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“Well, that’s what they have to do if they want to get licensed to do launches again,” he reveals with suppressed enthusiasm.
“Huh?” I turn, staring at him in disbelief.
“Yeah! Dad just found out from the state that the potential new owners have inquired about resuming launches.”
“That’s cool,” I respond. “Do you know why they ever quit in the first place?”
“I’m not sure why the state quit their research,” he says, starting to work by opening the cabinets along the wall to the right of the door. “Something about funding or tax breaks; something to do with the state’s finances anyway.” He pulls some empty boxes out of a locker and throws them into the trash barrel.
“So what are the rules here again?” I’m standing by the exam table, staring into the top drawer on the end. It is full of gauze, tape and some smaller bandages.
“If it looks clean and sterile, keep it and inventory it on the list,” he answers. “If it’s an open package, throw it away because we don’t know what’s been crawling on it.” He looks over at me. “Do you see a pencil in there, and maybe some paper?”
“Not in this one.” I open the two drawers underneath. The third has a little of both. “Here we go.” The small pad of paper is a little faded around one edge, like something had been spilled on it. I spot a nice pen next to a pencil and pull it out first. Twisting the top so the tip comes out, I scribble on the paper a few seconds to see if the ink still flows. “This’ll work,” I report. I turn the pen to get a good look at it. “There’s initials on it,” I say quietly, recognizing them. “S.C.”
Jared quickly walks over and grabs the pen out of my hand. He looks at the initials, then up at me with sadness in his eyes. “This is the pen I gave my mom for Christmas when I was seven.” I watch his eyes moisten as he looks back down at the pen. Then he turns away. “Dad helped me pick it out. He suggested I have the initials put on to make it more special.” I could hear sorrow in his voice as the memories flood back into conscious thought.
This is awkward. I put my right hand on his left shoulder, hoping it might be a comfort. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. He lifts his head a bit and walks out the door. A few muffled sobs echo softly through the large prep room.
Standing there in silence, vague memories of Grams come to mind. I hadn’t known her very well; I was six when she died. But I remember how sad my mom was, how she cried on occasion for the next year or so, when something came up to remind her of her mother. Dad said simply, “that’s how it is when you lose someone you love”.
“Find any tissues yet?” Jared is standing in the doorway dragging the end of his sleeve over his eyes. I hand him a small box from the second drawer. “I feel so stupid,” he confides.
“Don’t, man,” I suggest gently. “It’s good to remember. Your mom must have been great.”
“Yeah, she was,” he smiles, throwing a couple of tissues into the barrel. The pen is in his t-shirt pocket, close to his heart. “She used to help out down here once in a while. She was thinking about getting certified as an E.M.T. At least that’s what Dad tells us. He said she was always thinking about ways to try and help people.”
He turns back to the cabinets. It’s quiet for a while as he continues through each one, tossing something out, organizing something else. I finish the drawers and look into some lockers at the back of the room, but find nothing. On either end of the lockers are doors into a walk-through closet. I enter the one on the left, checking inside the walls for a light switch. The door at the other end opens and I hear Jared’s voice say, “Looking for this?” and the lights come on.
Between the two doors, a pole is mounted horizontally and several empty white plastic hangers are grouped together towards the center. The back wall of the closet is fitted with an assortment of different sized cubby holes. A few of them contain sealed packages. Jared lifts one out, reading the label. “Clean suits. Cool!”
“What are they for?” I ask, picking up a package.
“These are what the guys who loaded the passengers into the splanes wore,” he says. I nod, wondering why. “It was really more for show than anything else, or so I was told.” He looks through all the packages. He writes down the number of each size on the pad of paper. “I guess we’re done in here until Kylie shows up.”
I follow as he rolls the waste barrel out the door and around the corner to the right and into the storage room. This one contains almost nothing but shelves. They’re on three of the walls around the perimeter and an island of them, built all the way to the ceiling, fills the center of the room. The wall without shelves has a few hooks on it. A small step ladder hangs from one hook, an old, ratty three foot wide dust mop on another, and a regular mop on a third, below which is a bucket. A second, taller fiberglass step ladder leans up against the wall next to a vacuum and a couple of padded folding chairs.
Jared rolls the mops and bucket out the door, and plugs in the vacuum saying, “We don’t have to inventory this room. But this is where we might find some stuff worth exhibiting.”
“Good thing,” I mumble quietly. The room is full of old equipment and parts, and is somewhat organized already. Nuts and bolts, hoses, wire and connectors are all grouped together, and there is a shelf with three old LCD monitors and a couple of computers in rack mounts. “Any of this work?” I turn around to watch as he sets up the taller ladder and starts climbing it.
“I don’t know. I would assume so but it’s all pretty out-dated. Now hand me that vacuum hose.”
“Might be fun to find out,” I comment, handing him the hose and flipping the switch. The motor seems loud as it breaks the quiet of the room.
Jared makes quick work of the dust that has accumulated on the shelves. Occasionally he hands something down to make room for pushing other things aside to vacuum around. Then I hand it back.
He works his way from top to bottom. Some dirt falls to the floor but we get that when he moves the ladder to the next set of shelves. He finishes one wall, moves the ladder and hands me the vacuum saying, “Your turn.” I am glad to do something more than assist.
It’s pretty boring but still a nice switch from the cold, wet work in the tunnel. And at the rate we are going, we’ll be done a little after lunch.
Jared disappears out the door. I quickly finish vacuuming the shelves on the second wall. As I’m getting ready to start the third set, I feel a light tap on my shoulder which causes me to jump a little before I turn around. Kylie is standing there smiling at me. I reach down to turn the vacuum off. She has brought two cans of soda and hands me one.
“Thanks,” I say as I open it to take a quick, cool sip.
“So how’s it going?” she asks, walking down the row of shelves.
“Okay, I guess. Pretty much just getting the dust off of things and straightening up. Where’s your brother?”
“In the First Aid room, cleaning the bathroom and mopping the floor.”
“I thought for sure he’d have you do that,” I lightly joke.
“I do the house. He can do this,” she replies firmly with a grown up tone in her voice. She continues around the island of shelves. “I guess these haven’t been done yet?” she comments, completing the circle.
“Nope,” I say, taking another drink of the soda. “Jared show you the pen?”
She looks at me. “He didn’t say anything but I saw it in his pocket.” Her voice drops in volume. “I’m glad he found it.”
There is a short silence. I set the can down, securing the ladder so I can resume cleaning. From the corner of my eye I see her make a half turn towards the door.
“So… see you tomorrow?” she asks quietly.
“What’s tomorrow?” I question, looking at her.
“Dad’s having some the investors over for a tour. Didn’t Jared tell you?”
“I guess he forgot.”
“Can you come?”
“Probably. I don’t think Mom and Dad have anything planned for me.”
“Thanks for the drink,” I call after she rounds the island.
“Sure,” I hear faintly, the echo of her footsteps fading quickly.
I turn the vacuum on and finish the back row of shelves before Jared reappears. A faint whiff of chlorine follows him into the room.
“Hey! Where’s mine?” he demands, spotting the can of soda on the shelf.
“Didn’t she bring you one?”
“Of course she did. I finished it already and just wish I had another.”
We finally start on the center island of shelves. It feels like we’ve been in this room a long time. Maybe the thought of getting done early is making the day seem longer.
These shelves are stacked with boxes. Some are labeled. Most aren’t. “Should we wait to look through them until after we’re done cleaning?” he asks me.
“Sounds good. That way we won’t get any dirt inside them.”
It takes about a half-hour more to finish the shelves. Jared makes a sweep of the floor with the vacuum. I’m feeling hungry so I know it must be getting close to lunch.
The first box I look in contains old papers; invoices, delivery receipts, and some fire extinguisher charge notices. “Shouldn’t this stuff be in the office?” I ask, showing Jared the documents.
“I don’t think so. The dates are pretty old, so the newer certificates are probably already there. A lot of this could probably be shredded.” He lifts another stack of papers. “This is going to take all day if we look at every piece of paper,” he says. “Let’s just try and spot some interesting stuff.” After that, if we see anything business related we pretty much ignore it. We also bring over the folding chairs so we can sit while we search.
Using the ladder, we finally get to the last boxes on top. Jared passes down as many as he can reach before we sit and open them. The one I open contains two photo albums. “Here we go.” He sets his box, which is longer but not as deep, down on the floor and looks over my shoulder. “It’s full of press releases and newspaper articles.” I read the date on the first one.
“This one is from September 2006.”
“That’s before we were born!”
“It’s about a launch.” I read on. “It was a small rocket, and it didn’t send much of anything up.” I look up at Jared somewhat confused. “Was that before the rail was put in?”
“Yep. I’m guessing there weren’t any people on it,” he says. “Let me see.” I pass the album to him. He reads a bit as I begin to look through the other one. “Says this rocket only got up around seventy miles. That’s not even into orbit,” he chuckles and flips to the next page.
“I guess they had to start somewhere,” I comment, looking up from the other album. “This one’s about building the launch rail.”
“That was in 2012, I’ll bet,” Jared challenges, looking up.
“Yep.” I return his look, expecting an explanation.
“We have pictures at home of me sitting on a crane, and that’s what they’re dated.”
“That’s cool.” I resume my review. “Says the first launch from the ‘rail’, as they call it, was in April 2014.”
”Yeah. That’s around when that picture I showed you in the control room was taken. That sure was some cool stuff.”
“And here’s an article about shutting it down from, uh, 2018. It says the government needed the money for other projects at the time but that the launch facility will reopen as soon as fiscally possible.” I close the album and pass it over to Jared, who has closed the other one as well. “I hope that time has finally come,” I conclude, thinking about what Jared had said earlier.
“Yeah, me too,” he agrees. “We could really help that along if our project is successful.”
That’s probably true. It will take a couple of years, maybe a decade for development, but what we had, what Stiles and his boss had hoped to hide, would change the course of a lot of things.
“Just some more clothes in this box,” I hear Jared say. “Flight suits, I think.”
I look over as he holds up one of the white, one-piece outfits.
He lays the first suit aside and lifts the other to look at it. “I’m surprised they don’t have names monogrammed on them. We usually did that for customers. These must be extras.” He folds the clothing and places it back in the box. “We should take the albums and flight suits up to Dad. Everything else can stay for now.”
We place the items outside the door, put away the chairs and ladder, then I do a final round with the vacuum. The two rooms look pretty good. “Feels like lunch time to me,” I say as I roll the vacuum up against the wall. Actually, I feel like lunch time has long passed.
It takes two trips to carry out the boxes of artifacts and the trash. We have more trash than history.
When we show the albums and jump suits to Jared’s dad, he’s pleased with what we have found. He also notices the pen in Jared’s pocket and smiles, saying, “I’m glad you found that.”
Kylie has lunch ready, and invites me to stay, which I accept. We tell her about the suits and albums. She says she’ll check them out later, but seems preoccupied.
When lunch is nearly over, Kylie says “Dad wants me to make a presentation tomorrow.” She is speaking more to Jared than to me.
“About what?” Jared asks.
“About the gyro exhibit. What do you think?” she asks her older brother, looking from him to me and back. “What should I say?”
“As little as possible,” he advises with a smirk. He sees that she is on the spot, not him. She looks at me for a better explanation.
I think hard for a minute. “He’s right.” Jared smiles broadly, pleased with the affirmation. “We can’t let on what we’re really planning so it would be better to downplay the exhibit. Just say the software is being tested in a virtual environment, that it’s coming along fine, and that you’re using the Play Max, 3D gaming helmet to test it for now. Say that the physical shell is coming along slowly, and that they can see it if they want.”
“Tell them that you’re on schedule, but that there are still the mechanicals to work out,” Jared adds. “That’s true enough.”
Kylie gets up to grab a piece of paper to make notes. Like a lot of kids, she’s reserved about speaking in front of a group, especially a group of adults engaged in a business that she is on the periphery of. That thought gives me another idea.
“Maybe we should present the idea of the saucer being part of a parade, like for a promotion?”
“Yeah,” replies Jared, becoming more involved. “Then even if they’re doubtful about the exhibit as a demonstration of a gyroscopic control system, they might still see value in it as an advertising gimmick.”
Kylie looks up from her notes, appearing a little more at ease. “Do you think we should have Willie and Jennifer here?”
“What for?” Jared questions.
“Just in case.”
“I don’t think so,” I reply. “It would just create another possibility that something would slip.” But I do like the idea of everybody getting together.
“Thanks for your help Tyler,” Kylie offers as I get up to leave.
“Sure,” I reply. “Glad to. And thanks for lunch.”
Jared ushers me out the door. Walking over to the hy-ped, he quietly worries, “I sure hope she doesn’t say anything stupid.”
Fireworks
Everything appears pretty quiet when I drive up to Jared’s house the next day. It’s hard to tell there’s an investor tour being held. I park the hy-ped next to their car and walk up the steps of the porch. The entry door is open. Through the screen door, I hear loud voices. After a few moments listening, I know it’s Jared and Kylie.
“Shut up you jerk!” I hear Kylie shout, her voice rising in anger. “That’s got nothing to do with it! Besides, Dad said I could.”
“Yeah, sure,” I hear a taunting reply. “Are you about ready?”
&
nbsp; “Just get out of here! I’ll be ready when I’m ready.” Then I hear a door slam.
It’s quiet for a moment so I think it’s probably safe to knock. Jared answers quickly, a big smile on his face. He pushes the screen door open to join me on the porch. “Better sit down. It’s going be a while,” he says with a guilty look on his face.
“What’s going on?” I ask with hesitation, not sure I want to hear the answer.
“Nothing really. I was just giving her a hard time.”
“About what?”
“You’ll see. She’s just…” Jared starts to say something and stops. “Actually,” he begins again, “I just think she’s a little nervous about the whole presentation thing. She really doesn’t want to do it and she told Dad this morning. She was up all night, making notes, and practicing in her room.”
“But she’s given reports and presentations in school,” I reason. “I remember her talking about that one last spring in… what was it?”
“Geometry.”
“Yeah, geometry. Something about rocket trajectories and how it’s so important to be able to calculate that kind of stuff. She really loved doing that report.”
“Yeah, and she did a good job,” he compliments his sister, “but this is totally different. It’s for a bunch of stodgy old suits, not her friends and classmates. Anyway, that wasn’t the gist of our discussion. You’ll see.”
It’s not too many more minutes before Kylie comes out the door. And I see what Jared is talking about. Kylie is dressed in a sleek black slack suit, standing a little taller in slightly raised, black heels. As she gets closer, the chemical aroma of dry cleaning is noticeable. It mixes poorly with the other, sweet fragrance of her usual perfume. A string of pearls hang around her slender neck, with matching earrings lightly framing her face. Her hair is up in a way I haven’t seen before, and she is carrying a black leather notebook. She looks ready for business. She looks grown up.
“Let’s go,” she scowls at Jared. Noticing me, and softening with an faint smile, she adds, “Hi Tyler.”
“You look great!” I compliment her, almost breathless.