Reading the journal, Cooper let out a low sob. Reading of the lowest moment in his daughter's extraordinary life was hard, but the notes about suddenly feeling the call of 'her ghost' resonated with him powerfully. While he wasn't certain, that would have been about the time he had made it back into orbit after losing so many years to time.

Amelia thought that love transcended distance and time. Cooper thought to himself. Maybe on some level, Murph knew where to find me all along.

Amelia. He thought. What happens to her now that Plan A worked?

And as hard as it was to read the low points, Cooper was living proof that it got better. So he kept reading.

Murph started from scratch, ignoring Brand's whiteboard. She had always worked out her problems on a notepad. It was how she had done her homework, the problems her father gave her, almost all of the training with Brand…

And her ghost. She had worked out her ghost's messages on paper.

The longer she worked, the more she wanted to go back to that moment and check. She wanted to go home. She hated being in that house, but it suddenly felt like the answer was there somewhere.

But she hadn't been back in that room since grandpa died, and she hadn't wanted to be there since dad left. This was her home now.

She kept working, and figured out the snag.

"Gravity, Motion, Time." Murph explained to Getty. He couldn't understand half the things on the board, but he was spending more and more time with her, and she was glad to have it. Brand had spent his life locked in the office, mostly alone with his own thoughts. If that had been what lead to his monstrous Lie, Murph would gladly work in a funhouse before letting her own thoughts take that path. "Here's how it works: Everything in physics is covered by one of two theories: General Relativity, and Quantum Field Theory. The first covers Gravity; only visible on a planetary scale. The other covers everything else. Nuclear forces, Electromagnetism, all of it."

"Okay." Getty nodded.

"The thing is, the two fields disagree on how gravity works at a quantum scale. In science, you either find data to support a theory by observation, or experimentation. But there just isn't anywhere on earth you can do that. The last hundred and fifty years of theoretical physics has been trying to reconcile Quantum Mechanics with Relativity."

"Oh, is that all?" Getty drawled.

"I know, I know." Murph smiled a bit, despite herself. "One of the main points of disagreement between Quantum Field, and Relativity; is how a Singularity works. The kind you would find in a black hole. Like the one on the other side of the wormhole." Murph stilled, feeling the anger building towards Brand all over again. "If he'd just sent the Lazarus Missions to Gargantua instead of the planets in its orbit, we might have gotten the data needed to finish the formula."

"And if it hadn't worked, he'd have thrown all our eggs, and the basket, into a black hole." Getty pointed out. "That's why there's a Plan B."

"Because the old man, in his eternal wisdom, figured that if he couldn't imagine a black hole in his head well enough to invent the math, then surely nobody else could do it in real life; despite the fact that we got given a hell of a shortcut." Murph scorned. "But without those ships, or anyone else that can make the flight to Jupiter, that's what I have to do now. Invent a Black Hole in my imagination..."

"You'll need coffee."

"We have coffee?" Murph was awed. "I thought it was extinct!"

"It is, but… well, Lazarus has some, vacuum sealed. From the old days. You're head of the Science Department now. Rank hath its privilege."

Murph let out a moan. It had been unspoken since The Night she admitted feelings for him. It felt like something new, but familiar between them. Something that had always been there. Murph knew what the 'something' was. But she hadn't saved the world yet, so 'love' wasn't on the table. But the prospect of him bringing her actual coffee had made her realize all over again just how much she…

She shook her head. Back to work!

Murph had been studying the equation longer than she could remember. Troubleshooting the first part of the formula was actually fairly simple. Figuring out where it suddenly broke down was equally straightforward. After a week, she had made it halfway to the finish line.

The other half was as impossible as ever, and Murph finally understood why. She wasn't chasing ghosts any more.

Getty brought her food, as always. She made a point of showing more gratitude than she usually had. They were touching each other more than they used to. Innocent, friendly; just this side of flirty. Her connection to him was growing, but neither of them dared mention it.

"Murph, check your messages, would you?" Getty said patiently. "You tablet has been flashing this indicator light since breakfast."

Derailed from her thoughts, Murph obeyed. She had forty messages from her sister-in-law, all of them variations on the same three words. 'Where Are You?!'

Murph cursed, loudly and fluently enough to make Getty cover his ears. She had completely forgotten. "Listen, I need you to make a house call."

"Tourette's Syndrome?" He quipped, and Murph blushed.

She spent the next few minutes explaining to him, as best she could, the situation at home. "I meant to bring it up a week ago, but of course, that was the night Brand died, and everything just got…" She shook her head. "That's no excuse, I know. He's my nephew, and I forgot."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. You've told me about Tom's obsession with keeping the farm going. I doubt he'd be okay with them coming here, let alone a stranger in his house." Getty offered. "Especially since…"

"Since I know what the prognosis will be." Murph nodded. "Tom won't let you bring him here."

"I figured." Getty said grimly. "I think your dad's leaving screwed him up worse than you."

"I think so too. And after this week, that's saying something." Murph admitted. "His anger at dad was what kept him on the farm until Jesse died; and after that he was committed. He couldn't admit he was wrong after losing his son." She rubbed her eyes. "It was bad, Gets. I can't sit through one meal with my brother without things getting… distant. There's just this canyon between us ever since Jesse died."

Getty said nothing to that, just listening.

"Okay, maybe a lot longer than that." Murphy admitted. "Before Dad found out about Lazarus, education was a real thing for him. I got suspended from school because my dad and I were taking on my teachers for suggesting the Moon Landings were real."

Getty snorted. "I heard about that sort of thing happening everywhere. There are some places that are an inch away from offering human sacrifices to keep the harvests coming in."

Murph chuckled. "Yeah. Tom went to High School, took Advanced Agriculture, I came here and was tutored in physics." She rubbed her eyes. "And then I royally screwed it up."

"What do you mean?"

"When I went home to visit? Tom was having trouble with Plant Pathology. He wanted the class to help with the Blight on the farm, and… I told him it was easy." She smiled tightly. "Y'know, just botany."

"Like fingerpaints." They chorused the words, and Getty laughed at the age old rivalry between the Base's science teams. It had been a running joke for longer than either of them had been alive.

Murph sobered. "Tom didn't find it so funny. He spent five years in school and had to repeat a few classes, while trying to run a full time farm, and the usual high school gauntlet at the same time. Then his little sister comes home and spends the visit patronizing him about science? He's trying to feed the whole town with sick crops, while his fifteen year old sister is in a nice antiseptic base, getting fed three squares a day, bragging about what she's learning in Quantum Mechanics? The sort of thing that's useful to NASA's hail mary plan, but not to people trying to eat dust." She rubbed her eyes. "Grandpa kept the veneer of family going, but then I tried giving Jesse the equivalency tests; and Tom nearly attacked me over it. There's a whole…" She shook her head. "They hate us, Gets. Outside the Base? They hate people like us. They put anyone with a PHD in the same category as the people who came up with the Bio-Blasts, the Resource Wars, the H-Bomb…"

"They may actually have a point." He reminded her. "The world didn't just 'happen' to fall apart."

"I know, but when I told Tom that I was working on a way to save the human race by abandoning earth, he nearly took a swing at me. It's like there's a wall between people covered in dust, and people who aren't. They're trying to claw their next meal out, and we're in here scribbling on chalkboards all day without dust choking us. They hate us for it."

She could feel him tense. "And you're going back?"

"Relax. I've been wrassling my brother since I was seven years old. I can take him." She gave him a grin. "And I'm taking you along to protect me."

"Protect you, and see if I can find a door number three." Getty said grimly. "Because if Coop has… what we both think he has, then either he'll die; or he'll have to live here. Either way will split your family all over again.

"I know." Murph shook her head. "Lois looked so scared, Gets. She wanted to say yes, and she was scared to ask for help from anyone on Base. But it's Bad enough that she's willing to go behind Tom's back. She's told me when he's going to be out on the fields, and we need to time our visit precisely."

"I'll be ready." Getty promised instantly, just as she knew he would. "Come to think of it, I haven't been off Base since dad died."

"It'll be an eye-opener then. It's harder to ignore the Doomsday Clock when you're off base." Murph confessed. "This is the only place where I don't need to sleep in a facemask, or put a cloth over my plate between bites. That damn dust is just… everywhere."

"A person can get used to anything." Getty chuckled. "Alright, I'll get my medical kit together."

"Bring a jar of lollipops." Murph told him. "It's traditional."

They talked about her work on the drive, for the simple reason that she wasn't ready to talk about her brother yet, and there was nothing else in their shared life, beyond their almost romance. Neither of them were ready for that topic either.

"Starting over from scratch let me figure out the truth from fiction with Plan A." Murph explained. "The equation isn't wrong, it's incomplete. He only has half the variables. The gravity formula is, literally, half done."

"How do we get the other half?"

"Out there? A black hole. Here on earth… I don't know." Murph sighed.

Getty felt her tense beside him. They both knew where to find a Black Hole. It was on the other side of the Wormhole. "You think that 'They' opened the Wormhole because they knew that?"

Murph stilled. "I have no idea what 'They' had planned, but I'm fairly sure this isn't it." She said finally.

Getty felt for her. The Black Hole was the answer, and there was nobody left to get it. The Lazarus Missions were over. There was nothing left to launch. Murph could tell them exactly where to look, but there was nobody left to build a spaceship, and little left to build it from. All the people who knew how had retired or died. Everyone else was fighting over food.

Her father would have been in a perfect position to help his daughter save the world, if he was only alive to answer them. But even hinting at the thought was a raw nerve that could do nothing but hurt.

The road was filling up with cars, and more dust. Murph pulled over to let them pass. The entire town was moving out, Migrating away from the Dust Bowl. Murph was glad the dust was so thick. She didn't want to see them. She knew all their faces, all their names. She grew up in this town.

"What are they hoping to find?" Getty asked, watching the dozen or so carloads of people with all their possessions lashed to the rooftops.

"Survival." Murph said with grim familiarity. "They want to leave this town and find a way to stay alive. We want to leave the planet for the same reason."

"True enough, I guess."

Getty wanted to tell people, deep down. He was the only one left to keep the faith in anything, let alone humanity. He wasn't wrong, thinking that she was acting like Professor Brand. But Murph knew the difference. Brand hadn't been working all that time. He was just playing out the motions, keeping Plan B in play. His work had ended the moment his daughter launched with those Embryos. That's why the journal entries stopped.

Why did he take me on? Guilt? Hope?

Such thoughts chased her as Getty gave her nephew a physical. Lois couldn't stop looking out the windows, watching for Tom.

Murph steeled her nerves and did something she hadn't done in ten years. She went back to her old room.

It was like stepping into a time machine. Lois wasn't kidding when she said it had been kept the way she left it. She could practically see her younger self putting her father's watch on that shelf and leaving it there…

Coop came and checked on her. Murph realized that she'd been communing with the room vacantly for almost twenty minutes. That feeling was back, that she was with her ghost. That he was trying to tell her something. That she needed to be here.

But she shook it off and went back downstairs.

Lois was getting a physical herself, and Getty was not smiling. He put a friendly smile on his face when Murph brought the boy back into the kitchen, and asked Coop to hop up on the table, but it was just procedure. Getty had his diagnosis already.

"Lois too?" Murph said inaudibly.

Getty gave her a hard look. "They cannot stay here."

Murph wasn't surprised, but it made the tension jump another notch. If they couldn't stay; then the next problem would be telling Tom. And that was when it struck her suddenly: Lois had been keeping watch, but if she was being examined too, then-

Tom walked in. He was surprised to see a stranger with a stethoscope, but less so when he saw his sister. "What's going on here?!"

Okay, here we go. Murph steeled herself. "Tom-"

He was already squaring off with Getty.

Murph went into a semi-crouch automatically. Tom wasn't going to be reasoned with. "Your neighbors have already migrated, and so has most of the town. They all know it. They can't stay here anymore, Tom."

Getty chimed in. "You need to leave." He said, feeling the adrenaline spike. Getty had done relief work and humanitarian missions to areas still sick from the Bio-Blasts. He knew when there was a lynching coming. During those missions, the Doctors had survived by putting the focus elsewhere. "Let me be very clear: You have a responsibility to-"

Pow! Tom punched Getty right across the mouth, and went to the sink indifferently before he hit the floor. "Get her things, Coop. She's leaving."

The casual nature of the violence made Murph certain that Lois hadn't told her everything. Tom was getting violent, and he knew why Murph was back so soon. "Dad didn't raise you to be this dumb, Tom."

"Dad didn't raise me. Grandpa did. And he's buried out back with mom and Jesse." Tom still sounded so… unconcerned.

"Look, if you're not going to go, at least let your family go. Save your family."

"And what?" Tom said with barely contained hostility, squaring up to her. "Live underground with you? Wait for daddy to come save us?"

And there it was. He still thought she was trying to chase after their father. Getty had been right. Dad leaving had screwed Tom up as much as her. She was trying to find him, Tom was trying to take over his role.

Murph let out a breath, and told him the secret she'd held back from her family until now. "Dad's not coming back. He was never coming back. It's up to me now."

It had been her mantra since the night they'd buried Brand, but Tom wasn't getting it. "So, if dad couldn't do it, you will; is that it?" He was derisive, scornful. He hadn't gotten it.

"Dad didn't even try!" Murph flat out raged at him. "He abandoned us! All of us! He left us here to die!" Get that through your head, brother. Stop thinking about what dad would do. He's not a good role model when it comes to saving your kids.

But it was the worst thing to tell Tom. Telling him that their father knew the earth, and the farm was a lost cause? Telling Tom that he needed his little sister to keep his family alive? That was worse.

"What are you gonna do?" Murph demanded. "Wait for another of your kids to die?!"

It was too far, but she wasn't sorry. She wanted to shock him out of The Old Argument. To at least get some kind of reaction out of him. And she got one. For a split second, Tom was ready to haul off and swing at her. Murph didn't flinch, ready for it. He'd swing, she'd rear back, and he'd be wide open. Just like every wrestling match they'd had since they were kids. Bring it, dumbass! I'm ready for you!

But Tom didn't strike. She was almost disappointed. She was feeling twenty years worth of frustration and bitterness and lies pushing at her from every direction, just being back in their kitchen. She wanted to hit something so much she would have taken an axe to the walls if she'd had one.

"Get. Out." Tom said seriously. "And don't come back. Ever."

Coop was coming down the stairs quietly, carrying a box of Murph's things.

"Keep my stuff." She told him, wiping back tears. "I don't need anything from this house."

Lois was trembling. Getty looked the question to her, but Lois' eyes flicked to her husband, and she shook her head, barely.

"He's doubling down on the wrong choice." Murph snarled, gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white. "He's just so pissed at dad that he's going to stay right where he was when he left, and he'll kill himself waiting for dad to come back and face him before admitting that it's over."

"It's his call, Murph."

"Yes, it is. And I wouldn't care at all, except that he's going to take the rest of the family down with him." Murph growled. "And I am so sick of stupid, arrogant men making choices for my family without a word."

"Murph, take it from a doctor: Patient consent is the one thing that overrides even Hippocrates." He looked at her sideways. "And for a woman who was determined not to come back until the world could be saved, you seem to be taking it awful personally."

Murph forced herself to relax, fractionally. "I am, aren't I?" She sighed. "God, just being back in that house…"

The feeling came back. It was so strong now. Like any other time she thought of her father, she could feel it like a tether pulling her back to her old bedroom.

That house, where her grandfather died, waiting out a clock he could barely bring himself to care about. That house, where her father had taught her that anything that could happen, would happen. That house, where he'd tried to say goodbye to her, and she wouldn't even look at him. But she, at ten years old, doubled down on her anger too long, and even running after his taillights couldn't undo it.

That house, where the next generation was trying desperately to keep breathing, while Tom doubled down on the wrong choice…

Just like me, doubling down on Brand's Plan A, on his refusal to tell the truth...

Murph let her face turn to stone again, and slammed both feet on the brake pedal. No.

Getty had no idea what she was going to do, but he was on board.

Murph had the spare fuel tank in one hand, and a road flare in the other within seconds. The dust was tearing at her face and hands, but she barely felt it.

Lois was already packing when they got back to the house. "You burned the crops?"

"I figured it's the one thing that'd get him out of the way." Murph declared, heading inside. "Be glad, Lois. I'm an inch away from burning the whole goddamn house down on general principle!"

There were one or two things Lois couldn't part with from her bedroom, and Murph left Getty to keep watch. Upstairs, the three of them crammed everything into a box. Murph felt her gaze shifting back to her old room; even under current circumstances, she couldn't stop looking back at the door.

Lois noticed caught her arm. "Bring your father's things." She said intensely. "Some of them, at least."

Murph was caught off guard.

"I know it hurts." Lois said, not unkindly. "It does for Tom, too. But I don't think we'll ever be back, and…"

Lois didn't have to finish that, and Murph shooed her extended family downstairs to the car.

Leaving her alone. At her bedroom door. With the Ghosts.

Defying Tom was equal parts reckless and nessecary. She wasn't about to see reason now. Squaring her shoulders, she went into her old room; and made a beeline for the box of her father's things.

Most of it she barely remembered. She remembered the model Lunar Lander, broken in half, when her Ghost had knocked it off the shelf. She put the two halves together again, and put the model back on the bookshelf.

She remembered the watch. He'd taken it from his pocket and given it to her. She'd thrown it across the room. It had stopped ticking at that point, though the second hand still twitching, trying to turn; even after all these years.

A few stuffed toys, things that had been hand-me-downs… But she wasn't looking at them. She was looking back at the model. The first thing her Ghost had knocked off the shelf. The first hint she'd had that there was something going on in her room...

"All right, ghost. I'm here." She hissed at her bookshelves. "You showed me once, straight as a line, how to get where you needed me. I was ten. I had no clue. Times have changed. You opened the door to the Black Hole. You got me to Brand, so I could learn what I needed. Tell me where to go next… Or have you given up on us too?"

No answer.

Of course not, idiot. Murph shook her head hard, as if trying to clear a fog. She felt… connected. Like there was something drawing her back to this room, to the moment when she'd first wondered about her own personal poltergeist.

But that was silly, of course. It was twenty years later now…

She was holding the chair. Her desk chair. Why was she doing that?

The memories were coming thick and fast now. She'd barricaded the door, flopped on her bed…

Murph looked down and found she was indeed sitting on her bed, like her younger self had taken over for a minute.

"Murph!" She heard her father calling frantically.

She shook her head hard again. No, not her father; Getty. He was outside, wasn't he?

Which brought her back to the bookshelf; because for a minute, just a minute, she was hearing him again; getting a message, just like…

Just like when she was a kid, reading Morse Code in the spaces on her bookshelf… She had spun around and was pulling the notebook out of the box. The old notepad she had written in, translating the message.

"Stay." Murph whispered. Oh god, I'm going insane! I'm losing my mind, right now; I can feel it!

But it was twenty years later now, and she knew that time wasn't always a constant, knew that things didn't have to happen in a straight line…

"When I'm up there…" Her father had told her, the last time they'd spoken; the day he'd given her the watch. "...In hypersleep, or travelling near the speed of light, or near a black hole, time's gonna change for me. It's gonna run more slowly. When we get back… We'll compare."

"Time will run differently for us." Murph heard herself whisper, the same way she had as a girl.

Why would my Ghost have told me to stay here when I was a girl?!

And then Murph realized why it felt so familiar. It wasn't memories. It wasn't nostalgia. There was an actual presence in the room. One that she recognized, because every other time she'd been with her Ghost, he'd been there too.

"It was you…" Murph breathed. "You were my ghost?"

She was moving forward again, like a dream. Looking at her bookshelf. Tossing dust around, hoping for another message...

"Murph! The fire's out! Come on!" Getty was yelling from outside.

Does a crazy person know they're crazy? Murph thought absently.

"Murph, I can see them coming back! Come on!"

Murph shook her head. "Okay. I'm coming."

She grabbed the watch, and was about to scoop it into the box when the second hand caught her off guard. She had seen something; and it made her feet freeze. She kept staring to make sure. Just like listening to the last signals from those dusty, dying towns…

She stared another few seconds to make sure. She could hear the engines of her brother's truck, plus a few others; but she was a million miles away. She wasn't imagining it. The second hand of the watch was signalling. It wasn't slipping a gear, or the twitch would be constant and rhythmic. This was something else entirely.

There were a dozen things with moving parts in the room. Two different clocks. But the one that she had been drawn to, the one tapping out Morse Code, was her father's watch. A more blatant suggestion she couldn't imagine. It was practically a signature. Like the message 'stay', written in Morse.

"Dad?" Murph almost whimpered at the watch's face.

When she came running out of the house, Tom was there, squaring up to Getty. He was going to murder someone, covered in soot and blackened by the fire she'd set. Lois and Coop were trembling in the back of her 4x4, but she barely registered any of it.

With a huge smile, she waved the watch at him like it explained everything. "He didn't abandon us!"

Tom knew who she was talking about, but had no clue what she meant.

"It was him, this whole time!" Murph was laughing, tears streaming down her face, like she'd seen a holy sign. "Dad's gonna save us!"

Tom was too confused by her apparent mental collapse to get violent. Getty secretly wondered if that was Murph's plan to get them out alive, but doubted it.

Lois was scared to death of which way this was going to come down, and immediately opened her door. "Tom, thank god you're here!" She said quickly. "They've gone crazy! She's gone crazy! Telling us to get in the car, or else."

Tom was still fixated on his sister, who was still fixated on the watch. "Go back inside, Lois."

His wife nodded quickly, and took Coop, who was getting annoyed by the constant false starts. Lois sent Getty a quick, betrayed look as she went back inside.

Getty was mad as hell when they started driving back to Base. "We went through all that to save your nephew and his mom." He bit out. "And at the last second, she had to pretend we were doing it against her will. Murph, you haven't gone crazy on me, have you?"

"Don't be mad at me just yet, Gets." Murph said with a grin. "I swore I wouldn't go back without a solution. What I didn't realize was that I got that backwards. I didn't find the solution until I went back." She had a strange, vaguely unhealthy gleam in her eyes. "I can do it, Gets. I can save everyone!"

Murph had locked herself in her office for two days. Getty brought her food, but she wouldn't open the door for him. Her eyes were glued to the watch, writing down each subtle flick of the second hand. She couldn't pause the motion, and if she took her eyes off it, she'd miss valuable data. When she ran out of page, it would be a race to get to the next one before she missed something.

It wasn't the formula. It wasn't the holy grail she'd been after. But it was the data. It was all the numbers that described gravity at both the astronomical and quantum level. The question mark that had been the only blindspot in the unified field theory. The only thing without data to back it up.

Data that filled in the gaps, if you knew how to read it. If you knew how it related to quantum mechanics, and how both things related to general relativity.

Murph kept recording the movements until she was very positive that she was repeating herself. If she had been wrong, if she had taken her eyes off the watch, even missing one number would be like moving a decimal place.

The data took almost a day to give a full revolution. Murph wrote the entire Morse Code message out a second time, start to finish; just to make very sure she hadn't made any mistakes.

It was exhilarating. It was the most focused she'd been in months. The most certain she'd ever felt. She could have gone forever. A lifetime of all-nighters, cramming sessions, and exacting tests from the sharpest minds left alive had all been building to this. Years of keeping others at arms length, avoiding social situations and going without food or sleep had given her the physical and mental endurance to work non-stop. She'd been training her whole life for this.

When the data began looping a third time, she put the watch down and her hand rebelled, cramping from the position it had been in for almost thirty-nine hours.

Murph didn't know Morse Code as well as her father did. She'd been taught it, but she'd never had need of it. But NASA had copies of every digital and analogue transmission format ever invented, and she began translating.

The code was in a repeating sequence; like a constant mobius loop. Once she figured out where the first number was, she finally had the data.

After that, it was just a matter of finishing the equation. The point where Brand had pretended to be at for thirty years.

Having reached that point, Murph suddenly realized how long she'd been at it, and bolted for the bathroom. That done, she also noticed how hungry she was, and she went to the door. There were three food trays stacked on Julie's desk, untouched.

Getty. Murph took the top tray and crammed the slightly stale sandwich in her mouth, drinking the melted jello soon after. You told him you couldn't. Now that the hard part is done…

In a day full of electrifying hope for the future, this thought still made her giggle to herself a bit. Well, after this long, don't I deserve to celebrate, just a little?

She couldn't stop smiling. She had it. The data was there, in her office; right in front of her. The Holy Grail and the Rosetta Stone alike. Her father had sent it to her. In her old bedroom. Twenty years later, and still helping me with my homework, showing up my teachers.

Having eaten, she knew she should have slept, but there was no chance she'd be able to.

"So, dad." She said to her father's watch. "Now that we've got all the pieces to the puzzle, let's see how long it takes to figure out what the picture should look like."

"I'm worried about her." Getty said for the fifth time in three hours.

"She's gone on work binges before, Gets." Ellie told him soothingly. "She's still wearing her bio-monitors, and she's not redlining yet. In fact, her readings say she's happy."

"Ellie, she's been in here for almost three straight days without food, water, or sleep." Getty said. "I'm a doctor. Take my word for it, a smile only takes you so far." He rubbed the back of his neck. "And the… the way she was grinning when we drove back to the Base…"

"You think 'happy' is code for 'finally cracked'?"

"It was a watch, Ellie. She thinks she found it in a watch that wasn't ticking." Getty stood up. "I'm going to go kick her office door in. If I don't like what I see, I'm bringing her straight to you; to be restrained and medicated as needed."

"Well you go, girl." Ellie snorted, nonplussed.

Getty was marching to Murph's office so fast he almost didn't notice her going in the opposite direction at a jog. She was thumbing through a dozen sheets of notepad paper, and almost missed him as well, but she grabbed his arm with a giddy smile, hauling him along with her as she made it to the central shaft, looking out across the entire circular Base.

Almost climbing over the handrail, Murph threw half the papers out across the chamber. "EUREKA!"

Her joyous cry was so emotional and heartfelt (two things which were in desperately short supply) that half the Base was watching her immediately.

Murph turned back to Getty like she was dancing in a dream, seeing his disturbed expression. "It's traditional." She excused… before throwing her arms around him and giving him a passionate kiss.

He was so surprised he didn't get a chance to kiss her back, before she'd already broken off, and thrown the rest of her papers out into the air; crying Eureka! again, laughing euphorically… Before spinning around and kissing him again.

This time he was ready, and kissed her back. Getty forgot about his worries in an instant. He'd been waiting years for this, and he eagerly enjoyed every soaring heartbeat of it.

Word spread fast. So fast, in fact, that Ellie was waiting when they got back to Murph's office. Murph had her hand on Getty's arm possessively, leading him towards their nearest bet for privacy.

"The whole Base is buzzing. And your bio-monitors spiked a few minutes ago." Ellie said lightly, looking them both over. "Please tell me it's office gossip and tiger beat lust. Because the alternative is something far more… hopeful."

"Any reason it can't be both?" Getty quipped, hoping she'd leave immediately.

No such luck. "Murph, Gets came to me half an hour ago, worried for you. He says your reaction to your father's watch was incomprehensible, bordering on unstable."

Murph sent Getty a look. "Being excited is unstable? Archimedes leapt from his bathtub and ran down the street naked, shouting 'Eureka' when he made his breakthrough!"

Getty held his hands up, realizing The Moment was over. "Murph, your brother and I were getting ready to have a knife fight, and you were dancing around your father's broken watch."

Murph settled instantly. "You're right. I'm sorry. My brain got ahead of my mouth. I was the bane of every teacher I had, before Brand." She forced herself to take a deep breath and sit at her desk. "Ellie, you can contact… whoever it is Brand answered to, and tell him that in the wake of his tragic demise, the formula is finished."

Dead silence.

"Start at the beginning." Ellie said, voice raw. "Tell me everything."

"You have, repeatedly, sworn that you don't understand the math."

"I don't, but I know that the math hasn't be the problem for thirty years. So what changed when you went home?"

Murph glanced at Getty. "Gets, shut the door."

He did so, and both her friends sat down.

"Ellie, tell me something." Murph began. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

The energy in the Base was palpable. They all knew who Murph was, what she was working on, and what could make someone cry 'eureka', let alone laugh joyously and start closed door meetings.

By the time evening chow was being served in the Cafeteria, the Base was all on the edge of their seats. In her office, Murph had managed to get the whole story out.

"You realize, of course, that you can't tell anyone about this." Ellie said carefully, once the story was done.

"You think I've gone crazy. Just like Tom did." Murph rolled her eyes. "You, of all people."

"Of all people? Murph, your fixation on your father leaving has been the driving force of your life for twenty years. Ditto this formula, which you just found out was always a con-job. Add to that the heartbreak of being lied to by your surrogate dad, and the extra pain of losing him; plus the pressure of the whole Base expecting you to save the human race by rewriting the laws of physics…"

"Ellie, that's exactly the point." Murph said intensely, pointing at the pictures of the wormhole. "We have physical proof that higher dimensional beings can control space-time, and use gravity to cross dimensions. That's what all this was based on. The whole Lazarus Project exists because of those Gravity Anomalies. Is it so hard to think that people who exist outside of time might have given us the whole solution; and it just took us this long to work out the message?"

"Doesn't sound hard to believe at all; but most people don't know about the Wormhole, or the Gravity Anomalies, or this station at all." Ellie reminded her. "Or, for that matter, that the world is doomed. You've got a lot of difficult concepts to get across to a bunch of people who don't believe the moon landings happened. You think the idea that you're being haunted by your long-lost father from the fifth dimension is going to get them to take you seriously?"

Murph stopped moving so fast it was almost comical. "You're right." She said finally. "This is going to take some careful diplomacy."

"Social politics are not your strongest brand of Kung-Fu, kid." Ellie reminded her. "So walk softly with this one for a while."

Murph bit her lip. "You're right. I need a plan."

"And before you do any of that, you need Proof of Concept." Getty put in. "I'll be honest with you, Murph. This equation? It's gibberish to me. So was the stuff Brand had been putting on these blackboards for decades. In fact, he made sure it was. The fact that nobody understood what any of this meant is the way he was able to fake it for so long."

"My brother." Murph said immediately. "If I can convince him, I can convince anyone." She turned back to her laptop. "Ellie, find Howard."

"Engineering? Why?"

"Why else do you call an engineer? I have something I need to get built."

Ellie went to fetch the head of their Engineering team, and Getty hurried to catch up with her. "You believe any of this?"

"It's clear that she believes it." Ellie offered.

"Which is not at all what I asked."

"You want to know if your office crush has had a psychotic break." Ellie nodded.

"She's a lot more than that to me."

"I know." The psychologist sighed. "Look, she wasn't wrong when she said that all our work is wrapped in the hope that extra-dimensional beings are trying to save us. I'm not a physicist; but I've seen Back to the Future enough times to hope she might be onto something."

"But the idea that it's her father?"

"It's… hard to believe." Ellie conceded.

"Which is psychiatrist-speak for 'whacko'." Getty said harshly.

"Look, I know Murph. If she needs to see her father in a dream to get inspired, that's fine with me." Ellie said simply. "The rate of suicide on the Base is up another nine percent. Seventeen people this year, and counting. Fifteen thousand a day are suffocating, globally. If the formula works, I don't care if Elvis or Bigfoot gave it to her."

"What if it doesn't work? Getty asked quietly. It was the closest he could come to asking 'what if she's just lost her mind?'

Ellie sighed. "Then she's going to need you with her when she realizes it."

Lois was ready to strangle Murph when she came back to the farm a week later. "You bitch!" She snarled. "I came to you for help! I was already packed! I was begging for my kid's life, and- what is this?!"

Murph and Getty were carrying a large footlocker between them, heading for the barn. "Well, if it works, this is what's going to save all our lives." Murph said cheerfully. "You're going to love this, Lois."

Lois was staring at her sister-in-law, trying not to cry. After a moment, she let them go, and turned to go back into the house.

Getty felt for her; and took the opportunity to have words with Murph. "Last time we were here, we weren't nearly as much help as she needed. Please acknowledge that some time before show and tell? We all but offered to kidnap her so she wouldn't have to face Tom, and then we left her to face the consequences without us because of that watch."

Inside the barn, Murph pulled off her mask, and turned to him. "Gets, I know that part of you thinks I'm cracked. But trust me, this is going to work. And when it does, Lois and Coop will have all the time in the world."

Tom came storming into the barn. "Murph! I told you to get off my farm and not come back!"

Murph, over at the foundations to the Barn, spun back to smile at him. "No vehicles left?"

"Not in here. The tractor is out on the back forty. We're spraying anti-blight as fast as-" Tom caught himself. "You need to leave!"

"Tom, I know you hate me, but trust me: This was all worth it."

"Oh, so your little seance with dad's watch was successful then." Tom scorned.

"Tom, no fooling: This is going to be bigger than the Wright Brothers!" Murph enthused. "I haven't done this before, because I needed you to see this moment before I showed anyone else." She actually reached out and gave her brother a hug. "This is going to change the world forever!"

Tom wasn't impressed, wasn't even intrigued. He was sad for her. He didn't even talk to her, looking to Getty. "She just flipped like a pancake, didn't she?"

Getty couldn't meet his gaze.

"Whatever you did to my barn, undo it; and then get lost." Tom turned to leave them alone, not even bothering to see if they were obeying.

"What I've done, is turn your barn into the first thing to fly without wings, hot air, or fuel." Murph chased after him, putting her arm in his. "Let's get the others together. They're going to want to see this too!"

Fifteen feet from the Barn, Lois held young Coop tight against her, both of them facing the structure. Tom was beside them, arms folded. Getty had drifted closer to Murph, who held the remote in one hand, counting it down; with a dangerous gleam in her eye. "Five! Four!"

Young enough to be excited, Coop counted it down with her. "Three! Two! One!"

Getty tensed so hard his limbs hurt when they reached zero. Either Murph was right about everything, or the pressure had finally driven his brilliant beloved into total delusion; and here was the moment of truth.

"Blast off." Murph's voice dropped to a hushed whisper, and she hit the controls.

Nothing.

Frowning, Murph hit the controls again.

Nothing.

Getty deflated. He wanted so badly for this to work out for her, but it hadn't. The formula was a bust. The hard part now, would be trying to keep Murph from losing it completely when she realized she'd imagined the whole thing.

"It doesn't work." Murph whispered. Horror and confusion crossed her face. "Why doesn't it work?"

"Because you were looking for the meaning of life in a broken watch?" Tom guessed dryly. "Can't imagine what the trouble with that plan was."

"Will you get off it already!?" Murph rounded on him. "You can tear me up all you want, but it won't help anyone survive what's coming! You have any idea what's really going on on here?!"

"Murph." Getty tried to hold her back. Lois was doing the same for Tom.

Nobody noticed Coop wandering back into the barn. The machine that Aunt Murph had built wasn't like any of the sci-fi stuff that his dad had been describing when he went on his rants about 'the damn eggheads'. In fact, it looked a lot like some of the battery generators that they used on their farm equipment. Tom had told his son about his namesake's talent with machinery, and Coop had inherited the knack from his grandfather.

Noticing something in the works that struck him as important, Coop started fiddling with the switches.

"Tom, I'm telling you; there's nothing else it could be!" Murph was insistent, almost crazed. "How can you not follow this? You grew up in that house the same as I did! You heard dad talking about-"

"Oh, here we go." Tom scorned. "How many more ways are you gonna find to call me dumb? You know the difference between you and me, Egghead? The stuff I make actually keeps people alive. What's on those chalkboards that's so all-fired awesome? Because it looks to me like you've been chasing a mirage for twenty years."

"Tom-"

"Maybe I am stupid, Murph. But you're just nuts; thinking dad is haunting a wristwatch!" Tom was winding up for something big. "Even your boyfriend over there thinks you're ins-"

"Auntie Murph!" Coop screamed as he ran from the barn as fast as he could. "I think I changed something!"

All the adults turned to look, as a moment later, the barn groaned... and then ripped free of the ground. It floated up into the air. It reached an altitude of almost a dozen feet, before it fell to bits and came crashing back down to earth in ruins.

Long silence. Getty glanced to Tom and Lois, who were staring in open disbelief.

Murph grabbed her nephew by the shoulders and made him look her in the eye. "Do you remember the thing you changed?!"

AN: Read and Review