctor?" Angie asked, her voice cracking.
Harper's thumbs were a motion blur across her phone's screen. >You tell them that we're about to change the goddamn world here.<
"
Harper,
" Angie hissed.
Harper sighed and turned around. "
What?
"
Pointing at the monitor, Angie stared in disbelief.
Blinking in green, Harper refused to believe what she was seeing.
S U C C E S S
S U C C E S S
S U C C E S S
"Bullshit," she whispered.
"Oh, my God!" Angie shrieked. She launched her arms into the air in victory. "
We did it!
"
Without waiting, Harper pulled her phone up, opened the camera, and took a picture of the screen's declaration. Nothing else mattered in the moment.
>Dr. Raphal, please tell Drs. Leonard, Donaldson, and Mihangel to kiss my ass.<
>!!! I will apprise them of this monumental update. congratulations, doctor<
Whirling around, Harper surveyed their empty lab. "Where the hell is everybody?"
"It's not even 9:00 yet," Angie said.
Harper scowled. "Synthesize it immediately. And pull me up the winning formula."
Angie clacked away at her keyboard. "Bull. Shit," she said after a second.
"What is it?" Harper asked, trying to hide her fear.
"You'll see." She reached for the paper shooting out of the printer and handed it to her supervisor.
Reading it over, Harper scoffed. "Bullshit."
Angie threw her hands up in surrender.
Harper shook her head. "Do you ever get the feeling the universe is laughing at you?"
"I didn't think you believed in God," Angie said.
"I don't. But looking at this," Harper said, waving the papers around, "hard to believe this isn't all just some joke."
A half hour later, as more people rolled in for the day, Harper held a lab meeting to announce they'd finally found what they spent years looking for. Hoots and hollers, hugs, high fives, and back pats were exchanged, as well as several bottles of champagne that had been saved for just that moment.
But as everyone crowded and congratulated themselves, Harper's cold eyes focused only on the mechanical, three-fingered arm inside the synthesization bay. It mixed, added, and created everything to the specific levels they had discovered.
Somehow, together, these precise amounts of bismuth, mythomanium, boron, and oxygen parts were exactly what they'd been looking for all this time. The sheer coincidence...
Behind the glass, the mechanical arm whirred in a beautiful dance as it grabbed, placed, and spun chemicals; the results being a heretofore impossible recombination.
But just as everything had been brought together, before the arm could activate the sequence, it stuttered. Like the broken second hand of a clock, stuck in a repeating sequence, it moved forward, then stuttered backwards.
"The fuck," Harper swore under her breath.
Without a second thought, she walked to the bay door and scanned her badge. The translucent glass door slid to the side with an airy hum, opening for her. Once inside, she eyed the machine, scouring for the source of the mechanical failure.
But nothing was readily apparent.
"Just work, you fucking thing," she said. Frustrated, she slapped the base of the arm.
A merry pneumatic whirring was her reward, and the arm was back to it.
Unfortunately, as soon as she did so, the glass door slid back in place.
"Goddamn it," Harper muttered, rolling her eyes. Slapping her badge back against the ID reader, instead of turning blue and allowing her through, it flashed red.
E R R O R
"You stupid thing." Again, she laid her badge down on the reader.
E R R O R
Groaning, she attempted a third time. "Fucking come on."
E R R O R
Just then, flashing red lights exploded all around her. The now-working mechanical arm placed the manufactured compound into the aerosolization port. In horror, Harper watched the liquid extracted from the tube. Next, it would be vented out and recollected with their half-million-dollar industrial exhaust fan.
Harper whirled around to see spinning warning lights proclaiming some real science was about to be done, so steer clear. But that, of course, entailed being
outside
