Look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not.

When the electron microscope slides came back with another full file of notes nearly bursting at the seams, all Dr. Ericka May Elwood-Woolum could do was sigh.

Taking her thick rimmed glasses off for a minute to rub at her eyes, she took a glimpse at the time displayed on the lower right side of her computer screen. 14:32. She set her glasses down, and leaned forward at her desk a little, the text and images on screen blurring. With another look at the time, and seeing only a few minutes had passed, she reached back to pull the ever loosening elastic out of her heavily grey, light brown hair before fixing her hair back into a proper ponytail and snapping the elastic back around it. The buzzing of a mobile phone – her mobile phone – on the desk startled her, only for her to shut off the alarm that had begun going off and slip her glasses back onto her face. The same notice that had set off the alarm appeared on the screen of her computer. Meeting with Jon, Wilfred, and Colonel Kemp in five minutes – 14:45 on October the 19th, 2076. Logging out of her computer and setting it to sleep, Ericka swept up the file of notes and tucked it under her arm. Once she was sure she had not dropped anything and that her ID badge was still clipped to her skirt with the keys to her office, she slipped her mobile into one of her skirt pockets and left the room, pausing only to lock up. Finding the corridor and the doors to the laboratories open and surprisingly busy, she managed a smile, though it quickly dissipated when she made her way through the halls, past the staff break room, and to reception. The stairs up to the second floor were, it seemed, the only part of the building everyone avoided.

She went up them anyways.

"It's my own damn company," She muttered to herself. "If I want to go up to the second floor where the executive offices are, I damn well can."

Catching a glimpse of the portrait hanged on the wall at the top of the stairs, she sighed. Herself on the left; the only differences, as far as she could tell, were the number of greys in her hair, a different pair of glasses, and a much less tired, even happy look to her eyes and the way she held herself. Her eyes lingered on the man in the centre of the portrait – her husband. Of all of them, she told herself, he was the least changed. Dr. Jon Braden Elwood; a 'pillar of the community,' a calm but observant man, and resilient. And we went back to school at the same time, at roughly the same age, and in the end founded the same company together, the same damn company that's profits are putting our children through university now. We finally made it. Nervousness and irritation came nipping at the back of her mind, and she simply stared, closely looking over every detail of the way her husband looked in the portrait. Hair starting to fade a little and thinning. Dark, pointed brown eyes. The eyes making her a little uneasy, Ericka shifted her attention to the final person in the portrait, the man on the right – Dr. Wilfred Anders Bergman. Went back to school shortly before us, too. Small world for all of us to meet in our fifties and wanting to do something with our lives that we made the mistake of not pursuing in the first place when we were younger. Something about the way he held himself in the portrait, she realised, being at the root of what was irritating her, Ericka rubbed at her neck for a moment with her free hand. Giving up on the idea of pretending to forget about the meeting, and the clock on the wall nearby indicating she was very nearly late, Ericka started towards the facility Director's office.

She stepped in a minute later.

The door closing behind her with a thud after being pushed back by her right foot, Ericka adjusted the bustling file under her arm again and barely acknowledged even her husband when she sat down at the small table cramped into one corner of the room. Searching for any sign of discontent or potential objection to their work in her demeanour, Colonel George Kemp eased a little when he felt assured in himself that she had nothing to hide and that she had been made uncomfortable enough by his close observation. When his gaze relented, something she only realised from out of the corners of her eyes, Ericka calmed herself quickly. She set down the file and cleared her throat to get the attention of all three of them present. On paper, the project sounds so easy, developing a lining material that would allow power armour to charge itself by absorbing ambient ionising radiation and converting it into electricity and, yet, in practise it has been anything but. The most taken aback by her demeanour, it seemed, was her husband, who stared up at her in surprise, unsure of whether to speak or not. Colonel Kemp awaited her telling him something – anything – substantial for him to respond to. Unlike the Colonel or, indeed, his colleagues, Dr. Wilfred Bergman tried to soak in the way each of them held themselves in front of the Colonel. Ericka's tension and Jon's exhaustion. A hint of impatience in the Colonel and his countenance.

"Your biggest success in the last year has been upgrading and maintaining Code Defender," The Colonel sharply looked between Jon, Ericka, and Wilfred. "Which, if I recall, the three of you solved the developmental issues on while still working or – in the case of Dr. Elwood and Dr. Elwood-Woolum – studying at the CIT. The last prototypes you sent us are unsuitable for use in combat. Would you care to explain that?"

"The new material was successful, Colonel Kemp," Ericka said, bristling with a sprig of grey coming loose from her ponytail. "We noted it may not be strong enough to be workable long term. You requested what we had ahead of schedule, and that is what we had."

His eyes narrowed when she handed him part of the file she had brought with her.

"This seems to be much of the same," Kemp said, taking his reading glasses out from where he had left them tucked into his coat. "A piezoelectric material, Lead Zirconium Titanate, and a polymer of gold and lithium hydride can produce a material capable of converting ambient ionising radiation into electrical energy. You have proved you can do that. You have not been able to prove you can create anything suitable for use as lining material and as a long lasting lining material."

"We only received the Nucleostrictive Lining Project a year ago, just shy of three years after we went into business, and in the midst of our work on a smorgasbord of other projects for a variety of institutions and corporations," Jon pointedly reminded him. "If the military wants us to be able to work faster and more efficiently on this, we're going to need more funding. I'm sorry to be so blunt, Colonel, but we aren't a large corporation, such as West-Tek, for instance, with thousands of employees and researchers. We can't fulfil all of our contracts on time if we're focusing solely on this one – especially when it's classified and hard to get additional researchers on."

"The team working on the project includes all three of us," Wilfred added, leaning back a little in his chair though his jaw tensed. "And twenty others from scientists, laboratory technicians, and research assistants. For context, Colonel Kemp, that's the largest team working on any singular project in the entire company, and the next largest team is six people; two scientists, three research assistants, and one laboratory technician all working on developing faster drying, stronger bonding cyanoacrylates."

"Research I am very sure is fascinating, but not the priority. Your priority is fulfilling this contract with us, and you're doing a poor job of it thus far," Kemp's eyes coldly flitted between the three before him. "The other work you do may interest yourselves, the public, and your investors, but we are funding this endeavour to get results and to get them as accurately and speedily as possible. You do not seem to understand that, otherwise we would have a decent prototype by now."

"If we could, we would, but we have given you what we have thus far. Rushing through it – or any project, frankly – would be counterproductive at best and actively dangerous at worst," Ericka pursed her lips. "We have no desire to become the next DuPont for either our mishandling of products wherein unsafe chemicals enter the market and environment or for our work to create a scandal where our products and work are at the centre of such a scandal."

"Are you honestly worried about the consequences of potentially using 'forever chemicals' in your work?" Kemp raised an eyebrow, almost amused. "Every company in the whole of the United States that have worked with 'forever chemicals' gets accused but let off for contaminating the environment unless it's a complete and utter disaster. If you're careful, it won't even come to you needing to be let off. But I'm tired of excuses. Tell me the truth about why you are lagging on such a critical project that – I can assure you – will save at the very least some of our men and women in service when the new, stronger power armour reaches them."

Jon hesitated. "What is the current problem with the power armour models in the field? Is there any chance we can help while we try to solve the issues we're having with the Nucleostrictive Lining Project?"

"And the concern we have is not with fluoropolymers or C8 or any other chemicals being used in our work becoming pollutants, nor is it with the radioactive materials we work with," Ericka pointedly added, her fingers curling around each other in her lap. "The concern is that, in a rush to get the project over the line as a soon as possible, we will create a product for field use that could be unsafe for its users."

Kemp considered that, looking closely between them and Wilfred.

"The problem with the T-45 series is an error West-Tek have mostly corrected relating to the welding just below the chest plate that was vulnerable to moderate but especially high calibre rounds of penetrating ammunition," He finally said. "It has been an issue in the T-60 series and some of the T-51s, but is one they are actively remedying. If you think you could do better, then, by all means, write up a proposal and come up with some blueprints for how to correct the issue but that is not what you are contracted to do and not what you are being paid to do."

"If we're going to have even a shot at helping the military and West-Tek resolve the issue, we're going to need the current blueprints," Wilfred took a moment to let the Colonel think. "The three of us could, potentially, work on potential solutions alone from them while you get others cleared to make a slightly larger team working on it here."

"I'll discuss the possibility with Colonel Spindel, but – even if it were to be the three of you alone – I give you no guarantees," Kemp said, the faintest hint of a smirk passing over his face when he saw Wilfred, Jon, and Ericka all bristle a little. "Again, the Nucleostrictive Lining Project is what you are contracted for. Focus on it, and, with that being all I assume you wish to divert me with, now tell me what is going wrong with the project and what you are going to do about it."

"The core problem we're trying to solve is making the nanoweave material used in the lining durable all around," Ericka told him, her voice a bit tenser. "What we gave you was a technical success, certainly compared to what we had before, but is still less durable than we had hoped and, as you've made no secret of it, less durable than you had expected."

"We can't have it shred under intense use. It won't last long in active combat," Kemp flatly replied. "How are you planning to approach fixing the problems with it in its current state?"

"At the moment, my hypothesis – as I've shared with Jon and the rest of the team – is that the solution to the material's lack of strength is to produce a material capable of absorbing radioactive particles approaching at an oblique angle," Ericka sent Wilfred a brief, dark look. "In short, we would be changing the dosing pattern so it isn't producing nanoholes perpendicular to the surface but at an angle. That, I believe, could be able to reflect the most direct radioactive particles and trap only those coming in at an oblique angle to the material. The drawback is it will lower the rate of energy harvesting, but it would solve the issues we're having with the material's lack of strength and the issue of thermal dissipation."

Kemp leaned forward slightly, looking closely between the three scientists before shaking his head.

"If that's the best you end up with, I'll consider it if you can produce tangible results, but I would advise you to return to the drawing board and create a material without any of those drawbacks. You're all supposed to be geniuses. Act like it," Kemp let out an irritated sigh when he finally stood up. "With the state of the War in Alaska specifically, what we need is to be on the cutting edge of power armour technology, not settling with 'the best you can do.' We are set to win – I suspect even before the next President is sworn in come January after the election in a few weeks – but it will be a swifter victory if we have better power armour and thereby do not lose as many good men and women on the battlefield."

Ericka, Jon, and Wilfred shared a sour look when the Colonel began towards the door.

"Do you think," Wilfred said before the Colonel could leave. "That the election will have any impact on the state of the War?"

Kemp paused in the doorway before shaking his head. "Even if it does matter," He said. "The impact will be marginal at best."

The door swung open and then shut behind him. When it slammed shut, the three left behind relaxed ever so slightly. A few seconds passed, and they looked between each other in silence. Frustrated by the Colonel's abrupt departure and lack of understanding of the developmental process or scientific method, Dr. Ericka May Elwood-Woolum pushed the file she had brought with her to the side and stood up. She walked across the room and swept a pen off her husband's desk, and a small notebook out from within it. Far more exhausted than anything else, Dr. Jon Braden Woolum reached into his pockets and pulled out a half smoked pack of cigarettes. He toyed with the pack and the remaining cigs within it before finally taking one out and lighting it. When he offered one to Dr. Wilfred Anders Bergman, he was surprised to be rebuffed; when he offered one to his wife, however, he was utterly unsurprised that she took one seconds after he lit it for her. Time seemed to slow; Jon stayed where he was sat as he began smoking his cigarette, drowsily tapping off ash into the nearby ashtray with his eyes hovering between open and shut. Ericka began to pace, taking her mobile out of her skirt pocket and glancing through it every so often with one hand, her cigarette in the other. Wilfred found himself staring up at the ceiling and around at his colleagues, though he, too, eventually gave in to the desire to look at his mobile as Ericka was, frowning at his emails when he did.

"Have either of you looked at our stock numbers recently?"

"Don't focus on them, Wilfred," Jon said, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand and taking a drag on his cigarette with the other. "We're not a large company, but our investors have been steadfast. Even if our numbers continue dipping and not recovering quickly, the chances of them backing out are low."

"I would agree with you if we were, for say, West-Tek," Wilfred said, pushing his mobile across the table towards him. "But, even for us, this isn't looking good. We need to up our public face, or get people more interested in our work – what we can openly talk about, at any rate – or, at the very least, do something to raise our numbers. If this keeps going, we're either going to be barely held together by the military – and Kemp sure as hell won't help with that – or bought out and have our jobs handed to someone else."

"What we have that is alluring, if you can even consider a project this frustrating as alluring, is precisely what we cannot talk about in the open. Seeing as there's still a decent probability, too, that any of our prototypes could accidentally boil the blood of their wearer should they be near a direct, nuclear attack, I don't think we want to discuss the potential benefits or the potential drawbacks of the Nucleostrictive Lining Project in public, either, even if we could," Ericka reminded him with a shake of her head. "And, given how fixated the general public were on the tricentennial back in July and are now the 'grand, fifty ninth Presidential Election of 2076' in a few weeks, I don't think we have much of a shot at getting any attention cast our way even if Jesus Christ himself were to come down from the sky above and tell everyone to throw money our way. I barely see any of the media big three reporting on the War, and – between Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, – you'd think at least one of them would be reporting on the War longer than as a byline."

"I don't know why anyone is so interested in the damn election," Wilfred said, rolling his eyes. "My grandson is obsessed, looking at every little detail he can find to try and predict what the results will be down to the level of the Commonwealths and States."

"I can't even remember the last time I voted," Jon said, stubbing out his cigarette only to light a new one shortly thereafter. "It doesn't seem to matter. What will be will be."

"I overheard Colonel Kemp say something to that effect a few weeks ago," Wilfred said, shutting off his mobile when Jon pushed it back to him. "Think he was talking on the phone with his husband, but what I heard him say was 'I've only ever voted for Democrats, but I don't know who to vote for now.'"

"If he did say that, he sounds a lot like my mother did before she passed," Ericka said, pausing her pacing to take a draw on her dwindling cigarette. "And I understand the lethargy. The last time I bothered voting was in the 2050s."

Jon nodded. "The last time I voted and cared about it was in 2040, and then 2044," He took a few drags on his cigarette. "I don't remember when I decided to stop voting, but I haven't bothered to in over a decade. Why take the time when it won't change a damn thing? The rest of the country have made up their minds, and we all have to live with the consequences."

"The election of 2040 was, admittedly, more exciting than most, at least at that time," Ericka said, stepping back over towards them. "We got our second female president. God, it's strange to think I was only six in 2024 when we elected our first female president. I remember President Harris well, I think, because she was the first president we had that I could remember. I was just about to start high school when her second term ended."

"Memorable, too, seeing as she smoothed out some of the turmoil at the start of the '20s," Wilfred said, relenting when Jon once again offered him a cigarette. "But her successor really finished what she started in bringing things back to normal, or, at least, normal as my parents saw it. Couldn't have been an easy feat, looking back, seeing as in that time a former president was convicted of seditious conspiracy. I didn't think President Maddox had done much at the time, but he did much more in the '30s than I think he was ever given credit for. His media moniker of 'the most boring man in the world' was accurate, but I'd say that was what we needed."

"And knowing we had that is part of what frustrates me. We had three good presidents from 2024 to 2048, and things went down the gutter after that. Of course, the Resource Wars can be blamed for some of it," Jon said, looking annoyed at the thought. "We had President Harris, who started to restore normalcy and faith in our republic and – her words – set America on the path to win the twenty first century against China and Russia, then President Maddox who ensured the tenants of her administration stuck, and, finally, President Haley and, I swear, everything has gotten worse since she left office."

"You'll hear no objections from me," Ericka said. "I quite liked her. Met her about twenty years ago, and, I have to say, she really was the 'what you see is what you get' woman she's known as."

Jon nodded. "I'll admit, I was a little nervous when I voted for her, seeing as she had a failed run for president sixteen years earlier, but she proved me wrong. Granted, Nikki wasn't perfect but she was a strong president and kept our alliances – the West, really – together, the country and especially our borders secure, focused heavily on law and order, continued to put an end to military consolidation, pushed for more funding back into the DOD and established and reestablished more military bases around the country, refused to negotiate with terrorists or the Reds…and, ever since, it seems we've had weak president after weak president, on law and order domestically and holding the West steadfast internationally."

"That certainly wasn't helped by the disbandment of the UN in '52," Ericka noted, finishing off her cigarette. "Although, and I'm well aware President Haley got a lot of criticism for saying it, never mind the fact she had been an ambassador to the UN at one point and could speak more directly about them, but the UN had become near useless by the mid '40s."

"Second most useless institution in the world behind the EU," Jon frowned. "The Anglosphere, France, and Spain managed to more or less survive its dissolution, but I, for one, am damn relieved to not have to live in the rest of those countries. Italy fell apart in what, weeks? How it's still technically a unified country is beyond me."

"What shocked me the most about the EU's dissolution in the '60s was that the countries that haven't gone into complete disarray are the ones that – albeit reluctantly in the case of Spain and especially France and Ireland – went onto the Pound Sterling," Wilfred took a long drag on his cigarette. "The writing was on the wall by the '20s about the EU. It may not have been the best decision in the short term, but I certainly think the British departure from the EU was one of the smartest political moves made in the last fifty years, with the benefit of hindsight, of course."

"It made for a rough decade, but you're not wrong," Jon said, tapping off some ash. "My sister's husband is British, and his family had it rough in the '20s because of it – extremely rough, honestly – but when things started to turn around in the '30s, his parents stopped regretting having voted for it, though the Tories had a hell of a time recovering from it."

"Makes you glad to be American, especially when the good old US dollar is the world's reserve currency," Ericka rolled her eyes. "I still don't know why it took me until my fifties to go back and get my doctorate in chemical engineering when I was far from enjoying myself as a global economist. I wouldn't call my BA or MBA useless, but I certainly enjoyed them less than getting my BS and MS in chemistry. Doing those two rather different courses of study at the same time probably didn't help, though."

"And now the military are breathing down our necks to solve a problem that has no apparent let alone easy solution," Wilfred made no effort to hide his annoyance. "I want our men and women in uniform safe and home as much as the next person, and I want to see the Reds kicked the hell out of Alaska, but we can't figure this out on a timescale as short as Colonel Kemp seems to want."

"It's his superiors who are giving the orders. Can't entirely blame him for being the bearer of less than pleasant news and tidings," Ericka said. "But I agree it is frustrating. I've certainly found myself a bit envious of my and Jon's kids out and living their lives without some of the strain we're under. The twins especially. Those girls and their yoga studio have been more successful than I'd have thought possible and, as for our son, though I was never much of a partygoer myself while in undergrad, it sounds much more enjoyable than being shut up in the lab two thirds of the time struggling to figure out how to make this damned project work."

Wilfred nodded. "It sounds," He remarked, finishing off his cigarette. "As though we need to close up our work a bit early today and have a brief breather. Dinner and wine at five, maybe?"

"I certainly won't object, Jon stubbed out his cigarette. "I can welcome a distraction, though I'd like to avoid downtown. Vault-Tec are having an event at their Northeastern Regional Headquarters tonight, and I have no desire to deal with them and their people. I don't know why so many people, especially those in the government, do. Every 'VIP' in this country will lose their damn minds if the War ends the way Vault-Tec fear monger everyone into believing they will."

"Like them or not, they're going to be the best choice we have if things go to hell," Wilfred said, glancing between him and Ericka. "It's not a comforting thought, I know. At the same time, it's true. Vault-Tec may be run by smug bastards, but I'll take them over any of the alternatives every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And, irritating as it is, we're lucky to have the choice to either prepare for ourselves, choose them, or risk it all with the subpar, cheap competitors of Uncle Sam's good friend Vault-Tec. That availability of choice, I'm sure, doesn't exist in any other country now."

"That last is why I'll never deny that I'm grateful to be a US citizen," Ericka paused before she let out a tired sigh. "But do you really have a choice if all of your options in circumstance are bad?"

"It may become worse than that," Jon said, meeting his wife's gaze with the same look of resignation. "Do you really even have a choice if you never had a chance? Because whatever is going to be will be – and I don't mean about only the election – and if the War…I don't think any of us stand a chance, even for those among us lucky enough to know they'll be a Vault dweller."