Tansy sets down her mug, staring blankly back down at the papers lying in front of her. Her brain felt numb. Nothing wanted to go in or out. It was like the door to her brain had been slammed shut. She squeezed her eyes together and then reopened them giving her head a little shake. She couldn’t stop now. Within the array of pages upon pages of numbers and data was the answer. She knew it. It had to be there.

Tansy continued staring at the paper. The numbers danced about in organized chaos, the language of the universe, as that is what she had. It was the code of the universe. She and her team, the Escaped, had spent months of relentless, systematic measuring and recording using the latest and highest-tech inventions known to man. They had watched the world, down to the minutest detail. Studiously converting the apparent chaos of life into the numbers and data in front of her. Their objective was to catch the glitch in the code of the universe before it was too late. The glitch that was in there...somewhere.

It hadn’t taken the most educated human to understand that humanity’s very existence was in jeopardy. The world had been amid World War IV when the signs started first to appear. Slowly the stars in the night sky had started to diminish. First, it was hardly noticeable, only one or two, then it began picking up the pace, losing up to 20 stars a night, and now it was around 40. Once the word got out and the severity of what could happen hit, the war was halted. Everyone turned their full attention to saving humanity. Anyone that could do anything sprung to life, trying any idea or possibility. Some dove into searching for an alternative galaxy and the means to get there, while others attempted to formulate sunlight in large enough quantities to grow food, and others were desperately trying to form their own artificial sun. Millions of the sharpest minds were hard at work and had been at it, for now, eleven months since it had first started, and yet nobody had a viable solution. They had two weeks left if the predictions were correct before the sun disappeared from Earth, abandoning them in utter darkness.

Her group was attempting to find the mistake in the universal patterns, trying to read the very language of the universe, seeking to understand the reason. Once they had that, they could seek to stop the disappearance of the sun by correcting the mistake in the code. The code was like DNA, carrying the framework for life. Now, they finally had the data, and all that was left was to decode the meaning. Somewhere in the pages of numbers and letters in front of her was the broken code containing the tiny glitch in the organized chaos that was the universe, causing this to happen.

It was no use! She couldn’t get her mind to focus. After spending a week wide awake with no sleep, save the sleep replacer pills, her brain had shut down. The medication was supposed to act like sleep, performing the same work as the actual act in small bits. Allowing the patient to stay awake but without the negative effects. The entire crew basically lived off of them. You were only supposed to use them for about four days in a row, however, nobody listened to that. In a few weeks, the entire world could plummet into irreversible darkness - sleep was not a high priority at the moment.

She looked at the timepiece (screen?) next to her on her cluttered desk, 2:42 it read. Time to check in with Victor. She took a quick breath in, released it, and as she did, opened the communication channel to Victor in her mind. When she first had to learn this technique, she had to close her eyes and take multiple breaths to open it. Slowly she had trained herself to need only one. It was now easy for her, like shooting a free throw in the game of basketball, where the players had a routine. They would bounce the ball the same every time, getting them into that state.

“Hello, Tansy.” Victor’s voice came through.

“How’s the work, any updates?” She tried to relay this with authority in her tone. Victor was always trying to undermine her position in any way possible. How she wished she could work with anyone other than him, but he was too good at the job to replace him. And he knew it, which was a shame because she couldn’t use it to keep him under her thumb. His voice sounded a little too cheery.

“Oh, how nice of you to check-in.”

“It wasn’t funny the first time, and it’s still not funny now.” She responded, gritting her teeth. He was so irritating. To the outside world, he appeared to be a class clown, always making jokes at everything. Under this exterior laid a highly intelligent mind, shrewd, and with an answer to every question..well nearly every one. You would never be able to guess this in daily life, however. It was only after she had seen him at work that she had come to realize why he was as high up in the ranks as he was.

“As bitter and boring as ever I see. You truly live up to your name.”

“Give. Me. The. Update.” She basically shouted through her mind.

“Okayyy. Chill,” he responded, giving her a second to wait impatiently and then went on.

“Well.. let’s see. Oh, Rocket found a glitch in the coding earlier this morning.”

“A glitch?” She sprung up, on her feet in an instant. “Where?”

“Between 2.3649 and 2.5981.” She pressed her hands together waiting, they were clammy from nerves. Could this be it! Her heart was beating at an accelerated pace.

“But it was all a false alarm. The idiot had been looking in the wrong area, at the planet frequency instead of the sun’s. Had us all racing around for an hour before Creed noticed it.”

An hour. And he hadn’t thought to let her know! Or likely he had, but didn’t, wanting to keep the glory to himself.

“Next time this happens, Victor,” she gritted out “you let me know IMMEDIATELY.”

“Aye-Aye captain” sarcasm dripping from his tone. “I just didn’t want to bother you, and as you know, it was all a false alarm like the last time, an...”

“Save it.” she clipped. “Anything else?”

“Not anything from our group really. Did you know it is Dara’s birthday today? You should probably acknowledge it somehow unless you really don’t care that everyone thinks you're a heartless, cruel, beast. Which they wouldn’t be incorrect in thinking, but you can always try and pretend. Oh yeah, and the Comet Community thinks they may have the solution.”

She was just about to bite out a response to his accusations and then faltered.

“A solution?” He really had to wait with that information until now. Why couldn’t he just have told her that from the start instead of wasting her time with all of the rest? She knew the answer though, he enjoyed tormenting her as much as the fact that he had the power of the information, which legally he had to relay at some point, but he could always make her wait for it.

“Yes. They have created a device that in theory can simulate sunlight to a large enough extent that seventy-five percent of us can have something to eat.”

“Seventy-five percent? That's not nearly enough. And what about the effects of losing the vital heat? The loss of gravitational pull? We’d still be floating away into space likely to collide with anything in the path. How is this a solution?”

“I wasn’t finished. The hope is to combine forces. Split up the human race and hope some survive.”

“B-but that’s not a solution!” she sputtered.

“Could you stop interrupting me? I haven’t even explained yet.” he continued “One quarter will be sent to the moon- the caves should provide enough, or at least some, protection from space objects. It will be more protected than the earth, but still, one large encounter with a meteor or the like and everyone is dead. The moon, as you know, is capable of sustaining a few million people but no more. The other quarter leaves for the Andromeda galaxy. The r...”

“Do we even have enough rockets for that?” She interrupted again.

“They think so. As I was just finishing to say the rest will stay here.”

"That will never work. They will die, and you know it, Victor. This isn’t a solution!”

“As you keep saying. But seriously, do you have any better ideas? Tansy it's time to face the facts, we have had eleven months of all of the best working against the clock to find an answer, but nobody has found one. The fate of humanity is resting on one of these options to work.”

“But the answer is here. In this code. I know it is.” She stared desperately at the papers, scanning the numbers again. “It has to be.”

“Well, the days are counting down. 14 more to go... if that.”

- -

Once she had ended her conversation, Tansy sat back in her chair, contemplating the new information. Her mind was roiling. Victor annoyed her to no end, but more than that, she felt an awful sense of defeat and helplessness welling up in her. It was not a feeling that she was used to. She had always been one of the most intelligent no matter where she was - no problem was too challenging. But now...now when it truly mattered, she was stumped. She couldn’t help the people when they needed her.

She sat there contemplating for a while longer, wallowing in her emotions for about three minutes before she decided it was enough and shook out of it. She reached for the phone, telling herself that she would have done the same any way it wasn’t anything that Victor had said.

Scanning in the third floor’s code, she waited as it rang. Telepathic communication was one of the best modes of communication in this age. It was hard to hack into, making it a relatively safe option when operating in their line of work. A call could always be listened in on. The only downfall of telepathic communication was that it could become tiring, and it was less effort to use a phone. In this case, it didn’t matter at all who heard her conversation, so she went the easier route.

“Hello,” Dara’s voice carried a worried tone “What’s going on. What happened?"

Well, that was a great way of proving Victor right. She never communicated unless something was dreadfully wrong. In her defense, it was work, and it saved her time.

“Oh. Everythings fine.. just fine.” now she felt a bit awkward, “Um, just wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Oh!” The shock in her voice was able to carry right through as it was converted into an electrical signal, transmitted to a nearby tower, and then turned back into sound. Tansy thought abstractly.

It took Dara only a moment to recover.

“Thank you,” she said the words with some residual hesitation, almost like she didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. That was why she was the third-floor receptionist. She had not mastered the art of covering up tell-tale signs in her voice and lying. Tansy acknowledged that she herself may not have the best communication skills, but she could hide anything with her tone.

“Enjoy it.” then realizing how bad it sounded, “The day.” she added as if it made more sense. What was she doing!

Dara made some sound of agreement. Before she managed to humiliate herself any further, Tansy hung up as quickly as possible, tossing the phone down in front of her and staring at it like it was a snake ready to bite.

This was why she never called. It was a great reminder, she thought. She shouldn’t have allowed Victor to get into her head like that. She knew better than anyone that you didn’t need people to be your friends. Friends could turn on you in an instant with no regrets. She had to remember to keep them as co-workers, irrelevant people with jobs. It didn’t matter what they thought of her.

- -

“You might want to check the paper.”

She was greeted by Arrow as she entered the building. The team's main work center was a rather large building composed of four floors accommodating the three hundred people staffed. Most of them she hardly knew, barely even saw at all. Her wing, one of the highest in rank, had very little to do with any of the others. They were generally kept separate, with their own offices and floor.

She had gone home earlier this morning to get some sleep after her superior, Cromac, had basically forced her out of the door. She did feel somewhat better for it, not that she'd ever admit to it. Weakness was not something that she allowed herself to show. Too much rested on her shoulders. The whole world had basically invested in her. There had been many times that she had wished she hadn’t been brought into life in her situation. Countless nights she had found herself dreaming of being one of those children that had gone off to a family to be raised, not one of the few that carried the rare genetics. She was the product of months of dedicated effort by a large team of scientists. Brought to life in a lab and gifted with the genetics of the most intelligent minds on the planet. There was a limited amount of this DNA to be had. Once the scientists had developed the children in the laboratory, they had been sent to be schooled altogether. She had been raised in the classroom, along with the ten others. Five had been a failure. It was only her and four others that carried through with actual promise.

Her whole life she had known she was smart, it had been genetically engineered into her. She also now carried that pressure, the burden of knowing - knowing that she was their best hope of survival and knowing that she was about to fail them.

“Tansy?” A sharp high-pitched voice sliced through her thoughts.

“Yes.” She shook out of her reverie.

“Wow, you look bad.” Arrow looked up at her with small sharp, beady eyes. Despite her diminutive stature, Arrow was not one to be messed with. Her personality was big enough to fit two of her and still have some leftover. Nothing got past her. She had vision like a hawk and was sly and cunning like a fox. She had placed her sturdy self right in front of Tansy, blocking her path, her broad flat face tilted at an angle to better study Tansy. It resembled a satellite dish Tansy realized to her amusement.

“Here’s the paper for today. Seems you needed an invite.” She plopped shiny pages into Tansy’s hands. Duty fulfilled, Arrow bustled off towards the reception counter without any further acknowledgment.

Tansy looked down at the papers in her arms. It felt strange having all the world’s noteworthy occurrences in hard copy. Normally it would have been wirelessly transmitted and displayed on screens, but with aliens never having been completely ruled out for the disappearance of the sun, and Earth’s less-than-friendly relations with the tribes on Mars, it had been voted by the leaders to use paper - eliminating the possibility of anyone listening in by capturing the waves transmitting the news. The little black characters danced across the white background in front of her eyes as she skimmed across the surface. She came up short as her attention was captured by the headline on the second page. She stopped dead in her tracks staring at the words in front of her, rereading it a few times hoping, praying, that she had read it incorrectly.

The Escapade Team Has Found a Solution. It boldly proclaimed.

No, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. The article was obviously designed to convince the general public into believing lies by using her team's name, that she knew. The Escapade had made a name for themselves over the years, having been the team to discover how to create oxygen while removing carbon dioxide from the air. A few generations ago when the globe had been facing a crisis, the air had been too toxic and the oxygen dwindling, they had found a solution. They had earned their reputation, and even though they might not be able to continue it now, it was theirs to lose.

She hadn’t even needed to do any digging to know who was behind this article, simply reading the title was enough. Dwade. The head of the government, and also her long-time rival and nemesis. He had also been part of the Escapade group but had been kicked out as he was proclaimed not intelligent enough for them. It had been a battle between the two of them for the position, and now his resentment of her landing the job of his dreams had boiled up in this form.

Stopping short of the door, she knocked on the one-way glass door. She knew her superior would be able to see her, but she couldn’t see him, so was the design of the glass. The door slid open in front of her, and she cautiously stepped into the room having the door slide closed behind her. Cromac was one of the only people on the floor to have a responsive door, one that could be opened and closed on the command from the mind. He swiveled in his chair to face her.

“Hello, Tansy. I'm assuming this is important as you never drop by unless you really have to. Let me guess, it's about the newspaper this morning.”

“Yes. I am about one hundred percent sure who it was.”

“Oh, are you now.”

“Yes.” Oh, how she wished this could have happened telepathically. She hated speaking directly to people, especially her superiors. She never knew where to look, it was so much easier in her office where she had all her evidence in front of her, and she could think more clearly. But it was safer this way. Telepathic communication was secure but not impossible to listen in on.

“And who might this be?” He prompted her after she failed to continue.

“Dwade.” Argh. What was it with her and these single syllable answers! She could solve quantum physics problems in her sleep, remember pages of data without even blinking, but when it came to actual communication she felt like an astronaut without a spacesuit. She had captured Cromac’s interest nonetheless.

“Why him?” Without giving her time to answer, he continued, “You’re right though. Regardless of who exactly it is, we know it is somebody within the government.. and he does check all the boxes..but why would he do this?” Cromac was on his feet now, pacing.

He came up short, facing her as if expecting her to answer his questions. She considered listing all the reasons why exactly this would be happening but settled for merely stating the obvious.

“There's 13 days before the sun is scheduled to disappear. No plan has been set forth that can save everybody, not even near the majority, they must have found out that if they convince everyone to disperse they can save themselves.”

“But is there even a way to save anybody?”

She simply watched him, knowing that soon the memory would dawn on him. His eyes widened the smallest fraction of a degree as the realization dawned on him, anyone else would have missed it, but she had been trained to notice the slightest change in body language.

“How could they have possibly found out about it?!”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but whether they know or not is far from our biggest concern at the moment.”

He nodded in response.

“Somebody has to go talk to Dwade.”

“Yep.” She was already with her back to him, hasty to exit as quickly as possible. Her job was done here. She had to get back to the code. An entire hour had just been wasted, six if you counted the time she had taken to sleep.

“It's going to be you.”

She froze mid-step. The words though soft and innocent themselves strung together created a sentence that she was unwilling to hear.