Eleanor gazed at the dark storm outside her bedroom window. The room had an aroma of a nearly cooked chicken pot pie. A half-knitted scarf lay in her lap as she hoped Shawn would make it home safe from the storm. She was sure his car would do fine, but she knew a storm would be pretty good cover for an attack. Zandith could easily make it look like Shawn had lost control of the car and slammed into a tree.

She hadn’t abandoned her earrings since Zandith forced her to wear them, but she did wonder if he would punish her for taking them off when normal people take off earrings, such as for taking a shower or sleeping. So far, he hadn’t, so it seemed like he had some sense of decency despite his lack of empathy.

She tried to refocus on her knitting, but her mind kept drifting off to other problem areas. The professor she found to substitute for Brandon was doing his best, and while he technically knew the material, he wasn’t cut out for the teaching job. Well, Brandon wasn’t really either, but he seemed to enjoy showing everyone how much he knew.

It was funny. After talking to Brandon about his non-optimal teaching style, she realized there was a tiny part of her that relished lecturing him. Perhaps it was even strengthened by the interaction. She was beginning to regret giving Brandon his own medicine. Would he even try to change, even as Eleanor was doing what she was telling Brandon not to do? Once a student, always a student.

Her wrist pad beeped quietly. It was a recently published news article about the treaty crisis between Eredore and Sylga. The representatives were nowhere near a resolution.

The entire world revolved around Aetherite. Not only were they an excellent power source, the smaller ones were accepted as currency in some Eredoran states.

Two centuries ago, one of the neighboring countries to Eredore, Trellendek, had a change of heart at the throne and tried to conquer Eredore to confiscate the massive crystal ores. Eredore had almost lost the fight, but then decided to ally with Sylga which neighbored both countries. The treaty involved supplying Sylga with a certain amount of Aether crystals each year so Sylga could defend itself from Trellendek while still functioning as a country.

A few years ago, Eredore noticed that Sylga had begun stockpiling crystals underground. This made the Senate very suspicious that Sylga was up to something, so they cut down the crystal supply until Sylga put them to use. Sylga then claimed Eredore was breaking the treaty, so they withdrew from fighting Trellendek. There has been an ongoing struggle between representatives of both countries ever since.

All the politics was starting to give Eleanor a headache. She had mostly gotten off paying attention to the news, but now she was considering blocking it all out entirely. Most of the time, it was bad news she couldn’t do anything about, and her time was best spent being the best Nephrinist priest she could be.

She gave a frustrated sigh. Sometimes she wondered how much of the Nephrinan she really understood. Countless times she used passages from the text to radically transform people’s lives and bring about a sense of peace. Then there were times like this when she had a hard time following the advice she had given and practiced for years. She knew she would recover and find that inner peace again, but life was indeed thorough with its lessons.

The gentle hum of the garage door opening started in the background. She got up and put her knitting aside. Shawn entered the house just as she made it downstairs. They gave each other light kisses in the kitchen. Eleanor put a hand on his shoulder. “Good day at work?”

“Eh, not quite.” He took his brim hat off and set it on his briefcase on the counter. He ran a hand through his sparse gray hair. “I had the honor of firing someone today.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah, it crushed him. Me too, honestly, but it had to be done.”

Eleanor got a couple plates out for dinner. “What was the reason?”

“He showed up late one too many times,” Shawn said, leaning on the counter with an arm. “You just can’t leave a terminal unattended like that. If someone in line gets clever, they could hack into the bank. He was a nice kid, but we told him multiple times.”

“I’m sure he’ll learn from it,” Eleanor said as she pulled the chicken pot pie out of the oven. She put it on the stove to let it cool and removed the oven mitts from her hands. “We have to be able to deal out the lessons as well as take them.”

Shawn got a plate and used the mixing spoon to serve himself a portion of the pot pie. “I stopped teaching specifically to stop giving lessons… and to let someone younger than me give five hundred of the same tectonic plate lectures. I’m confident that’s why I’m losing my hair so early!”

Eleanor smiled as she served herself. She would never get enough of his denying-his-old-age jokes. They settled into their chairs in front of the living room fire and waited for their dinner to cool.

“I wouldn’t mind if you went through with the operation to get your full head of hair back,” she said, peering at his head and remembering the jet black it used to be.

“Nah,” Shawn grunted, waving a dismissive hand at her. “Let it fall out. It saves on the haircut bills. I’ve seen old fellows like me make the bald look work. It’s all about this stuff here.” He stroked his short beard.

She laughed. “I think I know who I’m praying for next time I’m at the altar.”

“Who, the guy who gave you those earrings?” Shawn said. Eleanor frowned. She knew he was trying to joke, but he had also been bothered ever since she came home with the earrings. She mixed the pot pie around in her bowl, trying to avoid eye contact. “You know what my answer is going to be, Shawn.”

“I know, but you can’t expect me to let something like this go, Elly. A stranger gave those to you? Do you know how that looks in our marriage?”

She took a deeper breath, then used the exhale to help cool the pot pie. “All I know is that one day, you will understand. Until then, and for the sake of our love, Shawn, please bear with me.”

“Well, I hope that day comes soon,” he said, finally digging into his pot pie. He winked at her. “It’ll make my hair a little less gray.”

She smirked. “That’s not how it works.”

A couple minutes into eating, her wrist pad rang with the sound of morning birdsong. She looked at the contact ID, then cautiously at Shawn. “Oh dear, I may have to answer this one.”

He nodded. She went upstairs, closed the bedroom door, then picked up. “Jase, is everything well? This is hardly a good time.”

“I know, sorry madam,” Jase said. “Domrik is in the middle of a class right now, but I figured someone should know.”

“Know what?”

“Hector was being spied on by one of the Scythe’s men. I talked to him, and he was talking to a dude who knows Marvain. She’s been tormented by the Scythe too.”

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Eleanor caught herself just before asking anything else. The damn earrings! Questions seethed in her mind, and she frowned, knowing they would not be fulfilled. “Jase, report this only to Domrik. I should not be hearing anything unless I absolutely need to know.”

“Yes, madam,” he said, then murmured, “I know.”

She nodded. “Well then, you stay safe.”

“I was also calling as a bit of a warning,” Jase added. “We don’t know what will happen next.”

“When do we ever?”

“... Good point.”

“You go get some rest for the night.”

“Yes. Until next time.”

“Until next time,” she repeated, ending the call. The room became silent. The only things she could hear were her thoughts and worries. She got up and made her way down to the dining room. Shawn looked at her, dejected. He had finished his meal without her.

Eleanor knew time was running short for them. Either the earrings went, or he went.

***

Evan scrolled through his hoverboard designs on his laptop. He wanted to have the real thing in front of him to work on, but it was really heavy and he wasn’t sure his mom could pick it up. Also, since he couldn’t walk, he would only be able to work on it if it sat on his legs. He wasn’t into 3D design much, but he was in the process of teaching himself the program in order to test out a couple different designs.

There were a couple different races he wanted to enter, and different boards worked better for different races. For the obstacle course, a slower and more maneuverable board was best. That required more stabilizers on the sides as well as a retro thruster on the front for hard stops. Cross-country and time trial races called for speed boards. That was the one he was almost done building now. Most of the energy would be focused on the main engine with only a couple stabilizers on the sides. Slopestyle was a hybrid of speed races and obstacle courses. The board used for those depended on the racer. The high-risk racers used speed boards to maximize speed on the straight stretches, while more conservative racers went with a slower but more maneuverable board to gain an advantage on the sharp turns.

Evan had tried to see if it was possible to build a board with maximum speed and maneuverability, but that required power levels that most racing leagues deemed illegal for regulatory reasons. He had to settle with just getting it to power on in the first place.

He used another program to simulate the power usage and efficiency of the Aether crystals. Right now, it was showing him the output he was getting with the tests he did a couple weeks ago. He played with the configuration, trying to see which one yielded enough energy output to make his board hover. The general rule of thumb was that the more crystals that were aligned in parallel, the better, but shape mattered as well.

Putting the three crystals parallel to each other wasn’t quite working, but he found that if he put them in a triangular formation while keeping them parallel, it was fifteen percent more efficient. He added a crystal and made it a square. That increased the power output while also increasing efficiency by ten percent. He added more and more parallel crystals to the shape until the efficiency started decreasing instead of increasing. It turned out that a hexagon was the most optimal shape.

He put a crystal in the middle of the shape and watched the efficiency drop by nearly a third. That was odd. The total power output had dropped as well. He removed it and everything returned to its previous state. He smirked, pleased that he had solved the problem, but then frowned when he realized he would have to build an entirely different power module. It would both need to be big enough to house the new formation and be able to spin fast enough to generate the magnetic field required to channel the energy. No wonder all the commercial boards were eardrum-breaking loud.

Hector walked in without knocking. “Morning Evan, did you sleep alright?”

“Eh,” Evan groaned, tilting his head. “I’ve had better.”

“Ah, well that’s okay because I have brought you something that might help.” He gestured to the door, and five men in combat armor walked in and faced Evan. Combat armor was a watered-down version of power armor. There were no computers or heads-up displays, but they still allowed for easy Aether wielding.

Evan raised an eyebrow. “The Eredore Guard?”

“Your mother herself requested this,” Hector said, showing his hands in innocence. “I can’t blame her for wanting some peace of mind that you would be okay for the remainder of your recovery. I screened them myself to make sure we don’t have any impostors.”

“Oh… okay,” Evan muttered, waving a hand. “Hi.”

Hector looked at the soldiers. “From left to right we have Damien, Marco, Phillip, Kaden, and Alek. They will be standing just outside the door with at least three of them present at all times. They have staggered ten-hour shifts, so there won’t be any gaps where nobody is here.”

"That’s cool and all,” Evan said, “but isn’t this a bit overkill? I have only a couple weeks left before I can walk well enough to go back home.”

“Evan, it’s your mother’s orders, and probably your father’s as well. It’s a temporary installment.”

Evan scanned each of them. They looked like they each trained hard to get into the service. He did feel a bit safer now. He looked back at Hector. “Are they allowed to help with my homework?”

One of them struggled to hold back a smirk. Hector shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Though I can’t guarantee they’ll be of any help.”

The one who smirked shook his head slightly. Hector patted Damien on his shoulder and started on his way out. “Behave yourselves, alright fellas? That’s my friend’s son you’re protecting. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

Two of them followed Hector out, while the other three took their positions in the hallway outside the door. Evan called to them, “Hey, are any of you an engineer?”

The guard visible in the doorway pointed questioningly at one of the others out of view. The tall one with the crew cut leaned. “Alek here. I took Aetheric Basics in college.”

“Okay, cool. You want to help me with my hoverboard?” Evan gestured to his laptop.

“A hoverboard? You trying to make repairs or…?”

Evan shook his head. “Nah, I’m almost done making my own, but the design still needs work.”

Alek looked at the other two, then walked cautiously into the recovery room. “You’re building your own? Where’s it at?”

“In my garage at the moment. I need to replace the power module with something much more sophisticated. I have an updated design right here, though. Wanna take a look?”

Alek sat in one of the chair and leaned in. “Damn, dude.”

Evan looked at him. “What?”

“It looks impressive, though I haven’t seen too many of them in real life, so I can’t say how they compare to commercial boards.”

“It might not be as high-quality,” Evan said, “but I can customize it. I’m also going to make the armor, but my dad’s going to help a bit more with that. Racing armor needs to have some special functionalities in order to be approved.”

“Like what?”

“High-powered mag boots to stick to the board. Reactive Aether shielding so I don’t die when I’m going half the speed of sound. Stuff normal power armor usually lacks.”

“That sounds dope,” Alek said, looking at the laptop. He pointed to the screen. “What’s that?”

“Oh, the crystal configuration? That’s how I’m going to build the power module. I’ll have to see about commissioning an engineer to build a motor for me.”

“Those spin up pretty fast, don’t they?”

“Yeah, thousands of RPM.”

“So that means you have to make two of them.”

Evan furrowed his brow, confused. “Why do I have to make two of them?”

“Well, it’s physics. You’ll have a fast-rotating mass in the board. It’ll be resisting you every time you try to turn. You’ll need something else rotating in the opposite direction at the same speed to cancel it out.”

Evan stared at him for a moment, trying to remember his physics lessons from this semester. His eyes widened. “Oh shit, conservation of angular momentum! I forgot. Great, now that makes the entire thing twenty five percent more expensive.”

Alek shrugged. “I might be able to help with that. I know a guy who could use some work and good with engines, but he won’t be available for the next couple weeks. He might be a bit cheaper than most other options.”

“Oh, really? Can I see his contact?”

“Yeah, just look up Laski Services. He works for another company but also does custom commissions on the side to help pay off debt. He’s worked with engines and turbines before.”

Evan typed on his keyboard and scrolled through the search results. “There’s a Laski Services on Connect.”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Evan looked at the profile on the social media site. The guy’s name was Strucka Laski, and he didn’t work too far away from Evan’s house. Repeat customers would get a discount. That would change a lot of things if Evan could use him to build all the parts the hoverboard needed that Evan couldn’t build himself.

“It looks like a good deal to me. I’ll message him and see what’s up.”

Alek inhaled through his teeth, wincing. “That’s the thing, man. He’s in jail for the next couple weeks.”

Evan looked at him then back at the profile. He shrugged.

“I got time. I can wait.”