“It totally happens. And needs to be planned for.”
Nora held her wine glass up, saluting Adeline. “That’s why you get paid the big bucks. You think of everything. Always imagining what could go wrong.”
You have no idea, Adeline thought.
“So how do we avoid a bad binge?” Nora asked.
“Mandatory check-ins. At the fifteen-minute mark in episode one, we hold our fists out and do a thumbs-up or thumb-down. Same at the end of episode one and two. We need two thumbs up to continue.”
“It’s a little dorky, but it could work.”
“It will work. And yes, it’s extremely dorky.”
Adeline refilled their wine glasses, and they started the board games phase of the evening, sitting at the table in the dining room, playing Scrabble, music on in the background.
Thirty minutes later, Adeline was laying down the tiles for the word relativity.
*
The next morning, in the lab, most of the Absolom Six were sitting around a raised metal table, looking haggard and tired.
Hiro had recently returned from a trip to Vegas. Adeline had last talked to him at 3 a.m. the previous night and knew he was returning a hundred thousand dollars poorer. She had cut him off, which was perhaps the only reason he was back at all.
Constance had been up late doing a video conference with someone from her past who lived in Australia. Adeline could tell from her countenance that the person had been sick, and that the experience was weighing on her.
Adeline looked up to find Nora staring at her across the metal table, a cup of coffee in her hand, a subtle grin on her lips. Adeline had to admit, last night had been the most fun she had had in a long, long time.
They weren’t the only two who were slightly hungover. Elliott was guzzling coffee as if the dark liquid could vanquish the fatigue and stress that grew every day.
“Sam’s late,” he said.
Adeline rose. “I’ll get him.”
She once again found the door to his office cracked, but he wasn’t sitting in the chair this time. He was standing at the window, staring out, in a daze, with no idea Adeline was there. In the reflection, she could see the tears creeping down his face.
“Sam.”
He jumped at the word as if a needle had pricked him.
He ran his forearm across his face, the sweater soaking up the tears.
“Has it started? I lost track of time.”
“You should go home.”
“No. We need to figure this out. If we don’t, we’ll lose everything we’ve worked for. All the money you put in.”
“Forget the work. And the money. Go home, Sam.”
He inhaled and shook his head. “I’m not leaving you all to figure this out alone—”
“I lied before, Sam.”
He squinted at her.
“I told you we were partners. We’re not. I’m still the majority owner of this company. I control it. At the end of the day, I call the shots here, and I’m telling you to go home.”
His chest heaved, but he didn’t move.
“Besides,” Adeline said, stepping out of the office, “I already figured out what we’re going to do with Absolom. We don’t need you right now. But somebody does.”
He barreled past her then, his eyes full of emotion, hurt from what she had said or because of what was waiting for him at home—of what was happening in slow motion, the knowledge that these moments would be his last with the love of his life.
At the stairwell, he looked back, and Adeline thought he understood because his eyes said thanks, but his mouth didn’t move.
When he was gone, she returned to the lab and the four waiting scientists, who sat silently at the table, all seeming to contemplate the things hanging heavy in their lives.
“Sam can’t make it.”
No one said a word. They knew why he couldn’t make it. Like any real friends, they felt some part of his grief.
“I have an idea,” Elliott said. “I’ve given it a lot of thought.”
All eyes turned to him.
“Nuclear fuel rods.”
No one said anything to his pronouncement.
“It’s quite simple,” Elliott said. “We offer a waste disposal service. Spent nuclear fuel rods are radioactively dangerous for about ten thousand years. We put the rods in Absolom, transport them to an alternate universe, and the world is rid of them.”
“Yes, but not the world they arrive in,” Constance said. “We can’t just dump our poison on another world because it helps us.”
“Of course we can,” Elliott said. “The world is full of people dumping their poison on others for profit.”