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Olesya Ilyukhina was bored. It was a highly problematic development. However, because she was just that awesome, the simulation they’d run her through for fixing the broken water recycler on the (not-yet-built) ship had taken her 2 hours less than had been allotted for it. Hence her current position outside the door of the lead’s scientists lab, holding a set of magnets and whispering ‘here, Gracie Gracie Gracie,’ as if trying to lure a stray cat.
“Um, what the fuck are you doing?” Grace’s friend Marissa asked, interrupting her outside of the door of the lab.
“I am trying to summon him to entertain me by sending magnetic signals to pins and screws; he should be feeling a tingling in his elbow and a desire to come see Coolest Friend any minute now,” she replied quietly, shushing the woman.
“That’s not at all how magnetism works, and those medical pins aren’t even magnetic,” Marissa pointed out, giving her a very dubious look. “Also, I’m his coolest friend.
“Lie! I am literally Space Engineer. Also, magnets don’t work that way that we know of,” the engineer corrected her. “But aliens are eating sun. Who knows what else humans were wrong about?” She looked at her magnets in dissatisfaction, then proceeded to pull a replica of the Tenth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver out of the pocket of her flightsuit. It was pretty heavy-duty looking, no mere piece of run-of-the-mill souvenir fan merch, and Marissa had a feeling that the woman had made it herself. She edged backwards, slightly wary.
“Relax,” she told the other woman, rolling her eyes. “This was one of my first attempts. I didn’t start weaponizing them until I made 13th Doctor screwdriver. That one has laser beam.” She smiled brightly at Marissa, who raised an eyebrow and backed away further.
She flicked the lever on her screwdriver, and it made a noise that Marissa, unfortunately, recognized intimately. At least one of Ryland’s kids got him spectacularly sick every year, but the man hated passing his class off to a sub, so he’d usually just wear a mask and push himself through to the nearest school break out of sheer force of will until his body finally crashed out on him, necessitating Marissa to invite/force herself into his apartment to nurse him back to health as his comfort show played in the background. She fucking hated the sound of the stupid sonic screwdrivers or the damn TARDIS, which always conjured the mental image of a pathetic, feverish puddle of delirious scientist wrapped in a blanket-burrito on his G-d-awful ugly Goodwill couch.
“You know, he can’t even hear anything over the sounds of his headphones and the protein-crystallography machine,” she told the Russian.
“His name is Biff,” Ryland told them, opening the door. “Biff the BioFuel Hunter, and he’s just finished up. Come on in. Oh, sick sonic screwdriver, Ilyukhina!”
“Thanks, I made by myself!” Olesya responded cheerfully.
“Did you seriously name the 6 million dollar piece of equipment after the goldfish from Phineas and Ferb?” Marissa asked, hating that she even knew that.
“No,” her best friend replied cheerfully. “I put up a poll on my google classroom, and the kids named him that. But I like it; it’s a great name.”
“You’re still talking to your classes?” asked Steve, because Carl was taking a Union-Mandated Nap. “I thought you’d be too busy saving the sun.”
“Their substitute called me crying at 3 am San Francisco time sobbing because they’ve apparently decided to Go On Strike until I came back. I asked what that meant and she said that they weren’t doing their homework and that my entire fourth period of sixth graders had called the police to report being held against their will by a hostile interloper. On top of that, Kevin apparently saw Stratt ushering me into her scary black government van, and so the eighth graders have all been posting on Twitter that their teacher got kidnapped by the government. Some idiot named Tim Riddler or something who does terrible, non-scientifically-feasible action films apparently retweeted it and it went viral. I got out of the lab last week to 10 voicemails from the San Francisco PD and had to assure them that I was not, in fact, being held against my will. Clearly, I have to keep at least a virtual eye on my kids; they’re normally so sweet, but they’ve been through a lot lately and apparently they’re acting out,” Ryland replied. “I’ve been gang-pressed into recording a video of myself emailing the weekly Kahoot! to the sub as proof of life.”
“Wouldn’t Stratt be angry about you sending video from a classified location?” one of his lab assistants asked, putting aside the slide she was staring at as she looked at him curiously. “We all had to sign like, 300 pages of NDAs.”
“Stratt requested it, actually. Apparently Susie somehow found Stratt’s personal email and wrote a program to spam it every thirty seconds demanding my safe return. And Jax allegedly made a very decent attempt to hack the project servers that came a little closer than anyone was comfortable with. That’s why she brought on that influx of cybersecurity experts,” Grace shrugged, doing his best not to look so excessively proud of his little deviants. “Stratt’s really great with adults, but she seems kind of lost when dealing with adolescents committing emotional terrorism. She told me to do what I needed to do to make it stop and then washed her hands of the whole thing.”
“Middle schoolers scare me,” his other assistant replied.
“Congratulations,” her boss replied back drily. “You’ve passed your cognitive assessment. Would you mind going down to the Science Dishwasher and grabbing me some more clean beakers?”
The assistant agreed eagerly- her back was stiff from standing over the microscope all day, and she was eager for the movement.
Ilyukhina quickly claimed her empty stool and started spinning around on it while pointing her homemade Dr. Who prop at the walls and trying to figure out how to make the best use of her hard-won free period. She was sure that Stratt was going to be a lot more careful with her schedule once word inevitably got around that the reason dinner would be late tonight was that she was busy consensually defiling the head chef in the walk-in refrigerator.
“So,” she turned to her New Best Friend Dr. Ryland Grace. “What explosions can we do in here that won’t destroy ship and everyone on it?”
“Um, I don’t think explosions are the best idea in a lab full of astrophage, but I can give you the supplies to make a baking soda volcano,” he offered.
“Do you have glitter?” Olesya asked, cocking her head as she considered the offer.
“I’m a self-respecting 35-year-old man with significant disposable income for the first time in my adult life, of course I have glitter. Pink, silver, or rainbow?” he replied, opening a drawer.
“Oh, I’m totally stealing him,” Olesya told Marissa, her face beaming with delight. “And you can’t complain, because I’m going into space for you.”
Never tell a Jewish woman what she can and can’t complain about, Marissa thought. Challenge fucking accepted.
Their animosity did not last long, as thirty minutes after they left Ryland to his very important, world-saving work, they were both three sheets to the wind and plotting to glitterbomb Stratt’s office.
______
“Dr. Grace?” Dr. Lamai knocked on the door to Ryland’s lab, and he turned around with wide eyes, feeling like his kids had caught him eating candy from the treasure box during his lunch break.
“I slept 18 hours ago, you can’t take me yet!” he accused her, pointing a stirring rod in her direction. “And if Carl put you up to this, tell him to mind his own darn beeswax!”
“I’m not here to make you sleep, although the idea is appealing,” she placated, raising her hands. “I just came to introduce you to my new medical robotics specialist who just arrived from India. She says she has a cousin in your class.”
“Oh, Priya’s cousin-sister!” Ryland exclaimed in delight. “Rishi, right?”
“Dr. Rishitha Krishnapalli,” the woman agreed, sticking her hand out. “But everyone calls me Rishi. My mother’s younger sister and her wife are Priya’s parents.”
“How is Priya?” Ryland asked, shaking her hand eagerly. “I’ve been really worried about her… she seemed alright in her email, but… well, I’m sure you heard what happened. I didn’t want her to see that, I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be; she’s alive because of what you did, and nobody could ever talk that little kothi out of something once she sets her mind to it. Krishna himself couldn’t have kept that girl from triaging her favorite teacher,” Rishi said, moving in for a hug. “The whole family is so grateful for what you did. If you ever come down to Telangana or Andhra Pradesh, you won’t have to pay for food or a boarding house; we’ll take good care of you.”
Ryland blushed, and then to his horror tears began pooling in his eyes. “You remind me so much of Priya,” he sniffed. “Tesla, I miss my kids so much.”
“Well then,” Rishi replied, smiling and squeezing his hand. “We’d better get back to work. The sooner that ship is in the air, the sooner you can go home to them.”