The Polylocus Problem by Ariele Sieling

Author:Ariele Sieling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

4. The Problem With Math

Kaia didn’t remember the walk from Conference Room 100 to Dr. Winkler’s office. Her mind tripped over itself as she tried to process everything that had just happened. She was angry at Axel Vance for putting them in such a difficult situation. At the same time, she was annoyed at herself for suggesting that she could fix the Doors—ha! The gall!—and felt an overwhelming despair beginning to well up in the pit of her stomach. If she had only known about the 24-hour deadline first! And now, because of this ludicrous suggestion, she felt excited and overwhelmed and exhilarated—because she was going to meet the famous Dr. Winkler, the only person in Pomegranate City who worked with the Clutch.

Kaia began to run over everything she knew about the Clutch, hoping that she wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of Dr. Winkler. The Clutch was a device developed many centuries ago by Dr. Percivall Finnegan that operated as a combination antimatter scoop, trap, and accelerator. When operated correctly, it allowed the user to look at and affect the base layer of the universe. Some of her professors had scoffed at this idea, but others thought it made sense—how else did the Globe create and move entire planets? But no one knew what the base layer of the universe looked like or how scientists affected change. The problem of course with this kind of power was that doing it wrong could have catastrophic consequences—and legend had it that Dr. Finnegan had learned this by accident when a whole corner of the sky went dark.

After that, the Globe took control of the Clutch and it was only ever used for one thing: planet building. Only one person at a time was allowed to operate it. And Kaia was going to meet that person. She took deep breaths to steady herself.

“You’re going to be fine, you know,” Quin said suddenly.

“What are you talking about?” Kaia realized they were standing outside of room 32-19, and Quin was looking down at her, his arms crossed.

“You’ve been doing deep breathing exercises for the last ten minutes,” he said. “I figured you needed some time. But honestly, you’re the smartest person that’s walked through the doors to this building, and you need to believe that about yourself.”

“But John—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Quin interrupted. “John’s pretty smart. But he’s also an idiot. Don’t be scared. And if you can’t figure it out, don’t worry about it. Give yourself some time. Be patient. Dr. Winkler is awesome. She’ll help you with everything.”

“You know her?” Kaia asked.

“My dad used to work closely with her,” Quin said.

Grise Black had been in charge of the planet-building department at the Globe for a couple of decades, before he built his own planet and then ran off to retire—as a fugitive, of course. It made sense.

Kaia nodded. Quin was right. She would be fine. She simply needed to focus on the task at hand: fixing the Doors. She had figured out the full formula

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.