Shmac: And she is married.
Marie: To you?
Shmac: Depressingly, no.
Shmac: Sorry—we’re restructuring the lab. Gotta go before someone destroys a 5 mil piece of equipment. Talk later.
Marie: Sure, but I’ll want to know everything about your affair with a married woman
Shmac: I wish.
It’s nice to know that Shmac is always a click away, especially now that I’m flying into the Wardass’s frosty, unwelcoming lap.
I switch to my email app to check if Levi has finally answered the email I sent three days ago. It was just a couple of lines—Hey, long time no see, I look forward to working together again, would you like to meet to discuss BLINK this weekend?—but he must have been too busy to reply. Or too full of contempt. Or both.
Ugh.
I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes, wondering how Dr. Curie would deal with Levi Ward. She’d probably hide some radioactive isotopes in his pockets, grab popcorn, and watch nuclear decay work its magic.
Yep, sounds about right.
After a few minutes, I fall asleep. I dream that Levi is part armadillo: his skin glows a faint, sallow green, and he’s digging a tomato out of his boot with an expensive piece of equipment. Even with all of that, the weirdest thing about him is that he’s finally being nice to me.
—
WE’RE PUT UP in small furnished apartments in a lodging facility just outside the Johnson Space Center, only a couple of minutes from the Sullivan Discovery Building, where we’ll be working. I can’t believe how short my commute is going to be.
“Bet you’ll still manage to be late all the time,” Rocío tells me, and I glare at her while unlocking my door. It’s not my fault if I’ve spent a sizable chunk of my formative years in Italy, where time is but a polite suggestion.
The place is considerably nicer than the apartment I rent—maybe because of the raccoon incident, probably because I buy 90 percent of my furniture from the as-is bargain corner at Ikea. It has a balcony, a dishwasher, and—huge improvement on my quality of life—a toilet that flushes 100 percent of the times I push the lever. Truly paradigm shifting. I excitedly open and close every single cupboard (they’re all empty; I’m not sure what I expected), take pictures to send Reike and my coworkers, stick my favorite Marie Curie magnet to the fridge (a picture of her holding a beaker that says “I’m pretty rad”), hang my hummingbird feeder on the balcony, and then . . .
It’s still only two-thirty p.m. Ugh.
Not that I’m one of those people who hates having free time. I could easily spend five solid hours napping, rewatching an entire season of The Office while eating Twizzlers, or moving to step 2 of the couch-to-5K plan I’m still very . . . okay, sort of committed to. But I am here! In Houston! Near the Space Center! About to start the coolest project of my life!
It’s Friday, and I’m not due to check in until Monday, but I’m brimming with nervous energy. So I text Rocío to ask whether she wants to check out the Space Center with me (No.) or to grab dinner together (I only eat animal carcasses.).
She’s so mean. I love her.
My first impression of Houston is: big. Closely followed by: humid, and then by: humidly big. In Maryland, remnants of snow still cling to the ground, but the Space Center is already lush and green, a mix of open spaces and large buildings and old NASA aircraft on display. There are families visiting, which reminds me a little of an amusement park. I can’t believe I’m going to be seeing rockets on my way to work for the next three months. It sure beats the perv crossing guard who works on the NIH campus.
The Discovery Building is on the outskirts of the center. It’s wide, futuristic, and three-storied, with glass walls and a complicated-looking stair system I can’t quite figure out. I step inside the marble hall, wondering if my new office will have a window. I’m not used to natural light; the sudden intake of vitamin D might kill me.
“I’m Bee Königswasser.” I smile at the receptionist. “I’m starting work here on Monday, and I was wondering if I could take a look around?”
He gives me an apologetic smile. “I can’t let you in if you don’t have an ID badge. The engineering labs are upstairs—high-security areas.”
Right. Yes. The engineering labs. Levi’s labs. He’s probably up there, hard at work. Engineering. Labbing. Not answering my emails.
“No problem, that’s understandable. I’ll just—”
“Dr. Königswasser? Bee?”
I turn around. There is a blond young man behind me. He’s nonthreateningly handsome, medium height, smiling at me like we’re old friends even though he doesn’t look familiar. “ . . . Hi?”
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I caught your name, and . . . I’m Guy. Guy Kowalsky?”
The name clicks immediately. I break into a grin. “Guy! It’s so nice to meet you in person.” When I was first notified of BLINK, Guy was my point of contact for logistics questions, and he and I emailed back and forth a few times. He’s an astronaut—an actual astronaut!—working on BLINK while he’s grounded. He seemed so familiar with the project, I initially assumed he’d be my co-lead.
He shakes my hand warmly. “I love your work! I’ve read all your articles—you’ll be such an asset to the project.”
“Likewise. I can’t wait to collaborate.”
If I weren’t dehydrated from the flight, I’d probably tear up. I cannot believe that this man, this nice, pleasant man who has given me more positive interactions in one minute than Dr. Wardass did in one year, could have been my co-lead. I must have pissed off some god. Zeus? Eros? Must be Poseidon. Shouldn’t have peed in the Baltic Sea during my misspent youth.
“Why don’t I show you around? You can come in as my guest.” He nods to the receptionist and gestures at me to follow him.
“I wouldn’t want to take you away from . . . astronauting?”
“I’m between missions. Giving you a tour beats debugging any day.” He shrugs, something boyishly charming about him. We’ll get along great, I already know it.
“Have you lived in Houston long?” I ask as we step into the elevator.
“About eight years. Came to NASA right out of grad school. Applied for the Astronaut Corps, did the training, then a mission.” I do some math in my head. It would put him in his mid-thirties, older than I initially thought. “The past two or so, I worked on BLINK’s precursor. Engineering the structure of the helmet, figuring out the wireless system. But we got to a point where we needed a neurostimulation expert on board.” He gives me a warm smile.
“I cannot wait to see what we cook up together.” I also cannot wait to find out why Levi was given the lead of this project over someone who has been on it for five years. It just seems unfair. To Guy and to me.
The elevator doors open, and he points to a quaint-looking café in the corner. “That place over there—amazing sandwiches, worst coffee in the world. You hungry?”
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? It’s on me. The egg sandwiches are almost as good as the coffee is bad.”
“I don’t really eat eggs.”
“Let me guess, a vegan?”
I nod. I try hard to break the stereotypes that plague my people and not use the word “vegan” in my first three meetings with a new acquaintance, but if they’re the ones to mention it, all bets are off.
“I should introduce you to my daughter. She recently announced that she won’t eat animal products anymore.” He sighs. “Last weekend I poured regular milk in her cereal figuring she wouldn’t know the difference. She told me that her legal team will be in touch.”
“How old is she?”
“Just turned six.”
I laugh. “Good luck with that.”
I stopped having meat at seven, when I realized that the delicious pollo nuggets my Sicilian grandmother served nearly every day and the cute galline grazing about the farm were more . . . connected than I originally suspected. Stunning plot twist, I know. Reike wasn’t nearly as distraught: when I frantically explained that “Pigs have families, too. A mom and a dad and siblings that will miss them,” she just nodded thoughtfully and said, “What you’re saying is, we should eat the whole family?” I went fully vegan a couple of years later. Meanwhile, my sister has made it her life’s goal to eat enough animal products for two. Together we emit one normal person’s carbon footprint.
