The Millau Viaduct in southern France was opened twenty years ago to address road congestion on the driving route between Paris and nearby Spain. It is regarded as an engineering marvel among bridge builders, and has won several awards.
Now it is under attack by the Fourth Mother, accompanied by a squad of diesel-powered, smoke-spewing war robots. The Argentinian crypt-fascist has decided to attack this particular bridge for unclear reasons. The people driving on the bridge don’t really care about why she’s doing it - they’re too busy screaming, as the bridge wobbles and buckles.
The Launch System portal disgorges Otto, Mo, and Bill in quick succession. The Sled follows - with Summer aboard.
She’s at a newly constructed station, built to operate her drones. These launch off the deck of the Sled and take up orbit around the bridge. High-resolution LIDAR scanners probe the bridge for big cracks - places the drones have to go, now, lest the whole thing come down. Building a new Chariot will take time. But Summer isn’t going to wait until she can be a rescue team member her way. She’s going to help now, however she can, whatever that means.
Mo and Otto play zone defense against the villain and her squad of metal men. They won’t have to wait long. Hellenic and other members of the European superhero community are on the way.
Big Bill hovers over the bridge itself, and loads cars into his cargo bay one by one. Sometimes he’ll lower his grapples, and Summer’s drones help connect them safely to a truck or other sturdy commercial vehicle too big to fit into the limited room he’s got.
As each car comes aboard, or each truck is hooked up, Summer glances left to a particular monitor that shows the occupants. And she speaks into a microphone that carries her voice to them.
“Hi there. We’re the Newman rescue team. We’re going to escort you to safety right now. The ride might be a little rough. Please put your vehicle in park and engage the emergency brake. If you have children, please make sure they are safely strapped in. I promise you’ll be checked by professionals when you’re put down somewhere safe. If you have any questions or problems, please roll down your window and get my attention, and I’ll try to tackle them.”
Dr. Mana provides French and Spanish translation as needed. Summer is fitfully learning Spanish, but doesn’t trust herself with it just yet, and she’s just flat out afraid of French. But it’s not the words that seem to help the frightened civilians relax. It’s the voice. They hear the concern in her tone, and they know someone’s looking out for them.
She sort of wishes she was out there slugging it out with Fourth Mother, and with anyone else who’d deliberately hurt people like this. But she’s trying. Every day, in every way, she’s going to make herself a little bit better.
Not knowing that the planet spins, and that a space station orbits around it, almost cost the team a rescue mission and many other people their lives. Rather than make Minato feel bad about it, Summer wants to make sure something like that never happens again.
Otto was kind enough to escort MInato to space, and let her take in the view. The Atlantean girl had no idea of the planet she lived on, and now she very emphatically does.
Summer is taking it upon herself to handle other aspects of the Atlantean girl’s education. She herself is dressed conservatively, and Minato wears a hijab and makeup to disguise her non-human heritage. Together, they explore Occitania, the southeastern region of France. Geographically, it’s not too far from where the team encountered the giant monster, Titalion. Now it almost feels like home.
Summer has to tease out what Minato doesn’t know, and that fact is also something Minato does not and cannot know. So Summer is doing her best to feed the girl as much new experience as she can, in hopes of finding the gaps.
Minato is not uneducated, of course. Courtesy of life in Atlantis, there are things she knows about water and fluid dynamics that surprise and inform the Newmans, themselves scientists of distinction already. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of undersea life. But things like rivers still amaze her, and the sight of the Mediterranean off the coast of Perpignan enthralls her.
Over coffee and crepes, Minato asks Summer a difficult question.
“Ma’am, I mean, Summer, you’ve been really good to me. This has been amazing. But, erm, sometimes it seems, well, like you’re down, but you’re hiding it. What can we do to help you feel better?”
Summer sighs. “Am I that obvious about it? Or are you just really perceptive?”
She finishes the bit of crepe she was working on, and thinks about it, and smiles. “At one point I would have said, ‘haha I am doing okay’, even if I wasn’t. I’d have dodged the question because of a lot of complicated me issues. Now? Hmm… Now, I’d say it’s this. You’re doing this, and it’s helping me.”
Minato blinks. “Ma’am?”
Summer suddenly puts her head in her hands and laughs. “Oh god, Minato, please don’t ever call me ma’am again. It makes me feel incredibly old.”
She looks up with a bright smile. “This is what I need. I need to be with people, and help people, and experience things with people. You’ve given me a chance to do that, outside of a rescue operation. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that.”
She pokes her crepe fork at the girl. “Your turn. Why are you doing this? The operations work, I mean. Mission control.”
Minato doesn’t have to think about this one. “Ma-- Summer. Sorry. When you dressed me up, you told me about the hijab. How Muslims in this - uh, country, right? Countries? Right. They’re a minority and there’s people who don’t like them. But you dressed me up because people here like people like me even less. The whole world is suspicious of Atlantis. But you Newmen took us in, those of us that needed help. You’re helping when nobody else would. Why wouldn’t I want to repay that?”
Summer sits up a bit. “Tell me about that. As an Atlantean Blood, you have a home, don’t you?”
Minato waggles her hand, imitating a gesture she’s seen Otto do. “Senior Commander Saito instigated a coup against the Emperor. The Emperor commanded that everyone under Saito was to be exiled. But there were people like me, who didn’t want to go along with his plans, and we couldn’t go back to Atlantis. Soooo, we came along with the humans who’d lived in the Attics of Atlantean cities. To the surface. And to Safe Harbor. We’re refugees, like those people in Syria.”
Summer pauses, and lowers her head. “I’m sorry if we gave you grief about the Haven station thing. You didn’t deserve that. We were just… I think worried is one thing, but I think we Newmen were also used to working with each other. We know what each other knows. But that’s bad, if we’re only interested in working with people we already know. That’s a bubble that isolates us. And building connections with other people is a way to break out of that bubble.”
Minato’s smile betrays the intensity of the feelings she’s feeling. “You have to be able to rely on me. I get that. That’s why I’m so grateful you’re taking time to teach me these things, and take me to these wonderful places. You took my hope of contributing, and you’re doing what you can to make it a reality, instead of shutting me out because I’m not good enough.”
Summer grins suddenly. “You know, I just went through my own little struggle. And it wasn’t the first time. Minato, none of us are good enough. All of us are trying. But all of us have our own strengths. That’s why we help each other, however we can. I’m gonna keep helping you, however I can. But I hope you will keep helping me too, in your own way.”
The two girls smile at each other, and eagerly finish their crepes in the warmth of the French sun.
When Summer isn’t out teaching Minato and learning in return, she’s attending classes at Safe Harbor with Otto and the others.
Dr. Mana is teaching languages.
“The most spoken languages in the world, in order, are English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, and French. We will master these at a conversational level, then focus on the specific technical vocabularies you may be called upon to use during rescue work…”
Dr. Somsak Panya, the Thai nuclear physicist, is teaching the team about the specifics of nuclear fusion, and how to build a reactor.
“The deuterium-deuterium reaction is much less efficient than deuterium-tritium, but the first reaction’s byproduct is itself tritium. That may then be fed into a more efficient primary reactor. Since we are situated on the sea floor, we have a unique opportunity. The first step is to build a pressurized heavy-water plant, as India is doing. This normally requires uranium, but a deuterium-hydrogen exchange process, mediated by ammonia or hydrogen sulfide gas, may prove more accessible…”
And Summer, realizing a need, announces that she will be teaching the basics of cafe operation. Safe Harbor is a secure place to exist, but it still lacks much in the way of being a home in which to live. People need the small, ordinary things. She can give people one of those things.
“We don’t really have competition down here, so we don’t have to worry about price wars or marketing, but that’s secondary to what a cafe is really about. The word cafe is derived from the French word for coffee. Coffee has a rich history, because of the qualities it has when we drink it. It’s warming, and it gives us something to do when we’re talking to somebody and a conversational silence comes up…”
Safe Harbor has experienced its first crisis in public safety. A group of three people have been getting into fights, and haven’t found ways to work out a peace. The Newmen have offered to mediate, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. Finally, the council of seven that Aria appointed steps in, and declare that the trio aren’t welcome in Safe Harbor any more.
“You can go anywhere else you want, but you cannot stay here,” the council’s ruling had said.
To avoid simply dumping the problem in someone else’s lap arbitrarily, the group were asked to pick a place to be sent to. It would be their choice, and whether their new hosts accepted them would up to them. They had chosen the Canadian-American border. To forestall still more problems with the law, Otto had notified Arbogast ahead of time.
Summer and the others are at the portal. They watch as it opens. They observe as the Sled conveys the trio through.
“Wish we coulda cracked this nut, before it blew up like this,” Otto, standing beside her in his human-scale shell, confesses in a quiet voice.
“I know what you mean,” Summer murmurs. “All our talk of connection and togetherness. I guess… some problems can’t be solved.”
“The good news and the bad news is, ‘this too shall pass’.”
Summer hangs her head. “Not everyone has our privilege. We don’t have to eat or worry about sickness or rain or cold. We could live anywhere. They can’t.”
Otto smirks. “I doubt those three can live anywhere long.”
He sees Summer’s unhappy face and realize his joke didn’t land as he’d hoped. “We gave 'em the thing they needed. The chance to find somewhere else to be, if this place didn’t suit ‘em. Well, it didn’t. We’re not hunting them down, or making them conform, or throwing them in prison. We’re just gonna stick to our deal, and keep on truckin’.”
“It was our turn to play Arbogast,” Summer realizes. “I wonder how he’d grade our efforts.”
Otto’s voice is firm. “Not gonna ask him. Not now anyway. We gotta learn our lessons and make our own mistakes. But until I can distinguish between him trying to manipulate us, and him offering us genuine advice, forget it.”
Summer shrugs. “I guess you’re right. But… we also can’t just assume we’re doing the right thing all the time, can we.”
Otto shakes his head. “Nah, you’re right, I get it. Outside advice, outside scrutiny, keeps anyone honest. I’ll talk to the council about it. I’m sure they’ve thought about it. And it’s not my job to tell 'em theirs. I’ll ask because I’m curious, that’s all.”
The event attracted a small crowd of onlookers. Otto and Summer were mostly on hand to keep the peace. Now that the spectacle is over with, they turn their energies to maintenance of the Launch System, in hope of keeping their respective thoughts at bay.
To Summer’s great surprise, Arbogast’s next call isn’t to protest some new outrage the robots have perpetrated by, you know, rescuing people in need. It’s to ask Summer how the press can reach her.
The robot girl listens to the request. And at the end of it, she makes her pronouncement.
“Uh, what?”
“You’ve become popular,” Arbogast explains. “People now want to learn more about you. Unfortunately for my career, perhaps, I’m now the Safe Harbor guy at State. So pressure was brought to bear on me, as usual, and here we are.”
“What?” Summer repeats in confusion.
“The press - wants to know - how to find you,” Arbogast enunciates in clearly growing impatience.
Summer looks at Otto helplessly. But he shrugs and grins at her.
She looks at Minato, who holds her hands before her, palms upturned, in a gesture of helplessness.
“Uhhh well I’d give them my old Halcyon City address, sir, but you know.” Summer knows she’s leaning on Arbogast a little heavily, but she’s not feeling super charitable toward him. Still…
She adopts a more polite tone of voice. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. So, we have a hotline. It’s meant for friends and family, so to speak. It goes right to the command center here. Ummm, uh… I guess we could set up another one. It might take a couple days… I’ll give you the number once it’s ready?”
“Fine. Thanks.” Arbogast hangs up without even a goodbye.
Summer turns to the others. “I said I didn’t want to be doing Aria’s job. But… it’s gonna help us, isn’t it.”
Otto nods. “Probably it will. Having a public profile can mean donations, which we could desperately use, but just general goodwill gives us leverage over guys like Arbogast, it’ll definitely help the citizens here, and it can unlock doors we need to do rescue work more effectively in conjunction with other people.”
The girl lets out a sigh, and her shoulders slump down. “Long time ago - oh god, the ancient epoch of age 17 - I thought about being a model or a journalist or something. Well, here I am. I’m in front of people now.”
She finds something inside herself, and straightens up, and looks at Otto and Minato with a reborn smile. “You know what? I’m gonna do it. The council will make decisions about Safe Harbor, but I can bring people to their attention and vice versa. And I’ll represent us the best - the most honestly - that I can.”
Otto grins. "Li’l girl, you always were a bright and shining sun, and now it’s time for you to be a star.”