The Price of Water

Chapter 2 - Ilse

Ilse Langstrom was in the lab working late again. She enjoyed the quiet. Everyone else was gone, and she was alone. She liked being alone.

Do I really? Like being alone?

Well, she had her experiments and chemicals to keep her company. She thought of them as soldiers marching into a battle to purify water. The world was dying of thirst. She needed to find a way to quench it. After five years of research and double that in dedication, she was on the verge of a breakthrough.

Always on the verge.

Frustrated, she looked up from her microscope and caught sight of her reflection in the large windows. Unconsciously, she reached up to adjust her long, silky dark hair piled high to keep it out of the way. Her gaze lingered on the image before her. The small details of her face were obscure, but her large, almond-shaped eyes above high cheekbones and smooth skin regarded her thoughtfully. She didn't like the attention her looks got.

"It is so annoying," she said to her reflection.

That day, at lunch, she and her best friend and co-worker noticed a creepy guy staring at them.

"Do you see that man across the street under the traffic light?" Natalie Roche asked, moving her expressive blue eyes toward the intersection.

"I do," answered Ilse. "He's not that creepy At least he's not old. I just don't get your paranoia."

"I don't get your naivete. I hope you never do understand," Natalie said with a sigh. A heartbeat later, Natalie decided. "It's time to go. The creep hasn't moved and keeps staring. I'm going back."

Ilse agreed, Natalie's mood infecting her. The young women returned to the lab.

* * *

Her eyes refocused past her likeness to trees blowing in the wind.

A storm was coming.

She shook her head and returned to work. As she adjusted her microscope, the small white circle came into focus, revealing the remaining impurities that stubbornly resisted her protein soldiers—the failed results of her latest experiment.

"How do I get you out of there?" she said aloud, seemingly challenging the impurities themselves.

A sharp snap down the hall startled her. She glanced toward the lab's open door just as a gust of wind sent the branch of a small tree tapping against a window. She didn't think it was the same sound.

"Let's just go and check this out, shall we?" she said aloud to her reflection, sighing at the interruption. Pushing her lab chair back from the bench, she went to the door and peered down the hall for several long seconds.

"As I suspected, just the wind," she continued the conversation with herself but was not convinced.

She liked speaking aloud to herself when alone at night in the lab. It helped clarify her thoughts. As a child, she picked up the habit of watching her father, Bjorn, working in his lab.

"Speaking things aloud helps me think them through," he would say with a smile and a wink. She was very proud of him. He was a world-renowned chemist and professor. Her mentor. Her idol.

She peered down the hall for a few seconds more, but seeing and hearing nothing, it was time to return to work. Her work. It was what got her up each morning. She loved it.

Because of her father.

* * *

"What do you say we go on an adventure into the Sahara Dessert?" Bjorn Langstrom asked his wife and daughter with a big smile as they lounged poolside at the Tunis resort. He clearly loved the idea. He sat at the foot of his wife Ann's lounge chair and gazed at the Mediterranean Sea just a short distance across the sandy beach. "It would be a nice break from all this hard work," he joked.