reach - just like the young man himself.
"Don't punch me in the face while you're asleep," he whispered.
Rolf turned slightly. "No promises."
Elizabeth
She let her mind float in the dim outer marches of sleep. She could have just closed her eyes a moment ago, for all that she felt refreshed - but there was no pretending, no chance to feign further sleep.
She heard scuffling in the cot across from her; Rolf waking in a fit, no doubt.
"It's just me," she heard Og whisper fervently, audibly struggling with him.
A moment of silence passed.
A short, embarrassed whisper followed. "Sorry…"
Ignoring them, she began moving her eyes, scrolling through the messages she'd received while asleep. Most were proposals and propositions from random men - and sometimes families - dredging the short list of living blondes.
She deleted them without reading a single one.
Sitting up and hanging her legs off the edge of the cot, she swallowed, coughed, and scrunched up her eyes. A glance out the window brought a momentary image of the southern sky, burning high with searing blue and roiling low with shimmering rain clouds.
A calm breeze billowed through her heart, matched by the light draft from the window.
Another day, another opportunity… something good was near. She could sense it in the upward curve of life, in the contrast between today and yesterday. She was - officially, amazingly, finally - a Scientist. She almost couldn't believe it. Twelve years ago, told of that moment, she wouldn't have believed it.
Groans and stretching filled the otherwise quiet room as Night shift neared its end.
Too tired for small talk, she nodded goodbye at Og, and then walked clumsily with the crowdflow leaving the room. Morning shift sleepers lined the walls in waiting, eager to crash for the next eight hours.
The ten flights of steps downward seemed endless, stepping down repeatedly in time with the thick line of people, but she was almost unhappy to see it end. She found herself thrust out into the Unsetting Sun's warm amber light, blinking and holding up a hand to shade her eyes until she reached the long shadows cast from the buildings across the wide main quadrant.
She'd read the files, had a visual map, and knew where to head, but she still felt a little uncertain just walking over to the solar cells project building by herself. She looked around nervously, but Rolf was nowhere nearby.
"First day blues?" someone behind her asked, catching up to her.
Immediately wary of yet another random suitor, she brushed away whoever it was. "I'm fine."
"Sorry," the other said, walking behind her. "I just saw your project when you three came in. I'm on it, too. I'm an engineer." He randomly switched topic. "I met Mjögen Ragnisson, he seems nice. Somehow I thought the son of such a famous Scientist would be - you know - all superior and stuff, but he was… nice."
Taking care to keep pace with the incredible flow of people spreading out to their various places of work, she glanced at her follower.
"You're -" she hesitated, seeing his lack of beard and telltale blue-streaked black hair.
"Dierk," he replied, holding his hand out in the old style.
She recoiled slightly.
"Oh, that's fine," he said hastily, withdrawing his offered handshake. "Mjögen didn't shake my hand either."
"It's Og," she replied, not wanting to explain her hesitation.
"Og?"
"That's what we call him, his nickname."
"Oh. Og. I like it. He's really tall."
She peered back at her strange new acquaintance. "Yeah…"
His gaze was already on the gigantic red-brick factory ahead. "Are you gonna crack the efficiency barrier?"
"The what?"
"We're stuck," he explained as the twenty-story high walls loomed above them. "Have been for some time. We keep redesigning, and redesigning, and redesigning, and -"
She held up a hand. "I'm new. It's my first day."
"You know what they say, fresh eyes and all that." He tilted his head. "Oh, hey, you're blonde. Wow, not many of you guys around."
Despite herself, she laughed. He was odd - and extremely talkative - but pleasantly harmless. For some reason, she felt a little better.
The solar cell factory floor spanned an interior space that seemed almost endless. Filled with assembly lines and an incredible array of monolithic machines, it looked every bit the design area for society's most important technology.
Dierk moved off to his workstation, and she stood near the vast entrance, petrified.
"Orientation over here," somebody mass-texted.
She peered past the milling crowds of Scientists, relieved.
Ragni stood upon a raised platform free of machines, an area obviously reserved for discussion. She headed in his direction, joining a circle of young men and women around her own age. She recognized some of them from the Atoll.
"Lots of graduates and transfers today," he commented, turning his clothes to the traditional light blue donned by teach-speakers. "I can advise you and guide you around here, but the rest is all really up to you."
She looked to her left and right, scanning intent faces.
"What do we do here?" Ragni asked aloud. "How about you, Elizabeth?"
She snapped her gaze forward. "Me?"
"Yes."
Quickly grabbing the question she'd missed from her own lifelog, she looked out across the massive factory space. "Design and upgrade solar cells?"
He snorted, but not in an unkind manner. "Yes, that's true." Leaning on his cane, he looked around, scanning each new face. "This -" he tapped the air in the direction of the controlled chaos around them. "This is the entire backbone of society. Every single brick, bread, and machine out there was made with the energy from the solar cells we create here… and we're stalled."
"Stalled?" an olive-skilled Orani boy asked, concerned.
"Yes, stalled. We hit an efficiency barrier about eight months ago, and haven't been able to improve the design since. What does that mean for us?"
Nobody answered.
"Well," he continued, pacing a tight circle. "We're becoming a burden on our organization, for one. The large donors that support the Scientists have their own issues to worry about, what with the dropping Peak. Many wealthy people are reconsidering their investments. None of us are about to spark that volatile conversation by asking for more money."
He stopped in place. "And I'm sure you've been told a thousand times that, individually, we get paid a percentage of the improvements we make. Pay for performance, which sounds great in theory - only, we're not performing. Oh, but no pressure."
Nervous laughter circled the group, barely loud enough to be heard over the keening, whirring, and screeching of the factory's machines.
"But worse," he said after a moment, frowning. "The solar cells currently in production at the six major factories are still the eight-month-old design. The more that ship out, the more that get installed, the more our energy generation forecasts flatten. The Peak is creeping up on us."
Many of the others nodded. They seemed well aware of that fact.
While studying at the Atoll, she'd been aware of the trending problems, but the reality of the situation only hit her as she stood in that circle and saw the shared concern on the faces of her new colleagues.
"Here's what we've got now," Ragni continued, pulling up a complex three-dimensional layout. He pushed it into the air in front of him, expanding the virtual image in the middle of their circle. Myriad lines of light traced out the complex inner workings of a rectangular solar cell. "As you can see, we've reached the limits of our current fabrication tools. We can't make the components any smaller, and we can't pack them any tighter, at least not with any accuracy."
A taller Anglan girl on the other side of the circle spoke up. "What's the timeline on the next generation of fabrication capabilities?"
Elizabeth scanned her confident features, and then glanced aro
und the group, wondering if everyone was really as well-versed as they seemed. She felt like she hadn't even had a moment to study the design. Ragni had sent her the files, but she'd only just arrived… when had they found the time?
He grimaced. "Six months to a year." His words elicited murmurs of concern. "Every time we shrink a factor in size, it gets exponentially more difficult for them. They're doing the best they can, but we have to come up with something else in the meantime. We can't afford to wait that long."
Elizabeth absently stared at the design, running over it in her mind. She could picture the already-installed cells covering rooftops all across civilization, angled perfectly at a star that never moved in the sky. She cycled through a series of possible improvements, discarding each of them for various impractical flaws that only revealed themselves after deeper analysis.
Still absorbed in her mental permutations, she hardly noticed when the orientation circle ran its course and disbanded.
Not yet certain where she could best contribute, she wandered over to Dierk.
He sat on a chrome stool, bent over a long metal design table hosting many other Scientists and their various works. A small cell lay open in front of him. Seeing her, he carefully placed his fine instruments in their holders. "Hello. Have you cracked the efficiency barrier yet?"
"What? It's been like ten minutes." She snorted, unsure whether he was serious.
He looked back down at his work. "Oh, ok. I was just hopeful, that's all."
She looked around the floor, scanning the individual projects. "What are you working on?"
He perked up again. He lifted his virtual overlay from the prototype to the air between them,