Callisto 2.0, Susan English [i love reading .TXT] 📗

of the calculation. “And here,” I pointed at Hadley’s document,

“you solved the problem! It’s ingenious, what you did, so simple, so elegant.”

Hadley was silent, staring at my work. “Oh my god!” She enlarged a series of my calculations. “What you did here. I’ve been struggling with this idea for years: how to control and manipulate the warp bubble from within the bubble itself.” She dragged the work closer to her body. “Let me look at this.”

I sat quietly, my heart thumping in my chest. She was examining what I considered to be my greatest breakthrough. Many scientists over the years had grappled with this exact problem, and the most promising idea, to create not one but two warp fields, one

“inside” the other, was the most viable. The outer region, called the Broek warped region, was the subject of my breakthrough, where I had modified the original theory to create what I hoped to be a stable warp shell causally connected to the inside of the warp bubble. I had checked and rechecked the calculations and my logic countless times, but no one else had seen my work until now. Had I made a critical error in my thinking? Had I blundered in some way? Was the logic sound? Sweat broke out on my brow, and I dabbed it with my sleeve, then tucked my hands under my armpits. Hadley sat immobile, staring at the screen. Finally, I remembered to breathe. I studied Hadley’s face. She was gone, deep in thought.

Silently, I pushed myself across the room to my console, thinking I could use the time to contact Olivia. Our last communication was when I sent her a brief note to tell her about my impending trip to the Moon. As always, her reply had been warm and supportive, wishing me luck. Not wanting to disturb Hadley, I only opened a text window instead of holochat. I typed in Olivia’s username and saw that she was also online.

Hi, I wrote.

Hi! Her response was almost immediate, considering the Earth-Moon time delay.

Another line of text appeared: What’s happening? Are you still on the Moon? How did it go?

Olivia was my best friend, and we loved each other deeply, even though we hadn’t been in the same room for over five years, not since we broke up. I felt the strength of our connection pulsing through cyberspace, mitigating the vast physical distance that 62

separated us.

Where to start? I typed, then continued, the words tumbling out onto the screen. I told Olivia everything, from the moment I stepped onto the shuttle in Havana until showing Hadley my work moments earlier. I wrote about my budding friendship with Naomi, the lunar colony, the orbital lab, even my unrequited attraction for Diana.

And she told me about her postdoc in terraforming, her ultra-fastidious boss—I laughed out loud at her descriptions of his eccentric behavior—and the new love in her life. She seemed happy, and, I realized, so was I.

As our conversation wound down, my eyes flicked to the clock on the screen—we had chatted for over two hours. I looked over at Hadley. It appeared as though she hadn’t moved a muscle.

I should go. Love you, I wrote.

I stared at the now blank screen. I should contact my parents. They knew I had gone to the Moon, but things had happened so quickly, I hadn’t taken the time to get in touch with them since leaving Earth. But since my mother preferred holochatting to texting or even phone calls, I decided to wait until I was in my cabin. My father rarely participated in our holochats, so if I didn’t visit them in person, we hardly ever saw each other. He was a quiet, broody man, and preferred to be in the background and let my mother do all the talking. In any case, talking with either of them was, to be honest, more of a chore than a pleasure. I loved my parents, and they loved me, but even though I was their child, it was as if we were from completely different worlds.

Catching a movement out of the corner of my eye, I looked over at Hadley again.

She met my eyes and invited me over with a tilt of her head. I pushed my way to the table and settled into the chair next to hers.

Hadley grabbed my hand. “It’s fantastic.” Her eyes were gleaming.

I heaved a sigh of relief. “And what about this part, with the infinities?” I pointed to an equation. “Can I really renormalize here?”

For the rest of the day, we pored over every calculation, every idea, merging our work. We ate energy bars, popped water blobs, and barely tore ourselves away from the table to visit the toilet across the hall. It was as Hadley said, we both had solved different pieces of the same puzzle, and the picture that was unfolding was incredible.

“It will work, I really think it will work,” Hadley kept repeating.

Finally, eyes burning, I leaned back in my chair. It was three a.m. I touched Hadley’s shoulder. “I can’t do any more tonight.”

Hadley looked at the time on her wrist computer. “I can’t believe it’s so late, or so early, rather.” She rubbed her face with the palms of her hands. “This is a fantastic start.

I really think it’ll work.”

I smiled, exhausted but supremely happy.

“We’ll need to spend a week at least going over everything, to see if we missed something vital. Then get the engineers involved and build a prototype.”

“Our next step,” I agreed.

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Hadley leaned over and wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her tightly in return.

“We did it,” she whispered. “I believe we did it.”

“Me too.” I released her. “Let’s get some sleep, and look at all this with fresh eyes tomorrow, I mean, today.” I laughed, feeling punchy from fatigue.

“Yes, perfect.”

Hadley pushed herself away from the table and I did the same. We went together to the living quarters module and to our separate cabins. I zipped myself into my sleeping bag, exhausted, but my brain wouldn’t stop. Had we done it? Had we solved the warp drive mystery? No more thinking tonight. Tomorrow would be another beautiful new day.

◆◆◆

The next morning, I woke up at eight-thirty, went to the gym, which was empty, for a quick workout, then to the dining room, also empty. I sat at a table, enjoying my balls of food—this morning it was potato knishes. Despite the intensity of the day and night before, I felt clear-headed and refreshed, ready to work.

Hadley was already sitting at the conference table when I got to the lab. “About time you decided to show up,” she said with a grin.

I settled into the chair next to hers. “Oh, really? And I suppose you’ve been here for hours already.”

She laughed and pointed to the collection of energy bar wrappers floating just above the table. “Just long enough to eat these. I didn’t make to the canteen for breakfast, I wanted to come straight here.”

“Canteen?” I cocked my head.

“That’s what we call the module where the dining room and observation deck are.”

“Oh, okay.”

“We have nicknames for all the modules. Let me see, station ops and engineering is

‘ops.’ The module which houses the living quarters is the ‘dorm,’ the shuttle bay and storage module is called the ‘dock,’ then there are the ‘labs’ and the ‘farm.’”

I arched my eyebrow. “Each one more creative than the last.”

“Well, I guess they aren’t nicknames, more like a shorthand name for their functions.”

“Well, ‘canteen’ is sort of a nickname, at least.”

She looked at me askance, eyes narrowed. “You’re not making fun of me, are you?”

“Oh, of course not. I have the utmost respect for your impressive command of the language and your creative interpretation of the meaning of the word nickname.”

She rolled her eyes, the sides of her mouth twitching. “Fine. Now that we’ve got the Shambhala lesson of the day out of the way, let’s get to work!”

Hadley and I reviewed our calculations carefully, eating energy bars when our stomachs made too much noise for us to concentrate. We tried to poke holes in the 64

theory, but it seemed to be sound. We were both smiling so much that by the end of the day my face hurt.

At dinnertime, we went together to the dining room. Diana and Izumi were sitting in their usual spot. Looking at Diana’s face, I didn’t even feel a twinge of longing. It was true, what Naomi had said. Diana was a wonderful person, and we were all lucky to be working for a woman who was a real visionary. Marta and her team were at another table. After grabbing our dinner, Hadley and I went over to sit with them.

“You two are looking rather smug this evening,” Marta said.

Hadley and I exchanged glances, and broke into laughter. “I think we did it,” Hadley said.

The three women locked their eyes on Hadley’s face. No doubt they knew exactly what she was referring to.

“You did?” said Rika, looking first at Hadley then at me.

I nodded, my mouth full of food—Vietnamese drunken noodles. I was famished.

“We’ll need to do a prototype test,” Hadley added.

Andrea let out a whoop, and she gave Rika an enthusiastic high five. If their feet hadn’t been wrapped around their chair rungs, and the chairs hadn’t been attached to the floor, they would have ricocheted away from each other. Newton’s beautiful third law.

“We still need some time to review our work, couple of weeks I think.” Hadley gave me a sheepish grin. “I’m afraid my estimate of a week was a little unreasonable.”

“I was excited, too. The theory appears to be sound, but there’s still a lot to be done.”

“Whenever you’re ready, we’ll be here.” Marta turned to Andrea and Rika, her eyes glowing. “Let’s start preparing first thing in the morning. We can call in the materials science team to talk about the resins for the 3D printers.”

“Once you and Calli are ready,” Rika said, looking at Hadley, “we’ll need to get together and work out all the details. We can meet in the engineering lab.”

“Yes,” said Andrea. “We can draw up the plans for a prototype once we see your work.” She smiled at me, then leaned over to