SCIENCE COMPLEX
MARIE CURIE INVENTORS LAB
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6TH
3:04 P.M.
“Good morning, creators!” Dr. Irina Gorbachevsky, brilliant nanotechnologist and jolly Alpha Invention Mentor, shouted down from the top of the lab’s iridescent spiral staircase. Designed to mimic the shape of a strand of DNA, the staircase spun dramatically up through the center of the enormous lightbulb-shaped room. Like the building itself, the stairs were made entirely from recycled glass, and covered with holographic scientific formulas.
Dr. G pushed her bright green rectangular glasses up the bridge of her nose and smiled, locking her raisin-colored eyes with Charlie’s and flashing her favorite student a comforting smile. Dr. G was a pioneer in nanotechnology and string theory, and Charlie smiled back at her warmly. Then she put her hands on her laptop keyboard and readied her fingers to record any words of scientific wisdom Dr. G might have.
“Today,” Dr. G continued as she traveled bouncily down the spiral strand of DNA toward her protégées, patting her frizzy gray hair with one of her pudgy hands, “we’ll take a break on our own projects and do a brain-stimulating mini-invention session.”
The only brain stimulation Charlie had experienced since Darwin dropped her in the jungle was shocks of guilt, confusion, and loneliness. Charlie rolled up the sleeves of her platinum coveralls and spun around on her ergonomic lab stool, her body mimicking her thoughts. She pulled her chocolate brown hair up into a loose ponytail and glanced around the room, waiting for Dr. G to continue.
To the right of Charlie’s cubicle was the workstation of Yvette Chan, a spiky-haired cyber-punk obsessed with touch-screen technology, and to her left was Lydia Bjorgstrum, a half-Swedish food scientist who only spoke in monosyllables and worked 24/7 on developing cloning techniques for cuts of meat. The IM’s were friendly enough, and Charlie appreciated their passion and their drive, but she couldn’t pour her heart out to them. They were more interested in molecules and microscopes than meeting boys.
Charlie sighed and turned back to Dr. G, who had made her way to the invention floor and now stood under the etched-glass section of the lightbulb. It read: Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Charlie had read and reread the sentence, but right now her only dream was to be able to confide in Allie again. She was so confused—never before had she been less sure about her and Darwin. Too bad the only person she trusted enough to confide in about something this important liked him, too.
For Allie’s sake, Charlie wanted to get over Darwin. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t figure out how. She looked longingly at the lab’s LCD vending machine, where the IM’s could type in whatever tool or material they needed, and receive it instantly via delivery from robot lab assistants that looked like white plastic beetles. Charlie wished she could order up a little bit of clarity with a side of emotional glue to repair her breaking heart.
Dr. G yanked her lab coat down along her protuberant tummy and continued with the day’s assignment. “I want everyone to invent something small, simple, and streamlined. Something that will improve your life today, instead of changing civilization as we know it. Set your invention intentions first. Remember, sometimes aiming small produces huge results. Look at the Post-it Note!”
The Post-it Note was one of Dr. G’s favorite examples of modern-day success. Something as simple as small squares of paper had made billions of dollars, simply because someone added adhesive. Simple, elegant, effective, Dr. G liked to say.
Charlie wrinkled her nose, stood up and headed toward the LCD note board that covered a wall of her workstation. She put a writing thimble on her index finger and began to grope for inspiration.
Improve your life TODAY, she wrote, then ran her palm over the glowing script and erased the phrase. After a moment, the perfect name for her new invention came to her. It was only thing that could improve her life today, but it would be impossible to invent. Sighing, she wrote it down in big capital letters anyway: HEARTBREAK HELPER.
Charlie smiled at the shimmering board for a moment before heading over to her computer to do some research.
She Googled “what makes humans feel happy?” and eagerly read the first fifty hits that seemed to have research on their side. Why hadn’t she ever thought to approach her own happiness with the scientific methods she used in her studies?
In a few minutes, Charlie compiled a list of scientifically proven happiness helpers and hastily wrote them in bullet points on her invention board. After she crossed off everything that couldn’t be simulated, her list looked like this:
THINGS THAT INCREASE HAPPINESS:
—Smiling (fake smiling leads to real smiling!)
—Strong connections to community, friends, and family
—Sense of purpose
—Pets, houseplants (though there was that baby seal invented in Japan….)
—Exercise
—Nature
—Aromatherapy (tangerine!)
Tangerines and smiling. Charlie leaned forward on her lab stool and rested her chin in her palm to think. It wasn’t a lot to work with, but it was a start. Charlie opened up the 3–D rendering program on her laptop and began to sketch some ideas. A few minutes of aimless sketching ticked by, but the faces of Darwin and Allie still loomed more 3–D in Charlie’s mind than any invention.
Charlie rubbed her tired eyes with fisted hands. She was at a loss. How could she invent something to cure heartbreak when she was such an emotional wreck?
Beep!
A blinking box popped up on her laptop screen. It was Bee, wanting to IM from across the Atlantic in Oxford.
Bee: Hallo luv. How is my brilliant girl?
Charlie: OK…
Bee: Just OK?
Charlie didn’t want to explain the whole sordid story to her mother. After all, Bee had given up a thirteen-year career as Shira’s assistant so that Charlie could attend the Academy. The last thing Charlie wanted was for her mother to think she wasn’t serious about her education or that she was compromising her place at the Academy by stewing over Darwin. Besides, her IM window wasn’t big enough and her time wasn’t unlimited enough to even scratch the surface. So she settled on generic loneliness.
Charlie: Lonely. Miss you. Miss the way things used to be with Darwin.
Bee: In this world, you have to count on yourself for your own happiness. And lucky for you, you inherited your father’s talent with his hands.
Charlie: But what if that isn’t enough?
Bee: It has to be. You can’t depend on anything in life to always go your way, but your talent is yours forever. Make me proud.
Charlie: I will. Promise. Gotta run. Big kiss.
Charlie nibbled on her lower lip and twirled her three cameo bracelets around her wrists—the bracelets were the only things she owned that had belonged to her dad. One bracelet had a picture of Bee from 1980, when her mother looked a lot like Charlie did now. One had a picture of her father in his Royal Navy uniform. And the other cameo was empty. It used to have a picture of Darwin inside it, until Shira forced her to hand it over as a condition of acceptance into the Academy.
Ignoring the crash of a shattered tray of beakers one of the IM’s dropped somewhere behind her, Charlie ran her finger along the ivory cameos, desperate for an idea. She looked over her shoulder at her notes on the board. Smiling… tangerine… smiling… tangerine.
Suddenly, a lightbulb went off. She had it.
Charlie raced over to the LCD vending machine and punched in the components she needed. A few minutes later, a shiny white lab robot that looked like an ottoman on wheels sped up to her cubicle with all the materials: an oscillating fan, which she would repurpose as an aromatherapy delivery device, and a series of pulleys that Charlie hoped would get a user to smile.
An hour later, Charlie set down her soldering iron and looked up at the clock. She had only a few minutes to test her device. She sat down and put her head through the hole in the helmet she’d rigged up as part of her Heartbreak Helper.
Two tiny plastic prongs pushed Charlie’s lips—which had been set in frown mode for so long that they seemed to have lead weights on their corners—into a forced-yet-comfortable smile. Then her own recorded voice said “please close your eyes” and a light mist of tangerine essence filled her nostrils.
Charlie felt ridiculous under her Heartbreak Helper helmet, but after twenty seconds of forced smiling and sniffing tangerines, she had to giggle at the silliness of her synthetic happiness producer. And giggling made her feel… happy. Which meant the helmet actually worked! For a few minutes, at least.
When she pulled the Heartbreak Helper off, Charlie did an emotional assessment. She felt a tiny bit less panicked, less miserable, and ever-so-slightly more hopeful that things would be okay, that she would survive this glitch with Darwin and maybe even be a better person for it. Which led her to consider Allie. Post-helmet, Charlie decided that even the Allie question would resolve itself somehow. Allie wouldn’t—couldn’t!—hate Charlie again. Not after everything they’d been through together. Maybe Charlie would manage to make Bee proud after all, even from the middle of the most lopsided love triangle in history.
Charlie stood up and smoothed out her platinum coveralls and a faint smile spread over her lips, no helmet required.