Bozer turned his gaze to Sri. “My dear swami friend, you are obviously a miserable worm in a lab coat, so I will keep this simple: fuck you. Here you are, jacking off into your beakers because I’ve been busting my balls down here for the last five years, building your lab. So go fuck another penguin, and I’ll keep this station going in the meantime.”
“This has nothing to do with construction, Sri, and you know it,” Dwight said. “This is political. I mean, look at what you Beakers have unleashed! This whole thing is your fault! If you guys had been cool about Pavano instead of acting like eighth graders, none of this would be happening.”
“What the F, Dwight?” Sri said. “You’re the one who made him kiss your ring for satellite calls!”
“To be fair, Dwight does that to everyone,” Pearl chimed in.
“Washington isn’t worried about satellite phones, Sri!” Dwight shouted. “They’re worried about—oh, what was it? Oh yeah—threats and intimidation.” He pointed at Sri angrily, his Livestrong bracelet trembling on his wrist. “Threats and intimidation, Sri!”
“What threats? What intimidation?” Sri cried. “These are fairy tales Pavano and his conservatard congressmen are spinning.”
“Everyone knows it was you who took his name off the manifests to the Divide, Sri. Everyone knows your research techs deleted his username from the server. And the petitions? The multiple printouts, Sri, where you guys defaced stuff and made comments about Jesus. That debate, and the way Sal got up in Pavano’s face while he was trying to give his talk?” Dwight looked over at Cooper. “And holy shit, her finger? Her fucking finger?”
“It’s not their fault this happened,” Cooper said quietly. Sal shook his head. He seemed to know something about Dwight that Cooper didn’t, that this outburst was necessary and that Dwight should be allowed to go on, the way Floyd had been allowed to castigate Marcy that night at the bar when she’d returned from Cheech. And, in fact, letting that drama play out had worked—there Floyd and Marcy were, sitting perpendicular to each other, Marcy with her legs propped up on Floyd’s lap. Cooper looked around the room: Alek was sitting quietly, his demeanor as serene as if he were settling in for movie night. Pearl knit, while next to her, Doc Carla scratched her ankle. Tucker leaned against a bookshelf, carelessly flipping through a James Patterson paperback. Only the admin staff looked mortified.
“She says it’s not their fault. Okay, that’s good.” Dwight nodded at Cooper. “King Beaker’s ice-wife says it’s not his fault, in her completely unbiased opinion. Look, Sal worked overtime being an asshole to Pavano and then he put on that show when Frick and Frack and the rest of the government suits came—don’t you guys see? Don’t you see what’s gonna happen, what they’re already doing?” Dwight was hysterical. “They’re gonna shut us down! They’re gonna stop payments, they’re gonna close up shop. They’re gonna send us home.”
Tucker reshelved the Patterson novel and walked over to Dwight. He rubbed his shoulders, and to Cooper’s surprise, Dwight let him. He turned to look up at Tucker. “I don’t wanna go home.”
Simon sighed, and hauled himself out of his chair. Cooper caught the eye roll he sent over to Warren, who appeared to have gone catatonic. “I’ll address your question about the fuel supply,” Simon said to Bozer, “despite your lack of manners. We expect the Hercs coming in over the next ten days will carry enough fuel to put us where we need to be.”
“Negative,” Floyd said. “Seeing as I’m actually the one who runs the power plant and observes the fuels, and reports back to you, I can say with, yeah, let’s call it total certainty, that that’s not what I reported to you last week.”
“I didn’t see that report,” Simon said.
“According to my calculations, I believe that we would need twenty-seven air tankers ferrying nothing but JP-8 in order to survive the winter. All those ‘delayed shipments’ set us back.”
“Send the Nailheads home,” Sri said. “Stop construction and keep a small crew to keep the station and the labs going. We can live off the fuel we have. I need my data. Sal needs his data. I’m not leaving here without my data.”
Floyd laughed. “You think you’re gonna finish that shit?”
“I know I am.”
Floyd shook his head, and muttered, “Moron.”
Sri looked over at Sal. “What’s he talking about, Sal?”
Everyone turned to look at Sal. Like Warren, he, too, had folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. Cooper realized both men were in possession of the same information, and that their demeanors matched because this information had impacted them similarly. “Sal?” Sri said.
“We have bigger problems,” Sal finally said.
“Bigger problems than a fuel shortage heading into winter?”
“They have us—you, me, Lisa, everyone—going home in two days.”
Sri paused for a moment. “Because we didn’t sign the confidentiality agreement,” he said, his voice dead. Lisa dropped her head in her hands.
“Just sign the goddamn thing, guys,” Marcy said. “Everyone else did.”
“They’re research techs,” Sal said. “Early-career scientists, some of them still post-docs. Most of them working on other people’s projects. You expect me to sign away my life’s work, my ideas? I can’t.” He looked over at Sri and Lisa. “We can’t.”
Cooper reached over and rubbed Lisa’s back as she wept.
After leaving the winter-over meeting, Cooper stopped by the station post office to see if she’d received any mail. Along with the fuel shipments, postal delivery had slowed dramatically, further dampening everyone’s spirits. The place was empty when she arrived, as were nearly all of the post office boxes. Halfheartedly, Cooper thrust her hand into her cubby and felt around. To her surprise, there was something there: a package, the size of a pack of cigarettes, lumpy and wrapped inexpertly in brown paper. There was no return address, and Cooper didn’t recognize the handwriting on the mailing label.
She opened it and found something hastily wrapped in a page from a week-old Washington Post. With some difficulty, she was able to tear the paper away with her good hand. As she did so, something metallic fell to the floor. It sparkled under the fluorescent lights like a Fourth of July firework. When Cooper picked it up, she saw it was Calhoun’s lapel pin. Let’s Roll.
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