Chapter 14

JACK

Welcome to your first suit-up. This is the clean room at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, or SAF,” I explain as I join Rooney outside the doors of the gowning room. After a couple of weeks of orientations and trainings, Rooney finally gets to experience what we do here.

We’re both covered head to toe in white bunny suits. She pulls at the protective thin material. “Think NASA will let me keep one? You know, as a memento?”

“I can’t endorse that,” I say. “We wear these to help minimize pollutants and airborne particles in this room. Dust, hair, fragrances, body oils. All of these things run the risk of contaminating the spacecrafts and potentially the environment we’re trying to study in space.”

“Isn’t that what the air shower was for?” Rooney asks, tucking her red sketchbook under her arm. “Because that was life-changing.”

“Exactly. It’s the last chance to get dirt, hair, and any remaining debris off before entering the clean room. Sometimes after, I feel cleaner than if I had showered with water,” I admit.

“What brand of air shampoo do you use?” she asks with a smirk.

“I prefer the one that makes the air body wash–shampoo combo. It saves time.” The joke slips out before I fully process our conversation. This is absolutely not the place for jokes.

“We’re cleaner than surgeons before they operate,” she continues. “It makes you wonder why doctors don’t have air showers, doesn’t it?”

I resist the urge to joke again.

“We have to do everything we can to avoid system and instrument failures,” I explain. “It’s very serious.”

“That would be so typically human of us to bring bacteria from Earth to another planet,” she says bleakly.

I cast a sideways glance at her, slightly amused. “Here we build and test most of our robotic spacecrafts. High Bay 1 is JPL’s largest clean room. It’s about eighty feet by one hundred and twenty feet. Forty-four feet high. I’ll be showing you around.”

Rooney rubs her gloved hands together. “Will I get to touch a spacecraft?”

“No.”

“One of the FATE gas stations?” she asks.

I shake my head. “Unfortunately not. But you can touch it with your eyes.”

“That’s my favorite way to feel,” she says sarcastically.

I watch her explore the all-white, warehouse-size space. Her gaze passes over the equipment, the Wall of Fame with images of previous missions, and the silver film spread over machinery and objects in the room to prevent contamination and transmission of electric charges.

“Can I do one of my installations in here? This space is incredible,” she asks.

I snort. “Dusty, the contamination control engineer who manages the clean room, would never allow it.”

“Wait. The guy who manages this place, his name is Dusty?” Rooney asks. “That’s perfect.”

“It’s actually Dustin. He prefers Dusty, though,” I clarify. “He thinks it’s pretty funny, too.”

“What do those vents up there do?” she asks, pointing toward the far end of the room.

“The air is kept clean by a special ventilation system. Clean air blows in from there, and the old air is sucked out and processed through filters before being blown back.”

“Forget nature. This is the cleanest air I’ll probably ever breathe.” Rooney deeply inhales. “Yeah. That’s good stuff. My New York City–born-and-bred lungs can’t handle such pure air. Can we pollute the air a little? I don’t want my lungs getting too comfortable.”

I smile. “Sure, no problem. I’ll sabotage the missions for you. Grab some soil from the Mars Yard. Throw it into the air. Dusty will kill me, but it’s worth it if it means saving you.” I catch myself, as though even the slightest impure thought might contaminate the area.

Rooney places her gloved hand on my upper arm. “That’s the most romantic gesture anyone’s ever offered me.”

“Here. Let me help you with your grounding strap,” I say, noticing she’s not wearing it. Rooney steps closer to me and holds her wrist out. I pull back her sleeve until I find skin. I fumble with the coiled cord, wrapping the wristlet around her arm.

“That’s not too tight?” I ask.

“Just right,” she says quietly. With her hair under a hood and the face mask covering the lower half of her face, her eyes are all I can see. When framed by white cloth and without bangs falling over them, they look like a richer shade of honey. Dark amber.

I hold her eyes for a few more seconds.

“Is that it?” she asks.

I pull my gloved hand away from her wrist. “Yeah. Yes. We, uh, we clip this end to the hardware when we’re working on it. This is to prevent the buildup of static electricity. We can’t risk damaging these spacecraft electronics with an electric shock.”

Rooney confidently gestures toward the others in the room and calls out, “You’re all unsung heroes. Without you, this room, your brains, and these little black wrist cords, astronauts would go nowhere.” They laugh.

Everyone in here today has signed NDAs so that Rooney can ask them questions. If there’s anything I’ve noticed about her so far, it’s that she’s observational. Rooney notices something unremarkable about a place and expands upon it, providing a new perspective. No wonder she’s a great artist.

Dusty approaches us with a clipboard in hand. I estimate that he’s in his mid-sixties. He’s clean-shaven and detail-oriented, which I’ve always appreciated. He’s also worked his way up at NASA, which is an inspiration in and of itself. He’s been here longer than I’ve been alive.

“Welcome, Rooney,” Dusty says before introducing himself. “If you have questions I can answer about the clean room, I’ll be around.”

“Actually, I do have a question,” Rooney says, smiling sweetly and pointing to me. “He won’t let me touch anything in here. Do you have the power to do something about that?”

I cough out a small laugh.

“No coughing! I’ll apologize for him, Dusty,” Rooney says, patting my back.

“Your DNA is getting all over,” Dusty says dramatically. “We can’t risk little Jacksons popping up on Mars.”

Rooney laughs hard at this.

Dusty chuckles, too. “But no, I’m afraid you’ll have to blame me for that one,” he says, answering Rooney’s original question. “I assure you we’re excited to have you here. I’m personally a big art fan, so this was happy news about the Artist-in-Residence program coming back. Have you been enjoying the area?”

“So far I’ve only visited the Norton Simon Museum,” Rooney informs him.

“That’s it? Has Jackson planned anything fun? A team welcoming of sorts?” Dusty asks, turning his focus on me.

Rooney shakes her head. “Afraid not, Dusty. We’ve been focused on work, but a little team event sounds like a great idea. Nothing like a little NDA-signing party to make everyone feel bonded.”

Dusty leans back and crosses his arms. “You have your reasons, I’m sure.” As he turns to leave, he adds, “If you ever want to come to Social Science, Rooney, do let me know. It’s our biweekly happy hour. There’s also the Cacti Council, of which I am the chair. We discuss very important topics like what type of cacti is trending. There are a couple of events coming up you might want to keep on your radar.”

“Dusty apparently has an extensive cacti and succulent collection at home,” I explain, recalling what he’s shared with me during an earlier invite.

“They’re my children,” he says. “I put all my money into them and love them equally.”

“Kids. You have to love them even when they’re prickly,” Rooney says, straight-faced.

Dusty chuckles and tilts his clipboard toward us. “And Jackson, the invite always stands. It would be great to see you there sometime.”

“Invite still stands?” Rooney asks when Dusty moves on to the next team.

“I haven’t had time to go,” I inform her.

Rooney arches her eyebrows.

“What?” I shrug. “I’m not here to socialize.”

“Do you know anything about the people you work with?” Rooney asks. “What about barbecues or office parties? Aren’t you angling for a promotion?”

“How do grilled meats have anything to do with that?”

“Dusty seemed to appreciate that you know about his cacti,” Rooney says. “It shows him you’re interested. That you care. It’s nice to have people on your side, Jack.”

“It’s just not something I’m used to. My inner circle is… small. As for my colleagues, I know what they do here and how we need to work together,” I say. “I don’t see how needing to know who’s married to who or who does what for fun on the weekends really matters.”

I can see Rooney studying the side of my face as I guide her through the room so I feel compelled to add, “When the team needs something, anything, I will do what I have to do to get it for them. To ensure the mission is a success. I like to focus on the work. Besides, now I’m mission liaison.”

“Exactly. You’re the mission liaison. You’ll be talking to the press about your mission but also about the team behind it, right? They’ll want to hear how you all work together to accomplish this massive undertaking more than they’ll want to know about the technicalities.”

I shake my head. “I bet people are more interested in how it works than you think. That’s why I’m the one who has to liaison and explain it. And I’ll be using your art to help me communicate the big ideas. People want to know how we’re actually going to get to Mars, not about the people behind it like me.”

Rooney gently places her gloved hand on my shoulder. “They definitely want to know about people like you, the people behind the machines. And absolutely they want to hear from the ones who are doing the work more than they want to be marketed to by a communications team. You and your team do challenging things every day here. Tell people who you are.”

I let Rooney’s words sink in. When she doesn’t say more, I lead her to the airlock, the area attached to the clean room where spacecrafts and equipment move in and out without exposing the clean room itself to the outside air.

“Once the spacecrafts leave the airlock, they’re on their way to the end destination,” I explain. “People think it’s once the spacecrafts have taken off at the launch site that the journey begins. But no. This is where it all starts.”

“It’s fun to watch you do what you love,” Rooney says as she hugs her sketchbook to her chest. Her papery-thin suit makes a soft crinkling noise.

“How can you tell I love it?” I ask.

She hums. “The way you talk about it. How your voice softens. Your thoughtful movement in the room. Your patience with me.”

“Being in here never gets old. This is where history is made,” I say matter-of-factly.

“Literally. It’s made here,” she says, looking around at all the shiny equipment.

Behind my face mask, I smile at her.

We quietly walk past teams working on spacecrafts for their missions. Finally, we reach one of the parts of the FATE mission equipment. My colleague, Maria, is already there working on troubleshooting potential problems.

“You grounded?” Rooney asks, looking carefully at their wrists.

“Fast learner,” Maria, the team’s instrument systems engineer, says with a laugh. She holds up her wrist to show us that she is.

“So this is it, huh?” Rooney says, eyeing up the craft.

“One of the FATE spacecrafts, yes,” I say.

“How would fuel actually get to the equipment?” she asks.

“We’re working on a couple of different options,” I explain. “There’s one way of thinking that uses the moon’s water ice from its lunar craters to convert into rocket fuel. But our mission focuses on alternatives to moon mining.”

Maria climbs down the ladder. “We want to build stations like the International Space Station, or ISS for short. Not as large, of course. Just big enough for docking and fueling,” she adds. “Jackson, if you need me, I’ll be back from lunch in a bit.”

I nod to acknowledge her.

Rooney watches us curiously. “So you launch these into space. Then they just stay where they are?” she asks me.

“Good question. The ISS orbits Earth at seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour to stay in orbit. The equipment of our FATE mission would also always have to be in orbit. We would manage them and their locations within the solar system from Earth.”

“It’s like stepping stones,” she says. “To Mars.”

“That’s a nice way to imagine it,” I say.

“Lily pads in a pond that frogs use to cross over to the other side.”

“Anything else?” I ask.

“I prefer not to give spoilers. I need to save them for my creations,” she says. “Next question: How far away is Mars?”

“Depends on where it is in its orbit around the sun. They have elliptical paths, so their minimum distance is never the same,” I say. “And gravitational pull affects their orbit. And other planets, like Jupiter, influence the orbit, too.”

“I should’ve known better than to have expected a simple answer,” she says, starting to move in her own orbit around the equipment.

I climb the ladder next to the spacecraft to check out the machinery. I clip myself to the hardware and evaluate the work that’s been completed today to determine if there are more tests to run this week.

It seems that Rooney and I share a similar process. Below me, she crouches to look at the hardware from a different angle. For a moment, I see the equipment in front of me through Rooney’s eyes. I follow the sharp angles of it until Rooney is back in my view. Her knees have become a makeshift table for her sketchbook as she holds her pen an inch above the paper. She doesn’t make a mark and instead stares at the empty page.

“Do you want to see this up close?” I call to her. “The inside is more interesting than what’s underneath.”

Rooney looks up and nods quickly. “I want to see how the space sausage gets made.”

She holds the base of the ladder still as I slowly step down. We switch places at the bottom. Move clockwise, our covered feet in sync. The dances of the sterile chamber.

I grip my hand over the side of the ladder. She hands me her sketchbook before climbing. Her leg sweeps my arm, our bunny suits rubbing gently against each other. The spark of an electric shock runs through me, my grounding strap not protecting me from the charge.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Rooney peers into the body of the craft when she reaches the top. “Scalpel,” she says, holding out her hand.

I laugh and shake my head. Her sketchbook flips open. While she’s busy looking at my work, I can’t help but glance at hers.

“No, don’t look!” she calls out.

I’m mid-flip when she says this and have already looked at a few pages. But there’s nothing there.

“Jack!”

“Sorry! I didn’t see anything. See?” I turn the sketchbook toward her. “It’s blank.”

“Exactly,” she says with a dramatic huff. She unclips herself from the machine and climbs down the ladder. “That’s what I didn’t want you to see.”

“I sincerely apologize. I had something in my possession that gave me direct access to your brain. It drew me in.” In her eyes, I can see that she’s sort of smiling. “What did you not want me to see?”

“That I have,” she starts, looking around and lowering her voice to a whisper, “artist’s block.”

I close the sketchbook. “This is all so new. That would be pretty unusual to have ideas for intricate installations on your first suit-up,” I say, trying to reassure her.

She keeps her eyes trained on the large piece of reflective metal in front of her. “I appreciate you saying that, but even still. This place is artistically ripe for something incredible, yet the information just passes through me. Nothing is sticking. There’s no significance. Without deeper meaning behind my installations, it’s just… string. I’ve really fooled everyone, huh?” she asks, her arms wrapped around herself. “This opportunity is the biggest heist of my career.”

I arch an eyebrow. “How do you figure? You were chosen to do this. You were picked because of your work.”

“Jack, I haven’t had a new idea for an installation in six months. Inspiration? Motivation? Who are they? I don’t know them anymore.” Rooney fiddles with the cap of her pen as she laughs humorlessly to herself. “My liaison is the last person I should be admitting this to.”

“Anytime you feel unsure, you can talk to me,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. You can tell me things you don’t want NASA knowing.” This block must be why there aren’t any other photos of work on her website, just Entangled and sketches of Gravity.

Rooney’s eyes glisten under the bright lights. “I just don’t want to let anyone down. This is too important. I need this to work and get exposure. I need the money. The auction is only…”

She squeezes her eyes shut.

“Hey, it’s okay. What auction?”

“Jack, I’m going to come clean to you. And be warned that this is not proper clean room talk.” There she is.

“Okay. Yeah. Welcome to Clean Room Confessions,” I say, suddenly realizing how hard I’m trying to make her feel better.

She inhales deeply. “I was born a piece of art.”

“You are pretty great,” I start, not knowing how to respond to this.

“No, like a literal piece of art,” she clarifies, her tone unenthusiastic.

I’m confused. “Like your mom painted a portrait of you after you were born?”

Her posture deflates. “More like I was born in front of people, and it was recorded and subsequently sold for a good amount of money. Literally. My mom birthed me in a museum as part of a one-time be-there-or-you’ll-miss-it art exhibit.”

My jaw drops, and I’m grateful for the mask to cover it. “Seriously?”

“It’s called Baby Being Born. I’m… the baby that was born. Her goal was to celebrate birth and women and to show the types of things you rarely get to see. Expensive art, people giving birth,” Rooney explains. “Long story short, it’s coming up for auction and I want to buy it back. For my entire childhood, it was the most interesting thing about me. I was always that baby, an exhibit.”

I’m exposed to big, new ideas every day at work but that is definitely something I haven’t come across before.

“Talk about being put on a pedestal in life. That must’ve been tough,” I say.

“People wanted to meet me because of it. It’s partly why I went into hiding as an artist. I didn’t want my success to come from Baby Being Born. I wanted it to be because of what I create.”

“That’s why you go undercover as Red String Girl,” I say.

She nods. “If no one knows it’s me, daughter of Wren Gao, then I can find success on my own,” she says. “And they won’t rename the piece Nepo Baby Being Born. Anyways.”

I know she’s trying to make light of the situation, cracking jokes at her own expense. I clench my jaw. I don’t like seeing Rooney sad.

“It happened after our night in New York,” she continues. “Losing inspiration. All that talk about fate, us meeting in the way that we did, the destruction of Entangled, it must’ve thrown me off. That was the installation that was supposed to change the course of my career. And maybe in a weird way it did, because now I’m here. I got a second chance for a big break, and I’m creatively blocked!”

I nod, understanding the feeling of having been thrown off after that night. “And our talk about fate impacted you? You don’t believe in the Red Thread of Fate anymore?” I ask.

“Of course I still believe in it… but the spark feels gone. Everything feels flat, empty. For my work, for any new ideas, and yes, sometimes even for fate,” she says, glancing up at me. “I’ve never been creatively blocked before. I just haven’t felt like myself in a long time, and now meeting you here just makes everything more confusing. Like I said, nothing is sticking. It’s difficult to know what anything really means right now.”

I look around to see who might be able to overhear us. I’m not used to having these types of discussions in here. It’s mostly empty, except for Dusty and another team at the computers. We walk around the equipment toward a different piece of machinery.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she says, staying close to my side. Her defeated tone of voice makes the center of my chest tighten.

I can problem-solve this. Fix this. That’s what I’m good at. Talking about the technicalities and working through complicated issues. But my manager has been saying that there are soft skills involved, too. That I need to inspire. Maybe this is one of those moments.

Think, Jack. If this was a challenge on your mission, how would you find a solution? What can you say that might help? What can you do?

It comes to me so suddenly, I almost want to laugh.

“We’ll test it,” I say.

Rooney shakes her head. “What?”

“We’re going to get you creatively reinspired,” I tell her.

“I wish it were that easy,” she says.

“Would you be willing to try?”

“I don’t agree to anything without reading the fine print first, but at this point, I’ll try anything,” Rooney says. There’s intrigue behind her eyes.

“Red String Theory. The fate tests we came up while eating dumplings. We’re going to follow the list.”

Rooney lets out a short laugh. “You’re not serious…”

“You said you want to become creatively unblocked. And your belief in fate helps you do that. It’s what inspires you in your work.”

“And in love,” Rooney adds. “They’re both intertwined.”

“Yes. Right,” I say. “Your first showcase is in less than four months. Let’s get you your spark back. I think a little perspective shift is needed. We’ll take classic fate moments, do them in real life, and observe what happens.”

Rooney pulls at the grounding strap on her wrist. “I don’t see how that’s going to work. Especially here of all places. You want to test fate… at NASA. I’m sure I’ll feel creative again soon. There’s still time.” She doesn’t sound very confident.

“Rooney, there’s no time to wait around for inspiration. Or fate, for that matter. NASA is literally where people come up with new ideas and make them happen. We’re in a room where spacecrafts get made,” I say, gaining enthusiasm as I go on. “You think we get to space by waiting until motivation strikes? No! It’s because we have an idea, a goal, a dream, and we make it happen. We form hypotheses, test them, and try different variations when the first time doesn’t work.” I’m breathless after my pep talk.

Rooney’s eyes are scrunched up. “I hear you. That was very convincing, but—”

“No buts. You were willing to play along in New York. Will you now?” I ask. “Do you trust me?”

She’s quiet, though I can tell Rooney is smiling by the way her cheeks push up over her mask. “Now you know all of my secrets, so yeah, I guess I do.” Rooney tilts her head back. “I’m doing this for both of us, though. I know how important this promotion is to you, and I’m not the only one who wants the program to be a success.”

“Yes. Great. Okay. We’ll keep it simple. Here’s the hypothesis,” I say excitedly, piecing the words together in my head. “If you follow these Fate Tests, then you will be reinspired.”

Rooney’s eyes are fixed on mine. “Where do we start?”

“Do you have the list from that night?” I ask. “If not, we can try to piece it back together.”

Rooney glances down at her sketchbook in my hands. “Check the back pocket.”

I reach into the attached folder and pull out the creased Chinese menu from our night together. In the corner is a splash of soy sauce that I hadn’t noticed earlier.

I unfold it, and for a brief moment, I’m back in that Chinese restaurant at midnight. I’m warm and eating dumplings while the snow falls outside. I snap out of it and back to the present moment. I run my eyes down the list.

Fate Test 1: Say yes to something you normally wouldn’t.

Fate Test 2: Show up early or late to somewhere you’re supposed to be.

Fate Test 3: Return a lost object.

Fate Test 4: Interact with someone online.

Rooney peers over the edge of the menu. “This is a good start, but we need one more. Four is bad luck. What about ‘Follow the signs’?” she offers. “Like when I notice something that feels like a sign, to pay attention and… follow it?”

“That’s too abstract. What about directions and knowingly not following them? Like with maps. Something like that?” I think out loud.

“Yeah, that’s not bad.” Rooney points at me. “You might be a little too good at this, Jack.”

On the menu, below Fate Test 4, I write:

Fate Test 5: Go the wrong direction on purpose.

“Now what?” Rooney asks.

I smile. “Follow me.”

Rooney stays where she is and narrows her eyes at me. “Is this part of the test? Should I walk in the opposite direction of you?”

I shake my head and wave the menu. “I can’t rip this in the clean room. Fibers from the paper and all that. Come on.”

Her curiosity gets the best of her. “Rip? Rip what?” Rooney asks as she traces my steps.

“After you,” I say, opening the door to the air shower. “We’re going into the shower together. Air shower! That’s where we’re going together. That’s not how I meant that to sound.” My face feels as hot as the sun. “I apologize if I made that weird.”

Rooney bursts into laughter. Her laugh is as easy and loose as it was in New York. That night is a memory I’ve sealed shut in the airlock room of my mind. A place where no other thoughts can touch or alter it. That night is its own standalone event. So out of the ordinary for my life that it requires careful handling because it’s once in a lifetime.

“I’m going, I’m going. Just promise you’ll share the hot air.” She steps inside the enclosed room.

I take the menu between my fingers and tear along each written Fate Test until we have five strips with one test per slip. I open and close the entrance door to activate the high-velocity air. From the jets in the side of the wall, air pummels us from all sides. Rooney holds her hands up, waving them vigorously as her suit puffs out.

“Grab one!” I shout to Rooney. Then I let go of the strips of paper.

The Fate Tests blow around us, being pushed every which way like we’re in a money-blowing machine. But right now, these Fate Test strips are better than dollars.

Rooney closes her eyes and leans her head back. She spins slowly, like she’s letting the air blow her worries away. I’ve never seen anyone so moved by being cleaned. She keeps her fingers spread out until one of the papers flies into her hand. She makes a fist around it.

As cool air expands my suit, I realize that this is a total misappropriation and misuse of taxpayer dollars. But for her, I would do it over and over again.

For her, I am going to test the hell out of fate.