“You’re welcome,” I replied, still wary, “do you think you’ll make it to the launch today?”
“I wouldn’t miss it!” Zoey said cheerfully, “Can I come a little early and give you a kiss for good luck?”
This is a trap, my cynical, pragmatic side insisted, she’s going to do something, and you aren’t going to like it one bit. She’s going to try and stop the launch. Probably with her magic tits. But as always, Zoey effortlessly exploited my weakness for her. I was powerless to resist her. Or her tits (which were, in all honesty, truly magical).
“Of course,” I said, grinning and hoping for quite a bit more than a kiss, “come by around noon?”
“Ok, I will. By the way, I quit JuicyNews yesterday. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the Picayune though, I think the interview went well.”
“Good for you,” I told her honestly. Maybe that’s why Zoey was in such a good mood. The fact that her employer had tried to basically turn her into a porn star was unfathomable. Nothing against porn stars or anything, but it’s not a profession Zoey was interested in transitioning into. My own involvement and reputation aside, I could never imagine Zoey agreeing to something like that. In her own way, Zoey was as proud as me. That pride was the only thing that had me worried about keeping her, but that was a worry for after the launch, not before.
“It feels good to be free,” she said, and I could hear it in her voice that it was true, “JuicyNews was toxic. But enough about me. Are you ok about the whole Marcus-Oleg thing? I can’t believe I was right about him.”
“You were right about him and then some,” I said, “I can’t thank you enough. We probably never would have caught him without you.”
“Is he really the husband of that cosmonaut you, um, knew?” She asked carefully, clearly nervous about broaching this particular subject with me.
“I think so,” I said, “That’s the most messed up part of it all. I have a bad feeling something terrible happened to Ysenia after she went back to Russia. Oleg said she was dead, and I think he was telling the truth. I’m trying not to think about it.”
“That’s probably a good idea, Nathan.” Zoey said seriously. “Don’t focus on the negative stuff today. You need to be at your best. Look, I know you’ve probably got a lot on your plate this morning to prepare for the launch, and I don’t want to make you more stressed out, so I’m gonna go. I’ll see you at noon!”
“See you then,” I replied, still feeling slightly suspicious of Zoey, but more cautiously optimistic, “bye.”
I hoped to god that Zoey wasn’t going to ambush me right before the launch to try and stop me from going through with it. It would be much harder to greenlight the launch if I had to look into Zoey’s big, sad brown eyes while I did it. Seeing her upset just once had already proven to me how totally powerless I was in the face of her unhappiness. I’d do just about anything to avoid being the source of her tears. So, if her plan was to stop the launch, I’d just stepped squarely into her trap.
34
Zoey
“Excuse me, miss?” the woman behind me in the Starbucks line said at eight a.m., touching me gently on the shoulder to move me along as the long line crept forward. I shot her an apologetic smile. She looked back at me with an irritated expression, clearly just wanting to get her coffee and move on with her day.
“Oh sorry, sorry,” I mumbled, shuffling forward awkwardly. I was spacing out again. This was the second time she’d had to prompt me to move. My brain was too full to multitask at the moment. Standing in line and thinking at the same time was beyond my current capabilities.
I had no idea what I was doing. Not about being in Starbucks; I was there for coffee, obviously. But everything else had me completely confused. The whole business of being an adult, having romantic relationships, living independently, having a career, all of it. I was just winging it on a day to day basis. Just making it up as I went along and hoping for the best.
Nika said that was perfectly normal and everyone felt the same way, but I wasn’t so sure. Other people seemed to have themselves figured out. Nathan definitely seemed to know what he was doing with his life. He had it all so together that he was literally out of this world. But me? I could hardly keep my car running, my rent paid, and my head above water. With my paltry bank account balance and no job, I shouldn’t even be treating myself to a Frappuccino, but I wanted one, dammit.
My phone rang when I was two people away from to the counter, and I fumbled to answer it. I could practically feel the eyes of the irritated woman behind me boring into the back of my skull. She already thought I was an idiot. Now she was going to think I was a rude idiot for talking on the phone in line.
“Hello,” I answered cautiously. I recognized the area code as Tallahassee. But the number wasn’t Nika’s, and I didn’t recognize it at all.
“Hi, is this Zoey Atkinson?” The female voice on the other end asked.
“Yes, it is, may I ask who’s calling?” If it was a telemarketer I was gonna hang up on them in 3-2-1.
“This is Gillian Schmidt with the Tallahassee Picayune,” she said, and my finger froze on the button. My stomach seized up in anxiety. Gillian Schmidt was the editor in chief I’d interviewed with the night before. She was calling so soon! Was it good that she was calling so soon?
“Hi Ms. Schmidt,” I exclaimed, my voice going high and nervous as I moved forward another step toward the cashier, “how are you?”
“I’m doing well, thanks for asking. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve talked it over with the rest of the editorial staff and we’d like to make you an offer to join us down here in Florida. We’d start you at a salary of thirty-two thousand dollars and would like you to start in two weeks—sooner if you can get here that fast. What do you think?”
“I think yes!” I blurted ecstatically and heard her chuckling as the line moved forward again, “I-I mean I accept,” I finished weakly in a more normal voice.
After more than a year of JuicyNews, the offer was everything I’d hoped for. It wasn’t my dream job (that would be editor-in-chief of the New York Times), but it was an enormous step forward in my career. A sizeable piece of my heart was already missing Nathan desperately, but I knew I had to accept this job. Only an idiot would say no.
“Great!” Gillian said enthusiastically, “I’ll work on the paperwork and have human resources email everything over as soon as possible. I think you’re really going to like it here, we’ve got a great team. We’re excited to have you join it.”
The rest of the conversation passed in a dizzy, inconsequential blur. I also had to be ‘that girl’ who awkwardly ordered via improvised sign language while on the phone. My ridiculous pantomime earned me a very nasty look from both the barista and the woman behind me, which I certainly deserved, but it was unavoidable. My drink was also wrong, another unavoidable consequence I unequivocally deserved. It didn’t matter, though. I had a job.
I had a job!
You never can tell how things will work out. This week had changed the entire course of my life. I wouldn’t have aced this interview with the Picayune and gotten this job if I hadn’t been motivated by the necessity of finding another job. I wouldn’t have needed to find another job if I hadn’t quit JuicyNews. I wouldn’t have quit JuicyNews if I hadn’t met Nathan. And wouldn’t have met Nathan if I hadn’t interviewed Angelica. At the end of the day, I had gold-digger and fame-whore extraordinaire Angelica Hunt to thank for my newfound journalistic credentials. I wondered if I should send her a thank-you note?
A hysterical giggle over the grand irony rose and died in my throat when I thought about Nathan. He was going to do something he cared deeply about today, something that I thought was unnecessarily risky. When I’d called him earlier, I had every intention of trying to talk him out of his launch when I got to his office at noon. I’d even picked out a particularly sexy set of lingerie I was wearing under my black dress today to aid me in being extra convincing. But now, knowing that I would b
e moving to Florida in less than two weeks, my conviction wavered.
Was the reason I wanted to stop Nathan from test piloting the launch because I was in love with him? Was it because it was the objectively right thing to do? Was it really for his safety, or my comfort? Was I just being selfish about a man I was about to leave, a man I barely knew? I was too confused to come up with an answer.
Employed or unemployed, I was just making it all up as I went along. My maybe-boyfriend was going to maybe explode, and my Frappuccino was wrong and probably made with soy milk, but at least my car was starting today. I refused to wallow in self-pity when I had just achieved my goal of getting a real job. I was going to be happy whether I wanted to be happy or not. I drank my incorrectly prepared Frappuccino and smiled through my breaking heart.
35
Nathan
Drs. Matthews and Gonçalves were back in my office, fidgeting. Only this time, they’d entered holding hands. They thought I hadn’t noticed, but I had. They were a cute couple, in a middle-aged scientist kind of way. Apparently, their celebratory drinks on Sunday went very well. I’d heard a few rumors that they’d been quite affectionate at Monday night’s party. I was glad I hadn’t been forced to witness them making out.
“Did you want to go through the launch data from Monday’s test again?” Matthews asked, her face resigned to my inevitable last-minute repeat of their work. They were used to this anxious routine by now. I did it before every launch, and they clearly hated it.
“Not today,” I said, and her eyebrows rose up beyond the frame of her big glasses, “I want to get your honest opinion on something else. Something more important than the launch data.”
Matthews and Gonçalves exchanged a surprised glance. In their mind, there was probably nothing more important than the launch data.
“All three of us came from NASA,” I continued, “where obviously things were done very differently. If NASA had been hacked four days before a launch, they would delay, even if the culprit was found and caught. Am I making a mistake by proceeding with the launch today?”
My jerk of a brother had gotten to me. He had sent me this stupid picture of the two of us from when we were little boys, maybe age five, holding hands and looking all cute in some wildflowers like we were posing on the cover of a greeting card. No text, just the picture. One picture and now, suddenly, I was doubting everything. David was such a manipulative asshole. He knew just what buttons to push.
Oblivious to my inner turmoil, the two multiple PhD’s in front of me considered my question with their typical sincerity.
Gonçalves answered first.
“I think that one of NASA’s greatest failures is their lack of ambition. That isn’t something Durant Astronautics suffers from. If anything, we suffer from the opposite: a profusion of self-confidence, hubris even,” he said, inadvertently quoting my brother and making me cringe inwardly, “But we’re not stupid. The data and computer people, of which I’m not a member although I have great respect for them, say that the individual who attacked us had no access to any information that could truly jeopardize the launch. As long as we trust them—as long as you trust them—I see no reason to scrap the launch.”
Despite his pronoun choice, he was just talking about Victor. Watching Victor and Gonçalves having a conversation with one another was sort-of humorous. Victor lived and breathed computers, and Gonçalves lived and breathed math. You would think they’d actually have a lot to talk about, but they didn’t. They recognized the genius in each other but were totally unable to connect. It was like watching two highly intelligent people from different cultures trying to create a new, shared language from nothing, only they were both speaking English and getting increasingly frustrated. I’d given up trying to understand it. Maybe Zoey could interpret it for me, she was good at people. She’d probably find them both endlessly fascinating.
“I agree,” said Matthews, “we’ve gone through all the hardware and software with a fine-toothed comb at this point. We’re as prepared as we’re ever going to be for this launch. The threat from the Russian is contained, quite literally, in a pine box somewhere. Delaying will cost us money, and time, but it won’t buy us safety.”
I nodded, relieved to hear my own position echoed back to me more articulately than I’d ever manage to say it. I should have brought these two to the Durant mansion last night. It would have gone much more quickly if they’d been allowed to speak, except that my family would probably just yell at them until they cried. Or quit.
Gonçalves and Matthews had left NASA at the height of their career and the peak of their influence to follow me to Durant Astronautics. Yes, I paid them more (a lot more), but people like them were never in it for the money. Like Zoey, most scientists were too into what they actually did for a living to really think about shallow things like money, even if you threw it at them in large quantities (which I did, because they deserved it). They were here because they believed the things that I believed, and they knew a single failure would doom their careers as surely as it would doom me, personally, if Starflier 1 exploded.
“What about the unknowns?” I pushed, needing to be one hundred percent sure that I was doing the right thing, “What if there’s more to this hacking than we know about? Or another Russian agent out there to pick up where Oleg left off?”
“There will always been unknowns in the space business,” Matthews answered, smiling broadly, “that’s part of what makes it exciting. You’re an astronaut, you’ve been up there and seen how even the most perfect mission is actually filled with a thousand mistakes. We’ll never be able to quantify every one of the risks that are presented by space travel, this company, or anything else. Never. There are too many what-ifs to go down that road.”
“If there was a defined threat,” Gonçalves added, “something we knew or at least suspected might be heading our way, it would be different. But we don’t know that. All we really know is that someone stole some of our data, and that person has been identified and is now dead. The biggest risk, at least in my mind, is that someone else will beat us to a successful manned launch.” He shrugged, and continued, “But it’s you up there in that capsule. You’re ultimately the one that needs to feel ready, because it’s your life on the line if we fail. If you don’t think today is the day, we shouldn’t proceed.”
A knock at the door interrupted our conversation at that point. Paul stuck his head in nervously.
“There’s a Zoey Atkinson here to see you,” he said, “do you want me to ask her to wait?”
“No,” I said, rising to dismiss Gonçalves and Matthews, “I think we’re done with our meeting.”
Gonçalves and Matthews rose obediently to head toward the exit.
“Thank you both,” I said to them, “this has been really useful to me. Thanks for indulging me and answering those questions. I think I’m ready for my next meeting now.”
Paul, who was still standing in the doorway, shot me a skeptical look that he quickly wiped off his face when he saw that I’d seen it. What did he know? These two verified geniuses said the launch was a good idea.
I felt all better now.
I did.
Didn’t I?
A Day in the Glamorous Life of America’s Princess
By Zoey Atkinson, JuicyNews Contributor
I meet Angelica Hunt in the living room of her closet, where she does most of her at-home entertaining. “It’s my favorite place in my house,” she confesses, “next to all my favorite things in the world: my clothes, purses, and shoes.” This statement generally sets the tone for our time together.
She’s stunningly beautiful of course, and her natural assets have been further enhanced by every modern technique that money can buy. She’s also charming, but perhaps not in the way she thinks or intends. Angelica Hunt’s charm comes from her nearly complete, almost childlike obliviousness to reality or the world outside her bubble.
“I hate smokers,” she mentions condescendingly at one point whe
n her long-suffering assistant steps out for a cigarette. “How many calories are in a cigarette, anyway?”
She then mentions her father, US Senator Tom Ellis, “He’s probably going to be President one day. The first Catholic ever to be President. That will be quite an achievement.”
It almost hurts, frankly, but then she surprises. Angelica Hunt can speak fluent French, Italian, and German, and she plays the piano beautifully. Her tennis serve is deadly, her palate for wine is discerning, and she collects semi-psychedelic modern and Pop Art. While all of this probably suggests an excellent and privileged upbringing more than anything else, it is nonetheless impressive.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Angelica Hunt is her improbable genius: she is the world’s leading authority on—and number one promoter of—the sort of shallow, image-obsessed media that Americans crave. She can write an Instagram or Twitter post that seizes on a subject and distills it down to the smallest, most common denominator. Attach a picture of her in a bikini, or better yet nude, and she’s got social media gold. If she posts a video of one of her screaming meltdowns, that’s even better.
She’s become famous for being famous, but unlike the Kardashian-Jenner clan who use their brand to build their wealth, she uses her wealth to build her brand. She’s on the last frontier of fame.
When asked why she wants to be a star when she’s already inherited a fortune, her reply is simple: “Everyone wants to be loved.” It tugs at your heart-strings. But then she elaborates with a winning smile, “all I really want is for people to see me the way I see me.”
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