Kate Day - In the Quick

Then I stopped. I looked hard at the last schematic, at the whole of the fuel cell and the shape of its combined parts. I closed my eyes, and in my mind I made it work. I slowed time down and watched all its parts in slow motion, and then I sped time up and watched it work over days, months, years. And when I did that I saw the problem the notes pointed to, the vulnerability. Every potential difficulty had been addressed by the modifications posed, discussed, and implemented in these pages—except one. Vibration.

When I used to watch the four of them in my uncle’s lab in their blue uniforms—James, Theresa, Amelia, and Simon—I never had any doubt they would find all the answers they sought. That the fuel cell would ultimately succeed. But the unfinished dialogue created another story, and this story made me uneasy.

I remembered the last months my uncle was alive, when he was too weak to go to work and his students started showing up at the house. They camped out in his study with the door shut, and my aunt was tasked with keeping me and John away. At dinnertime my aunt would tell them all to leave, but James and Theresa never did. They stayed until late into the night. One morning I looked into my uncle’s study and the two of them were asleep on the floor, curled against each other, pieces of paper spread out all around them. That day my uncle couldn’t get out of bed—he was having trouble catching his breath—and my aunt yelled at James and Theresa. She told them to go home and not to come back.

Outside the window a test rocket fizzed through the sky. I got up and moved around the room. The fuel cell had gone through many iterations, had been refined and modified. At first this was a matter of making a cell that would function well in the lab. Later it was a process of arming it against the hypothetical scenarios spelled out in the schematics’ notations. But maybe that conversation should have kept going—maybe it stopped too soon when my uncle died.

There was something else too. When James, Theresa, Amelia, and Simon wrote these notes they thought they would be the team chosen to be Inquiry ’s crew. The decision was made between two teams and they had been the favorites. But in the end the team commanded by Anu Sharma had won. Anu’s team had helped develop the explorer’s communications system and hadn’t worked on the fuel cell at all.

The front door opened, and footsteps sounded in the hall. I quickly picked up the schematics, careful to keep them in order, and stood near the door. My aunt was talking to John in the hallway, and I waited for her footsteps to pass. They didn’t—they came closer. I ducked behind the desk just as the door opened and revealed the sleeve of my aunt’s blue coat, her soft blue glove.

Why’s the light on in here? she said and stepped into the room. I could see her shiny black boots, and the hem of her coat floating above the floor. The door closed, and for a second I thought she’d gone, but she hadn’t.

Her cheeks were flushed from the cold outside, her hair tied in a complicated knot. She stood still for a minute. Then she walked slowly around the room and touched things. Papers, instruments, the silver handles on the filing cabinet. Her movements were slow, reverent even. She pulled a book from the case and pressed it to her nose.

I made a decision. I would come out from behind the desk and accept my punishment, and then I would ask her for help.

My aunt turned when I stood up. Her eyes were wet, smudged with black. She blinked at me.

I need to ask you something, I said. It’s important.

She looked at the papers in my hands and frowned. What do you have—

It’s about Uncle’s fuel cell—

You went through his things. She pulled the papers from my hands and the pen dropped to the floor. Her mouth twisted. You wrote on his things.

It might help Inquiry. I can explain it—

You’re twelve years old, she said. Do you know that?

I felt a surge of irritation but tried again. I described the problem with the fuel cell carefully; I spoke slowly and used the right words.

But she held up her hand. Stop talking. She straightened the papers and put them carefully into their folder. She pressed the label on the folder flat once, twice, and tucked the folder under her arm.

You haven’t brushed your hair, she said. I told you to do it, and you haven’t. Then she put her hand firmly on my shoulder and steered me out of the room.

That night I woke at midnight and sat up in bed with a start, my head full of whirrings and scrapings. I had been running it in my mind as I slept, the cell. Slowly at first, it made a soft, familiar hum. Then quicker, moving through time at such a clip, at breakneck speed. Until the hum started to shudder and break.

One of my aunt’s paintings on the opposite wall loomed, a white canvas with swaying black lines. In the dim light the lines seemed to tremble like the cell had in my dream. I jumped out of bed, wrapped a blanket around me, and went into the hallway.

My aunt’s room was dark. I opened her door a crack and whispered, Aunt Regina? But she didn’t answer. I went inside and got close to the bed. Her head was in her hands on the pillow, her forehead smooth. One of the dogs, Reacher, was at the foot of the bed. He stretched out long and grunted. I said my aunt’s name again and her dark lashes fluttered but she didn’t wake.

I leaned on the bed and looked at the cracks in the ceiling. A hook. An arch. The number fourteen.

My aunt sat straight up. What?

She saw me. Oh June. You scared the— What’s the matter now?

Reacher lifted his head.

I can’t sleep, I said.

Go back to bed. Sleep will come.

Can I stay?

No.

Just for five minutes.

Reacher shook himself and bits of silky hair momentarily filled the air. He turned once in a circle and lay back down.

She sighed. All right.

Can I sit on the bed?

She moved over and I settled between her and the dog on a white comforter that smelled like down feathers.

She reached to rub her feet and moaned softly. My feet hurt.

Mine do too, I said.

I’m watching the clock, she said, and closed her eyes again.

Did they say anything more about Inquiry ? I asked.

No. She pulled the comforter around herself.

I don’t know why anyone would want to be an astronaut, she said after a minute. They must always be hungry, or cold, or scared. Or all three at once.

I hadn’t thought about whether the crew were scared or cold or hungry. I carried their faces around in my mind, but those pictures were smooth and flat. I knew the facts of their lives on Earth and their jobs on the explorer. I knew what they could do, their abilities. But that was just information. Now I thought of them floating inside the compartments of the explorer, with empty stomachs, with cold hands and feet.

Time’s up, she said. Back to bed.

I didn’t want to go.

If you can’t sleep, read a book, she said. Or draw something.

For you?

All right. She laid her head on the pillow again. If you want to.

Back in my room I got some paper and a pen from my desk. In my mind I heard my aunt’s soft moan and I drew an invention that would help her. The idea was a wire basket with legs that could climb stairs so she wouldn’t have to run up and down them all the time. The drawing was detailed like my uncle’s schematics. It showed the invention from different angles, different positions. I hoped it would work. Then my aunt would admire it and say, Thank you June.

Whirrings and scrapings woke me every night that week. But I didn’t go back to my aunt’s room; I worked on my invention. At night I roamed the house to collect things. Parts from a dryer that didn’t work anymore, wiring from a broken remote control car, the telescoping neck of the lamp in my room. Bicycle spokes. Bolts and screws I’d hidden in my dresser drawers.