The Folly of Genius

The workshop odor increased as Yumi made her way down deeper into the house. ‘I’m a little surprised that they dug this deep into the earth for this. They went through a lot of effort. Were they trying to use the ground as a sound damper?’ Karen and the Boy were wanting to keep Sumiko a secret and making a lot of noise in the center of the town would have gotten a lot of attention.

When she came to the final door, it had a significantly less complex design to it. Perhaps because the secret door before was supposed to be the security and if one passed that there was no more point to trying to do anything more. Or maybe it said something about Sumiko instead. Yumi was split on the reasoning, but she pocketed into her thoughts for her confrontation to come.

A basic door with a simple hinge, not even sliding, gave to her hand’s push. She only needed a little force to get it started. Judging from the feel of the surface and weight that she felt on the push back she could tell that it was re-enforced. Likely it was meant to keep the rest of the upper room protected from everything coming out of the shop, though it seemed to be failing at that job.

Her opinion on its failure changed when her nose came under a renewed assault from the burnt materials that hung in the air. It made her gag a little not expecting it to be even worse at the heart. ‘How the hell does she get any work done in here like this?’ The air was thick with the fumes making even walking feel like going through a mist. She might have to change her statement on the health of this sort of life.

She however didn’t immediately find Sumiko as she opened the door. A quick scan of the workshop didn’t reveal the woman, but there were walls of equipment filling out the chamber. Judging the size of the room was nearly impossible from the angle that she had. Everything that she saw above made it clear that she had a large space to work.

Yumi poked around quickly fighting with her eyes stinging in the mist. It almost seemed like there was no one in the room, but those two wouldn’t have acted the way that they did if that was the case. “Su—!” Her throat closed up on her quickly, giving her a surprise and start. She had to cough to try to clear it out and let her breath normally, which she immediately regretted as a heavy dose of the mist entered her lungs.

The near toxic concentration made her press a hand to the bench of one of the work stations needing to recover. “D-Damn-it…” Her body started to adjust to it with time as it wasn’t so potent against her. ‘I’m glad this isn’t real or I’d fear for the lasting effects this’ll have on my body…’

Once she adapted enough to the environment, she started her search for the woman and the corner that she hid herself in. ‘Where are you in here? I figured I’d hear you working, but it’s quiet…unless it’s just that big…’ Finding her suddenly became something that started to worry her. She had no idea how large the shop was and her wondering only proved to her so far that it was getting larger by the minute. ‘What the hell did they do? Give her the whole research lab? It’s kinda amazing that they found this much working equipment. For someone that’s hiding doing nothing useful, she’s awfully well set up…’

Sumiko’s workshop turned out to be deceptively difficult to navigate. They didn’t build it as a large rectangular room as she would have thought. Her mental mapping didn’t give her a good image, but it felt like it was like a snake with the whole room just made up of a series of hallways, which seemed like a strange design. Walls of equipment only made it more difficult to get an accurate judge of the space.

“Damnit…what’s the point…of all of this…”

“To reflect on the world,” replied a distant voice.

Yumi snapped quickly to find the source. She could see a figure finally around the corner near the end of the long winding room seated amongst a pile of scraps poking with a magnetic alignment tool at some non-polarized cables. “Sumiko…”

Chapter 496 – The Folly of Genius

She put down the tool and leaned back against the wall. Seeing her face clearly, it was covered in dust and grime. For someone doing nothing, she kept very busy. “Figured you’d eventually come.”

“Of course I would! You’re the reason I’m here!” Yumi took a few more steps forward, not trying to get too close if she got defensive about her space. ‘Not going to tell her that I’ve been avoiding this day for a year…’

“Let me guess. My mind is too brilliant to waste? Or perhaps maybe you can’t stay cooped up here forever? The people will forget in time? That something like what you were going to say?” Sumiko glared back at Yumi with eyes that told her that she was in the wrong place. She made no effort to hide what she was thinking. She wanted her to leave immediately. She didn’t understand and it was a futile effort that she made. She didn’t want to listen to another clueless idiot.

Yumi rejected the offer to leave and grabbed up a metal box that served well enough to stand on its side length-wise up for her to have something to sit upon. She met with Sumiko’s eyes directly, not turning away. “I’m not like them.”

Sumiko shied away seeing that Yumi refused to step down. She started poking at the cable again pretending that she preferred to focus on that rather than listen to Yumi. “No, I suppose you’re not.”

“I’m guessing you think that I don’t know what’s going on.”

“You haven’t a clue.”

‘True, I haven’t pieced it all completely together, but I’ve got a pretty good start to what’s going on.’ Yumi grabbed up a plate that got removed from some wall within the Ark and grabbed the atomic stripper that was next to her. “Why don’t you try me? I might just surprise you.”

“You don’t even know me. Someone that stole away and showed up at the end. You’re just stealing glory and riding on others' success.”

“I know that you’re not like this normally. You’re not the sort that gets defeated even when you fail. I know that you failed to get any of the funding needed for the Ark and the wormhole tech. Even your own mother rejected you when she should have been the one to support you. But that didn’t stop you.”

“I didn’t know when it was smart to quit.”

“No you didn’t, because of that you did everything stupid that no one would have. In the face of global threat you didn’t give up.”

“I thought you said you weren’t like them. You’re starting to sound very familiar.”

“Just making a point. Strange as it’ll sound, I know you very well for having only worked with you briefly.”

“Great, I have a stalker. I don’t know why I even let you help. You should have been locked up.”

“But you saw something in me that could help you. You didn’t care about rules, you never did. Rules slow things down.”

“I’m starting to get that urge to remove you from my sight.”

‘Touchy…she’s worse than I guessed.’ Yumi pushed too far into one direction. She wanted to be careful and not repeat things again, but she had to progress as well. Everything from before would have been empty words if she retreated now. “I’m just saying it made me ask myself what happened to this woman that changed her so much. When I woke up I half expected to see you standing there limbs missing completely working like it was another day. Then I find that you were claiming to be dead.”

“Their idea.”

“I know. For a while I didn’t really understand it myself. Between all of the crises that still popped up and my own fear of facing you, I just ignored the problem. I was willing to accept that you were dead.”

“So just keep doing that. The world’s not going to care about you trying to come down here and drag me out.”

“No, I suspect not. In fact, dragging out you probably only make things worse right now. They might have found a solution on their own to stop blaming you, but emotions like that don’t fade away that easily. It’s going to be some time before they’re able to look at you and not want to punch you.”

“So stop trying.”

The layers of the plate were completely scrapped clean. Ignoring the mist at the moment, it was probably the cleanest and most sanitary thing in the room. Yumi could eat off it, had she wanted to be so bold. She put it down on the floor with the stripper set back on the bench table. Standing up, she paced about a little feeling like she was intruding if she kept working on things when it wasn’t her shop. “Because I also don’t know how to listen to people that are probably right. You know somewhere along the way of all of this I looked up to you.”

“You need a better role model.”

“No, I’m serious. Seeing what you had, I wanted it. You were smart and clever, you saw better in people than you probably should, naivety that shouldn’t exist in an adult and the charisma to have people follow you. You had it all.”

“And now reality hits you that your idol isn’t perfect.”

“No one is, though we still try to be. But that wasn’t you. You’re an oddity, but one that shines brightly.” Yumi stopped on the left side, rubbing her finger over the surface of the station. “I’m not sure where it happened, but I stopped trying to just learn enough and I wanted to be you and then surpass you. You were always so far ahead, nothing I did ever managed to compare. You’re quite frustrating in that respect.”

“You’re a strange stalker.”

“I’m not a stalker! I don’t think, anyway…” Yumi had to think about it for a moment. All of the obsessive things that she did and the details that she knew about Sumiko outside of her context might be a hard case to win. “That’s not the point anyway. Following in your footsteps as I did and my own journey that I took I had to deal with my own things. Thanks to them, I can see what’s going on here.”

“Making those claims again.”

Yumi walked over to a pile that Sumiko salvaged and dumped. She picked up a broken convertor. “You can fix this in two minutes.”

“Probably four, stripping out the fried bio-components to replace the filter would—“

“You still think with the same mind you have. You haven’t abandoned it. You can’t run away from that part, even if you’re running away from everything else.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“That scrap pile you have upstairs covering your home that you ignore does. They don’t have the heart to throw it out like you order them and keep hoping that you’ll fix them again, because they know that they can’t and they can’t send them my way either.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is what the hell are you so afraid of that you destroy everything that you make once it’s finished?”

Sumiko pulled the tool close to her palm as she gripped it tightly, interrupting her work. “I’m not afraid! Leave right now!”

“You only want me to leave because you know I’m right. You’re afraid, just like I was, though you’ve got different reasons. Failure never hit before, you always ignored it, so what was it this time? Because people died for your mistake? Is that it?”

The alone woman jumped up quickly, pointing the end of the magnetic alignment at Yumi. “You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Yumi stepped forward, having finally made the progress that she wanted to see. Her eyes narrowed in determination as she focused on Sumiko letting her see the personal pain that went through. “No, I do know that pain. My past is more checkered than you realize. I understand that doubt and uncertainty that follow.”

She slid a foot back only to find that she was already in the corner that she knew herself to be in. There was no escaping the advancing Yumi. It came through clearly to Sumiko that it wasn’t something Yumi lied about. Her eyes spoke to her in ways that her words left blank. “Then why are you standing here?”

“Because I learned that I had to get back up on my feet. That my mistakes don’t define me, no matter how terrible they are. They are a part of me, but they no longer control me. You’re better than this, better than me.”

The wall started to collapse around Sumiko as her body couldn’t support her. She fell back needing to rest against the bench before she fell into the pile of salvage. “You’re right that I’ve seen a lot of failure, but there’s two sorts of failure. Ones that others create for you and ones that you create yourself. I failed repeatedly in my life, but never did I fail myself. I’ve always been able to find a solution, find the answer, it might be a little hard, but I found it. I knew the same would be with the Ark. When I activated the engine I knew it would work, because I never failed. But it did and humanity is almost gone because of what I did. If I hadn’t been focused on the engine, maybe there could have been another solution that I didn’t see.”

“If I know anything, ‘what ifs’ aren’t a healthy mindset. You made a mistake, we don’t know what might have happened if you did something different. This is the result and they might hate you right now, but you can’t be afraid of failing again because you just learned that you’re not perfect.”

“But there might come another time that with everything I know that I can’t succeed and more die.”

“Yes, that can and probably will happen again, but you love making things and solving puzzles. That’s why you can’t stop working even though you can’t stand seeing your work finished.” Yumi extended a hand out to Sumiko to take her out from her prison and hopefully taste some fresh air.

Hesitation still filled Sumiko as she stared long at Yumi’s hand not taking it. However, she didn’t pull it away after Sumiko didn’t act immediately. She waited for her in a way that felt a little forceful in the ways that Karen and Susumu were, yet understanding feeling like they were parts of a whole. Sumiko slowly stretched her hand out overcoming the pull of her fear on her.

Clasped together, Yumi pulled Sumiko letting her stand back up and guide her towards the door. Things were finally at the end. They started to walk side by side through the workshop. “How long did it take you to make that replacement reactor?”

“Two days…”

“Damnit!” The world began to fade away with the resolution of the story and a return of everyone back to the void. Yumi had to cut her emotions short as she looked around for their overseer once more. “We’re back again…what’s going to be the next world?”