The thought gave me pause. I reached down and scratched Kepler’s head while I sorted out what was bothering me.
Yes, discovery should come first.
But I hadn’t actually discovered anything, had I? I’d only duplicated a machine whose earliest prototype came from 132 AD. Nor would I stumble onto new information with my seismograph. I’d contributed nothing to the world.
I was hit with a wave of melancholy. The feeling of not being quite enough. I wanted to invent something of my own. Discover something special, accomplish something no one had before. I wanted to contribute to science in a meaningful way.
Truth be told, I wanted glory.
My phone dinged with a text message, and my musings screeched to a halt.
IH: come up to the house
I ignored him. A moment later:
IH: hurry
I decided to comply only because it was getting chilly and I hadn’t set up the space heater for the season. (My lab was kept running with a generator, so it had electricity, but heating and cooling options were limited.) Ishmael was the sort of person who’d interrupt important work to show you a YouTube video of a sloth playing guitar, or to see if you agreed that his fried egg was in the exact shape of Texas, so my expectations were low.
I crossed the field and approached the farmhouse from the back. In the kitchen, Ishmael sat at the table with a man who looked vaguely familiar. He was in his midtwenties, tall and lanky, wearing an ill-fitting suit. The jacket was too wide for his narrow shoulders and the cuffs hung over his wrists. While I wasn’t immensely knowledgeable about fashion, I did know wearing a suit that wasn’t properly tailored looked less professional than not wearing a suit at all.
The suit-wearer had a notepad and pen on the table in front of him.
“Hello,” I said cautiously.
He leapt to his feet, grinned, and extended his hand. “You must be Gideon. Adam Frykowski.”
As we shook—him too eagerly, I might add—I searched my brain until his name connected.
“You work for the Lansburg Daily Press,” I said.
Frykowski’s face lit up. Just another of us poor human souls looking for recognition, for someone to acknowledge that they exist.
“I do!”
“You edit the obituaries,” I continued. (The previous year I’d been fleetingly obsessed with population and spent hours comparing births versus deaths in Lansburg.)
Frykowski’s smile sagged. “Well, that’s my main assignment, but I get others. Sometimes.”
“Sit down, Gideon,” Ishmael said from the table, businesslike. “Mr. Frykowski wants to discuss last night.”
I sat, but raised my eyebrows. “I don’t recall anyone dying in the explosion.”
Frykowski joined us at the table, a fervent light in his eyes. “But there was an explosion?”
“Where are our parents?” I asked Ishmael.
“Mom’s still working, and Dad took Maggie shopping for new cleats.”
“Should we wait for them?”
“It’s fine, Gideon,” Ishmael assured me. “He only has a few questions.”
Clearly, Ishmael would talk to whomever he wanted no matter how I tried to contain the story. Better to be present during it so I’d at least know what tales he was telling.
“Make it quick,” I said.
And the song and dance began again. Ishmael became animated. He told the greatly exaggerated story of how we were innocently minding our own business when something came from the sky and exploded in our field.
“And at first you suspected it was a meteor?” Frykowski asked.
“Meteoroid,” I offered.
But what did he mean by at first?
“Did you actually see the meteoroid?”
Ishmael hesitated, probably trying to sort through the various versions of the story he’d told all day. “No,” he finally admitted.
“You saw nothing until after the impact.”
Ishmael nodded.
“Yet you’re sure it was a meteor?”
Meteoroid. But I kept my mouth shut.
“Well,” Ishmael said, “we kinda assumed.”
“You assumed, but you don’t have any evidence that a meteor hit the ground, is that correct?” Frykowski pressed.
I took a long look at him, a tight, anxious feeling spreading through my chest. Had I underestimated Frykowski? Was our story about to be blown open by an obituary editor, of all people?
Ishmael licked his lips. He was getting nervous too, which increased my own unease. “Well, no. We don’t actually have any evidence.”
“Meteors often leave fragments,” Frykowski said.
“But not every time,” Ishmael replied.
“Still, it’s quite rare for there to be an explosion with no remaining evidence.”
“It happened this one time in Tunsga…Tuska… Somewhere in Russia.”
I needed to step in and help my brother. I needed to regain control of the situation. But I remained frozen, watching the interrogation play out with fascinated horror.
“The Tunguska event happened in 1908,” Frykowski said. “Certainly, scientists investigating it today would have different insights.”
“But there was this other time in Belize—”
“Brazil.”
“Right, Brazil.” Beads of sweat formed at Ishmael’s hairline. “Gideon really knows more about it than I do.”
“Listen,” Frykowski said. His expression turned grave, as if he was finally getting down to business. “I don’t think there was a meteor.”
Speak, I commanded myself. But it seemed I’d forgotten how. What would happen when Frykowski exposed us as frauds? Would Ishmael and I be arrested? Would we get harsher sentences because, in addition to causing the explosion, we lied about it?
Ishmael swallowed hard. “So, like…what do you think?”
“My cousin attends your high school,” Frykowski replied. “She overheard something interesting today.”
I frowned at this new development. Who was his cousin? Had she been eavesdropping when I told Cass about the seismograph?
I glanced at Ishmael. He stared back with an innocent expression. A far too innocent expression. Oh no.
“What, exactly, was overheard?” I asked, finally finding my voice.
Frykowski leaned forward, his gaze intense. He looked back and forth between me and my brother. “I’d like you to be honest with me. Last night, did you have a close encounter with extraterrestrials?”