Jane slung her pack over her shoulder and set out across the desert floor, the harness within clinking gently as she made her way through the scrub brush.
She was in the habit of opening the cargo gate as soon as the sun went down to let in air and reveal the fading wash of sunset. The rapid plummet in temperature helped to reduce the strain on the climate control, which during the day fought against the brutal heat without and the overwrought circuit boards within. On nights when the moon was rising late or still a discreet sliver and when Darcy and Erik were absent, out living their lives, it also lured her outdoors to clear her head.
To the northwest of their anonymous little compound ran an enormous electric transmission line (from where to where?) and less than half a mile away rose a solitary, imposing iron giant, hoisting the lines across across the valley and out of sight. It was the only visible indication of civilization apart from their dusty and humble research facility. In the last eight months or so, she'd become well acquainted with it.
She'd stood staring up after Thor until her neck had cramped, and then gotten to work. In daylight, the damage to the town had been unforgiving. It wasn't safe or ethical to continue her research so close to civilians, so she regretfully said goodbye to her charming midcentury car dealership and moved them to even more remote digs.
What agents had packed up in an afternoon had taken a month to unpack and rewire, but even so, it hadn't taken long to fully understand the obstacles she faced and the time required.
Needing air badly, it had driven her outside and there, as if manifest, stood the tower. It was almost heavy-handed.
Restless and frustrated, she'd collected rubberized work gloves, boots and a climbing harness, normally used for satellite receiver maintenance, and begun the slow ascent. Moving her safety line with the gloves proved painstaking, but similar to pipetting samples during her undergrad studies, the methodical and rhythmic movement absorbed her thoughts. Hardly knowing how she'd gotten there, she would reach the split of the two catenary arms, some three hundred feet in the air, suspended in the crux of a giant slingshot.
The overbearing buzzing of the lines swept the last cobwebs away and with her troubles on the ground she could always see them better. Not to mention the sky, it was almost like being wrapped up in stars.
It was easy to feel small, but only because it made you a vessel for its wonder.
That was something she thought about incessantly too, whatever had such a being seen in her? How could she possibly contain the depths required to transfix someone from another world? What on earth had resonated in him?
Besides an unfortunate, natural (god-given?) talent for puns, she didn't think badly of herself. As a female astrophysicist, she'd learned to demand respect and she had no reservations when it came to a level of competition for funding and grants that could be accurately described as a bloodbath. Anyone who accused her of being a workaholic was likely jealous. Anyone who was jealous was likely a guy. Any guy would be lucky to hold her attention.
But guy didn't quite cover it here, did it?
There was never enough data.
Which was to say, it remained a mystery and if mysteries didn't drive her up a wall she'd have become an accountant or a poet or anything but a scientist; truth-seeking was a callous and punishing mistress.
If she had ever talked about it directly with Darcy and Erik, she would have been forced to acknowledge that she was motivated by obsession. Those blue eyes had hit her like a hammer striking a tuning fork and for all the time that had lapsed she was still quivering. Still at a complete loss to understand her own heart.
Let alone anyone else's heart, mortal or otherwise.
And if she had ever talked about it directly, she might have also acknowledged that she had been thoroughly stood up, and that it was not something she took kindly to. There were myriad possibilities, legitimate or otherwise to excuse his absence, but a deal had been struck of his own proposing, so why exactly was she the one breaking her back to fulfill the main clause?
So her crusade had slipped down a greased half-pipe just a few months in, when, at the same time, both the realization that she would be old and grey indeed had begun to sting and the suited shadows had taken the trouble to have their offers rejected in person, again.
If Thor had anything going in his favor, it was that she took far less kindly to them. They were also used to getting their way and while patriotism was all very nice, it was naïve to be blindly dependent on a shadow that would undoubtedly ask for things in return. And Jane knew too well that there was nothing to hold them accountable. Without an enforcer, what even held them to their bargain?
So she fully intended to say no as often as she could for as long as she could. She'd worked very hard to win enough funding to achieve what independence she had and she wasn't eager to be responsible for any weaponized advancements.
Several months passed without a ripple, but they could afford to bide their time. In the end, they'd get what they wanted. For now, she had balked and kicked up so much dust that they'd decided it was more productive to leave her to her own devices.
For now, she smoldered. She could have packed up and taken tenure track anywhere (with a bouncer virtually turning eager post-docs away at the door,) could have had a husband and children, (that is, if she ever made up her mind about it,) and just maybe a Nobel prize, (forty years out, of course.) Instead, she had a skeletal transmission tower and a string tied beneath her ribs that refused to snap, however hard she pulled.
Securing her harness, then double checking, she slowly let the line take her weight, straightening her legs against the tower at the same time. The breeze swayed her lightly and she tilted back to let the sky fill her field of vision. She could almost imagine she was an astronaut on a space walk, floating, at peace. At least, if she ignored the cables, aviation obstacle light, and the wisps of loosened hair drifting over her face.
As a child she'd wanted more than anything to go to space. As a teenager she'd read Solaris, devouring even the dry textbook chapters, fascinated in tandem by the portrayal of the human interior as unknowable and alien and by the rebuke of expecting extraterrestrial life to arrive in humanoid form.
When sleep deprived, (which she avoided from experience; she'd become a firm believer in polyphasic naps while preparing for the defense of her dissertation,) this was the statistical improbability that usually set her off: humanoid extraterrestrial life. It was positively asinine, yet on at least one vividly memorable occasion, while sleeping over at a friend's as a bleeding-heart teenager, she'd vented her frustration with the shortage of worthwhile boys in their year, wishing in her jaded youth that, 'prince charming would just fall out of the sky already.'
She knew—knew that the human brain was wired to seek the circumstantial, the soft, the coincidental, the anecdotal evidence, but it was the sort of thing that gave even a person who was a professional skeptic pause.
Especially if said professional skeptic had been programing for so many hours that her thirty day leave-in contacts had dried out.
So she valued Darcy and Erik's company all the more, because if there was a fast track for mad scientist, she was leaving a trail of sonic booms in her wake. Although she was known to fall asleep at the keyboard, she tried to get at least six hours every night, whether in nap cycles or straight through. Less than that and she started making mistakes in her coding that were painfully time-consuming to catch and correct. Less than that and she tended to disintegrate into dry, frightening giggles.
So much of their programing had to be written from scratch, Einstein and Rosen's bridge had only been theoretical material, up until now. But fortunately, Jane had had the privilege of watching Darcy come into her own, discovering a love of hacking and programing. Just as importantly, by being herself, Darcy gave Jane permission to uncoil and enjoy herself. They now had a weekly movie night and although Jane pretended to suffer through Darcy's rom com picks, she'd secretly loved every cheesy, wonderful minute of Moonstruck, awful saxophones and all. Jane was deeply grateful for their bromance.
Their best nights were when they ran a test without a hitch. The three of them gathered together around the monitor of Jane's patent-pending 'Franken-machine,' talking and listening to music or a game while watching the script feed for errors. Darcy always produced a six pack to celebrate as the completion percentage climbed higher without issue.
The first sip of beer was always deeply satisfying, although as they came closer and closer to a clean finish, Jane was always too anxious to finish hers. Whatever the outcome, someone needed to be sober to get them to the nearest twenty-four hour diner when it was all over, and often as not, it was Jane. The long drives to town cleared her head too, and those greasy meals and long, rambling conversations, serious and silly, meant the world to her. It was while clutching a warming half-full beer, she felt all the thrill that had lured her into the tedious racket of truth-seeking in the first place and knew without doubt that she couldn't imagine doing anything else.
Glancing at the illuminated face of her watch, Jane decided she'd take a long (for the desert) shower and pack it in for the night. She would have a quiet, productive morning and then take some time to relax when Darcy got back in the afternoon. Catching her footing again on the railing, she stepped up to unhook her safety and lower it.
She smelled the smoke first.