The Source of Progress

Today, May’s room truly looked like that of a lunatic. She couldn’t help but chuckle as she studied her handiwork.

The walls and her desk and the floor were plastered with papers depicting hand-drawn spirals of all different kinds. Some might have thought she was trying to invoke some kind of eldritch being to help her cause—and at this point, she may not even reject that, were it to come her way—but that was far from her intent.

Her laptop sat open on the desk, showing that same map from a few weeks ago. This time, it showed several more points than last time. Each of them was an extirpation, though they strayed far from the city now.

If her model was anything to go on, which she doubted it was, the extirpations would start to turn back toward the city someday soon.

Extirpations back in the city, she thought.

The image of her father, twisting and bending in the breaking light of the extirpation… His distorted voice calling out to her… His foot… and all that blood…

She gagged, silently thanking the universe that she’d skipped breakfast, and shook out her hands at her sides to try and relieve the strange tingling consuming them.

“Um… are you okay?” came Alice’s voice.

May snapped upright, the anxiety and nausea beaten back by her sister’s voice and her own startlement—she’d completely missed her sister’s entering her room as she was absorbed in her memory.

“Mm,” she mumbled, clearing her throat and straightening upright. “Yeah. I’m good.”

She nodded, but her face hovered between concern and apathy. “Dad told me to ask when you ate last.”

“Yesterday, I think. I had some crackers.”

“You’re super skinny,” she said, sounding disparaging despite her youth and usual sincere demeanor. “Dad said to eat.”

May nodded. “I will—”

The door closed, cutting her off.

May sighed, sitting on her bed. “Even Alice hates me.” She lay back on the bed, sprawling out backward. “Why did I even do that?” She placed her hands over her eyes, squishing her face.

To say she wasn’t proud of what she had done… It would be a betrayal of words themselves to say that. She recalled the pit she’d felt in her stomach. The void. She felt it even now, absorbing and destroying her hope.

It ached still. She vividly recalled everything about that day, from Bianca leaving, to her running into the extirpation. She hadn’t wanted to die. At least, the idea that she could have died didn’t even cross her mind.

It just felt good watching her father chase after her.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes. They’d become teary without her realizing.

What a stupid point of view, she thought. Of course her father still cared. She had been selfish. And now, on account of her, and her stupidity, he was hurt. Crippled.

She clenched her jaw. What right do I have to be perfectly okay, when he’s… When I did that to him? She looked at her research all over the room. How could someone like me figure anything out, anyway?

May looked down at her own legs. At her hands and body. All intact, and completely healed of the few scrapes and bruises she’d sustained as she was saved by her father. He was a hero. She was nothing. And there was nothing she could do.

Her eyes turned up to her desk. To the photo sitting on it. She took it into her hand and flipped it over. She wasn’t quite sure what prompted it, but she opened the back of the frame, drawing the photo from it. It was fraying at the edges, degrading from all the times she’d picked it up to look at it as a child.

It was still a sweet memory. But this couldn’t fix what she’d done. Nothing could.

She found herself staring at her mother’s face. A handful of surviving memories played in her mind: her mother sitting with her, watching a documentary about the brain; she and her father playing in the park, while her mother sat on a bench, working away on her laptop, only looking up once in a while to smile thinly at them. These memories were the closest she got to affection. But it was the things she said that really stuck with May until now.

Well, one thing, in particular.

It was a cold day. In winter. Snow littered the ground outside, though it was little more than a dusting, coating the grass and fallen leaves in a fine pale frost—the kind that crunched and cracked with every step. She and her mother sat together at the table. They pored over one of May’s earliest assignments she could recall. Something math-related. Perhaps multiplication tables.

“Now, what do you think the answer here is?” her mother had asked.

“Um… I don’t know.”

“You do.”

“No, I don’t!” May had placed her pencil on the table then.

“Please, try, May.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“You want to avoid being wrong?”

May had simply nodded.

“But the point isn’t to be right, May. Though you might think it is.” Her mother picked up the pencil, placing it back in her hand. “Progress comes from trying, not knowing. There is no merit to knowing. This is why my job exists. Science, like learning, is the pursuit, not the prize.”

May forgot the rest of the conversation. At the time, she understood little of what her mother had said—it had happened when she was just nine. But she did recall that that little speech her mother had given had rallied her to blitz through the rest of the assignment, trying and failing until she succeeded with her mother’s help.

She placed the photo back into its frame and closed it. She picked up her notebook and laptop.

Maybe those words were enough. That memory. After all, the progress is in the trying, right, Mom? she thought.

———

May’s heart pounded in her chest, though she couldn’t quite discern why. She clutched her red-covered notebook and her laptop tight to her chest. The binding dug into her skin even through her shirt, and she could feel it leaving a mark from how tightly she pressed it to her, as though a phantom might come to steal it away.

She could hear her father speaking through the door of his office. Her mother’s voice echoed through it once in a while, too. I guess they’re on call? she thought.

Her hands felt wet against the cold case of her computer. As she rubbed one of them on her leg, and then the other, the door to her father’s office opened.

He stood there, eyeing her. Notably, he had no crutch—he just leaned on the wall for support, hopping on one foot. “May!” he said, surprised.

She jumped to attention, nearly dropping her things from her hands. “Uh, hi, Dad!” She scratched her head reflexively, almost dropping her things again. “I, um, I had something I wanted to show you.”

“I’m glad to see you out of your room.” He smiled warmly. “Help me to the bathroom quickly and I’ll take a look.”

She nodded, placing her things aside on the small table in the room outside his office. With her help, he hopped over to the bathroom door. With every step, his stump kicked back and forth to let him keep balance. The nothingness in her stomach intensified with each passing movement, forcing her to clench her jaw tight.

But at last, they reached the bathroom door, and the swaying motion stopped.

“Thanks, May.” He pecked a kiss on her forehead, using the door frame to hold himself as he entered.

A short while later, he reemerged. May was sitting patiently at the kitchen table, and after helping him back to his office and into his chair, she grabbed her things and sat on the floor across from him.

“So, what’s up?” he asked, facing her.

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m surprised you’re so… I don’t know, calm.”

He shrugged. “I feel the same. What’s up, though, May? I gotta get back to doing some work pretty soon.”

May sat in silence for a time. She wasn’t sure if it was the uncertainty she felt, or if it was the pleasure of being seen that she basked in. Probably both. Eventually, she stood up, though, opening her laptop.

“I’ve been following the trends on th’map,” she said, hurriedly trying to provide some exposition. “Thismap shows h’they’ve moved ov’r thepasfewmonths.”

“Hold on,” Ken said, holding up a hand. “What is this? Slow down. Breathe.”

She nodded, closing her eyes. “This map shows how they’ve moved over the past few months,” she tried again, completely enunciating everything this time—and, satisfied with her performance this time, she reopened her eyes. “The extirpations.”

Ken nodded, gesturing for her to continue.

“Well, I noticed something strange.” She took from her notebook a circular cutout she’d made out of one of its sheets, placing it over the center of the screen. “See this?” She traced the expanding spiral of points leading from the edge of the paper circle. “It makes a spiral. There’s some kind of pattern to where they appear.”

Ken studied it now, brows low over his eyes as he considered it. After a while, he leaned back in his chair, pulling his leg with the missing foot up over his other one, so it was parallel with the floor. He idly rubbed at the stumpy end with one hand, and his chin with the other. “First, that would be an amazing finding. Awesome job.”

May beamed at him

“Two problems I see with it, though: first,” he continued, scooting forward, “even with this paper circle covering the earlier points, the head of the spiral doesn’t come back out wide enough to go around the tail.” He traced it, running his hand over the paper and inside the start of the spiral to illustrate.

May nodded. She’d seen that too.

“To me, with that it mind, it looks more like some kind of oblong orbit.” He scratched the side of his face. “But the area by the apoapsis is too broad for that.” He looked at her face, checking for understanding. She feigned it masterfully, by her estimation, filing away the word “apoapsis” as something she’d have to look at later. She nodded, urging him to continue.

“The other problem is here.” He pushed away her hand holding the paper, and it slid down her laptop’s screen. “None of these points obey the trend, really. They’re fairly randomly distributed, especially around when they started.” Ken wheeled his chair back to where it’d been originally, leaning against the back of it. “I mean, it’s not impossible that structure would emerge, but… we’d probably need more data.”

May pressed her mouth tight together, nodding. “So, you don’t think there’s anything here?” Her stomach sank back down, the excitement fading away.

He studied her face. Maybe she wasn’t hiding her feelings quite as well as she’d thought.

“There very well might be. But there’s not enough there to know for certain.” He looked at the map again. “Outside thinking about its validity, why were you looking at that in the first place?”

“Oh, um… No reason in particular, I guess.”

Ken nodded, smiling. “You’re like your mother in that regard, then. Keep an eye on it.”

May nodded back, a slight smile touching her lips as well. “I will.”

“Is that everything?”

“...Yeah.”

“Alright. I’m gonna jump back on a call with your mother. We have some more work to do.” He looked around. “You’re free to stay, if you like, but I don’t have anywhere for you to sit, really. We’ll also probably be quite distracting.”

She paused, considering it. “...No, that’s alright. I’m gonna head back upstairs.”

Her father nodded, turning to his own setup. “Let me know if you find anything good.” He glanced at her, flashing a smile.

She nodded her affirmation one final time, then slithered through the door, closing it behind her.

She had known her theory wasn’t the strongest. But that didn’t matter. It was her first real, true theory that might bear some kind of fruit. And that was the point, wasn’t it? After all, the science was in the pursuit—in the trying. And seeing her father’s courage in the face of what she’d done to him, and remembering her mother, stoic, calm, but thoughtful, she’d realized: she still had some “trying” left inside her.