Chapter 11: The Crummy Boy

A tiny, makeshift, aluminum rocket launches into the air before quickly turning and nose diving back onto the workbench Celia was working at. Her head rested on her arms, lazily watching yet another rocket crash onto the table as Alto observes her closely, wondering what she was doing.

The two of them were back at the university workshops, building model rockets and testing them out using a high power air pump. Celia had reserved an extra time slot during a period she knew no one was taking a class so she could test her experiments out in peace, but despite this she didn't know what she was doing.

“This isn’t working…” Celia mumbled beneath her arm.

“What are you even trying to test?” Alto asked.

“That’s the problem… I don’t know,” she admitted, “I don’t know the math and engineering behind how to launch a rocket; I can’t even tell what a successful launch even looks like…”

Alto tilted his head at her — a habit she started to notice that he had when confused.

“Are you not taking the Aerospace Engineering course?” he asked, “do they not offer it anymore at this school? I remember that Alaric petitioned really hard to keep the course as an option on the catalog, and unless you didn’t repair my memory drives correctly, I recall that he was successful in getting this school in particular to agree.”

“No, no, they do offer it here, it’s just that… I didn’t choose to take it,” she mumbled, “I mean… after all, there’s no point up until now… It’s not like I got any value out of taking the course since I can’t get a job out of it.”

“I see,” he nodded, “I guess that’s fair. It seems that Alaric and Amelie didn’t account for everything in their plan. They wanted to keep the Aerospace Engineering course available so that people could still learn how to make rockets, but it seems that they didn’t account for the fact that people might not be willing to take it.”

Celia sighed.

“Well, I could always take the course next year,” she said, “but we still have a few more months until the next school semester, so that’s going to be a while.”

“Or maybe you could enlist the help of a fellow engineer who is taking the course,” Alto suggested, “it might be risky exposing the idea to them, but if they’re taking the Aerospace Engineering course, maybe they have dreams of building a rocket as well.”

Another engineer huh? she wondered.

“I don’t think there’s anyone taking the Aerospace Engineer class right now though,” she said.

“Is there a way to check for sure?” Alto asked.

Celia shook her head. 

“Not that I know of. They don’t make what classes someone takes public information,” she explained, “but… I do suppose I can at least check what classroom and time a class would meet if it existed. Maybe we can intercept them there.”

She walks over to the computers in the room, and opens up a website that was linked to the school, and quickly browses through the catalog, looking for the Aerospace Engineer course. After a few minutes of searching, she pulled up the class list and looked at the time slots.

“13:00 to 14:15, Tuesday and Thursday classes…” she murmured as she read the only slot that appeared, “it says here that it’s a class taught by a drone, probably since there aren’t any professors here that specialize in that field.”

“13:00? Isn’t it 13:30 right now?”

Celia’s head flips over to the clock on the wall.

“Shoot, you’re right!” she shouted as she quickly began packing up her things, “where does it say the class takes place? Like what room number?”

Alto looks at the screen and reads out, “Room EGN 41.014”

“Oh, that means it’s in this building on the 41st floor,” she said, dumping the pile of crappy rockets into her backpack, “we only need to take the elevator up 10 floors from here.”

After she finished cleaning up her area, the two of them head to the elevator and take it up to the 41st floor. 

Upon looking around the hallway, Celia immediately noticed how quiet it was, as she realized what type of floor they were on.

“Wait,” she said to Alto, holding her hand out and blocking him from leaving the elevator, “this is a study hall. Only drones are allowed on the floors that are labelled as study halls because a few years ago some engineering student’s robot was making a lot of noise and it disrupted everyone’s class.”

“But… I am not noisy… am I?” Alto asked with a slightly offended tone.

“Uh.. yeah, sure,” she said, “but it’s a general rule now, so unfortunately you’ll have to wait somewhere else. I don’t know which other floors in the building are study halls, so just go back to the 31st floor and wait for me there ok?”

Alto nodded and pressed the button to go back down. As she was left alone, Celia began to feel empty again. It felt weird walking around the place without some sort of technology on her other than her Neurolink.

How do people even walk around without a support companion?  She wondered.

She swiftly moved through the hallway, checking every room number until she found what she was looking for.

There it is, room 41.014, she read the sign outside the door.

As she opened the door and entered the room, to her surprise she saw a single student sitting alone in the middle of the lecture hall.

It was an asian boy with fairly long wavy black hair with strands of caramel orange mixed in, tied back into a short ponytail. He wore a black hoodie and had his Neurolink attached on his left ear. Next to him, was his support drone, a spherical one just like the one she had, except it was seemingly all black and had a pair of cat ears at the top instead of raccoon ones.

When he heard her enter, he looked up at her in surprise. For a moment, she just stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do. The drone at the front of the classroom, continued to teach the lesson, completely ignoring Celia’s presence. On the screen, she saw a detailed model of a rocket and all its parts being labelled as the drone babbled words she didn’t understand.

Without even saying anything, the boy turned back to focus on the lesson, ignoring her as if she had never entered. Offended by this, she decided to call out to him.

“Uhm.. hello?” she called out, her tone a bit more uncertain and shaky than she had intended.

“Are you lost?” the boy asked, “or did your friends make a dare with you to come in here? Because as far as I know I’m the only one who takes this class.”

What is he talking about? she wondered, why is he so hostile?

“Uh… no actually, I’m here to ask you something” she clarified, wondering how she should go about explaining what she wanted to him, before deciding to just be direct, “do you, by any chance, want to build a rocket?”

“Well gee,” he said sarcastically, “I wonder if the person taking the Aerospace Engineering course wants to build a rocket. Look, I don’t know who you are, but if this is just some stupid prank can you just leave? Unlike certain people, I’m actually trying to learn something here, so stop wasting my time, or I’m reporting you to the dean.”

So he does want to build a rocket, she thought to herself, but he’s just being really mean about it… Do I even want to work with a guy like that? No, I have to… not just to save time, but I’m going to need all the help I can get if I want to accomplish my dream, even if it is just some crummy guy.

With a deep breath she clenched her fists and furrowed her brows.

The best way is to be direct about this.

“Look, I don’t know if you’re just having a bad day or what to be acting all crummy like this, but I’m serious with my offer!” she shouted, “my dream is to build a rocket and launch it to the moon! I want to break through the Tropodome and show the world just how awesome space can be. The problem with this is that I don’t know how to build a rocket, and I need someone on the team who’s able to do the math to build one, and that crummy person just so happens to be you! So whether or not I like it, it looks like I need to work with you if I want to do what I want to do, so now I’m asking you if you’re in it or not!”

The boy looks at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

Ok… perhaps I was a bit too mean there, but he started acting crappy first, she thought, I want this guy’s help, but there’s no way I’m going so far as to beg for it.

Finally the boy sighs.

“Is this some new kind of elaborate prank?” he asks, “because for a moment there, I almost believed you.”

Her face curled up in a fit of annoyance as she closed her eyes to try to calm herself down.

“I’m. Serious.” she says, her voice slightly shaking with pent up annoyance.

The boy looked her, and for a moment she saw a flash of light in his eyes as if he really, really wanted to believe her.

“Fine,” he finally says, “say I do join this little group of yours. What do you have to offer? You don’t even know the basics of building a rocket. How can you prove to me that you’re serious?”

Celia turns to leave

"Wait,” he called out, “You're right. I suppose I do need all the help I can get... fine… I’ll join your team. How many team members do we have so far?”

She pursed her lips as she sheepishly admitted, “well other than you and me, we have… one more…?”