Chapter Two

1 year later

Maria was slouched over a series of completely full notebooks that contained equations upon equations and hypotheses upon hypotheses. It was the middle of night and she nearly passed out trying to find the flaw in her equations. She ran test after test, and even had some of the brightest minds come in and try to assist her, but they couldn’t figure it out either.

“Okay...maybe if,” Maria yawned. “I just replace the twenty-three with a basic forty-six and rework how it rebuilds the human body--No! That won’t work. Ugh!” Maria groaned. She’s been up for the past forty-eight hours substituting and reworking, with no progress. She sighed as she pushed her single braid behind her shoulder. “Hey, Apollo!”

When she said those words, the computer on the northernmost wall of her lab lit up and a holographic smiley face came upon the screen.

“Yes, Mrs. Salvador.?” Apollo’s planet wide A.I. asked.

“Can you run these numbers?” Maria asked. Apollo hummed in agreement before scanning Maria’s computer and all of her equations were displayed on the screen. Apollo quickly went through them as fast as his A.I. would let him, but his screen flashed a series of red lights and Maria groaned in frustration. “Again?”

“I’m afraid so. Sorry I cannot assist you in your research. My programmers only gave me the abilities to keep you all alive. Which includes the artificial gravity control, oxygen management, and-”

“The ability to pressurize or depressurize certain areas of the planet. We already had this talk Apollo.” Maria said in her usual motherly voice. She rubbed her forehead in deep thought before she heard the lab door open and her son walked inside.

“Mom?” Ray asked, looking around. “I knew I’d find you here.”

“Where else could I be?”

“Asleep. Back home. Spending time with me.” Ray said. Maria chuckled a little before her smile faded.

“I’m sorry, champ, but I can’t just stop my work. I need to crack this, and nobody else can do it but me.” Maria said. Ray shook his head in disappointment before walking over to the desk and looking at all of the papers.

“Let me try.” Maria chuckled a little as she stepped next to her son. She watched as he sifted through all of the papers and picked up one. He studied it for a bit before picking up a red pen from the desk and circling a specific equation.

“What about that one?” She asked.

“Why’s there negative numbers for how much stuff you need to produce?” He asked.

“Because that equation needs to equal two.” She said,

“Can’t it be positive numbers?” He asked. Maria chuckled before she began to think. Why couldn’t they be positive numbers? She left her son’s side  and walked over to the holo-board and started writing. She replaced the negative numbers with their positive counterparts and changed a couple of the other parts of her sequence as she went and Ray watched as she began to slowly piece it together.

“Oh dios arriba! Apollo run the equation on my holo-board!” Maria exclaimed. Apollo quickly scanned her holo-board and the giant equation she wrote on it appeared on his screen. He ran through all of the numbers and logic and with a moment of silence that felt like a knife to Maria’s heart, a bright green light illuminated Apollo’s screen.

Maria screamed with joy and grabbed her son by the wrists before dancing in circles. She did it- no- Ray did it. Her son solved the problem and cloning technology is right back on schedule because of his accidental brilliance. But, no mother could be prouder of an accident than Maria was in this moment.

“We did it! I can’t believe it.” Maria whispered to herself.

“What are we going to call it?” Ray asked. Maria looked at her son with a puzzled grin. “All of the famous scientists get to have their stuff named after them, why can’t you?”

Maria chuckled. “Okay, what do we call it then?” Ray thought for a while before his eyes widened with purpose.

“Ray’s genetic reconstruction masterpiece!” He exclaimed with pride. Maria shook her head playfully before speaking.

“How about...Ray’s accidental genetic reconstruction masterpiece?”

“R.A.G.R.M?” Apollo asked. “That sounds very...weird.”

“I like R.A.G.R.M,” Ray said.

“Well, it’s R.A.G.R.M. Now, excuse me boys, I gotta go and debrief OUR findings to Quasar.” Maria said as she collected herself and made her appearance a little more presentable. She walked out of her labs doors and outside of her apartment building. She was giggling to herself along the way and praising their success.

Not that long after, she made it to Quasar’s large and flamboyant mansion. Maria rolled her eyes at it. She knew he was self-absorbed.

She made her way up the stairs and used her spare key to unlock them and slowly walked in.

“Hey, Quasar. You won’t believe-” She said before hearing talking upstairs she sighed as she made her way towards his long flight of stairs. She wondered what he was doing in a meeting this late, but she realized she was up this late solving math problems. So, they’re both guilty.

She made it to the top of the stairs, but as she got closer to Quasar’s room she could hear the conversation more clearly.

“Yes, I know that for this plan to work we need her cloning.” Quasar said, slightly angry. “She’s working. I know she is. She’ll crack it any day and then we kill her, frame it as an accident, and take her work. The other sectors won’t see it coming from something as new as Sector-9.”

“Well, it seems she’s made no progress.” A mysterious man’s voice came through. “When we see progress, then we’ll take your sector wide domination plan seriously, Quasar.”

Maria put her ear up against Quasar’s door and covered her mouth. She started to believe that this was some sort of prank, that Quasar wouldn’t lie to her after how long they’ve been friends.

“What about her family?” A voice asked. Maria stopped breathing.

“If they get in the way, we’ll kill them.” Maria’s body began to shake from fear? anger? Disgust? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she needed to get out of here.

She quietly backed away from his door and made her to the stairs with Quasar still talking to the group of mysterious men. She lightly stepped on the top step and quietly moved to the next one while her mind was moving at light speed.

“How could he do this?” She thought to herself. “Why would he lie to me? How could I be stupid enough to believe him?!”

Maria made it to the bottom of the steps and quickly ran outside of the door, leaving it open, and continued towards her apartment.