In the Lion's Teeth: Second Edition

Chapter Two

Over the course of the next week, you throw yourself completely into the model you're working on. It's just a modified Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, but it's been relatively inexpensive to make and so this way, if any of your calculations are off, if you screwed up your numbers to chart your flight path, if anything has too much or too little force and it ends up damaged or, worse, destroyed, at least you won't be losing much. Eventually you want to work up to more complicated things. Your final goal is to replicate the Mars rover Curiosity, but small scale and readjusted for Earth's atmosphere. Then, once you're successful, moving on to designing your own. But, baby steps. Usually things like this are done in a team over the course of years, and you're working on your own.

You know a lot about aircraft from your repair work at the hangar, but there are a lot of specializations involved that you only have a basic working knowledge of. It's been almost six months since you started the actual build. Ten since you started your research. But you're nearly done, and it's going to be worth it.

The sky is in a constant state of dim grey, regardless of the time of day, and it's colder than it was last year, the snow is heavier, the winds angrier, so you stay inside, working and tinkering and programming, ripping out and reconnecting wiring and screwing pieces together, only leaving your room to get to one of the many campus workshops when you need more specialized equipment, like soldering irons. You're only outside for the few minutes it takes to walk between buildings. Chain-smoking and shitty instant coffee are your only sustenance, unless Mitch brings you something and reminds you that living on caffeine and cigarettes isn't possible and sometimes you need to eat food, too.

You don't sleep much, but why would you, you have plenty of energy and drive and right now your mind is working at its peak and pausing to sleep would only waste time and potential. Most of your coding and programming is done at night, quietly, so you don't disturb Mitch. Heavy, loud work you save for the daytime. You're not sure how many days have passed when your phone goes off for the first time in weeks.

You glance over to where it lies on the bed from your seat on the floor, back at the plane again. Finally, you're nearly done. There are just a few more double-checks and tweaks and then you'll be ready for your first test flight. You finish with the screw you had halfway in and then gently place the model down, dropping the screwdriver beside it and spitting out the other screw waiting to go in. When you flip your phone open, you mutter a surprised, "Shit!" in French, because the tone was your calendar app reminding you about the lecture tonight out in Medford. It had completely slipped your mind, so thoroughly that the knowledge may as well have never existed. You toss your phone back on the pillow, drop back to the floor to put in that final screw so you don't forget, then carefully tuck the plane in its spot under your bed and shove everything else up against your side of the back bookshelf with your foot to deal with later.

The lecture is at six and it's just past 3:30. It takes you a moment to run down the list of things to do to get ready to go outside, because sometimes there are too many to remember. You have to take a shower. Find some professional clothes, iron them if necessary. Brush your teeth. Find an online tutorial about how to tie a tie so you look put together. Why are there so many things to do to be considered socially acceptable?

The shower is quick, because they're communal, and that means echoes and whispers and murmurs you can't always distinguish. Water dripping through the drain, the hiss of the showerhead, the sticky plop of flip flops and footsteps all sound too much like the voices in your head. Being so focused on your work has made it mostly easy to ignore them, to force them away to think about and deal with later, and what if the noises encourage them, make them bolder and bring them back out to the surface again, forcing their way through your skin and out of your mouth?