“WELL, MISS AWARE, WHAT’S next?”

She pointed to a small trail halfway down the depression. “I propose we suspend this conversation to another time. We passed by there, and I kind of ignored it at first. But I want to skim along that little oval path and see how far it goes. See if we can walk the circumference of this place and maybe the outline of the lab.”

“And the food and water?”

“Oh, I’m sure some chipmunk or large cockroach will take it away if we leave it there,” she chided, knowing such creatures were never found inside their walls. “So, let’s circle around this first, then go back to the table area once we’ve finished our exploration initiatives.”

“Geez, sounds very scientific. Certain exploration initiatives are spinning around my brain, but I’m not sure they’re the same kind of exploration you’re considering.”

“Not an exploration of Daisy, Dearie. Not yet, anyway. We are finishing the task at hand.”

Sord’s heart began beating wildly at the thought. As every minute passed, he felt that much closer to experiencing something more with her. Lips to lips. Skin to skin.

Daisy led him downward to the small trail. He had missed it multiple times while paying discrete attention to Daisy’s shoulders, her smell, her stride. Any aspect he observed of the locale was only in relation to staying with her, to being close.

“I’d like to speak with your mom, Sord, more than just meeting her at the hospital. I’d like to understand who she is and who could have raised such a nice son.”

“Sure!” he volunteered. “I’m certain she’d want to see you again. As long as she doesn’t bring out the naked baby pics, I’m good with that.”

“Naked baby Sord? Sure. Naked teenage Sord? Hmm, not sure,” she teased. “I’d also ask her what she knows about your father and the things he was involved with here. This entire place has my investigative juices engaged. I mean, consider this little path we’re on. It’s an almost perfect oval with the exception of boulders and bioplas chunks we’ve had to dance around. Can your vexed mind remember anything else?”

“Honestly, I was ten, and it’s easy to get mixed up between school science classes and discussions I may have overheard with my dad and mom or friends who visited. I think it was somewhat secretive, like, not a lot of people were clued-in on his activities. I don’t recall it being particularly supported by everyone around him.”

Still in the lead, she turned to grab his hand. “Secretive. Not supported by all. Did he mention any names or the Prosperity Science and Tech Academy, or any such things?”

“I’m sure he did. He was a member of the Academy and even a leader in some administrative rotations, as I recall. He would always talk about office politics and disagreements, believe it or not. You don’t tend to see a lot of that in Prosperity. I’m not sure if it’s because we all share that same vision of science and tech and moving at a sensible speed without profit or power motives distorting our reasoning.”

“Um-hum,” she responded. “Do you recall otherwise why there were disagreements?”

“I can’t say it’s top of mind. I may even have blanked out some things. You know, when someone you love dies, you focus on the good stuff. If I could regurgitate anything from my feeble brain, it was vaguely about the dangers in what he was doing.”

Daisy stopped in her tracks and turned to him. “Dangers? Obviously there must have been danger of some kind or you wouldn’t have had all this investment in placing the lab at this distant location, whatever was in it, then excavating this huge area to locate the facility after it apparently disappeared.”

“Yep. From what my mom told me, they were searching for the lab itself.”

She continued walking, almost tugging Sord in her haste to pace along the circumference of the area. “I’m not getting this. Nothing ties together, right? I mean, here’s your dad, a physicist. Here’s his lab in a big oval the circumference of two high school tracks. Even with the manufacturing and building erection bioprocesses we use today, all of this was not that cheap. They could well have spent this capital on other projects, such as securing our perimeter or whatever. And this wasn’t the only sci-tech center in Prosperity. We have at least a dozen others at last count, though I don’t think any are quite this large.”

“Yep, this was a big one. And please, don’t mention erections again. It diverts my attention to your quest.”

She turned and grabbed his chin with her thumb and forefinger, shaking it gently. “Sord! You are just like a teenage boy! As I said, there’s a time and place for such things, but now we must focus. It’s getting more and more interesting, this story. Besides, you know the old Prosperity motto about managing your desires, be it food, sex, or other indulgences and entitlements.”

“Please!” he pleaded. “You’re killing me. You can’t possibly know how difficult it is to be testosterone-fueled with Prosperity’s rules constantly spinning around your brain. Then there’s you here with me.”

She remained a few steps in front. “Poor Sord! The poor boy has testosterone flooding his veins, and he seeks relief. Well, some minor form of relief may arrive, but let’s get back to the mystery.”

“Honestly, every time I think of what I can’t help thinking about, it’s difficult to re-focus. So, where were we?”

“His lab. Now, did he run the thing? Were other folks working here?”

“Sure, far as I know. He was up there in leadership. I’m not sure whom he reported to, but I could find out.”

“And why this oval? Don’t you recall anything, any discussions, about a collider, super-collider, particle accelerator, or similar?”

Sord shrugged. “I’m sure he mentioned it a hundred times along with just about every other scientific term you could imagine. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. My mind goes back to times when he’d sit with my mom at our small breakfast table, holding her hand like we’re doing now and talking about the same things.”

“Things like. . . ?”

“Colliders. Muons and anti-neutrinos and gravitons. Dark matter. Space-time. Black holes. Primordials, whatever that was.”

She halted, turning with her hand in the air. “Okay, time we stop and find a place to rest. Lots of walking today, plus we’ll need to get home pretty soon, and we have other business to attend to. But first, I need to delve into your feeble memory on those topics, particularly primordial black holes. Let’s see.”

Peering down into the depression, she saw a suitable place to sit. “Hope you don’t mind, but we’ll need to climb over some of those big blocks and boulders to get to that nice spot right there.”

Sord picked up her nuanced reference. “Other business? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Shaking her head, Daisy smiled. “Yes, and I assume that’s the only business frantically buzzing around your skull right now. That basal ganglia of yours is working overtime and blunting any rational thought, so I’m being forced to corral it, though my own reptilian is rattling its cage as well.”

“God, it’s so nice to know you have the same lizard brain wanting to do its thing.”

“Watch your hand, Sord. We don’t want another damaged body part,” she warned as they climbed downward toward the small opening.

Daisy sat at the lower end of a small, flat block of bioplas. “Guessing this is a piece of wall. Come here and sit next to me.”

Sord sat down and unexpectedly slid beside her. “Sorry,” he confessed, “I didn’t think this was at such an angle.”

“Dearie, I don’t mind you being this close. Here, let me slide over to this spot, then our butts don’t have to crush together as much.”

“I don’t mind crushing. Seriously.”

She sighed loudly. “Oh, my, that lizard. You mentioned something about primordials. Was there more?”

“Not that I remember. Just talk of primordials. I didn’t really know what it meant.”

“Was it discussed in the context of black holes?”

“Possibly. Maybe. I do recall something my mom said to him multiple times.”

“Which was?”

Sord peered up to the dome overhead. “Three hundred feet,” he thought. “At least. Gives the dome in Durango a run for the money.”

“Sord?”

“Sorry. It just got me thinking about my mom. She’s had a hard time of things since he died. In fact, I haven’t even mentioned Matt to you.”

“Matt? Okay, Sord. Yes, I want to hear about Matt, whoever that is. However, unless he is germane to this topic, can we stick with the primordials for now?”

“Certainly, Sherlock. I’m guessing you’re a major consumer of detective mysteries.”

“Diversion!” she countered.

“Caught me. Okay, so where were we?”

Daisy slapped his shoulder. “You are so bad! You mentioned something your mother said to your father multiple times.”

“Oh, yes,” he smiled. “Glad you’re keeping me on track. She said this multiple times. By the way, do you know how sparkling your eyes are right now?”

“Sord!” She slapped him again on the shoulder, this time a bit harder.

“Ouch!” he screamed in feigned distress. “Hitting an injured guy?”

She pointed her finger. “What your mother said to your father, naughty boy. Nothing else.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “Something about risk, that he was taking big risks. I believe it was in context with primordials. To be honest, the only thing I really recall about primordials prior to that was in relation to swamps and the like, back to the early days of the planet. I remember not being able to reconcile a primordial swamp with black holes and fifth dimension dark matter and anti-neutrinos and time distortions and all that. To me, it was just small, intangible stuff that consumed his conversations.”

“Lovely,” she smacked her lips. “Just lovely. I’m finally getting you to open up and you lay out there, as if it was of no importance, the concept of time relative to antimatter, dark matter and dark energy perhaps, as well as primordial black holes.”

His eyes grew wide as his mouth dropped open. “Did I say all that?”

“Yes, you implied it, or I am inferring from the gibberish I’ve been able to extract from your wandering mind, the one that keeps ogling my neck and eyes and breasts and waist, and all other Daisy accoutrements. I’m amazed at my ability to force you to concentrate, young man. Heck, with this kind of breakthrough in teaching one to focus, I believe I could even get an eighty percent human-rhesus monkey hybrid to recite all the works of Shakespeare from memory. I’m so proud of me, and so proud of you.”

“Kiss, then?” he grinned sheepishly.

She drew forward and kissed him, forcing him backward against a pile of dirt and rocks. Then she abruptly stopped.

“What’s that?” she asked, staring at her raised left hand.

He pulled her back toward him, but she resisted.

“What is that on my finger?”

Sord was just getting warmed up, and he thought she was teasing. “I don’t know about your finger. I’m thinking lips, lips only. Come back here.”

Daisy forced her left hand between their faces. “Look at this!” she exclaimed.

The bottom part of the ring finger on her left hand was covered in dirt and small pebbles, some radiating outward like rings around Saturn.

Her hand was so close to his eyes, he couldn’t focus. “Just some dirt. Can we limit the distractions and continue?”

She stood, lifting her weight from Sord’s body. “This is unusual,” she observed. “Very unusual.”

From this distance, Sord finally caught sight of the oddity. “Huh? Looks like your finger is magnetized.”

“That’s what I was thinking, young science apprentice. Somehow, my finger became magnetized just a few seconds ago. Or maybe it’s this ring of my mom’s since I can’t even see it beneath all this stuff. It’s almost as if I put my finger into a jar of honey, then into an ant hole.”

Daisy tried to brush the pebbles off the lower part of her finger to see if the ring remained intact. She couldn’t.

“Look at that! As if they’re permanently glued to my ring and to each other.”

Sord was amused by the slight delay in their activities, but he wanted to get on with it. “Maybe it is glue. We can remove it when we go back up. Maybe water will get it off. Again, can we just continue with what you were starting?”

Daisy was puzzled at the mystery and ignored his comment. “What could have so instantly super-magnetized my ring? I can’t imagine. The ring is tiny, an alloy of gold mixed with titanium to harden it. But I thought that alloy only became magnetized at super-cold temperatures. Here, get out of my way,” she commanded.

“Let’s see what’s back here.” Daisy splayed her body over the bioplas seatback to survey what was behind it.

Sord cleared way to give Daisy ample space to investigate the area. He stood silently as she talked, staring at the backside of her jeans. “You know, I’ve never known a girl with such a nicely sculpted fanny as yours.”

Daisy stopped momentarily and turned, rolling her eyes. “Do you recall why we came to this place, relentless young man?”

“To look at fannies?”

“Not number one or two on the list. Put your lizard back in its cage for a moment, please.”

“Seriously? Haven’t I waited long enough? I’m dying here.”

“Sord! We’re investigators. There’s a time and place for everything, including that.”

“I like this time, right now, for everything,” he responded. “In fact, it’s getting kind of late, and we could run out of time completely if we don’t get moving. And look, nobody’s here.”

His words dangled in the air and received no response. She was busy digging away.

“Look at my finger now,” she observed. “It’s covered in these little pebbles and dirt. And I’ve found something interesting.”

At that, Sord’s attention was diverted momentarily from his hormone-fueled desire. “What’s that?” he asked, moving next to her on the slanted bench and joining her as both slouched over the seatback.

“See this?” she said, flipping a palm-sized flap of leather back and forth.