They froze. Everybody hushed.

All the people on the left side of the room turned to stare at the glass doorway first. They were the scientists in the room – his subordinates – and they were also only the ones with pens in their hands and notepads before them, jotting down when relevant.

They were the only ones who were actually interested in what he'd been saying. That was what they were there for. That was long over now, because they all dropped their pens in shock to gawk at Mr. Gambetti.

The sound of Mr. Palmer's phone clattering onto the glass table was the loudest sound in the room.

Logan could only imagine he was gaping as well. Six people joined them in the room in total. There was Mr. Giovanni Gambetti and five hefty men whom Logan guessed were his bodyguards. They were adorned in suits and sunglasses, never mind the fact that they were fully out of the glare of the sun.

Mr. Gambetti wore sunglasses too. The ones with rectangle-shaped lenses. It was impossible to see his eyes, but Logan had a feeling they'd have some kind of child-like excitement in them. That was what he imagined his Italian boss to be.

A nonchalant overly wealthy hipster with no good ideas on how to put his money to good use. He certainly dressed like it.

He was obviously not a fan of smooth chin. He had a beard. Lots of it. Dark brown. Scruffy. Tinted here and there with specs of dirty-blonde color. There was a septum nose ring protruding from his nostrils, and they seemed too big for his round chubby face. The man even had a man bun sitting on top of his head and diamond earrings in his ears – both ears. There was a v-neck t-shirt underneath the sweatshirt. They had no other option but to know this when he suddenly took off the latter right in front of them.

Logan stiffened in irritation. This was the first time the entire company was meeting him, except probably the executive board, and the man was dressed like a homeless 20-year-old. Even his bodyguards were decent enough to look the part. As if he didn't already look like someone desperately clinging on to long-lost youth, a beaded necklace hung from his neck and five gold rings from each of his fingers.

Even though his shirt was long-sleeved, Logan had a sneaking suspicion that there were tattoos underneath. One could just tell.

"Ciao!" Giovanni Gambetti yelled into the room with a smile. He was Italian, not Spanish, and it was evident in the way he pronounced the salutatory word.

Logan snapped out of the spell he seemed to have casted on the room. "Perfect," he quipped beneath his breath and cleared his throat.

"What a pleasure, Mr. Gambetti." That brought everyone back to the present. They stood up in acknowledgement. Palmer, on the other hand, had a blush in his cheeks now. "We didn't expect you, sir," he continued.

Mr. Gambetti grinned wider. "I know," he said with a dismissive wave. "I didn't plan it either."

"Not that you're not welcome here though. Of course, you are. It's your company and it is–"

Palmer was rambling now. Logan immediately tuned out his voice to focus on their boss. There was still a big smile on his face.

"How is the clothing line doing?"

Logan raised an eyebrow.

"Cl-clothing line?" Coleman asked in stuttering confusion.

"Yeah. The stores."

One of the hefty guys around him whispered something in his ear until the sound of Mr. Gambetti's laughter filled the boardroom again.

"My bad. I thought this was Gambetti-Gambetta."

Logan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. What part of lab coats and PPE goggles somehow suggested that this was where his family's clothing brand was located?

"Honest mistake," he said bashfully with his hands in the air. "So, this is…"

"GSA," The bodyguard replied again. Something about the way he said it hinted that he was used to substituting as a personal assistant.

"Gambetti Space and Aeronautics," Logan added, just in case he was still clueless.

"Right! The space guys! Very cool," he added with another moronic smile. "It's been quite a while, yeah?"

Logan frowned. "If "a while" means never then, yes, absolutely." He finally moved away from the smartboard. The current images on the overhead projector, a PowerPoint chart showing the technical details of the Inter-Galactic GG-20, shone on him as he passed.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"And you are?"

"Dr. Logan Foxxman," he answered as he shook hands with him. "Chief Scientist here at GSA."

"I see. The biggest genius here. Nice."

Logan's expression switched back to blank.

"So, what were you guys up to before I walked in?" For the first time ever, Gambetti took his seat at the head of the table and dropped his sweatshirt on it.

"Well, this is the boardroom. So, I'd say a meeting." He was standing between their boss and Alison Coleman now.

Mr. Gambetti found that funny as well. "Amazing. About what?"

Nothing much. Only the one single thing that could save the entire human race, Logan wanted to reply but he was sure that his tone would reek of sarcasm.

"A missile. Rocket," Nicole Reid jumped in to say. She looked so proud of herself. "Space rocket."

Logan could have face-palmed himself. Space rocket? "Would you care to tell Mr. Gambetti, what it is used for?"

She paled. "You know…"

He laughed again. "I actually don't. That's why I'm asking."

"It...it...um...flys–launches! It launches into space. Out of Earth," she exclaimed.

How expatiating.

"The rocket is called the Inter-Galactic GG-20. It is a high-powered skyrocket specially built for planetary exploration." Logan put her out of her misery. "Basically, its job is to find a habitable and conducive new home for the entire human race. A new planet."

Mr. Gambetti crossed his arms over his chest. "What's the name again?"

"The Inter-Galactic GG-20. You named it." His sole contribution to the entire project. Besides the funding, of course.

"Sounds intriguing."

"Yes. It is, Mr. Gambetti."

"Giovanni," he corrected.

Logan smiled politely.

"I would love to hear more about it. Be a doll and start all over again for me, will ya?"

"Absolutely, Mr. Gambetti! Dr. Foxxman would be happy to start all over again," Reid gushed on his behalf, clearly desperate to be noticed by the billionaire. The billionaire, on the other hand, beamed. His sunglasses were still on his face.

"Lovely. By the way, Mr. Gambetti is my father. I'd prefer it if you would call me Giovanni." Then he faced Logan. "That goes for you too."

"I'd rather not." He swiftly returned to the smartboard to repeat four hours worth of technical words for the fourth time this year. His five-man entourage moved aside as he made to leave.

"You can be as nerdy as you want, alright? Just ignore me. You will barely even notice me."

From his side-eye Logan could see the bling glistening off the studs in his ears and the multiple rings. They would notice him no matter how hard they tried not to.

"Here we go again," he muttered before saying out loud, "The Earth is dying!" He navigated the remote in his hands till it went back to the beginning of his presentation.

If Logan were to look out the glass walls of the bathroom, he would see the main control room of the GSA. It was filled with at least a hundred employees; mostly data analysts. There you could also find engineers, legal minds and a handful of scientists giving them relevant information. But mostly data analysts.

In his opinion, their job was possibly the most complex one in the entire company. He wouldn't mind being one of them right now though. He'd fleshed out on one topic all day, and at least fifteen of them still had no idea what he was talking about. Now, he was supposed to do it all over again?

"No need to worry, Foxxman. I'll be a good student," Gambetti shouted across the room. Too loud.

Logan stiffened his face even further, before his eyes betrayed his seething annoyance. "What do you know about the earth, Mr. Gambetti?"

He looked slightly taken back. "Uh… we live in it?"

Logan cringed. "Well, yes. Obviously. Right now, it is in the worst condition possible. The ozone layer is depleting, the planet is getting overpopulated by the second, and global warming is already here."

"Exactly! I said it! It's all totally nuts and we're all gonna die."

"Yes. I remember the press conference."

"What can we do?"

"Not so fast, Mr. Gambetti." Not yet. He needs to understand just how screwed up the earth truly was. "30 to 40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste. Twelve hectares of tropical rainforests are destroyed every year. That is the size of thirty football fields, sir."

He seemed to mull over Foxxman's words as he listened.

"Half of the world's coral reefs have died in the last thirty years. Every minute, the equivalent of one dump truck of waste deposits plastic into a water body somewhere in the world. It's madness, sir! The middle of this century would see thirty to fifty percent of species all around the world go extinct. As we speak, one in every four species is at the risk of extinction."

Logan fixed him with a look that seemed to ask, "are you following, sir?"

He nodded along. "I read a research paper recently that claimed that the United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the worst impacts of climate change could be irreversible this year. Is that true?"

Logan blinked in shock. "That is absolutely correct, sir. We already see signs of it. In fact, scientists predict that in the next twenty years, there will be way more plastic than there are fish in the sea. By 2048, saltwater would literally cease to exist in our world.

"Two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef have been damaged by coral bleaching. This happens when sea temperatures are too high."

Logan cleared his throat again. "And don't get started on carbon emission footprint, most of which are left by the world's richest people. The 1% of the 1%."

He said it with a death stare till Mr. Gambetti giggled bashfully. "Guilty."

"The resources, biodiversity, and habitability of Earth are vanishing at an alarming rate. Global warming, an accelerating rate of extinction, plastic pollution, unsustainable fish farming, deforestation, air pollution, and food waste are just some of the factors that are threatening the planet."

The projector's images were practically abandoned now. Logan was fired up. He knew all of the statistics by heart anyway.

"Every 48 hours, a forest the size of New York City is destroyed. Scientific models project that the frequency of hurricanes that reach category four and five, intensity will increase as global temperatures rise. One in three people globally do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. In nineteen years, the world could run out of fresh water at this pace. The warmest years on record have occurred in the past thirty two years. Even the global sea levels have already risen eight inches in the past century and doubled in the past decade. Decade, sir! We would need 1.77 planet Earths to sustain our current demand for resources and absorb our waste. A global ecological overshoot."

For seconds on end, Mr. Gambetti just stared at him. Then he took off his glasses and heaved a sigh. "We are screwed, right?"

Somebody gets it now. Finally. "Yes. In a nutshell, we are totally and irrevocably screwed."