Page 7 of Starrily
As she sat down by the counter and turned on her tablet and laptop, Theia leaped up and let out a pleading meow.
“What is it, baby? You should have breakfast in—” Callie checked the automatic feeder in the corner of the room—Theia’s personally picked spot for eating.Hmm. Empty.“That’s not right. There should be two more meals in there.” There must be a glitch in the code of the app that regulated feeding times. Callie coded it herself, to satisfy Theia’s very particular feeding schedule. If the feeder was empty, two meals must’ve been released during the night, which meant …
“You already had your breakfast, didn’t you?” she gently scolded Theia.
Theia looked at her with innocent, clear blue eyes.
“Don’t give me that look.”
Theia meowed and swished her tail.
“Fine. You get one snack, and that’s it.”
Once Theia had been taken care of, Callie poured her tea and slowly sipped it as she browsed through the newly released papers on the tablet, flicking through titles and graphs to see which ones grabbed her attention. Dark matter, exoplanets, more dark matter, galaxy-galaxy interactions—that one might be useful. She downloaded two others and got to reading theabstract of the first one, when her laptop alerted her of an incoming email. She glanced at it, expecting it to be a non-urgent invite to some talk or workshop, but stopped as she saw the sender.
Mom.
She was too slow to stop herself from glancing at the beginning of the email:Hey, honey! We saw you got your paper out. Phoebe knows where …
Callie swallowed and sent the mail to Trash without reading further. Her fingers were already trembling, and she had to focus all her thoughts to prevent her mind from drowning in the memories.Dark matter. Stars. Galaxies. Not family.
She gripped the tea mug, but the spicy ginger notes were less satisfying than five minutes ago. She forced herself to gulp it down.Stop thinking about the email. Don’t get tangled in that again.Her schedule for the day! She should run over that again. She had an overnight analysis to check, and the images from the observatory in Chile should be coming in any day now …
The rest happened semi-automatically: she dressed in a light, mustard-color sweater and jeans, gave Theia some goodbye scritches, grabbed her bag, and set out.
It was a pleasant spring morning, with a gentle breeze wafting in from the sea as Callie headed for the bus to take her downtown. She sat in the back, pulled out her tablet, and began reading the research paper. Bright green trees and townhouses in all shades of pastel whizzed by, and down below, the cerulean sky nearly melded into the waters of the Bay Area, dotted with white ships.
QueLabs was located in a sleek modern building, the wavy design of the full-glass facade evoking a restless ocean. Callie greeted the receptionist in the lobby and headed upstairs to her office. She was walking briskly down the hallway when someone called her name from behind. Dr. Watzmann approached, thethin hair at the top of his head bouncing up and down in the rhythm of his light jog.
“Morning,” she greeted.
“And what a great morning it is, too,” he said when he caught up. Dr. Watzmann had a round face and warm eyes that always made him look friendly and happy, but he seemed especially cheerful today. “Callie, you know the grant proposal you wrote to get funding for the Selene mission?”
“Uh—of course I do.”
“Funds have been granted,” Dr. Watzmann said, his voice pitching up at the end. “You’ve done it, Callie! We have enough resources to move forward!”
For a second, she only stood there, frozen, and then something between a yelp and a scream escaped her. If she hadn’t reminded herself to act professionally, she would’ve jumped and punched the air.
Based on his twitching, Dr. Watzmann might have been caught in the same dilemma.
“Aries Tech is giving us everything we need. It’ll more than make up for SpaceSpire having to withdraw. Oh, and—we have a meeting with them. Right now. Come!”
Callie stuttered, then ran after Watzmann. “A meeting? What for?”
“There are a couple of conditions attached to the offer.”
All right. Surely it wasn’t bad. They probably wanted their logo on the astronauts’ suits, or something similar.
“They want one of their own on the crew that will go up there,” Watzmann said.
The polished wooden floor screeched as Callie suddenly stopped. “They’re sending their astronaut?”
Watzmann scratched the top of his head, leaving a few strands of hair sticking straight up. “Not exactly. Their CEO, Simon Montague, wants to go.”
“But he has training.” Surely, he had training.
“Uhh …”
