Chapter Four

After a long meeting at the Halikkon facility, Rosa returned home to join Eva and Aura, already in their conference room.

While the girls played in Viktoriya’s art and craft room upstairs, Rosa pulled the chair from underneath the long table and sat across from Eva, who wore all black underneath her pristine, white lab coat.

She sat next to Aura—Choe’s aunt, their Halikkon colleague, and a dear friend to the entire family.

Aura and Eva finished their chat while Rosa took a moment to reach into his pocket and pull out the nanny-bot hand-held device.

“Hi girls, I just got home. We’re all downstairs in the conference room if you need anything.”

“Okay, um, Dad. Bye-bye! Ah, we’re kind of busy,” Viktoriya said, laughing.

He placed the nanny-bot on the table. The device would alert them if there was any trouble in the craft room.

“You all good, Rosa?” his wife asked, smiling at him before he took a seat.

He blushed and brushed back his hair. Suddenly, he was a little self-conscious that he seemed flustered.

Rosa took a deep breath, smiled, and nodded to her. He was indeed all good.

“It’s just that we’re a bit far from the girls at this end of the house, downstairs here,” he confessed.

“Yes, I’ve actually seen menacing clay figures in there, waiting for their chance to take over!” Eva joked and giggled, patting her husband on the shoulder.

“Okay, enough already. I’m glad I helped you laugh today.”

Aura smiled widely at the two of them, not saying a word. This was a big day for them. Aura was the one Edmund—their TITAN team director—had appointed to review their test results. She was boisterous, sure, but she was also brilliant and cunning.

She was also a genius, as demonstrated by several scientific standards. If holes were to be poked in their research, she would undoubtedly find them.

“I reviewed all one hundred fifty-eight simulations. All of them,” Aura said, placing a tablet, which Rosa presumed held the data, on the table. “Your assumptions were sound, and I cannot seem to find any errors in calculations—”

“So, what are you saying, Aura?” he asked, eager to hear her feedback, leaning forward on the edge of his seat.

“What will be your recommendation to Edmund? C’mon, what is it?”

She sighed, taking a long pause with a stern face, scrunching her brows. Then, finally, she tapped her fingers on the top of the tablet.

He held his breath. Typically, Aura was loud and bubbly.

This would not be good news.

“Well, what will it be, you ask?” she mockingly repeated to him, staring at her tablet, rapping her fingers over it.

“What am I saying? It’ll be… wait for it… wait for it…”

“That we need to do something about this right now, even at this very moment!” she shouted. Laughing, she leaped up from her chair, her face widening into a crafty smile.

“Oh shit, why’d you do that?” Eva asked, laughing, placing her hand on her chest.

Rosa sighed in relief and looked over at his spouse, who looked just as thrilled by the news. They shared a soft smile, able to relax a bit more.

“The simulations you ran are beautiful, absolutely stunning. Chef’s kiss to you both!” Aura said. She puckered her mouth and blew air kisses to them. “There’s only one issue.”

Rosa stood and walked to her. “What, Aura?”

“Do tell. Do tell,” Eva chimed in.

She shrugged. “Real data. Actual results, for Edmund.”

“But this is real,” he argued, pointing at the tablet. “It’s all there.”

Aura poked him in the center of his chest with her index finger.

“You know it’s real,” she stated. She motioned over to his wife.

“Eva knows it’s real, and I know it’s real. But right now, it’s only a hypothesis, only a theory.” She pointed at her tablet.

“The Halikkon community will want to—no, NEED to—run more experiments before this is all ‘just accepted’. Observe real climactic data versus computer simulations based on TITAN data. But probably by that time—”

“It’ll be too late.” his defeated wife whispered from her chair. She stood from her spot and walked to the door, looking down the hall toward the stairs leading up to Viktoriya’s room.

Now she was the one who seemed overly concerned—concerned for the safety of the children, their daughter. She retook her seat and stared back at Rosa with her darling blue eyes.

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“We need to do something, and we must do it now, the planet—”

“Is going to cool to the point it’s irreparable sometime within the next several years,” Aura said and twirled around in her swivel chair.

She suddenly paused her rotation to study a picture depicting the Mars mission on the conference room wall.

“Man, those were the good ol’ days, right? Am I right?” she interjected, staring at the colony scene as if it were a boyfriend from eons ago that had found an opportune moment to drift back into her life.

Rosa stood and looked toward the picture with Aura, wondering if she was about to say something profound. Was she perhaps linking the two events with one another?

But she craftily smiled at both her friends and spun her chair some more.

It astonished him at how lighthearted she was about all this. Their futures, the futures of the world’s children—of his own child—were coming to an end.

And she was there twirling, reminiscing about the good ol’ days.

“Then we only have one choice,” he said, returning to his seat. The two women awaited his reply eagerly.

“Edmund has the authority and final say in all of this, deciding what we need and what we will get. If we can convince him, then we may persuade the rest of the world.”

“Edmund is a stickler for the rules. He’ll never go for it. Plus, he’s too connected to the international influencer’s circles to go out on a limb. He has to protect his value, his connections,” Aura said and waved him off.

“Perhaps Aura’s right,” Eva added, though she wasn’t looking at either of them.

She held her chin in her hand, eyes fixated on the table, darting back and forth as if reading from a page, though nothing was actually there for her to stare at.

There was something mischievous going on behind her ocean eyes, something perhaps out of the ordinary. Maybe outside of the rules, maybe even outside of the law.

He reached across the table and caressed the hand of his dear beloved. His eyes narrowed. “What is it, Eva?”

She shook her head, and then her eyes snapped to him. “Just a thought. It’s a terrible idea. So, we should not really consider it.”

“I know that look,” Aura jumped in.

“It’s not ‘just a thought’. It’s probably a brilliant one—Daring and clever!”

“She’s right about your look, you know,” he said without taking his eyes off his wife, “That is your clever thought look.”

“More like, illegal thought look,” Aura replied and wrapped her arm around Eva, pulling her close. “You can’t leave us on that cliffhanger, Eva. Do tell hun. We’ll keep your secret. Really!”

“I mean, and this is purely hypothetical.”

Both he and Aura responded simultaneously with, “Of course.”

His wife nodded, then flattened the lapels of her lab coat and cleared her throat.

“I just thought that if we’re concerned about the global scientific community—our peers and TITAN team?” she said.

“But seeing that this is a global problem, the potential end to humanity itself. Doesn’t that warrant a much broader audience than just our own internal validation?”

Rosa raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting what I think you are? You mean leaki—”

Aura widened her eyes. “Oh, don’t be so dense, Rosa. Of course, she is!”

He turned back to his wife, whose cheeks flooded red as she shied away from him.

“I was not, very much not suggesting it! More so, just running through the scenario in my mind.”

“It would cause mass panic! We’d lose our jobs—go to prison. think about Viktoriya!” Rosa blurted out.

Eva avoided his eyes, and he knew immediately that he had embarrassed her further. It was time to backtrack.

“You know I would support you in anything but—”

Aura jumped in before he could finish. “Or hailed as heroes!”

“Enough!” Eva shouted.

“Enough. This is the reason I didn’t want to say anything. I don’t think we should leak the data. No. We’d lose everything—”

He held both his wife’s hands. “And with our precious time left, we can’t afford to squander any time together. We must not risk our time left with Viktoriya.”

They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment before sharing an ever-so-slight nod of acknowledgment.

“Y’know, I hate when the two of you are right,” Aura said, breaking the momentary peace.

“First, you’re right about the world ending, and now, I must say, you lay out quite a compelling argument for not committing treason.”

Rosa laughed.

No matter how dark a situation, Aura always found the lighter side. Or at least some humor in it.

He cleared his throat. “So then, what’s the plan? Our actual plan?”

“You two keep running simulations and integrate as much real-time and historical data as possible. I’ll extend the calculations out a few decimal places for better accuracy,” Aura said. “And we’ll face Edmund, the Halikkon team, and iNASA-Climate together.”

Rosa nodded. “Shall I call the girls down?”

Aura agreed, and the next few minutes progressed with idle chat as they waited for the girls to join them—no one wanting to acknowledge the weight of the subject at hand, nor the stress that came along with keeping everyone in the dark.

But if there were only a few years left, Rosa would not sacrifice being with his family for anything. Not even the fate of the rest of the world could change that.

It was a sight to behold.

The girls appeared a few moments later, covered in paint and glitter. Their giggles lifted the mood of the room instantaneously.

All five walked out of the conference room, past the labs and the living room, through the modern hallway, and toward the magnificent front door.

Aura hugged both her friends goodbye while Choe and Viktoriya chased each other around the foyer.

“We’ve got this!” Aura said, as if she had transformed into an over-confident teammate on a middle-school intermural team.

“I can feel it.”

“Thank you,” Eva said, holding Aura’s hand.

Rosa nodded. “From both of us. Your support means the world.”

Aura nodded, then chased after Choe, wrangling her niece into the running shoes she had kicked off at the door when they arrived for their visit.

“C’mon, kiddo, let’s get you to your mom’s. She’s probably already scolding me for keeping you out so late.”

Rosa opened their front door for the two of them, whose autonomous car was already waiting in the driveway.

A gust of frigid wind pushed the heavy wooden door inwards, nearly knocking Rosa clear off his feet. The wind’s gusts, howling among the tall pines outside, had gone unheard in their soundproof home. The frosty, harsh air pricked their exposed skin even while they stood inside, and it tasted crisp—like winter.

The wintergreen smell of the trees overtook their senses while the wind whisked a wall of static noise through the limbs.

A single flake fell from the sky just before their steps, galvanized by the porch light, making it a brilliant white in contrast to the dark night air.

Eva stepped onto the porch, and Rosa had to quell the instinct to pull her back. He knew that stopping her from doing anything would just make her angry.

He followed her into the cold air that had replaced the earlier warmth of August just hours ago.

He observed the falling white flake.

Snow.

Eva stretched out her hand to catch the falling speck. It landed gently in her palm, floating down from the sky as if it was just meant for her and her alone.

Then, bit by bit, the air became an engulfing snow-globe, filled with wisping, churning flakes.

She cast her gaze away from her single flake up to the stormy-looking clouds and snow flurries above, shafts of brilliant moonlight piercing through as rays of fleeting hope, before turning her eyes back to Rosa.

Her flake abandoned her, flew upward, and joined in the ensemble of its peers in a chaotic dance of randomness.

Her following words were but a whisper.

“And so, the group destined to save the world is actually the one cursed with ending it.”

“YAY, let’s make a snowman!” Viktoriya shouted to Choe.