The Earth Above Us

The Lecture

„Eth? Are you even with me?" Diarthon asked disgruntled.

Blinking, she fixated her gaze towards him. „Sorry, what?"

„Geez, really? We have only two more days until the lecture and you are off with your head somewhere. Care to take me with you?"

She blushed, and shook her head. „No. So you wanted to go through our findings?"

Rolling his eyes, Diarthon took up his notes again. „What do you want to be?"

With her mind somewhere else again, Eth answered: „I want to be an artist, or a plant."

„What?" He squinted, not sure where to put her words.

„Well, artists are pretty free, they create marvelous things. And plants, well, it's something that seems to be able to be everything."

„You, my friend, are delusional. Whatever. So... you want to become an engineer or inventor or somebody without a certain specific field?"

Sighing Etheodra shook her head. He would not understand. „Not exactly... but well somehow yes? Let's just exchange notes."

They did, and discussed the information and how to best present it. But Diarthon understood quite fast that Etheodra was not up to her game. She was often lacking understanding or had to ask the easiest things. That, plus her strange behavior during those last days let him to worry about her, and his notes on the lecture. It might end up being the jumpstart he had hoped for, and he would not jeopardize it. Even if the lecture would go well, he needed to be sure she was both up to the tasks and not better than him. Though he wasn't as worried about the later.

„Seriously, what is going on? You have your head in the clouds, Eth! Even more than usual." Dia started again, and then caught an actual look on her notes. He ripped the paper off her hand. „What is this?" He called out angrily.

She cringed, but quickly regained her posture. „What do you mean?"

He stared at the note. Strange scribbles and small handmade...photographs of things surrounded the written notes. It looked strange, soothing almost, and interesting. But it was so wrong. He had never seen anything like it. She had a camera, why did she make sketches of those? Especially since they didn't have anything to do with the actual notes.

He pointed at a sketch of a strange object, it had a cylindrical shape at its bottom, with vertical, not quite straight lines inside for structure. Over this was something triangular with its peak showing vertical towards the sky. The triangular thing was divided into smaller stripes which seemed to point to the sides and in no particular order, except that the lower ones where bigger than the upper layers. „What is this?" He pointed at the strange thing.

„That's a fir tree." She mumbled. „It's a kind of plant."

„A what?"

Eth sighed, and took back the paper, casually explaining „I found it in one of the history books, it seemed interesting, so I drew it." She wasn't exactly feeling comfortable with it, but the lie passed her lips fluently.

„Oh. Okay..." Dia said and got up. „I better get going, have a lot of work left to do so..."

It was the day of her lecture, and any normal inhabitant of the district six four five would have looked forward to it as it was regarded as a life changing event to give insight of new discoveries and to prove one's hypothesis. However, Etheodra had discovered by now that she was indeed neither what one might call a normal inhabitant nor could this be her most important moment in her life until now.

Sure, science was important, but how could you think such things, however interesting, make the world?

Her surroundings had been interesting as she only watched through more or less scientific lenses. But the beauty and mystery of science coupled with emotions and an artist's view was even more wonderful. She had started to see the world in new lights, her own planet, her world, had become even more vibrant. Etheodra had taken up some of Tom's explanations and began to question the traditions and convictions of her culture. Why was music not a popular thing? Why weren't there any artists? Of course, some people might be able to be called artists, but they wouldn't know what she was talking about. Why were invented stories frowned upon so much?

The lecture was not her main priority but, funny enough, it was because of this she held the best lecture she had ever given. She realized that it was much easier to talk and explain when she was not scared of the outcome. It made it easier to scrap certain aspects during the speech and to concentrate on the more important facts.

Eth outlined her theory and explained the wavelengths of the fog and its effect on the Zoombas, and how her main subject, which she had named „Pikachu" had eventually changed its behavior towards her though she was not certain whether it came from how she treated the Zoomba or actually from the fog. She was eager to find that out, mainly because this would be reason enough for her parents to let her keep Pikachu as a pet.

Etheodra included the history of the fog, from its earliest discovery to different expeditions that have been taken in order to find its origins. One of the historic explanations had been quite near to what Tom had called quantum physics, and she now explained the theory with examples and intermixed with the discoveries of earthly physicists. When she was finally done, Diarthon gaped at her with an open mouth for a full minute before regaining his posture and going over to his own findings.

At the end of their lecture, people congratulated them and journalists came to have interviews.

„Etheodra!" One person called out as she wanted to make her way out of the building. „What do you want to be called?"

She stopped. Of course, people who had made their entrance to the scientific society got a name, and when your theories had been bold and good enough you could chose your own.

A smile passed her lips as she turned towards the interviewer.

„I want my name to be Spacegirl."

And with that, she turned again and walked out of the hall that used to be the planetarium and into the sun light.