THE MOMENT
“Go,” Aurelio focused as soon as he gave the word. He wore purple safety goggles over his eyes and stared forward at the vast empty plain of dry, cracked stone.
A storm raged for two seconds and flooded the plain, then came sunlight. Aurelio, with Jenny helping, stood in a small white monitoring everything.
Green flourished, then came animals shortly after. Evolution was happening in mere moments. Humans existed for several minutes before further ascending to beings of energy and disappearing.
“Stop.” Aurelio called after the last traces of energy vanished. Jenny stopped. She was the one manipulating the process so that Aurelio could study the happenings.
“I saw the options you suggested,” he turned and nodded at her. They had a very complicated situation to deal with and it was Jenny's idea to research that line of evolution. It wasn't the only route for humanity to take, and they'd seen dozens of possibilities during their research. It was easy to get to the end point when it all happened so fast. They were trying to piece a soul together, and Jenny had an idea where to find some answers. A suspiciously quick idea. “There's a good lead there, but how'd you even know where to look?”
Aurelio had created the problem they were trying to fix, and Jenny wasn't around when it happened. Yet, she seemed to quickly accept the situation and was even eager to help. While that was like her, it also was a bit too much. Aurelio would've been the only one to notice how mildly unlike her it was.
“Lucky guess,” Jenny shrugged. “Since we're trying to put Six and 23 back together, I thought it'd be a good idea to see how the process happens in a natural environment.”
Aurelio couldn't call that a lie. Thinking up a good idea was enough for Aurelio to act on, and an acceptable excuse, but not from Jenny. That was the moment he realized she was hiding something.
“Speaking of natural environments, you never did spill anything about your time on Mars. You were gone for months…, “ he reminded her with a smile.
“So many NDAs,” Jenny smiled and shook her head. “Besides, the deal was I tell you, IF, the node was left untouched. And since we're currently resolving all that, I think it's fair to say it wasn't. Besides, we need to be focusing on putting the twins back together.”
“Yeah, I was…,” Aurelio nodded. “Just thought you might've picked up some useful info.”
“Even if I did, I couldn't tell you,” she replied.
“Oh, right…,” he said. He was particularly astute when it came to Jenny, but overall somewhat slow to process things. Of course she was hiding things, she couldn't outright say where she got the idea. And she couldn't just put it in his hands, but she could lead him to it in a roundabout way.
“Uh, let me take another look,” he said as he turned to face the barren plain. He just wanted to buy a couple of quiet moments to think. It may not have seemed like much time, but a lot can happen in mere moments.