Chapter Text
It’s a shame the Earth is dying – Klara really likes it.
Lying in Tayane’s lap, she stares up at the ceiling. Tayane had made it a project of sorts a year back to paint the ceiling of the living room, because “nobody ever really looks up, so it’s free canvas space, right?” She chose to emulate a tree canopy, the view of an observer looking up. It’s beautiful, but it always sends Klara’s mind wandering.
She’s never been the largest naturalist, a side effect of spending most of her time in research labs and welding rooms, hunched over computer keyboards as she adjusts 3D models. But that doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate what the natural world offers. Animals and plants are complex machines in their own right, and while they aren’t ones that she understands, she can recognize them. She can recognize beauty, and she can recognize brutality, two pieces that come hand in hand. The panther’s fur is sleek, but its teeth are sharp.
Technology is not much different. Klara will pour months into designing machinery, and the way the pieces all snap together at the end and click and whir into action is something of a symphony to her. But then, people take it. They don’t see it for art; they see it for purpose. And they rarely take it for good.
It doesn’t surprise her anymore, all the weapons of war and extraction and depletion. The Earth is dying, and rather than banding together, people are tearing apart.
Still, nature tries to keep going. From the beginning of the Earth, it has persisted. Growth and resilience and adaptation, those are the traits that drive it forward. Klara has seen those traits elsewhere.
Tayane begins to hum a tune that Klara can’t quite place. Klara knows Tayane’s been through a lot, and yet, here she is. Humming.
Humans, Klara thinks, are incredible. Yes, the people with power take and take, but the people without it are resilient. Adaptive. Acting by whatever means they can to say that this doesn’t have to be the way of things, even if nobody is listening. But Klara is listening, and this is what she’s learned: The Earth is full of good people, and if the Earth dies, they shouldn’t have to die with it.
It’s a shame they all will.
“Klara?”
“What?”
Above her, Tayane sighs.
“That’s, like, the fifth time I said your name. Cara, you get lost in your head too much,” she says, pulling off Klara’s beanie to ruffle her hair. Klara makes a noise in protest, attempting to pull back from her girlfriend’s lap and save her hairdo, but Tayane wraps her into a hug. Klara snatches the hat back.
“If you take that one more time, I swear.”
“Oh, meu chuchu, just tell me what’s on your mind and I won’t have to resort to this,” Tayane laughs. Klara huffs.
“You are insufferable.”
“Insufferable?” Tayane sounds out, pretending like she’s never heard the word before, like it isn’t one of Klara’s favorite protests. “Is that German?”
Klara tries her best to glare at her, which Tayane takes as a signal to keep going.
“What does it mean?” she asks. “Ooh! Are you calling me sexy?”
Klara gives Tayane a light punch to the side, the other woman bursting into a fit of laughter as Klara continues to pummel at her abdomen. Tayane presses a kiss to her forehead.
“Now, if it isn’t too insufferable of me, will you tell me what’s on your mind?”
“I don’t want to bring down the mood,” Klara frowns.
“If it’s bothering you, I want to know,” Tayane replies. “Besides, do you really think I can’t just bring the mood back up?”
“I would never doubt you,” Klara responds immediately. “It’s just…”
It’s a strange feeling, knowing you’re about to make someone you care about sad, but Klara swallows the bitterness in her throat. Tayane would want to know this.
“I was reading the news again this morning.”
“Ah. First mistake if you want to have a good morning.”
She’s right. Klara can’t think of the last time the newspapers had anything good to say. Even before the energy crisis was made official, there was brewing chaos, brewing since before she was born. And then the official name came down like a decree from hell, and the floodgates opened.
No energy, the papers said. War, the papers said. Famine where farms could no longer support mechanized agriculture, natural disasters where the climate had suffered from the desperate consumption of unclean energy sources, entire power grids shutting down and leaving populations to freeze.
And this morning was no different.
“It was especially grim today,” Klara says, screwing her eyes shut. “Apparently the weapon France built to defend the Urdos plant from Spain got used against their own civilians today.”
“Shit,” Tayane says, eyebrows knitting together. “It really came to that so quickly?”
“Apparently so.”
“Who was it?”
“Anti-war protestors,” Klara says. “Supporters of the United Front proposition.”
Tayane mutters a curse under her breath. “I remember reading about the weapon when it first got deployed. What a brutal way to go.”
What a brutal way indeed. Klara had already thought about it all morning, imagining how the detonation would rip apart the skin before it stopped the heart, imagining looking down at her own arms to see muscle and bone. She imagines friends staring at friends, lovers staring at lovers. She imagines, and it's terrifying. But it isn’t out of the ordinary anymore, and that makes it worse.
“It feels like that’s all technology does anymore,” Klara sighs. “Nobody is building things that will actually get us out of this mess.”
“That isn’t true,” Tayane shakes her head, taking Klara’s hand into her own. It’s a comforting gesture, but all it does is make Klara think of skin sloughing off their bones. “You are,” Tayane continues. “We are.”
“All we’re doing is turning over more tech to the government,” Klara protests, looking up at the other woman with a conflicted expression. “We don’t really know what they’re doing with it, do we?”
“Please, what are they going to do with space rovers? Invade the moon?”
“Maybe we should’ve been building other things,” Klara sighs. “Renewable energy reactors. I don’t know.”
“And do you know how to build a renewable energy reactor?” Tayane asks.
“No,” she admits.
“Exactly. We make robots, Klara. And that’s okay! You can’t beat yourself up over things like that.” Tayane pauses, fixing her gaze on the pair of brown eyes staring up at her. “We have a specialty, and we do our best. Maybe they’ll find something up there.”
“I just don’t know.”
“The world is failing us, ” Tayane says, squeezing Klara’s hand. “They are failing you. You aren’t failing the world.”
“I just…” Klara chews at her lip. “I need to hear some good news for once.”
“I have some good news for you,” Tayane replies. “I love you.”
Klara smiles. “I love you too.”
Klara receives the call first, just as she and Tayane are sitting down for dinner. She almost doesn’t answer, invested in Tayane’s review of a new action movie, but upon seeing the caller ID, both of them fall silent.
“Böhringer, this is Officer Byrne,” comes the voice on the line. “Do you have a moment?”
“Ja, how can I be of assistance?” she replies.
“It’s about the Mycologic and Astrogeologic Extraction bot,” he says, and despite the distortion through the phone speaker, Klara can hear something beaming in his tone.
“Oh, MAXbot,” Klara says. “Glad to hear it didn’t burn up on reentry.
“Not just that, " Officer Byrne replies. “It seems like your metal friend may have found something.”
The conversation is brief, Officer Byrne promising to explain the rest in person, and Klara doesn’t know if the feeling in her chest is anxiety or excitement. The meeting date is set in a few days, and he’s already purchased her plane ticket. A few moments after he hangs up, Tayane’s phone rings.
“Alves, this is Officer Byrne,” comes the voice.
Tayane smiles.
*****
Two days later
*****
“The element extracted from the samples, they’re calling it Radianite,” Officer Byrne explains. They’re sitting in a small office, likely not the Officer’s own, in the highest clearance zone of the agency headquarters. It’s sparsely decorated, generic photos of space and industry buildings on the walls, and Klara thinks the plants are plastic. This place isn’t used often, that’s easy enough to tell. But it’s full now, though only three people sit inside. The weight of Officer Byrne’s explanation fills the four walls with an energy that Klara hasn’t felt in a very long time. She leans forward in her seat.
“And when you say element, do you mean that technically? Or do you just mean rock or mineral?”
“I may not be a scientist, but I’m using my terminology correctly here,” he grins. “It’s a new element.”
“As in, completely unpredicted, completely unexpected?” Tayane presses. Officer Byrne nods, and she claps Klara on the shoulder.
A new element . Klara’s internal monologue temporarily short circuits.
“Schieße , MAXbot really did it,” she says under her breath, the words still swirling in her brain like pieces of a puzzle that haven’t quite slotted together. She isn’t a materials scientist, or a physicist, or a chemist, or really anyone who has spent a significant amount of time studying elements and elementary particles, but it’s hard not to understand the weight of the officer’s statement. A new element, something that all of modern science was unable to predict. Something likely defying the laws of nature that, up until this point, had been accepted as truth, now in the grasp of humans to uncover. How much could come of this she has no idea, but her mind is racing. It’s in their solar system. It was brought here by her robot.
“Mr. Batra had a look at it already, and honestly I have no clue what he was talking about, but he seemed more excited than I’ve ever seen him,” Officer Byrne continues. “And knowing him, that’s saying something.”
“Is Varun still here?” Tayane asks. “I’d love to hear what he found.”
“He is. He, uh, well,” Officer Byrne scratches his chin. “He hasn’t found anything yet, not without testing, but he thinks this could be big. Just knowing what we already know about the more unstable elements, the part of the periodic table this will likely lie under… He recommended we pull together a team. International, the smartest people we can get, to study this thing as fast as possible.”
Tayane’s knee bounces as leans towards him. “As of now, who knows?”
“So far, just our agency,” Officer Byrne replies. “But we’re informing the science departments and bureaus of as many world governments as we can this afternoon. It will likely hit the press soon after that.”
It’s too much to take in. Klara leans back in her chair, allowing the gravity of it all to wash over her. Luckily, Tayane has the presence of mind to speak for the both of them.
“What does this mean for us?” she asks, gesturing between herself and Klara.
“For starters, it means you’ll probably be speaking to a lot of reporters in the next few days,” Officer Byrne answers. “They’ll want to hear about how exactly the Mycologic and Astrogeologic Extraction bot got these samples. We’ll be getting you a press kit. Batra will be fielding all the questions about the Radianite itself, though we’re going to try to keep details under wraps to avoid speculation until we can get a team in.”
“And that team?”
“Hopefully gathering soon, if the response from other agencies and nations is positive,” he says, pausing to chuckle to himself. “But I can’t think of a single reason any self respecting entity wouldn’t nominate one of their scientists to be involved in what could very well be the biggest discovery of the century.”
*****
One week later
*****
The stranger in the room has a streak of blue hair, and apparently one of the greatest brains in the world under it — and with the confidence with which he walks into the room, it’s clear that he knows it, too. Klara can’t fault that. He’s been selected for the task, and if he didn’t seem proud, she would start to think that the wrong man had wandered in.
“Kiritani Ryo,” he says, greeting the three of them with a bow. Varun steps forward to shake his hand while Klara and Tayane say their hellos. Ryo nods to each of them.
“So you are the team that made the rover,” he notes. “Impressive.”
Klara beams. Tayane beams. Ryo… stares. He takes a moment to look around the conference room, his lips an unreadable line as he surveys the surroundings.
“It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Ryo,” Varun says. “I’ve read your work on the potential energy applications of hypothetical condensed matter materials. Fascinating.”
Ryo gives a curt nod. “Hopefully, we will find something even more impressive than that,” he says, taking a seat to the right of him.
“Hopefully.”
Varun smiles at him, but outwardly, Ryo seems far less cheerful. He’s happy to be here, Klara can tell – there’s a spark in his eye when he sees the three of them, sees the Valorant logo on the glass door, but he hides it on his face. Trying to maintain impressions, she supposes. Varun, on the other hand, has no such worries that enthusiasm will destroy professionalism. He’s out of his seat again the next time the door opens.
“You must be Tala,” he says. The woman in question nods, and another round of introductions circles through the room. She enters with a briskness in her step that again reveals an underlying excitement, but like Ryo, her face remains neutral.
Coincidentally, her hair is also blue, and Klara starts to wonder if she missed a memo.
Tala is receptive as Varun engages them in small talk, while Ryo seems content to just observe, making sounds of agreement occasionally. She looks young, but Klara doubts she’s much younger than herself. She sounds too experienced for that, just in the brief anecdotes of her life that she shares.
Tala explains that she had only been notified of her appointment to this group the day before, and just arrived from a red-eye flight, apologizing in advance if she yawns during anyone’s hypothesizing.
“I promise I’m not bored,” she says, “just on the verge of passing out.”
Tayane produces an energy drink from an unseen pocket and passes it across the table. Tala’s eyes light up, and she pops the tab before Klara remembers that they aren’t supposed to have food or drinks in this room. Klara likes rules, she always has, but for some reason, she doesn’t mind this. There’s a strange feeling in the back of her head, growing stronger with every minute that passes in this conference space. It’s like some rules have already been broken in physics to even get them to this point. Like some pillars of understanding have fallen to allow this new element to exist. Like something more will come crumbling down by the time they’re through figuring it out.
And with that kind of cosmic unease eating away at her, it’s hard to care about an energy drink.
The next woman to enter is somewhat terrifying. Her face is intense, features sharp, and smile almost sickly sweet. Maybe Klara has always felt somewhat intimidated by beautiful women, but she knows that this isn’t just a front. She’s read, briefly, about all the geologists that were gathered for this meeting. She’s seen the photos on the files. And she recognizes this face and the words that were attached to it, the woman who had exposed and shut down an entire corporation for stealing her research back in graduate school. She means business, and that’s a good thing, Klara reminds herself. There could be big things on the horizon. Whatever they find, if it’s big enough, they might need someone willing to fight for it.
“Zyanya Mondragón,” the woman introduces herself. And then she seems to recognize Tala, because the two exchange a nod and a smile, but their interaction is cut short when the door opens again.
“Aw, I thought I’d be early!”
When the newcomer enters the room with a smile on his face, and a genuine one at that, it's a breath of fresh air to Klara. The smile doesn’t once disappear as he walks around to shake everyone’s hands. It seems to grow more with each colleague he greets.
“Jamie Adeyemi, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” “Nice to meet you, love what you’ve done with that jacket.” “Yo, you’re the one who wrote that paper about geothermal activity on Venus, right?” “Nice hair, mate. And hello.”
Ryo pulls out a butterfly comb to adjust his hair, as if the air moved by Jamie’s compliment had tousled it.
They continue to talk, the conversation much more lively now with Jamie, Tayane, and Varun all bouncing off of one another. When Jamie entered, he entered with energy. And when Vincent Fabron enters, his suit seems to walk in before him.
Vincent is far more done up than the rest of them, and Klara gets the sense from the way that he talks that this isn’t out of the ordinary. He’s charming in a practiced way, smiling like he would lean down to kiss the hands that he shakes if he weren’t in such a prestigious meeting. He’s the last member of a rather eclectic assortment, and as the final round of greetings ripples through the room, they’re all more descriptive this time.
Zyanya reveals that she’s been researching biological processes of recreating inorganic minerals in Mexico for seven years. Tala explains that she was nominated by her agency for her expertise in materials science and superconductors. And when Vincent mentions the Kingdom Corporation, something clicks in Klara’s head – he’s the weapons head of their French division.
It seems to register for Ryo as well, or at least something does, because he grimaces a bit at the mention of Kingdom. She’ll file that away for later.
When introductions circle around to them, Tayane explains that she and Klara aren’t actually to be a part of the geologist team.
“We’re the engineers of MAXb – of the Mycologic and Astrogeologic Extraction bot,” she says. “Just overseeing the transfer of the samples.”
At the mention of samples, the energy in the room shifts. The new faces around the table twitch. Their pupils dilate, bodies leaning in ever so slightly. Klara recognizes the look in their eyes. These aren’t just brilliant minds — They’re hungry to find something, whether purely for the love of discovery or motivated in part by the thought of being the first. Zyanya asks when the samples will be shown, and for the first time since he’s entered, once Varun explains the timeline, the corner of Ryo’s lips twitch into a barely contained smile. They’re not just hungry, Klara realizes. They’re ravenous.
She can only hope they mean to do well with what they find.
*****
One day later
*****
“Does this not all feel… strange to you?”
Klara pokes at her steak with her fork, staring at nothing in particular. Tayane polishes off the last drops from the bottle of wine Officer Byrne had sent them when the news first broke, watching Klara with a pensive look.
“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Tayane says, setting her glass down.
“I mean, the world has been waiting for a new discovery for decades, and here we are,” Klara says. “We made a discovery. Hooray.” She throws her hands in the air weakly. “But it isn’t the right one.”
“So?” Tayane shrugs.
“What good is it?”
“What good is it?” Tayane laughs. “Radianite brings us closer to understanding the structure of the universe! – or whatever it was Varun said in that interview. A new element?” She takes Klara’s hand, which had fallen softly onto the table, into her own, shaking it around. “That’s incredible!”
“Great. We’ll understand how the universe works when the power grid shuts off for good,” Klara frowns. “That will keep the lights on.”
“It’s not going to make the Last Light come any faster, either,” Tayane counters.
“I know, I know,” Klara sighs, “but it just…” She looks up at Tayane, at first attempting a weak smile. But she knows it doesn’t reach her eyes, so she drops it. “Back when I was getting my doctorate, I would have been screaming with excitement if this happened. And at first, I was ecstatic.” Klara looks down. She doesn’t want to see Tayane’s eyebrows twist in concern like they always do when admits to something melancholy. “So the fact that it feels so unimportant now, now that I’ve sat with it for a while… I don’t know what to do to feel excited like I should.”
“You don’t have to feel any way,” Tayane says, earnest. “If you aren’t excited, then you aren’t excited.”
Klara raises an eyebrow, even if only her half-eaten steak can see it.
“I’m sensing a but.”
“But you’re a nerd, Klara,” Tayane laughs “Once the reports start coming in, I’m sure it will hit you. Like an explosion!”
“You do love those.”
“And you will love this,” she says. “But hey, if you don’t, that’s okay too. I’ll be excited for the both of us, and then we’ll invent something else for you to feel proud of.”
“I don’t want to feel proud. I’m plenty proud,” Klara says. “I want to feel useful.”
Tayane nods, taking this in.
“I just…” Klara trails off, staring at the ceiling as if she can see through it, all the way to the stars, all the way to Bacchus, the planet where her rover once roamed. “I wish we had found oil up there instead.”
*****
Four days later
*****
The room is a mess of overlapping voices when Klara steps in. Nobody reacts to the door sliding open. Nobody seems to care when she walks over and picks up one of the papers on the table. It’s not like she can understand what the diagram means, anyway.
“It’s just bothering me. The nucleus shouldn’t be stable enough to be a solid, much less at this size,” Jamie is saying.
“But it is,” Ryo fires back. “So maybe instead of having the same argument over how this can’t be possible, we should focus on the fact that apparently, it is.”
“Maybe we can get my team back at the accelerator to run more tests,” Tala floats, leaning her hip against the table while she flips through a packet of notes. “If we can make a Radianite nucleus in the accelerator…”
Klara turns her attention to Zyanya, Varun, and Vincent, who are standing in various places, scribbling equations on a whiteboard. She clears her throat.
“Vincent?”
“Hm?” The Frenchman whirls around, marker cap between his teeth, clearly a bit startled to see her there.
“I’ve programmed the model you requested,” she says, placing a laptop on the table. “I’m not sure what purpose it will serve, but all the test cases came back clean.” Vincent’s eyes light up. “The documentation is all on here,” Klara continues, “but I can swipe you into the computer lab if you’d rather start right away.”
Vincent rushes to cap his marker, wiping his hands on one of the cleaner eraser rags before tugging down the sides of his shirt to smooth out the wrinkles from the angle he had been working from, half perched on a chair. It reminds Klara of nights spent assembling pieces in the laboratory, all the dignity and refinement that comes with the title of scientist melting away to make way for the messiness of true ingenuity. Nobody in the room looks as put together as they had on the first day – or sounds as put together, she muses, as the sound of Ryo refuting another suggestion reaches her ears.
“The sooner, the better, non? ” Vincent says, moving in Klara’s direction and snapping her attention back to him.
“The sooner the better,” she agrees.
He talks her ear off heading through the hallways. He seems convinced that this model could provide a missing variable for the equations that Klara had seen scrawled across the room before, though he won't say what that would prove.
“We must not get ahead of ourselves,” Vincent says, shaking his head. “I won’t celebrate just yet. But I do suggest you see about getting Officer Byrne to order champagne just in case.”
Klara gets him set up in front of a collection of monitors.
“Based on the numbers you were proposing, the model could take an hour to complete,” she tells him. He just holds up a stack of papers.
“I’ll just check Varun’s work in the meantime.”
When Vincent finally returns to the main room, the rest of the team is compiling their daily report, cataloging everything currently known about Radianite, the current theories to be tested, and the formal requests for those tests. So much has already been found in the few days they’ve been working. The group has been consistently returning with detailed accounts, mapping out the structure of the element, theories for its formation and occurrences. She wonders what today’s notes will bring.
Klara doesn’t know why she decides to stay to watch them write, but there’s a feeling in her chest that won’t let her step back out the door. It’s a strange mix of thoughts, equal parts anticipation and fear. She remembers the first time one of her robots exploded – properly exploded, not just a rogue spark. She remembers the excitement she had felt pushing the button, just before the crash. Just before her assistant was screaming and clutching her hand. Standing in the room now, she’s excited, and she doesn’t know what that means for what comes next. She wonders who she’ll be rushing to the hospital.
But that’s in the past. This is the present, Vincent rushing right to the whiteboard, ignoring the questions of his teammates, something completely disconnected from the world around him glazing over his eyes.
“Just keep working on the report, I simply need to plug something in.”
He holds a single sheet of paper in his hand, what looks like the outputs to the model Klara had coded. She doesn’t know what the numbers and letters and symbols are meant to represent as he manipulates them on the board, but she knows the math to follow what he’s doing with them. On the right hand side of the board sits a single equation. On the left, lines upon lines of chemistry, starting to look more and more like that final solution as variables begin to cancel and substitutions come into play. He’s trying to prove something, and it’s looking like he’s about to succeed.
Klara realizes that the discussion in the back of the room has fallen silent. Tala pushes past her, trying to get a closer look at the board, and the rest of the group has taken up positions on her right.
Vincent writes a few final strokes, stares, and drops his marker. For a few moments, the room is dead quiet. Klara doesn’t even hear the sounds of anyone around her breathing, and when she turns to the side, she doesn’t see movement in their chests. They’re staring. Just staring.
“Híjole, el mundo cambiará para siempre,” Zyanya murmurs. Jamie’s mouth opens, but he doesn’t speak. He just shakes his head.
“It was just a crazy idea,” Vincent says, pushing his hair back as he stares at his corner of the whiteboard. “When I told you all, ha, I’ve never been laughed at for one of my proposals before that moment.”
“That can’t be right,” Tala frowns. “Move for a moment, let me check.”
Vincent obliges, turning to face the rest of the group as Tala moves forward, picking up her own marker and beginning to write. There’s a wild look in his eyes as he grins at the team.
“If you’re right,” Varun begins, tripping over his words in a moment of shock, “if you’re right, this changes everything.”
“There are no words,” Vincent says. “Just thinking about what my team could accomplish with even a small amount…”
“You’re really thinking about just Kingdom right now?” Ryo interjects. “Mr. Batra is correct. This changes everything. Not just for you, not just for us. Everything.”
“Just as a frame of reference,” Vincent waves his hand. “Imagine all the projects you’ve worked on already, completely revolutionized.”
“Shit,” Jamie finally contributes.
Klara looks around the room, expressions she has never seen before plastered on all of their faces. It’s something weighty. It’s a million scenarios flying through their heads. It’s excitement beyond anything else, and she’s back in her lab and her finger is on that button. And when she presses it, something will either whir to life, or everything around her will explode.
Tala has frozen at the board, Zyanya now walking up to investigate.
“What did you find?” she asks.
Tala turns around. “It all checks out.”
“Shit,” Jamie says again.
“Shit,” Ryo echoes.
Vincent’s hands start to shake, another break of composure, another silence falling over the room. Klara bites the bullet.
“What checks out? What does all of this,” she gestures to the equations, “mean?”
“Break the news,” Varun says to Vincent, eyes still wide. “You’ve earned it.”
Vincent nods, composing himself as best as he can before clearing his throat.
“Radianite behaves unlike any other element we’ve seen,” he says. “This is no different. And Radianite runs hot, extremely hot. At first, we couldn’t figure out why. Until he did.” He gestures briefly to Jamie, who nods. “So I started to think about what that could mean for us.”
Vincent gestures to the board behind him next, numbers and letters displayed like an ancient text. “Klara, this might be the greatest equation of our lives.”
The button is pressed. Vincent opens his mouth, and Klara braces for the sound of crashing metal and open flames. But all she hears are words.
“It’s an equation for the output of energy release,” Vincent says, “and it’s near infinite.”