On the Heights (Part 4)

For our remaining two days on the GPSS, I gave up trying to force a confession. Even if I didn’t believe in astrology or superstition, the coincidence factor in all three foiled attempts forced me to acknowledge that some invisible force had set its will against me. Until Nelle and I were away from the others, I expected untimely interference would be inevitable as the laws of physics.

In other words, it was a temporary tactical retreat rather than full-on surrender.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

So it was with some relief that I waved farewell to Elliso, Mav, Pera, and Deji at the planetside terminal at the space elevator’s base. Nelle, freed from her crutches, waved next to me in her traveling disguise. Unwilling to take the same risk on the way down as I had going up, especially considering the universe’s current disposition toward me, I’d tucked my hair into a dark gray cap.

“Now,” Nelle said as our friends disappeared into the sea of people. “The real vacation begins.”

“Does a trip where you’re going to be staring at graphs and data streams count as a vacation?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Nelle said. We began moving away from the luggage claim towards the overseas hypertrain station that would take us to the island nation where the wind farm was located. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who thinks any form of intellectual stimulation is work.”

“Even if I was, it wouldn’t invalidate my point.”

“Then we’re going to have to define what ‘vacation’ really means.”

“You want to reconstruct the concept of a vacation from first principles?”

“You’re the one who started it,” Nelle said, gesturing toward the wide tunnel we took next. “All I was saying was that I’m excited.”

Although I had no idea how I was going to manage a confession on what anyone besides the experiment-obsessed Nelle would call a “working vacation,” it was a sentiment I shared.

Several hours later, I poked Nelle awake as the hypertrain’s display boards flashed the five-letter code indicating our exit. We’d been watching a documentary on twentieth-century magnetism research that had lulled her to sleep and, disappointingly, caused her to fall against the wall—instead of in my direction.

We stepped off the train, passing through the arrivals terminal and watching the codes on our digiticks shuffle themselves from NHTKY, our departure station’s designator, to NZWLG, where we’d just arrived. Before my tired eyes, the last four letters blurred together, the N the only constant.

It was likely just travel exhaustion, but I swore I saw an E-L-L-E emerge multiple times before the codes settled into place.

A technician from the wind farm greeted us, loading our luggage into a charmingly old-tech white truck before inviting us into the cramped cabin. I sat between him and Nelle, half-listening to the excited questions Nelle peppered at him and his detailed responses as, despite everything, I fell asleep.

I didn’t know how long it had been when I awoke with a start as the truck bumped to a gentle stop. Out the windshield, I saw a building covered by metal siding at an unusual angle. I blinked once, then realized it wasn’t just the building, but the entire truck that was weirdly angled.

“Can’t believe the lad managed to fall asleep like that,” I heard the technician say to the sound of an opening door. “Woulda given me a nasty crick in the neck, and I’m a head shorter at least. He your boyfriend, miss?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that question,” came Nelle’s voice, alarmingly close to the top of my head.

“…!”

I snapped upright, the word boyfriend sparking in my brain as realization struck.

The technician’s door clanged shut, leaving me alone with the girl on whose shoulder I’d just been sleeping.

“Oh,” Nelle said, not sounding at all surprised. “You’re awake.”

I looked at her, feeling both my suddenly pounding heart and alarmingly hot face with intensity.

“Vacation time!” she chirped. She opened the door and hopped out, leaving me alone with my thoughts zipping about like electrons.

A minute later, I’d calmed down enough to exit the truck after her. As I emerged, a crisp wind blew into my face and, for the first time in a while, I found myself transfixed by something I had never seen before.

From the gravel parking lot, I could see that we were on a high hill surrounded by many others. To the west, on the other side of the building I’d woken up to, the ocean dazzled with the clear sky’s bright sun. And, towering everywhere above the green fields of tall grass that covered the hills, countless giant wind turbines spun with stately authority in the air.

I walked a few steps forward, hearing the crunch of the stone beneath my shoes, and pulled off my hat to let the wind toss my hair into my eyes and then sweep it to the side, out of my vision. High above the turbines, scattered fluffy clouds overlapped piercing blue. After the confinement of the GPSS, I felt almost dizzy with the freedom of my feet on the ground and the atmosphere so far above.

“Quite the view, no?” an unfamiliar voice said behind me.

I turned to see a tall, dark auburn-haired woman in a blazer approaching the truck bed, where the technician was removing my bag. Next to him, Nelle pulled her attention down from the turbines, removing her own hat as she looked at the ID badge clipped to the woman’s breast pocket.

“Dr. Kamrin?”

“And you must be the princess,” the wind farm director, whose name Nelle had told me when we’d been planning for the trip, said, extending a hand.

Nelle took it, shaking firmly.

“You don’t need to use my title. I’m here as a student, that’s all.”

“Very well, Miss Rondar. And this is–oh!” Dr. Kamrin said as I approached. “ Your ambassador. We’re not used to welcoming such distinguished persons to our humble facility, but I hope you’ll enjoy your time here, Mr. Sessa.”

“Annin, please,” I said, shaking her hand and trying to channel as much of the old, adult-charming intonation as I had left. “Like Nelle, I’m only visiting as a student. Actually, I’m even less significant than she is here.”

“Why’s that?” the director asked as we picked up our bags, thanked the technician, and followed her toward the farm’s main building.

“I’m only an honorary member of the Experimentation and Analysis Club.”

We spent the rest of the day touring the wind farm, including the installation site for the mini turbine that had been sent ahead from the school’s engineering department and a monitoring room filled with so many data outputs that my head spun.

Nelle was in her element. She had questions about everything from electrical storage capacities of different battery types to the types of sensors used in the turbines. When Dr. Kamrin made an offhanded remark that wind farm’s presence had caused a unique microclimate to develop, I thought she might explode from her inability to get all her queries out at once.

“Enough new knowledge for one day?” I asked as we walked back to the visitor’s lodge after eating dinner with Dr. Kamrin and the rest of the monitoring team.

“How can you ask such a thing?” she said in mock shock. “Knowledge is the foundation of progress!”

“The only type of progress I’m interested in right now is progressing toward my bed.”

Well, that and romantic progress, but something about this place had caused the impatience that had plagued me in space to settle. Maybe it was that sense of freedom again, or maybe it was just that being alone with Nelle like this felt so natural that something as dramatic as a confession of love seemed almost unneeded.

“That’s not very EAC clubbie of you.”

“I’m not falling for that again,” I said. “And a real scientist would know the importance of proper rest. Maybe you should run an experiment on the effects of lack of sleep on mental processing.”

“Are you saying I seem stupider right now?”

I rolled my eyes at the mock outrage she directed at me, but the easy exchange in the late evening air had put something warm into my chest.

Just because the confession seemed unneeded didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do it. It just meant that I’d finally realized that I could afford to wait for the right moment.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Don’t dodge the question.”

“Do you want me to say you seem stupider? I’ll do it, you know.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“Then let’s say you’re the first data point in my sleep deprivation study.”

“How are you quantifying that? You don’t even know how much I’ve slept in the last week.”

“It’s qualitative data. Observational.”

“Your methodology seems suspect.”

“Nelle.”

I paused with my hand on the door to my room. Our argument had brought through the lodge’s door, up the rustic staircase, and down the hall. Nelle stopped on her way to her own room, the electric candle-like lights of the chandelier that hung from the ceiling above the stairs flicking tongues of illumination and shadow between us.

“What?” she said.

“Tomorrow.”

She huffed an exaggerated sigh.

“We’ve got the final installation of the turbine right after breakfast, then testing, then monitoring until lunch and afterwards. Didn’t you look at the agenda?”

“I did. I’m just wondering when we’re going to have some free time. You’re not just going to stare at monitors the whole testing period, right?”

“Free time…?”

Nelle gave me a puzzled look. If I hadn’t been trying to make a point, I might have playfully noted her confusion as a sign that her mental faculties had been eroded by lack of sleep, despite the fact that I knew she was simply caught up in her excitement.

Still, I thought there was a chance she might be at least a little interested in my proposal.

“You know,” I said. “It’s really pretty here. Might be nice to take a hike, and talk about stuff. Just the two of us.”

For a moment, her expression remained perplexed. I wondered if, despite the fact that Elliso and the others weren’t here, the universe was still eager to show that it owned me. Then, in the flickering lights, I saw the same sparkle I’d seen in the GPSS observation zone appear in her eyes.

The smile she gave me was just as beautiful as the view I’d seen when I’d gotten out of the truck.

No, it was even prettier.

“That,” she said. “Is something I think I’d like.”