Departure

        “Synthesis complete.”

An artificial voice, slightly distorted and almost sounding quite satisfied with itself, rang throughout a mostly empty room. In the center was a large cylindrical chamber. While the walls were glass, it was impossible to see inside due to large plumes of smoke flowing around, following an indistinguishable current. Slowly but surely, the smoke started to settle as whatever process had been going on finished. On one end of the room there was a row of empty desks, some of them had leftover pieces of stationary almost as if the lab had been cleared out in a hurry. On the farthest end of the row there was still a fully equipped desk. The room’s only occupant, asleep at said desk, began to stir upon hearing the voice.

“Attempt number 597 is ready for evaluation, please retrieve it.” A hint of urgency came through, almost sounding impatient.

“What…” The scientist groggily sat up in his chair, wiping away the sleep from his eyes.

“Synthesis attempt number 597 is ready for evaluation, please retrieve it.”

“Oh right yeah… I’ll get to it” The man got out of his chair with a yawn and stumbled over the chamber where the smoke had almost fully cleared, lazily jotting down some notes in a worn notebook.

Inside there was a small pedestal, on it was a small piece of wood, no bigger than a woodchip one would find on an elementary school playground.

“I’m assuming the sample came out horribly mangled like normal?” The man hadn’t even looked up from his notes, his dismissive tone was heavy with exhaustion.

“According to my analysis, the sample has a compositional integrity of 91.5%, about a 50% improvement over attempt 476”

“Oh sure I bet just wa-” The scientist looked up from his notes, completely forgetting how tired he was, “did you say 50%?”

“Affirmative, sample 597 has an improvement of 50% over the last best sample in my records: sample 476.”

Before the voice could finish the man was already back at his desk, frantically inputting the command to open the chamber. With a loud hiss, the glass walls lowered into a compartment in the floor as the tiny chunk of wood was exposed to the outside world. With the same speed, the man’s hand swooped across the pedestal and secured the chunk in his grasp.

“Computer! Has the Professor’s shuttle left the terminal yet?”

“Professor Pachelko’s shuttle will not leave for another five hours.”

“Then there is still time…” The man stared at his watch and barreled out the door of the lab.

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A loud banging made Frank jump. At first, it was strange to him that someone wouldn’t use his intercom. Soon, he became more annoyed that someone would bang so loudly on his door this early in the morning. A muffled voice that aroused some sense of familiarity in him started accompanying the cacophony of banging outside his house, so much so that he had half a mind to call the police as he opened the door.

As he pulled the door aside a rather unimpressive looking woodchip was shoved into his face. There was the scientist from the lab, his hair was going all sorts of places almost like an old school tesla ball, his clothes reeked of coffee and day old air freshener, and his eyes were bloodshot as he panted out his words.

“It worked! I figured it out!”

“Joel? What are you doing here? And what is this?”

“Sample 597, a success! We can use this as our way back into the academy”

“We are most certainly not! Especially after how you embarrassed the two of us in front of the entire council!”

“I know I messed up during the live demonstration, but with this we can put all of that into the past.”

“I don’t think you recall what we were told,” Frank scowled at Joel, “the chairman explicitly pulled all of our funding, we won’t have a lab to return to after today. I’m leaving on the first shuttle offworld this morning.”

“To where?”
“I don’t know… maybe I’ll find a young agrarian colony on some distant planet, start a farm, forget about this life.”

“So that’s it? You’re done?”

“I’m not sure you’re aware, but I gambled my entire career on our project succeeding and now because of you, it’s all gone.”

“Hey don’t place the blame solely on me, as far as I’m concerned, this is our failure!”

“OUR failure?!” Frank’s blood began to boil at the fact that Joel would even imply that their failure was shared, “You’re going to say it’s OUR failure when you were the one who made the last minute ‘unannounced’ modifications to the synthesizer without telling me. Those same modifications that almost burned down the entire conference room during the most important research symposium of the year and has now caused irreparable damage to both of our reputations as scientists and researchers! You’re saying that I’M to blame for any of this!?”

Joel stayed quiet for a moment, “That’s fair…”

“So forgive me when I say IT’S OVER!” Frank’s sudden outburst echoed through the halls of his house, Joel could see tears beginning to form in Frank’s eyes, “might as just leave and be forgotten like the rest of the failures”

“Don’t say that. There’s still a chance, the academy holds a second review period within six months of the first one, they even allow candidates that failed in the first one”

“But what chance do we have?”

“I’ve been trying to show you!” Joel tried to hand Frank the woodchip again,  “it’s not much, it looks more promising than anything we’ve done before.”

Frank turned over the woodchip in his hands. The grooves and ridges of the surface felt real. It was better than anything he had saw while the two actively worked on the project.

“How is this possible?”

“The key was more time, you had the right ideas and my attempts to accelerate the process without letting you know was not the move.”

Frank was about to interject, but was quickly cut off again by Joel

“Before you say ‘I told you so,’ hear me out! I’ve spent the last few days trying to make the mechanical modifications to the system work, I was too quick in making them the first time which is why the live demonstration failed.”

“Where do I come in then? Doesn’t seem like you need me at all if you’ve made this much progress alone.”

“But that’s exactly where you come in. The mechanical stuff works better now, but all I really have to work with are your notes and algorithms which were designed with the old system in mind. They’ve hit their limit and that kind of stuff was most certainly never my strong suit.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“This doesn’t come together unless we start working together again.” Under his disheveled appearance, Frank could see pure determination in Joel’s eyes.

Frank pondered the situation in his head, was he really going to throw everything he had done up until this point away by getting onto that shuttle? Especially now that he is holding their potential ticket back into the academy in his hands. As for Joel, Frank wasn’t sure if he could ever forgive him, but he had to concede that he had given up while Joel looked like he hasn’t left the lab since. He took a deep breath, one more leap of faith wasn’t going to kill him.

“All right Joel, just because it seems like you’re going to be pretty lost without me, I might as well make sure you don’t screw it up a second time” Frank smirked a little

Joel jumped up in delight, “I knew you’d agree! When do we start?”

“Not so fast, now that I know what you’re actually capable of this time, I’ll give you one chance so don’t mess it up!” Frank winked.

“You got it, no more mistakes.”

“And get some rest, now that I’m coming back we should at least try to keep up appearances for each other. I feel like we’re about to be suddenly spending a lot more time together again.”

“You got it!” Joel ran off, reinvigorated by Frank agreeing to help him.

There were definitely a few issues, like getting their lab back, successfully reapplying to the academy program, and seeing just what modifications he would need to make to the algorithm. That could all wait until later as Frank began to unpack the clothes that he just packed last night, he had work to do.

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This piece isn't one that I was particularly proud of. The premise is pretty easy to follow with a young up and comer trying to make up for essentially ruining an older scientist's biggest day. I think some of the biggest feedback I've gotten on this piece has been a need to really convey what has caused all of their tension as well as making sure the actual subject of their research makes enough sense. It's a bit all over the place, but there are some moments that I enjoyed so I feel comfortable posting it here in its current state. I don't think any work will be done on this piece in the future, but it'll for sure remain here in it's current state.