Lucy’s last few days had gone something like this: she slipped off her Medic Alert bracelet as soon as she was out of her mom’s view in the morning, stopped wearing earrings altogether, and gave cutlery the fisheye, afraid it would pull a Fantasia on her.
She’d also added another fib to her expanding repertoire, telling Claudia that Marie Curie had a punctured tire. She hated lying but she couldn’t risk the ten-speed developing a mind of its own in the middle of traffic. Her best friend didn’t mind shuttling Lucy back and forth in the Mystery Minivan because it provided her with ample opportunity to relay the details of her nightly text exchanges with Jess.
As Lucy had suspected, Jess was a sophomore at Heron, double-majoring in art history and psychology. Her family was Irish like Claudia’s; she had an unhealthy obsession with Sriracha sauce (she even put it on her cereal); and dabbled in BASE jumping. Lucy wondered how anyone could “dabble” in BASE jumping without becoming roadkill, but she kept mum because she’d never seen Claudia so gaga.
When the final bell rang on Friday, relief, nerves, and excitement warred inside her. Approaching the office at the back of the physics classroom, Lucy’s right thumb twitched instinctively against the inside of her opposite wrist, searching out the charms that usually dangled there. She couldn’t believe how naked her skin felt without the bracelet she’d once loathed. The clinking sound as she flicked the silver charms together was always soothing, and soothing was what she needed now.
She blinked away the image of Cole’s bewildered face as she turned down the offer of being his cheerleader at track practice today. Most of the time, Lucy was more than happy to cheer him on from the sidelines, but this afternoon what she needed more than her boyfriend was physics. Science. Laws that made sense.
Lucy took a deep breath, straightened up, and rapped twice on the office door. Mrs. Brandon had given Lucy her own key, free to come and go as she pleased, but she didn’t want to be presumptuous with Ravi.
She knocked again with a little more force.
Mass times acceleration. Lucy rolled her eyes. What a nerd. And yet there was something reassuring about reciting formulas. They were constant. They always worked correctly. Unlike her. Even pre–Tesla Suite. And now—now her life was anything but formulaic.
Her hand hovered mid-knock as the door shuddered open.
Ravi’s face was creased beneath his glasses, demeanor harried. He pulled out his earbuds, draping them on either side of his neck.
“Lucy,” he said. His eyes brightened and his soft inflection made her go soft in the head. Fiddling with the wires, he added, “Didn’t hear you.”
Looking anywhere but his eyes, Lucy spotted an origami unicorn prancing in the rain across his black T-shirt. She owned the exact same one.
“Do you dream of electric sheep?” she said, grinning in spite of her erratic pulse.
He returned it. “Blade Runner is a classic.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that. Since Americans have less culture than yah-gurt.” She dared to lift her gaze and he chuckled. “But here’s a really high-stakes question for you: book or movie?”
“Those are high stakes.”
“The best kind.” Lucy double-checked her hands weren’t glowing with emerald fire. Phew. The sudden sass was entirely homegrown.
Ravi tapped his chin as he considered. “Generally, because I’m a purist as well as a pedant, I would have to go with Philip K. Dick’s short story.”
“I know it’s a short story.”
“I didn’t doubt it.” He laughed again. “On the other hand, the movie does have Rutger Hauer. No one does menacing quite like him.”
“Fair point,” she conceded.
Turning the tables, Ravi said, “I have a high-stakes question for you.” He folded his arms, exposing the leather patches on the elbows of his jacket. “Which is more authentic, human or Replicant?”
“That is a high-stakes question.”
“The best kind.”
Their eyes met and her mind went blank. Lucy and Cole never bantered like this. That’s right: Cole. Your boyfriend!
Forcing herself to focus on the question at hand, Lucy smooshed her lips together and mulled over her response. The classroom became intensely quiet. In both the movie and the short story, Replicants were androids nearly indistinguishable from humans except they couldn’t experience true human emotions or dreams that weren’t preprogrammed. At least, that’s what the humans thought.
She hugged herself as a wintry blast rushed through her. Did Lucy’s post–Tesla Suite symptoms make her less than human? There was no way she was some kind of sophisticated android—right?
Ravi tilted his head, still waiting for an answer.
“Hmm,” she began eloquently. “I guess that depends on your definition of authentic.”
“Agreed. How would you define it?”
“Being true to yourself.”
“I like that,” he told her, and slouched against the doorjamb. “So, which is it? Who’s more true to themselves: humans or Replicants?”
Lucy just barely resisted swaying towards him. Mirroring his body language, she folded her arms and replied, “Replicants. Because they try harder to know themselves.”
“Nice.” A broad smile swept across his face, which shouldn’t have made Lucy as giddy as it did. “Do I spy a budding philosophy major?”
“Hardly. Science all the way.”
“You have a talent for it. Speaking of which, time to get down to business.” His face smoothed into something more serious. “Do you want to talk me through your experiment?”
Hands clammy, she mumbled, “Sure,” and followed him inside.
That’s the reason Lucy was here, after all. The only reason: Science and nothing but science.
Once the components of the experiment were arranged carefully on the black countertop at the front of the classroom, Ravi asked Lucy to describe her objectives.
“Right. So.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “The experiment I devised was to re-create the first battery invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800, and then to use the battery to power an iPod.” It had actually been her dad’s talks about alternative power that inspired Lucy’s project.
As Ravi’s eyes drifted to the tabletop and back to her, Lucy dug her fingernails into her palms. The experiment must have seemed incredibly elementary.
“I’m also writing a paper,” she told him. “Explaining the significance of Volta’s invention in the history of science. He lent his name to the volt, after all. But of course you know—”
Ravi cut her off. “Talk me through it.”
The earnest quality of his voice quelled her doubts. The laboratory was Lucy’s domain. Here—if nowhere else—she knew what she was doing. She inhaled through her nose, her restlessness draining away.
You’ve got this.
Lucy pointed at the alternating zinc, copper, and cardboard discs stacked on top of one another like some kind of electrical s’mores.
“Volta was a student of Luigi Galvani. Galvani theorized that animals create their own electricity. He conducted an experiment in which a dead frog’s legs were connected to two different pieces of metal. When the legs twitched, Galvani concluded the electricity came from the frog. But Volta deduced it was the touching of the metals—brass and iron—that caused the frog’s legs to twitch, rather than the frog itself.”
Leaning toward her, Ravi asked, “Was Galvani completely wrong about animal electricity?”
“Of course.” Lucy’s pulse thudded in her throat.
“Think about how a thumbprint is used to unlock a smartphone,” he pressed her. Ravi had no idea how close to an uncomfortable truth he was getting. “It’s not just the fingerprint. It’s the body’s conductivity to electricity that allows it to be read.”
“The nervous system, you mean.”
“Precisely.” His half-smile made him look almost boyish and it delighted Lucy, yet she couldn’t shake a sinking feeling.
“It’s not the same, though.” Her words were labored. “Our nerves send electrical impulses around the body but they can’t power anything.”
Liar. Liar. Liar.
Lucy’s lower lip quivered because she wanted it to be true, and she was immensely grateful when Ravi said, “All right. Back to the Voltaic pile. How does it work?”
Fighting her unease, Lucy replied, “The battery has a negative charge at one end and a positive charge at the other.” She cleared her throat, and her voice grew stronger. “Volta discovered that a single juncture between two metals doesn’t produce much electricity. When he multiplied the junctures and joined them with saltwater-soaked cardboard, however, he could generate enough electricity for a mild shock.”
“What does the saltwater do?”
“The saltwater allows for the flow of electricity without the metals touching each other.”
Ravi murmured a noise of assent. “And how do you determine how much voltage is required to power the iPod?” he said, his question laced with encouragement.
“Well, Volta used himself as the conductor—adding more discs to his pile and letting his body receive increasingly large shocks.” Lucy laughed. “Lucky for me, I have a voltage meter.”
Ravi laughed along. “Yeah. Let’s not do it Volta’s way. Otherwise I’ll have the shortest teaching career in history.”
“So, you’re eager to mold young minds, then?” Lucy’s mouth ticked up. “Physics is your major, I’m guessing.”
“Actually, it’s maths. Or math, as you Yanks say. Really. It’s mathematics plural. I don’t get it.” He offered her a smirk. “Barbarians.”
Lucy snorted as her belly flipped. Stop that.
“Why come to the land of barbarians?”
Ravi regarded her a beat, shifting his jaw back and forth.
“A change of scene. Less rain.”
Classic non-answer. Still, instinct told her not to push the issue. Scrambling for a safer, less personal topic of conversation, Lucy sputtered, “Alessandro Volta also invented the first remotely operated pistol.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. Newton and the Royal Society in London were very interested. So was Napoleon.”
“I can only imagine. The precursor to the modern drone. War is always profitable—for someone.”
Lucy coughed. She’d been so impressed by Volta’s technological achievements that she hadn’t thought about the other implications.
After an awkward lull, Ravi asked, “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Would you want to teach—one day?”
Standing in front of a class and trying to tame a horde of teenagers made Lucy want to run for the hills.
“No. I think I’d rather be a researcher. Tucked safely away in my lab.”
“Sounds like hiding to me.”
Her insides contorted into a pretzel. “Not a fan of crowds,” she said.
“Is that why you’ve never entered any science fairs?”
Ravi had a worrying way of making Lucy want to spill her darkest secrets. She tried to maintain an inscrutable expression.
“I saw in Mrs. Brandon’s progress reports that she’d encouraged you to enter,” he went on.
He’d read her file?
Lucy’s lips lemon-puckered as a million conflicting thoughts whirled around her mind. She didn’t want her medical condition to be the only thing Ravi saw when he looked at her. “Um, yeah,” she hedged. “My parents thought the attention would be too much stress for me.”
She had fought them on it when Mrs. Brandon first nominated her. Eventually, though, Lucy came to the conclusion they were right. She hadn’t wanted to jeopardize all the strides she’d made controlling her seizures before college.
“You don’t strike me as someone who caves under pressure, Lucy.”
The breath caught in her throat. No one—absolutely no one—had ever said that to Lucy before. Their gazes merged and the quiet began to roar.
Or maybe it was just her.
Switching back into scientist mode, Lucy resumed her explanation.
“Anyway, the voltage generated by Volta’s battery is determined by the kind of electrolyte used—saltwater or something else—as well as its concentration. Volta used a combination of saltwater and sulfuric acid but Mrs. Brandon suggested I try copper sulfate instead. Less likely to blind myself.”
“Cracking,” Ravi agreed with a grin. Lucy shot him a quizzical look. There was another hint of a flush on his cheeks. “I mean, good thinking.”
“‘Cracking’? That’s not English.”
“I think you mean it’s not American, because it most certainly is good English.”
They reached for the iPod resting next to the battery at the same moment and as Ravi’s hand extended from beneath the sleeve of his jacket, Lucy’s eyes landed on a tattoo that spread across the underside of his wrist and up his forearm. She wouldn’t have pegged him for the tattoo type.
On closer inspection, it was a symbol Lucy recognized. An eight-pointed star that made her think of a blossom unfurling. She’d seen it the other night in the manuscript her mom was translating.
Lucy brushed her hand unthinkingly over the dark star and pleasure catapulted through her, followed by searing humiliation. Ravi tensed as he exhaled. Oh no. Had she zapped him?
“It means creation,” he said without inflection.
No zap. Thankfully.
“Sorry, I—” Lucy stammered, but he didn’t seem upset. “In which language?”
“It’s not a language. Not as such.”
Then why was her mother translating it?
Lucy’s eyes were drawn back to the outlines of midnight ink overlapping on his skin. She counted the triangles that comprised it without meaning to. It was almost mesmerizing.
In a soft voice, he offered, “It’s alchemy.”
“Alchemy?” She released a strained laugh.
“Alchemy gets a bad rap. But a lot of ancient—and not-so-ancient—scientists were also alchemists.”
Lucy made a hmm noise. Her dad regarded alchemists as quacks, trying to turn anything and everything into gold. She couldn’t imagine what interest her mom would have in them either. Her mother’s research generally revolved around the depiction of women in the Odyssey or something equally arcane.
“What does it mean to you?” she asked.
The question just slipped out, and Lucy recoiled. Yet she did want to know.
His eyes were steady on hers as he replied.
“I like the idea that nothing is ever completely destroyed. That it’s just transformed into something else.”
“You’re talking about energy.”
“And other things.” There was a longing in his answer that made Lucy want to pry further but Ravi tugged down the sleeve of his jacket, covering the tattoo and effectively ending the conversation. “Right, then, let’s see what kind of energy your battery can create.”
Taking the hint, Lucy reached for the two wires on either side of the Voltaic pile and connected them to the iPod. A ghostly glow illuminated the screen as the track listing appeared: Miles Davis. “So What.”
“Not a fan of crowds, but a fan of jazz.” He arched a brow. “Me too. I like the—”
“Controlled chaos,” they said together.
Lucy’s heart jackhammered and Ravi seemed equally taken aback, muttering “Great minds,” but garbling the words, a wary set to his shoulders.
They pressed the Play button simultaneously. A ticklish sensation surged from Lucy’s forefinger like wildfire down her arm and across her chest. She swayed on her feet as the tickles morphed into sparks. It felt like someone was chiseling her brain.
She didn’t realize her finger was still pressed to the iPod until it began to smoke.
The riffs of a trumpet floated over Lucy as her eyelids fluttered, her knees turning to jelly, and she slumped toward the floor.
Lucy only had time to think, Not frakkin’ again, before the world smeared to black.