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But right now, he was fighting an eye-blurring headache, and just wanted to go home. He was glad for the late hour, because it meant Verdant’s interior lighting was dimming for the evening, leaving the impression of the distant overhead floor being a darkened sky with stars organized into cylindrical grid-patterns overhead. It was a fascinating effect, but at the moment it was lost on Calvin, and he was just glad for the low lighting being easier on his tired eyes.

He almost didn’t notice the voice that spoke his name as he passed down the corridor. At about the moment that it registered, he heard it again: “Dr. Rios?” He stopped and peered over with tired eyes, to see Kris Fawkes.

“Oh… Miss Fawkes,” he said, blinking to clear his eyes. “I’m sorry, I was distracted…”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you,” Kris said quickly.

“No bother. I’m just heading home for the day.”

“You look tired,” Kris said sympathetically, falling in slow step next to him. “Is Dr. Silver’s freight project keeping you busy?”

“Hm?” Calvin frowned, actually struggling to focus on her words. Finally he remembered the project Valeria had mentioned: She’d said it as one of Dr. Silver’s projects; and Jacqueline had mentioned a freight project, too. “Oh, the… I’m not working on that project.”

Now it was Kris’ turn to frown. “You’re not? I thought most of the department was working on one aspect of it or another.” This was an exaggeration on her part, but she wanted to see how Calvin would respond to the statement.

To her disappointment, Calvin said simply, “I’m not part of the sciences department. I’m working directly for CnC. I really don’t know what most of the people are working on here.”

“Oh, I see,” Kris nodded. “What are you working on, then?”

“Just some miscellaneous research for CnC,” Calvin replied, clearly not wanting to go into detail. “Which seems to be going nowhere,” he added, making the need for detail largely moot anyway.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kris volunteered. “It seems,” she continued after a moment’s pause, “that there are a few projects being worked on here that may be an inappropriate use of valuable time, given the current situation.”

“Well,” Calvin said, “I’m not sure I’d go that far.” Kris looked at him significantly. In return, he shrugged. “You never know what might turn out to be useful.”

“Mm,” Kris nodded. “Well, I hardly see how freight experiments are going to be useful to anyone right now. Even ballistic deliveries have been cancelled due to the caldera and the ash cloud.”

Calvin shrugged again. “Without knowing more about the project, there’s not much I can say about it. Have you considered talking to Dr. Silver, to get more detail?”

“I already talked to the man who put her on the project,” Kris explained. “Aaron Hardy.”

She looked to see what kind of reaction Calvin would make. His face reflected an effort to integrate this thread of information into an already-existing fabric, but it seemed only to confuse him more. He was very tired. “Hardy’s project? Hm. —but he wouldn’t tell you anything about it?”

“No,” Kris replied. “And frankly, it has me concerned. What’s so secretive about freight experiments?”

Calvin didn’t seem to be able to think of a good reason to conceal a program like that, either. “Strange,” he said quietly. Kris, examining Calvin’s face and gait, was pretty sure he was too tired to be able to successfully hide anything from her, and she was sure he knew, but was honestly in the dark, about the freight project. But based on Aaron’s reaction, the project was potentially a big one, and she didn’t understand how Calvin could not know about it… unless it was being actively hidden from him. Could that be because, as he said, he was working for CnC, and therefore considered outside of some inner circle of Verdant scientists? If so, what was that inner circle working on that they didn’t want CnC to be aware of? Surely not a series of freight experiments!

At any rate, Kris didn’t think she’d get any more from Calvin, and could tell he was looking for a polite reason to break off and get home. “Well, I’ll see if I can speak to Dr. Silver about it. Thanks for your time, Dr. Rios.”

“No problem,” Calvin said as Kris angled away from him, leaving him alone to proceed home. Within two minutes, he had all but forgotten the conversation.

~

By the time Calvin reached his flat, his headache was mercifully almost gone, but it had been replaced by a fatigue that threatened to buckle his legs before he made it in the door. Maria heard the door open, and looked around the corner from the kitchen. “Cal, honey,” she said as she came out to greet him, “Erin just called, her friend Frieda’s invited her—” Her voice faded as she neared Calvin, and saw how tired he was. “Cal, you look exhausted! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just tired,” Calvin said, allowing her to steer him into a nearby chair. His knees finally gave way as he folded into the chair, and he landed in the seat with an alarming thump.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Maria said at once, giving him a last look to make sure he was all right, then rushing into the kitchen to get a glass and pour him a brandy. “What have you been doing?”

“Researching Ceo Lenz’s force field idea,” Calvin replied, almost sheepishly. He had told her about the project, and even Maria had thought it was crazy… and she didn’t know a thing about physics. “Next thing, he’ll have you trying to grow a black hole in a pot,” she’d said, a reference to a line from a popular video program.

To her credit, however, she did not give Calvin a “told-you-so” look when she handed him the snifter. She simply smiled sympathetically, and said, “Had no luck?”

“Worse,” Calvin said. “I almost had my brain melted by well-meaning engineers intent on proving how crazy the idea is.” He took a draught from the snifter, almost draining it in one gulp. Maria noted it, and went back to the kitchen to get the bottle. “A few of them kept suggesting brute-force lasers would be better… but then they’d turn around and say, ‘On the other hand, aiming is a problem, and it’s even easier to deflect a laser.’ I don’t know… if there’s something to this stuff, I don’t see what.” He took another draught, draining the snifter, and when he brought it down, Maria was there, pouring more brandy into it.

“Drink,” she directed. Calvin grinned, and took another sip. “You’ve had a long day,” she said. “But you’re home now. Relax. Dinner’s almost ready.” Maria smiled, and headed back to the kitchen.

Calvin leaned back in the chair and tried to let the tension drain out of his shoulders. After a moment, he started to take another sip from the snifter. Then he remembered something Maria had been about to say. “Hey, did you say Erin—”

Calvin stopped when he looked up. Maria had returned to his side without his realizing it. “You were looking in the wrong place, I think,” she said. Calvin frowned, not understanding. “You’re looking for something outside of the raw data… something intuitive,” she explained. “I know how you think, Cal. The
last
thing you should have done was to go see a bunch of scientists.”

Then she turned, and returned to the kitchen. After a moment, Calvin raised his snifter to her.

The brandies finally helped to relax Calvin, and to remove the last of his headache, making dinner much more pleasant than his day had been. He and Maria talked about nothing in general, Calvin making a point of allowing his mind to drift into the mundane areas of everyday life, and temporarily forget his assignment… or, at least, to put it in the back of his mind for awhile.

After dinner, they decided to watch some video programming. Calvin let Maria choose, and she found a program providing tips for home food-gardening in a compact satellite environment, a popular pastime amongst satellite residents. They discussed various points of the program as it ran, comparing the vegetable gardens on the program with their own home garden, considering new layouts and tending techniques, and possibly trying new vegetables they had never before tried to garden. It was a nice, light, relaxing way to pass an hour, and left them both in a good mood.

The program afterward was a documentary, about the many pastimes and distractions enjoyed by twentieth-century Americans and Europeans. The twentieth century had represented the pinnacle of recreational variety, the direct result of the conspicuous consumption and unbalanced credit-based affluence that had begun to draw to a close by the early twenty-first century. As documentaries went, it could be painful to watch: At one point, the viewer would be treated to behaviors that seemed to be the height of irresponsibility, almost comic in its presentation, such as jumping off of bridges and cliffs with an elastic cable tied to one’s ankles; and the next, would be a pastime, essentially harmless in itself, but lost due to the ravages of environmental damage, like the recreational use of all-terrain vehicles, that one could only feel a sad nostalgia for.

And throughout it all, were vintage scenes of idyllic outdoor vistas, blue skies, swimmable beaches, open fields, and vast forests… the twentieth-century world that was so rapidly disappearing beneath them. The narrator did not bother to point out the differences between the green world of the twentieth century, and the warming-ravaged lands of the modern era… he didn’t need to. No modern viewer could help but look at all that natural landscape, and want to cry at how much of it had been lost.

But Maria was different than most viewers. As the scenes progressed, she became more animated, her eyes shining brightly. “Oh, Cal, look at that park! We really should visit that sometime!”

“Didn’t they say that was Shenandoah National Park?” Calvin said, too emotionally tired to do anything except respond automatically. “It looks nothing like that now… coal mining has ruined the ecosystems there.”

And Maria would become quiet… until another place was highlighted. “Oh, the Grand Banks were beautiful! Have they changed much since then?”

“Unfortunately, they’re all submerged now. Some of those houses were designed to float during floods… the ones that are left are permanent houseboats now.”

And so it went:

“Oranges can’t grow there anymore. Too hot.”

“Very few salmon that aren’t farm-raised now. The bears don’t have much to catch during spawning season.”

“The Saharan sandstorms supposedly reach all the way to Maine, when the winds are right…”

“What else is there to watch?” Maria said abruptly.

Calvin suddenly realized where their conversation had been heading, and he was immediately sorry. He knew his wife still held out hope to see the best of Earth again, the lands documented in those old travelogues, the majestic vistas and vibrant parks. And despite the fact that those parks and vistas largely no longer existed (because, for all her love of all things Earthly-natural, she seemed somehow to be wholly ignorant of what was and was not in existence on Earth anymore), she was adamant that, if you went down there and
just looked
, you could still find the pristine beaches, the quiet forests, the lovely sunsets. But his unthinking, offhand comments were bringing her down.

Maria found an old movie… and despite the fact that it appeared to be well into the narrative, she seemed to be happy to watch it. Calvin made no protest, even when he realized the movie starred Cary Grant… not one of his favorite actors… seemed to take place aboard a submarine, not one of his favorite means of transportation… and centered around a bunch of female nurses rather transparently forced into such close quarters with the men on the submarine, resulting in the predictable sexist gags that you’d expect out of a twentieth-century American movie, not one of his favorite periods.

He wished he could think of something to say to Maria, to placate her—but they had done that dance before, and he knew she saw right through him when he tried to encourage her belief that there was still something down there to see. So he stayed silent, and settled in to watch.

~

“Does it at least look different? Has it maybe changed color, or something?”

Goldie regarded Hunter with long-suffering weariness, as the tug she was piloting approached the same coordinates that they had flown out to that same morning. At those coordinates waited the beach-ball-sized package that they had deployed that morning, and which they had been ordered to pick up. “Looks the same to me,” Goldie said calmly. After a moment, she looked again at her screen. “Hold on.”

Hunter, up to that point doing his best not to look bored, uncrossed his arms and looked hopefully at the monitors. “What?”

“The access panel lettering,” Goldie said, peering at one long-distance camera. “Look: All the words are reversed.”

Hunter squinted for perhaps three seconds at the camera monitor, before realizing what was going on. Slowly, he leaned back in his chair, gave Goldie a sour look, and intoned, “Very funny.” Goldie just grinned to herself, as she brought the tug into a parking orbit before the payload.

“Naut-vee-four-three,”
came the voice over their com.
“Request fine coordinate check on payload. Report any differences from delivery coordinates, please.”

“Yeah,” Goldie said distractedly, flipping a few switches on her panel. After a few moments’ examination of the incoming data, Goldie keyed the com. “We detect drift of point-eight-six centimeters from deployment point, on a bearing of one-eighteen true by sixty-three.” Even Hunter nodded in approval: That small amount of drift was impressive.

“Roger that, Naut-vee-four-three. Capture payload and return to dock.”

“Understood,” Goldie replied, and brought the tug closer to the payload. Hunter brought a hand forward and keyed up the controls for the capturing arm, surprising Goldie with the fact that he was making any effort on this assignment at all.

Hunter caught her look, and shrugged. “Hey, the sooner we grab it, the sooner we get out of this tin can. Besides, this is turning out to be the high point of my day.” After a moment, the arm captured the payload, and the console filled with manipulating data. “Looks like no changes from this morning,” Hunter commented. “Did it do anything at all out here?”

“Just drifted, I guess,” Goldie shrugged.