Sorry about that. I needed a couple days to process the absurdly bad luck train-wreck that is my romantic life. Here’s what went down:A couple nights ago, I was cleaning an animal transport cubby after another messy teleportation failure. I was finally starting to get the blood to come off, when Doc Hotness burst into the lab, tears in her eyes.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She cursed, clearly not realizing I was in the back corner. “Why are you so dumb, you dumb, dumb-ass … DUMMY?!” She knocked a stack of computations to the floor. She was about to do the same with a rack of test tubes, when I cleared my throat.
“You’re welcome to throw all the paper you want. But glass is more of a pain to clean up.”
“Shit,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone was here. Sorry.” She scooped up the papers clumsily. “I should go. I have to … work.”
But instead, she sank to the floor, tears in her eyes.
“So it’s going good, huh?”
She laughed bitterly. “If our goal was to explode cute, furry creatures, I’d be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize.”
I made my way to her side. “You know, I think there’s something to be said for working too hard. When was the last time you were up top?” She looked confused. “You know, on the surface? With the stars? Outside?”
“Oh. Two weeks, I guess. Maybe three?”
“Well, if you haven’t seen Orion’s Belt from the wing of a stealth jet, you haven’t really lived.”
That got a real laugh, and she agreed to take a walk around the airstrip with me. I snagged a bottle of wine from the fridge, met her at the elevator, and we went to the surface.
Area 51 is kind of bleak during the day, but at night, it’s downright pretty. There’s no blazing heat melting the skin off your bones, and the visibility of the stars is amazing.
Doc Hotness (whom I suppose we should now call Claire) and I strolled down the line of parked aircraft, looking up at the stars and taking slugs out of the wine bottle. The night sky was so clear, you could see the spiral arm of the Milky Way.
“I just thought I’d be better at this,” Claire told me. “My whole life, I’ve been able to count on my brain to solve things. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out. If I don’t understand, I’ll break it down into manageable chunks. But this … it’s just a complete ...”
“Clusterfuck?” I suggested.
“Exactly,” she laughed. “We’re implementing technology without knowing the full extent of what it can do, or even how it works.”
“What does Plankton say?” I asked, passing her the bottle.
“Oh, he’s too busy trying to keep the general from pulling the plug on the whole show. The military never thought this was a very viable plan, and if we don’t show some results soon, the whole project’ll be scrapped.”
“But BP9’s in one of the biggest labs at Dreamland. I thought we were a priority.”
“Yeah, right. They stuck us down there because they thought something was going to go wrong, and they wanted the option of sealing us off in case some idiot like me screwed the pooch.”
We climbed up on the wing of a dusty Blackbird Stealth, leaning back and looking up at the sky.
“My dad used to take me up in his planes,” I told her. “And once we’d get up high enough, all the stuff on the ground would become really simple. You know, a tree would become a green dot. A house would become a black square. And up there, it was easy to see where things were.
“Maybe that’s what you need to do,” I said, looking into her blue-grey eyes. “Step back from the problem a little bit. Simplify.”
We were staring at each other in that way where everything else drops out. The stars wheeled overhead. My heart pounded on my ribs like a landlord screaming for the rent. And I must’ve had a severe oxygen depletion in my brain, because I leaned in to kiss her.
Claire leapt to her feet. I toppled over, nearly breaking my nose on the wing of the plane.
“Simplicity!” she shouted, jumping up and down.
The metal wing underneath us creaked ominously. “You know, these might not be entirely up to code,” I informed her.
“Joe, you nailed it!” she yelled, whacking me on the shoulder. “I’ve been looking at the particle stabilization all wrong, trying to compensate for everything little thing. I just need to think globally!”
She hopped to the ground, tossing aside the bottle of wine and running back toward the BP9 hangar.
“It’s two in the morning!” I shouted after her.
“I know!” she crowed back. “Thanks!”
Then she was out of earshot, leaving me alone on the wing of the plane. Even though it was dark, anyone looking would have seen my face burning a bright shade of embarrassment red.
God, I hope she doesn’t realize I tried to kiss her.
