Solar Umbrella (Book 1)

Chapter 2: The Cafeteria

PARKER WAS UNLIKE his brothers. He played games, accomplished things, learned and made mistakes just like everyone he knew, but he was different in that he always knew what he wanted to do. His brothers were smart and did well in school and got along with most people, but they all just sort of floated through life. Sure, they had their own successes along the way and they were all happy, but Parker was the driven one. He was the one who would do the extra steps in projects at school, learning things past his grade level on his own in order to understand the why of things. He annoyed his family by taking things apart, and occasionally reassembling them.

When he was in grade four, he was tasked with making a model of a building that could retain heat in a cup of water over a few hours. While his peers produced structures made of styrofoam and duct tape, Parker created a building with a roof run by a small motor that could open and close blinds of the roof to let the sun in or seal up even tighter. He didn't end up winning, but he certainly had the most interesting building.

Whenever kids had to talk about what they wanted to do when they grew up, Parker waited his turn while his classmates talked about police officers, teachers, doctors, veterinarians and the like, but he was always ready to answer "scientist" when his turn came around. Even from a young age, he had a realistic understanding of what that really meant. It wasn't mixing chemicals all day in a lab coat or bringing monsters to life using electricity like his peers would draw on their science notebook covers. It was finding solutions to problems. And those solutions had to work. He wanted to change the world for the better, and the world was in desperate need of people like him.

In grade five, he read a book about Thomas Malthus, an English economist, who posited that population growth would always be abated, eventually, by the lack of food or other resources. Parker was particularly interested in Malthus' idea that technology could help to stop the population die off, but that crunch would come eventually. Parker wondered why growth and progress couldn't just continue forever, especially if humans eventually colonized the stars. This sparked an interest in space in Parker. It seemed like the answer to so many of humanity's problems sat up there in the stars. Resources, planets to live on and learn on, scientific progress to improve life for everyone. If science was about finding solutions, surely space was the place to find them. Humanity seemed to agree, as space exploration was a key feature of all governments who could afford it. Both public money and private companies were allotting trillions of dollars in space. Parker saw his future there.

Parker's eldest brother, John, was a high achiever in his own right. He played football from an early age and was a standout from his first practice. They said he had a "golden arm", which Parker quickly learned meant he could throw the ball far. John made every team he tried out for and seemed to have a tournament every weekend. It took up a lot of time for the family, but Parker didn't mind. Once he was old enough, he often got to stay at home with his other brothers or semi-attentive babysitters and he was left to his own devices. He took advantage of the time to study just about every aspect of science and space he could find on the Internet. He would spend hours watching lectures from colleges and universities around the world.

Parker's work paid off as he received an early entry to grade nine, an exclusive high school specializing in science, technology and math. The school attracted students from all over the world. Parker was at an age to be entering grade seven, but he was bored of school and didn't have many friends beyond a surface level. His parents were hesitant for him to have the extra independence and responsibilities of high school before he was a teenager, but Parker was able to talk them into it over time. They were concerned he was growing up too fast and needed to do kid things, but they conceded those things didn't interest him and he was just wasting time waiting for the next step anyways. He eventually convinced them for good by comparing himself to John. John competed in tournaments and with teams in football beyond his age group. John was celebrated for playing with a team for kids up to age 18 while he was only 14. Was Parker's gift any less worth celebrating? Was athletics the only thing to be nurtured or could academics be treated the same way? The argument was enough to push Parker's parents over the edge and they conceded the point to him under the condition that he would have to go back if his grades or social life suffered. It was never a concern for Parker. He knew he was making the right choice.

Parker sat down in the school cafeteria. It was one of his least favourite places in the school. In the classrooms and labs, he knew what to do. His teachers set tasks and goals, and he set out to meet and exceed them. It was familiar, even easy. Set a goal. Meet the goal. Set a new goal. Like a computer program Parker chewed through the curriculum at a remarkable rate. He worked on projects alone, with partners and even in groups. He had learned to trust his peers with certain tasks, and stay out of their way when they were on the right track. Life with older brothers who were always right in their own minds had forced Parker to learn how to carefully inject his ideas into the minds of others, without letting them know he had. No older brother, or older classmate, wanted some kid telling them what to do. When Parker made careful suggestions, or left the right materials at hand...that was a different story. The person would take the idea without knowing it and claim it as their own. That sat perfectly well with Parker, as long as the task was completed. His peers and teachers quickly learned to respect his drive and intelligence. He was rarely the quickest to understand new concepts, but he had a determination to stick with something with a dogged compulsion until he understood its workings entirely. The cafeteria though? That was an entirely different world. There was no task to be completed. He was on his own. No teacher-created groups to work in. He generally let his mind drift while he ate, piecing together solutions for work he would get to later.

"I said, do you mind if I sit here?" she looked down at him, a flimsy orange plastic tray in her hands. Her hair was all over the place, blowing around her face from the air conditioning vent above her.

"Uh, sure," Parker prattled off, a piece of french fry slipping from his mouth. "I mean, yeah, please take a seat." Take a seat. What am I, a waiter? Pull it together Parker.

"Thanks, this place is huge, and sort of intimidating," she said as she settled all her food down on the table.

She dropped an enormous book bag on the seat beside her and Parker noticed a NASA sticker on a tablet sticking out. She looked to be about 15. Parker had never seen her before. "I haven't seen you here before, are you new?" he asked, swallowing the food he had in his mouth, turning to look at her. Besides the wild hair, he noticed a piece of electrical tape stuck to her hoodie and a smear of what looked like paint on her neck. She had green eyes with a ring of orange in the middle of each. Her smile came easy and welcomed more conversation.

"Yeah, we just moved here from Austin," she replied. "My family and I saw a report about this school on the news a few years back and my parents became obsessed with it. They both work in software design for NASA, so they were able to pull some strings to get my brother and I in. We moved in a week ago."

Parker appreciated how up front she was with her information. He was used to the older kids being fairly terse with him. They weren't rude or mean, but they tended to give him one word answers or the bare minimum of information. While they respected his abilities in the classroom, it seemed like they still saw him as a kid, unable to process the extremely complicated lives lived by someone a few years older. "Right on, I know there've been a lot of kids who graduated from Boulder Tech who went on to work for NASA, ESA and a few other places," he replied, remembering the guy who spoke to the whole school a few months back. Arjan Singh had graduated a few years before from BT and was part of a startup working on some software to run an asteroid miner remotely. They had thought up a way to bounce the signal from Earth to a series of satellites dropped along the way, strengthening it in order to get more done in a short time. It allowed video and audio to travel much more cleanly. "What classes are you enrolled in?"

She listed off her classes—mostly first year classes with a few second years mixed in. "I took a program last summer that counted towards a few credits, so I could jump ahead this year. I'm looking to finish a semester early if I can." She finished up her food and was messing around with a few things in her backpack. "Oh hey, what's your name anyways?"

"Parker. I'm in my first year as well. I'll see you later today in Electronics actually. Parker Varia," he replied, finishing up his own food, and taking her tray.

"Katherine Bouman, but everyone calls me Kate," she added, picking up her bag and offering a fist bump.

He looked carefully as she stood up. She was taller than him even if he had been standing, and she blocked the overhead lights briefly. A glow came up behind her, highlighting her even more. Not wanting to get caught staring, he added his fist to hers and made a boom sound as if a bomb had gone off. He immediately felt like an idiot, but she cracked a small smile which instantly melted his self consciousness.

"Later, Parker Varia."

"Uh yeah, later Katherine. Kate!"