FLUX

Grace rediscovers wonder with her seventh-graders, then gains perspective and renewed purpose when hang gliding on her birthday. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

While Grace begins to put down roots, her doubts about whether she can trust her heart are calmed by an encounter with a dragonfly. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you Susan J Tweit, Katharine Beckett Winship, Margaret Williams, MS, ACC, Lisa J. Marshall, Sally Gillespie, J. Paul Moore, Lisa Bardack, Lindsay McLaughlin and many others for tuning into my live video with Camilla Sanderson and Leah Rampy! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace finds her footing as a middle school science teacher, between singing in a choir, cooking her mother's recipes with Ned, and attending Hélène's science fair. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace navigates the potent liminal time after Francesca's death, attends her funeral, is folded into her loving community, and welcomes a quiet reconciliation with Ned. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Cycles of life and death, loneliness and community, weave through Grace's days as her mother rejoins the ancestors. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Following a crushing encounter with Ned, Grace confronts a devastating truth about her past and accompanies her mother on her mysterious journey. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Barbara delivers surprising news that jolts Grace into decisive, irreversible action. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace companions her mother into the unknown and accompanies Ned on an unusual journey in the New Year. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

As the year winds down, Grace chooses to be with her mother for her final weeks of life. An encounter with Ned reveals a long-held sadness tempered by hope. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Barbara outshines Grace by arranging a rock-star guest speaker who studies the Arctic. Worse, his talk awakens her long-buried grief over the state of the climate. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace is barred from accessing her well study sites and must scramble to keep her project going, which leaves her wondering why she's even still fighting when her passion for the work has long faded. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace wakes in the hospital after a near-fatal asthma attack at the well site she's studying. Faced with another major failure, unexpected visitors, and absurdly high medical bills, she tries to carry on as if nothing has changed. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace has a sweet moment with Ned just before receiving devastating, life-altering news from the dean of her department. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

As Grace wrestles with her estranged mother Francesca's illness, Ned accompanies her on a visit and volunteers them for duty in the neighborhood vegetable garden, where they learn just how beloved Francesca is in her community. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace and Barbara argue about the narrow scope of their methane research, while Grace tries to push away a growing sense of unease about Barbara's loyalty. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace is creating a definitive map of methane emissions from United Energy’s wells. Dragonfly Farm is the largest tract of land in the area, not under lease for methane extraction. She needs to sample their air as a baseline, to contrast and highlight methane hot spots from the well sites. She makes her pitch to the owners of the farm, but they know about her connection to the drilling company. They question her integrity and make a shocking demonstration that challenges Grace's closely held belief in the value of her work. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace contacts the owners of the farm adjacent to the methane well site to ask permission to place her air monitors on their property. They invite her to one of their Radical Self-Sufficiency workshops and promise to discuss her proposal afterwards. Now she’s burning an entire Saturday for something she learned the hard way—by living it. They said to wear old clothes and be prepared for mud. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace spends money like a drunken sailor to equip her lab with all new equipment, resists a strange mentorship, and spars with Ned, a reporter for the Sun, over their coverage of climate. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Grace's mother cooks her a fancy Italian birthday dinner, then delivers news that rearranges Grace's life. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

A cocky executive from the fossil fuel company first questions Grace's integrity and threatens to cancel her access to their well sites, then makes a surprising offer that would supercharge her research and prove just how valuable it (and she) is. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Warbird’s new well casing is throwing off crazy high methane readings. So are Dazzler and Beast. Three out of her eight sites. It’s alarming. She suspects the casings are cracked, but given the gaps in her instruments’ readings, she needs more data. And more reliable equipment, but that’s not happening. She’ll make the best of it. She always does. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to all the new subscribers who’ve joined in the past couple of weeks. I’m delighted that you’re here. Whether you’re here for the lovely interviews with nature writers; the bi-monthly journal, NatureStack, curating the best of Substack’s nature writing; the occasional essay on all this; or this serial novel, FLUX, welcome. Wherever you are on this path — whether you’re brimming with wonder or weary with grief — you belong here. Together, we can return to our deep connection with the world and find hope again. ⬅️ Previous chapterLate April 2009Grace enters a soulless classroom to lecture about what’s going on in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York state. The entire landscape—glacial swells and valleys, farms and forests—unifies a mile beneath the surface in a Middle Devonian shale formation called the Marcellus. Marcellus derives from Mars, the Roman god of war. Apt word for the carnage of forest clearing, earth moving, drilling and hauling that rages there now.The story that the fossil treasures of the Marcellus are there for the taking has been imposed on the land by men of industry. But the Marcellus was a secret that the land meant to keep. Everything in that underworld—methane compounds, radium, ancient bacteria—was hidden over millennia deep beneath the surface. Stashed to safeguard a fragile riot of green plants, fungi, soil, water, air, and furred, finned and feathered creatures. The biosphere is a thin layer with a thick purpose: to house all of life on earth.If Grace were a real teacher like her mother, she might have adorned the walls of this classroom with enviroporn photographs: Ansel Adams at Yosemite, sunrise on the Serengeti, James Balog’s glaciers, Jane Goodall’s chimps. They could have captions like:Climate is a painting. Weather is one brushstroke.Or she could use them as section dividers if she ever writes a book.Grace had forgotten that in middle school, she did write a book of letters to the earth. There it was, in a box of her old childhood things sent by her father’s cousin Gary. A black and white composition book, gone soft with age. Every lined page covered in tight, penciled cursive.Dear Earth,I could praise your sunrises or sunsets. I could write that I love to count fireflies rising from warm grass. I never trap them in jars, that’s cruel.I could describe the sticky sweet juice of peaches. Or the way a pine forest smells after rain.But today I’ll say, I see you. People usually only see each other. But I see you. It’s sad when bulldozers push trees over to clear land for more houses. They don’t have to do that. Most people are fine with a few trees in their yard.I’m sorry people divide you up with fences. I’m glad the deer can jump.I’m sorry they capture your whales and dolphins and make them do tricks for people. They’re all amazing. They deserve to swim free.I’m sorry they drill oil wells. Or even water wells. That must hurt.Ms. Simonds told us oil is what the dinosaurs became. And the plants from back then, and it’s all meant to stay down there because it’s poisonous. Sorry, hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings. We all have secrets, I guess.When she first read it, Grace cringed at every I’m sorry. Her father drummed into her never apologize. That lesson has served her well.She refuses to call what she does here teaching. She belongs in the lab or in the field, but her visiting professorship requires delivering information to undergraduates. Before her methane obsession brought her to hermetically sealed rooms like this one, she lived in khakis and waders tromping through marshes. Her sunburned skin a map of mosquito bites.Behind closed eyes there she is, under the great dome of sky with a breeze lifting strands of hair off her sticky neck. Black mud pulls on her boot as she lifts a foot to step. Cordgrass prickles her arms and hands.She pinches the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses to clear the sweat and opens her lecture notes. The course, Communicating Climate Change, is her department’s new initiative for students to make science more accessible outside their fortress. Her students write gems like, The earth is negatively impacted by our actions and non-actions alike. Not only does the word impacted irritate her, passive voice is too puny for what’s at stake. Subject-verb-object: someone is responsible. Stop dancing around and say it.Who is she to judge? She ordered three books and a pair of distressed jeans off Amazon Prime last night. The package will be on her doorstep by tomorrow.The box from cousin Gary is heavy with parts of Grace’s old air and water quality monitors, along with awards from high school. Whenever she needs a confidence boost, she slips the blue velvet ribbon with the Cross Scientific medal over her head to relive her nervous pride during the award ceremony. Her first-place project, A Portable Device to Detect Carbon Monoxide from a Localized Source, was powered by a small solar panel borrowed from NASA. Joey Strang protested over the outside help, but his project didn’t advance knowledge of anything.At the ceremony, Grace stood on the dais and searched the crowd for her father. He didn’t come. To make up for his absence, he promised to introduce her to the engineers who designed the life support systems for the space shuttle. They could recycle moisture from the astronauts’ breath into potable water. That trip never materialized.She’s carried the box to every place she’s lived, each time thinking she should pitch it and each time unable to. Besides science fair awards, there are ticket stubs from “Jurassic Park” and “The Matrix,” and pictures clipped from National Geographic: a cheetah at full gallop, a whale breeching, cameos of Nils Bohr, Marie Curie, and Rosalind Franklin. Some items must have been added by her father, pinned with the others to her bedroom’s 3-by-5 cork bulletin board—the only surface sanctioned by him for self-expression. A photo of her in a lab from an article about her Princeton fellowship, holding some papers and looking studious. A postcard she’d sent from Long Island while there for summer fieldwork. A press release from Cornell about PhD defenses. Her hair was so short then. Her chest aches to picture him tending that bulletin board, less a time capsule than a shrine to her absence.A dragonfly lands on the classroom windowsill. Its iridescent blue-green body glints in the low morning sun. Behind glass, objectified like a specimen in a lab. She draws closer, afraid it will fly away but unable to stop. Such elegance, the impossible eyes, the attenuated body, the clever cross of gossamer wings. During the year she lived on Holland Island with her grandparents while her parents bulldozed their toxic marriage, she’d sit for hours at the edge of the marsh. Palms open on her knees in supplication, waiting for one to land on her hand. Saint Grace of the Dragonflies.A good phrase to define impossibility: waiting for a dragonfly to land on your hand. None ever had. Mayflies, yes. But the dragonflies were on about their own business, nothing to do with her. Understandable. They live less than two months, devoted to the imperative to reproduce.A thick ache in her throat pushes her closer. The dragonfly doesn’t move. She presses her hand on the glass, overwhelmed by sorrow. There is no way back to that childhood marsh from here.There was one photo in the box that Grace had never seen. A black and white Polaroid, 1982 written neatly on the border in pencil. Her father as a young man in shorts and plain t-shirt stands in front of a tarpaper shack beside a slender young woman in a white summer dress. She has a serious face framed by a cloud of dark hair and holds a swaddled baby in her arms. Grace’s mother on her first visit to Holland Island. The little family poses beside the closed plank door of the crab-picking house where Grace’s grandmother worked part-time. A white-painted board proclaims the name: two black shapes, a star and a crab, followed by two black letters, C and O.The students shuffle into the classroom, talking in low tones, laughing. Grace rubs her eyes and turns to watch. After two weeks, they’d already formed friendships. She’s still learning their names.Climate is personality. Weather is mood.To set the context for her focus on methane, she starts with carbon. Poster child of the world’s climate models. “Currently, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is 390 parts per million. There’s little hope of getting back to 350, where it needs to be to avoid climate disaster.”Student Athlete, a young woman with close-cropped white-blonde hair, calls out from the back. “Without hope, what’s the point?”Thrift Store Kid in his overlarge mismatched plaids says hope is an anti-intellectual crutch. “In an emergency, nobody talks about hope. They get busy.”Spelling Bee Kid says, “Hope keeps us docile, chained to the system. That’s what they want.”Sorority Girl says, “Hope is a higher calling. Wake up, people! There are miracles all around us.”Other students debate hope while Grace remembers her friend from undergrad biology. High on hope, he became the world’s leading expert on the Yangtze River baiji dolphin. In 2006, he and his team scoured over two thousand miles of river with underwater cameras and microphones. They found not a single surviving dolphin. He returned to the U.S. defeated and broken. Within months, he quit his tenured post and hung himself. Hope kills. Literally.Sports Kid adjusts his Sixers hat and says, “You’re wrong. We need hope as fuel for the fight.”The Feminists jump into the fray. “You guys use military language for everything,” the redhead says. The tall, thin one says, “War on terror, war on poverty, war on drugs. Fight climate change. Battle cancer. Crush heart disease.”Grace’s father’s heart seemed fine her whole childhood. Until it wasn’t. They lived in a suburban brick, one-story starter home with chimney, fake shutters, and no charm. Identical to every other house in the neighborhood, arrayed on pointlessly curving streets and cul-de-sacs. The final crop on land farmed for generations. Neighbors had added front porches, screened back porches, kitchen-master suite additions, family rooms. Not her father.The one change he did make was to cover the pitched asphalt roof with solar panels salvaged from NASA’s cast-offs. The year Grace turned four, Ronald Reagan had made a point of removing Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof. Her father never let that go, enraged by Reagan’s claim that the free market would decide what’s best for the country.“The free market didn’t send us to the moon,” he would say.Grace clears her throat. “Let’s focus.” She shows an image of a fracking site from the air. “Methane is one hundred times more potent a greenhouse gas in the short term than carbon. While it makes up only ten percent of global emissions, in twenty years—when you all are up to your eyeballs in marriages, divorces, careers, school loans, kids and carpools—methane will trap up to one hundred times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.”That got their attention. “Currently, our climate models do not account for methane. Given the rapid increase in natural gas production and unchecked methane releases, that’s a dire outcome for the climate.”Climate is a forest. Weather is one tree.Next slide, closeup of a fracking wellhead and aerial of a black plastic-lined evaporation pit bigger than two football fields end to end. Light glints off patches of tan pink goo in the pit. “This is unbelievably sloppy. They pump fracking fluid back up the wellbore into these pits where they say it disappears, methane and all. Who here can tell us the laws of thermodynamics?”A few hands go up. “Seriously?” A few more hands. Grace waits. They stare back. She should stop now, for real.“Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed?” Class President says.Close enough. “Yes,” Grace says. “It can only transfer from one form to another. Thank you, uh . . .”“Kenneth.”“Right. Kenneth.” She should pop quiz them on the other three, but that would take too long. Next slide, a cross section, concentric circles of well pipe. “The concrete casing outside the steel well pipe is called the annulus.” She pauses for a few salacious giggles. “Concrete will crack if the mix isn’t perfect or it cures too quickly. It’s bad bad bad to have a dry annulus.” The laughter spreads, bolder now. “But so what? Why care? Because gases in porous sedimentary rock exploit these cracks. Methane will rise up a well pipe or in your annulus, it doesn’t care which.” Even she’s laughing now.Next slide, a bar chart. “One well in five fails on its first day. Forty percent fail over their lifetime. And it’s been this way for decades. Drillers figure it’s legal if no one finds out. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want a surgeon with such a dismal record operating on me.”A few half-hearted pity snickers. At least someone is listening.Grace’s father rarely listened to her. He was too occupied working late at the sprawling playground of labs, clean rooms, machine shops, and testing hangars at Goddard. She imagined heated conversations with colleagues over vending machine junk food in the canteen. He sometimes joked that the Hubble Telescope’s corrective optics were dreamed up over Skittles.The two framed photographs in cousin Gary’s box had sat on the living room side table. In the center of one, three orange-suited astronauts and a couple of bosses flank the elder President Bush, who wears a blue striped tie, a tiny flag pin, and a practiced smile. Behind them, a poster of a rocket pairs with NASA’s blue flag. Grace’s father stands at the end of a row of engineers, serious in his graying brush cut, suit, and ‘80s-loud tie. He holds a triangle-folded U.S. flag in a shadowbox. They did love to send those flags into space. He had promised Grace one for her eleventh birthday, but swept up in a deadline, missed the occasion entirely. The next year, she didn’t bother to ask.The other photograph is a portrait of astronaut Walter Schirra, with his parting words for humanity printed at the bottom: I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth. Schirra had scrawled across the lower corner in black Sharpie: To Paddy, thanks for taking care of our ship. Grace had never once heard anyone call her father that. He was always Patrick. Always.Grace’s next slide is a cross-section of a vertical gas well piercing through a horizontal blue ribbon of water near the surface. “It’s common in the Marcellus region for groundwater to percolate a few hundred feet down to pockets in the rock,” she says. “People’s water wells draw from these aquifers. Gases enjoying a free ride to the surface can detour into them. That’s how methane gets sucked right into people’s kitchens and showers.”Chess Club President raises her hand. “Don’t environmental regulations prevent that?”Grace lives for stamping out naïveté in all its forms. “Listen up, people. If you learn nothing else in this course, get this. Regulations are written by industry insiders and former regulators who go to work for industry. When Joe Struggling Farmer can light his kitchen faucet on fire, it’s on him to prove that methane isn’t naturally occurring, as the industry likes to claim. How can he prove that? Anyone?”They stare back like startled deer. Goth Girl takes a crack, lip ring quivering as she speaks. “They could, like, test the water? Like, before and after drilling?”“Exactly. Yes. That’s the only insurance they have. But these folks sign leases with fracking companies because they need the money. Nobody thinks of getting a two-thousand-dollar baseline water test. They’re counting on those royalties to refinance their second mortgage and pay down equipment loans before they lose the farm. Do any of you have an extra couple thousand lying around? I sure don’t.”Of course many of them do. The tuition here is off the charts and she’s seen the cars they drive. The stuff they throw in the dumpster when they move out.Budding Journalist in the front row says, “Your faculty profile says you work for one of those corporations.” His eyes are small and deep set beneath a heavy brow. Something simian about him, lumbering and dangerous. He consults a long dogeared notebook, spiral-bound across the top. “United Energy Holdings?”Grace avoids his beady eyes. “No, I do not work for them. Yes, I had to get their permission to study emissions at their wells. Big difference. Yes, you in the back?”Science Fair Nerd, twin of Grace ten years ago, leans forward. “I feel like you’re not being honest with us. What did you, like, have to promise, to get access?”Grace tries to clear her frustration with a deep breath. Her chest tightness sets off a dry coughing spell. The trickle of cold coffee dregs makes it worse. The students are mutinous. She glances down at her notes. Four slides and ten minutes left.“Next class, I’ll tell you all about the brutal world of science funding. I’ve been at this for a decade. So. Many. Stories.” She cough-chokes and dismisses class early.The dragonfly is still on the windowsill as the students shuffle out, grumbling and scheming. Did it die there? A wave of self-loathing clamps Grace’s airways, forcing her to fumble for her inhaler. When she finishes, the dragonfly is gone.She advances the four final slides to note where to begin the next class. Impatience claws at her. What the hell is she doing, teaching them to bear witness to destruction? Wasting her life measuring messes? How is more knowledge going to change anything?At the bottom of cousin Gary’s box, beneath everything else, Grace had found a newspaper clipping with a grainy black and white photograph of a lonely lacework house, all rotting shingles and white paint flakes. The caption beneath read: Last house on Holland Island destroyed by storm.The land is so flat, the sky and surrounding water are visible between the teetering cinderblock foundations. Pelicans perch along the sagging ridge on either side of a leaning weathervane. A rusty old earthmover lurks nearby. Last week’s storms, the article explains, battered what little remained of Holland Island above sea level. The house collapsed in on itself and disappeared beneath the waves. The gale claimed everything, including the earthmover used in recent years by the last owner in vain attempts to reverse the shoreline’s erosion.In the margin, her father’s distinctive scrawl, remember. The image always brings tears to her eyes. Her grandparents’ house, swallowed by the very waters that once blessed hard-working families with bounty, left them silenced by sunrises, humbled by storms. That special place where she’d turned eight.Grace imagines the house on the muddy bottom with the crabs and eels. And what of the cemetery with its 18th century headstones worn nearly smooth by wind and time? Or the stones she never saw that had briefly memorialized her grandparents?The first time she’d held that yellowed scrap, her grief had flamed quickly into disgust. How had she been so wrapped up in her life that she had never made it back to visit them, had never returned to walk the island and its muddy shores? Holland Island was mired in her imagination, forever entangled with the memories and longings that had molded her. And now it’s gone.The final page of Grace’s book of letters reads:Dear Earth,I like watching your birds. The red cardinals at the feeder in winter cheer me up on cold, gray days. They look so pretty against the snow.Sorry I don’t always remember to thank you for food. My grandparents always thanked God every night for their blessings. I know it’s really you.In the science classroom, there’s a list of ten things we can do to save you. I do the ones I can, like turn off the faucet when brushing my teeth. I ride my bike to school. I recycle. I tried composting but we got rats and Dad yelled at me. I know rats are yours, too, but seriously? Ewwwww.Every birthday, I ask for a tree to plant in our backyard, but so far Dad hasn’t come through. I’ll keep asking.Thanks for air. And for the sky. It’s really blue today. And for the ocean and everyone who lives in it. The way the waves fizzle into lace on the wet sand is so pretty.Keep up the good work.Your friend,GraceNext chapter ➡️This Note is about a gorgeous animated film I found while researching this chapter. One of the best things about reading serial fiction on Substack is the community that gathers around. This is slow reading at its best. Twice a month, everyone experiences a new chapter and gets to weigh in on what’s happening in real time. When I’ve read stories this way, whether short fiction or whole novels, the interactions with both readers and authors is one of the most enjoyable aspects. Join in the fun! FLUX will always be free to everyone. If you’ve enjoyed it, please share and help spread the word.Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season, it’s the Center for Humans and Nature, where they explore what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Track past and current recipients here.Reimagining What’s Possible: Even amidst collapse, there’s still room for connection, for creativity, for hope. Join us as we imagine a different way forward — tender, joyful, and grounded in wonder. Subscribe to Homecoming and step into a story where we belong. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

⬅️ Previous chapterApril 2009Grace Evans takes one step, another step, step, step, lift, the ground drops away and she becomes a creature of the air. She tucks her feet into the glider harness and tips horizontal to be rewarded by the joy of weightlessness. Her bones feel hollow and light as a bird’s.Though gravity seduces her glider earthward, she rides the wind off the hill and climbs a few hundred feet. Pockets of cooler air brush her face. On the ground, the temperature will climb near ninety. Up here, it chills her through.The earth is a great overturned bowl rimmed by horizon. Inky cloud shadows slip over the ground. Reservoirs and car lots glitter, roads ribbon. Corn and soy corrugate fields belted by scrappy patches of trees.She longs to lose herself in the joy of flight, but instead tips the glider to bank left. She steers towards the training field where Barbara stands buckled into her own glider. Grace flies straight at her, close enough to see alarm bloom on her face, then banks right, pulls her bodyweight back and floats earthward gentle as a leaf—tips of shoes, belly, wheels.She hops up and wheels her rig back to Barbara, who radiates awkwardness and anxiety.“See how easy it is? Just relax and look where you’re going. That’s really all there is to it.”Barbara is normally the picture of confidence. They’ve been at it for over thirty minutes and she still hasn’t caught air. Grace never should’ve let herself be talked into this. She remembers only eagerness and exhilaration from learning to fly in high school. Not this stiff reluctance.Barbara Hollinger is Grace’s lab assistant. From Penn State, she fast-tracked her PhD at Arizona State in ecosystem-level methane modeling in the Amazon Peatlands. On a fellowship at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Lab, she analyzed stable carbon isotope ratios. She joined Evans Lab last month to streamline the data analysis for Grace’s Marcellus field study.Grace unclips from her harness to help Barbara do yet another hang check. “See? You’re secure. No problem. Just relax into it and go. Trust the equipment.”“Will you run alongside me? That’s what the instructor did.”Grace came here to float weightless, not to run earthbound. “Huh. Not how I learned.”Barbara frowns, shifts her weight, fiddles a clip with a shaking hand. “Really?”Grace laughs. “I’m just messing with you. I don’t remember; it was too long ago.” This was supposed to be a fun day out. She squeezes Barbara’s upper arm. “Okay, okay, I’ll run with you. Remember to keep this part pressed into the frame, here. If you do that, you’ll barely need to hold on at all.”After a few attempts, Barbara does manage to lift airborne before crumpling heavily into the grass.“Chin up, chin up,” Grace calls out. She can’t remember ever having such trouble finessing freedom and control. Barbara seems incapable of letting go. In this setting, her trademark tenacity works against her.Grace loses count of the number of times they trudge back uphill only to drift down and land. Trudge, drift, and land, over and over. She’s never been so bored under a gliding rig. With rote practice, Barbara grinds her fear into cautious enjoyment of little hops downhill, lifted by invisible, reliable air. Grace tries to draft off her tepid delight, but it’s a relief when the light fades.In the car on the way back, they gorge on the sweet red plastic of Twizzlers and compare experiences with men of science.“I’ve lost count of how many of them have asked why I’m not married or when I’m having children,” Grace says. “Last month, one of the biochem professors pulled me aside after a faculty meeting to say, You should reproduce before it’s too late. Tick-tock.”“How original,” Barbara says. “I once had an advisor speculate about my sexual orientation.”“I had one send long emails accusing me of casting a spell on him, and can’t we ignore the age difference, his marital status, that he’s my supervisor.”“A guy in my first lab job offered to donate his sperm.”“Ewwww. What’d you do?”“I threw our smallest Eppendorf vial at him and bet he couldn’t fill it.” Barbara yanks off a chunk of Twizzler with her teeth. “Another guy started a pool, which got very heated. I made twenty bucks. Then I switched labs.”Grace laughs. “The way I see it, there are two categories of men. A******s and colleagues. A******s will roll right through and push you aside.”“Failing that, they discredit you and steal your work.”“I prefer the ones who don’t get all possessive and stalky after you sleep with them,” Grace says.“Too bad there’s no way up front to tell the difference between a******s and colleagues,” Barbara says. “Finding out the hard way is so tedious.”“With our experience, we could design a better methodology, turn it into an algorithm, make a million. Better than any dating site.”They finish the Twizzlers while brainstorming names. OkColleague, SciGuy, and LabPartner are the top contenders.Grace’s airplane flyovers of natural gas sites in northeastern Pennsylvania last year detected significant methane fluxes at every well site. But the only way to pinpoint the sources of leaks would be to measure on the ground, at the wellheads and the fracking hoses and holding tanks. No one was doing such extensive bottom-up research. Gaining access was next to impossible. Grace had mastered the game of academic science but knew nothing about negotiating with the huge corporations drilling for natural gas.She went for it. Managed to bluster in on the promise that she’d pinpoint their equipment leaks so they could maximize profits. Months of persistence worked. The largest, New York-based United Energy Holdings, granted her limited access to a limited number of sites in that area. The paperwork she signed was longer her CV.She hasn’t shared much with Barbara about her arrangement with UEH. Academic scientists guard against the stink of coziness with industry.Grace always knew she’d be a scientist. Her career template was a father who worked long hours at NASA’s Goddard campus. He rarely talked about money, but twice his projects had hearings on Capitol Hill. He told her that even though NASA was by far the coolest agency, even they had to beg for money. He cursed the “stingy, short-sighted Senators.” NASA’s budget is now less than 25% of its heyday, the 1960s Space Race. Besting your enemies is a powerful motivator.Of the four career paths for a research scientist—academia, government labs and agencies, or private industry—autonomy is highest in academia and lowest in private industry. Salaries are the reverse. Grace values the freedom of academia, which has meant a constant slog of writing grant proposals to secure funding and publishing papers to raise her profile.Her early success studying nitrogen and carbon flux in salt marshes led to inventing the first nutrient trading scheme. That was rewarded with a membership in the National Academy of Sciences, where she became the youngest person, and first woman, to chair a committee on regional ecosystem biofiltration. Her post-doc at Princeton Environmental Institute opened the door to a coveted fellowship at NOAA. Two universities dangled tenure track positions with 12-month salaries and start-up funding for her own lab.One day she was in hip waders collecting soil samples when she spotted a natural gas substation carved out of the marsh and thought to look through the infrared camera. Methane plumes gushed skyward like a summons. Overnight, she became obsessed with methane. She read about leaks in old gas lines in cities and towns. She wondered how much methane was leaking from the hundreds of drilling sites popping up all over the country. Other than a few enthusiastic articles in the Wall Street Journal, she could find no studies, no papers, nothing.There was a natural gas drilling boom with zero scientific study behind it. Grace saw a lane for herself, a nearly empty lane.“At first, I saw methane as a brief detour, just until the world scientific community got a handle on climate change and people woke up and changed their ways,” Grace says to Barbara one day in the lab. “I believed for a hot minute it would be like the ozone hole. That was five or six years from the first studies till the Montreal Protocol phased out aerosols and refrigerants.”“Guess refrigerants don’t have the appeal of fossil fuels,” Barbara says.“Yeah, addiction to hairspray is only a tiny fraction of society, but all of us are addicted to gas and plastic.”“BMWs beat beehives.”Grace relied on her track record to convince the NSF and DOE to fund her new methane research for two years. That money got her in the back door in Baltimore as Visiting Faculty in biogeochemistry. She’s lucky. Three friends from her previous fellowships are still holed up in basements churning out grant proposals. Grace has a lab with her name on the door and four tall windows, an adjacent office, and a manageable teaching load. She’d prefer not to teach at all, but that’s life.To stretch her budget, she designs and builds custom equipment that collects fugitive methane molecules. Together in the lab, Grace and Barbara assemble her next-gen wireless air monitors. Wearing latex gloves and jeweler’s glasses, they cannibalize old cell phones. They form neat piles of microcontroller DSPs, wireless cards, power supplies, and batteries.“Someday these monitors could be as simple and affordable as smoke alarms,” Barbara says.“That’s the idea,” Grace says. “There’s no reliable way to detect methane emissions in real time. I’m measuring on the production side, but there are leaks in processing and transmission too. Tons more research is needed. Sensors could be installed at multiple locations along the chain like smart alarms to alert operators of abnormal flux.”“Plus, what about regulations to limit methane emissions? And require monitoring.”“Right. Methane should be part of a global greenhouse gas regulatory framework, along with carbon dioxide. We need high-precision monitors to verify emissions, so countries can start cap and trade systems. Scientifically validated, direct measurement is the only way to prevent fraud.”“When that happens, you’ll make a million,” Barbara says. “And when you’re up on that Nobel dais, I can say I knew you when.”Grace’s fantasies tend more toward survival than a certain stage in Sweden. So far, she’s survived homelessness, harassment by her PhD supervisor, assault by a department chair, nine moves, one career change, countless failed grant proposals, her father’s sudden death. Her mother’s reappearance.When they work, Grace’s instruments send a steady stream of data, but she hadn’t considered the logistics of repair when they break down—which they do, often. She can’t exactly jump in the car for a three-hour drive whenever something blinks out.Barbara feeds samples into a methane isotope analyzer to graph the emissions. She’s already helped narrow the research down to the worst offenders. Something’s up with at least three of United Energy’s newest wells. It can’t all be down to Grace’s glitchy instruments. They need weeks more data before they can draw any conclusions.With all the promises she made to their PR guy, the last thing he wants to hear is that their seven-million-dollar wells leak methane from Day 1. There is no known fix.Grace cracks open another cellphone. “This project has rekindled my love for invention. I used to make all kinds of things like this when I was a kid.”“Bet you were one of those goth girls in shop class,” Barbara says.“Not at all. I was a total nerd tinkering in my dad’s garage at home.”“How fun. Inventing with Dad. I always wanted to go on my dad’s hunting trips, but he only took my brothers.”Grace and her father sometimes spent whole weekends together, inventing, building, testing, eating little. When he scored cool surplus equipment from his project at NASA, they retreated to his garage workshop. As a kid, she assumed every dad’s garage was a version of Doc’s workshop in “Back to the Future,” strewn with prototypes, models, and test materials. They didn’t talk much, but her few memories of laughing with him were always in that garage.“Look at this one.” Grace waves a bejeweled hot pink Hello Kitty cell phone case with a rainbow tassel. “What self-respecting female would carry a phone like this?”“How do you know it’s a girl’s phone?” Barbara asks, laughing.Grace finally finished assembling her dossier to apply for the department’s first tenure-track position to come up in five years. She knows it’ll be highly contested but refuses to be intimidated.In the lab, Barbara asks, “Ever have that feeling like, what have I achieved, really?”“Imposter syndrome? Nope, never.”“Come on. First time you’re up in front of a class of grad students and they’re all slouchy folded-arms glaring like, Prove it, b***h.”Grace laughs. “Never. I tell myself, You know more than they do.”Barbara downs the last of her coffee. When she interviewed, Grace hadn’t noticed low self-esteem. Maybe she’s better on paper than out gliding. Or competing in the arena.“Assembling that application was a grueling time suck but also surreal,” Grace says. “I kept scrolling through my CV like it was someone else’s. I was like, damn, this girl is accomplished.”“I bet. How many papers have you published?”“Forty-six, I think. Or forty-eight, something like that.”“Geez. When do you sleep?”“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”“On your CV, did you include Young Scientist awards, like, I’ve got Regeneron, Breakthrough Junior, Ben Franklin, NSF Talent Search—"Grace had put Barbara’s application in the trash because of that, but she went through with the interview as a favor to Pete Hollinger, Barbara’s dad.“No, who cares what I did in high school?” Grace pushes a strand of hair off her face. “Maybe I peaked too early.”Barbara laughs. “I doubt it. Hell, when I apply for tenure track somewhere, I’ll include everything. Make it twenty pages long, they eat that s**t up.”“Yeah, don’t forget babysitting. Summer camp counselor. McDonald’s. The search committee weighs CVs and shortlists the heaviest ones.” Grace smiles. “What you really want is first woman this and youngest that. I’ve got my eye on the Perkins Prize and the Detwiler Medal. They don’t seem to know that women do science too.”“You need gray hair for those,” Barbara says. “By then, you’ll have tenure somewhere.”“Oh, I will. Those will be to prove a point.”“Did you include your TED talk?”“No. It’s not peer-reviewed.”“What b******t. That’s why scientists are losing the climate ‘debate’—as if there even is one. We stay holed up in our labs, talking to ourselves in conferences and journals.”“Ivory tower is such a dumb cliché. I always think of Rapunzel.”“Let down your hair, Grace.”“Always. The dean encouraged me to apply. He actually said, to my face, We need more women around here. Like I’m supposed to be impressed at how enlightened he is.”“It’s because we’re so decorative. And we bring Lemon Drizzle Bundt cakes.”“How’s the reconciliation with your mom going?” Barbara asks early one morning.“It’s not.”When she arrived in Baltimore last summer, Grace assured her mother that this move was purely career driven. Their possible reunion had not been a factor.“What about your Sunday dinners?”Grace groans. “They’re awful. She acts like we can just pick up where we left off twenty years ago. It’s pure fantasy, complete with white tablecloths and platefuls of Italian food.”Her mother’s life in Curtis Bay, an old industrial neighborhood south of downtown, is like a ’70s TV show set in the ’50s. She lives in a two-story brick rowhouse with a white-columned front porch. Pruned shrubs and flowers border a tiny green lawn that she cuts in fifteen minutes with a push mower. Francesca drinks coffee on a creaky porch swing with floral-print cushions and reads the Baltimore Sun before walking two blocks uphill to teach middle school science. She co-manages the community garden and brings home whatever is in season. She attends Mass at St. Athanasius six blocks from her house and volunteers at the local food pantry.“C’mon, everyone loves Italian food,” Barbara says.“I never had it growing up. My dad refused to make even spaghetti. I didn’t understand until later that it was because of her being Italian.”“Not pizza?” Barbara asks in mock horror.Grace laughs. “Hell no. Pizza’s American, even he knew that.”“I do hope you take this chance to get to know her. Ask all those questions you’ve got bottled up.”“You watch too many sappy movies. I have no questions, bottled or otherwise.”“Well, there’s a reason you ended up here.”Grace sweeps her arms wide. “Yeah, you’re looking at it.”“No such thing as coincidence,” Barbara says.“Geez, if I’d known you were this New Agey, I might not have hired you. Tell me you won’t bring your crystals and Tarot cards in here.”“Mock all you want. It’s a rare opportunity. A woman needs her mother.”“Maybe two decades ago, but it’s too late now,” Grace says. “I’ve been fine without her.”“At least you had your dad.”Grace had been overseas on an exchange program when he died of a heart attack at work. His cousin handled everything, including the cremation per his wishes. For all Grace knew, the astronauts scattered him in space. After a lifetime of longing. He never talked about it, but his boyhood scrapbook was in a box of his stuff. His one and only ambition in life was to be an astronaut. He never came close.“I kept waiting to be sad when he died, but mostly I just felt relief to be free of all the expectation and judgment he heaped on me.”“I thought you two were close.”“On his terms, we were.” What Grace remembers of the years with him is nights alone with books, him working late, her mother absent. Grace remembers her early decision to be smart. His indifference. Working her way through the boys in tenth grade, not caring about reputation. Her father called her moody, sent her to her room. If she forgot to clear up after dinner, he winged dishes into the sink like frisbees. Now she flies like those dishes and she hasn’t broken yet.Next chapter ➡️One of the best things about reading serial fiction on Substack is the community that gathers around. This is slow reading at its best. Twice a month, everyone experiences a new chapter and gets to weigh in on what’s happening in real time. When I’ve read stories this way, whether short fiction or whole novels, the interactions with both readers and authors is one of the most enjoyable aspects. Join in the fun! FLUX will always be free to everyone. If you’ve enjoyed it, please share and help spread the word.Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season, it’s the Center for Humans and Nature, where they explore what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Track past and current recipients here.From Despair to Delight: Yes, the world can feel heavy. But here, we practice returning — to awe, to joy, to the profound beauty still available to us. This is our homecoming, together. Subscribe now and receive essays, stories, and reflections to help you walk this path with courage and curiosity. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe

PART 1Late October 2009Dr. Grace Evans yawns and stretches from the long drive. They’re flaring again. So loud it feels personal. A sulfurous, rotten stench hangs over the site. She can almost feel the air suffering. They say you’re invisible, she whispers. They say you’re intangible, odorless, colorless. That you’re out there. Would they act differently if they understood that you’re inside them? In lungs and cells, yes. But also in thoughts. In imaginations. And assumptions.The quiet time at Warbird of dawn and a shift change is the best time here—if such a place can be said to have a best. She peers through her infrared camera at the stack. Its plume spews hot carbon dioxide. Methane boils from every joint and valve.She yawns again. Needs to pee. The porta-john is hell here, but the crossroads gas station is worse.She’s exhausted from a late night of torturing her research budget, trying to do more with already threadbare funds. Being denied the interview she expected for her department’s tenure-track position was bad enough. But for the dean to offer a measly one-year contract as a visiting professor was beyond insulting. She slept under her desk, dreading the search for a new position by next summer.Warbird’s site is called “the pad” by the crew. That word reminds Grace of her father leaving a box of Stayfree Ultra Plus outside the bathroom door while she sat horrified by ruby red drops gathering in the bowl. What else could he do, as the single parent of a teenage daughter?The pad is the size of three football fields, that manly, mindless unit of measure. Five acres hacked from a forested hillside, stripped bare, flattened. It might still hint of pine needles and wood chips, if not for the diesel and burning and sand. Ribbons of razor wire adorn ten-foot chain link. The drilling platform dominates the landscape of corn and soy and dairy. The red and white tower of steel trusses could be steadying a rocket for launch.She pushes through sound thick as quicksand. Wearing a minor’s headlamp, she makes the rounds to her equipment with quick efficiency. She’s recalibrating a monitor in the far corner when the foreman Scott’s battered Toyota pickup, dust-coated black with an orange passenger door, slips among United Energy Holdings’ new white F-150s. Their blue and green logo is part spiral, part leaf, part water droplet—pure fantasy cooked up by a New York image consultant. After Scott steps out, James’ silver car glides to a stop beside him.On the drive here, Grace realized something so obvious she could kick herself for telling James no all summer. Her research is too important, too urgent to waste on academia’s nonsense. She’ll accept his offer to set up her lab at their New York headquarters. No more time lost teaching and grading, no more grant proposals and begging for money. No more conference papers, peer review, panels and posters. No more b******t politics and pointless committees, no more grabby, backstabbing colleagues. She’ll be on the inside, her research guiding James’ work to improve site operations. She’ll help curtail actual emissions in less time than it takes one of her papers to be published and read by a few dozen people.She watches Scott step into the job trailer, pictures him holding a cup of bitter coffee and standing at the grimy window. He’ll watch the low sun scatter gold across the misty fields beyond the pad and draw a breath. Ready for another day.After their first meeting in May, Grace read up on James Cowan, VP of New Energy. A fawning profile in an industry rag, Energy Today, described his “Sibling Rivalry” with older brother Hank, competing for the top spot to “bring energy independence to America.”The author led with insider jargon: “Of the 400 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of technically recoverable natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale region, United Energy Holdings is poised to claim at least 345 TCF. Wealth that languished underground will now flow into shareholders’ accounts.” Then several paragraphs glorified the men and machines “turning a failing agricultural region into an energy powerhouse.” Not that anyone around here asked them to.The second half profiled the two brothers, casting Hank as the sober guardian of supply-side economics and James as the visionary inventor. Bland family man Hank posed with his two children and trophy wife on a beach in Bali. A paparazzi-style photograph of James with a philanthropist film star was captioned: “James Cowan is one of New York’s most eligible bachelors.” The article credited his Aikido black belt with his “infallible ability to exploit setbacks into advantages.”Grace prides her own infallible ability to mess with eligible bachelors. The Aikido intrigues her. Her collegiate red belt was thrown to the mat by her career. She amuses herself sometimes with a fantasy of sparring with James in a dojo. Arms on shoulders, arms across necks, hands on torsos, hands on backs. Hands grip, pull forearms, twist wrists. Skin sweat, body drop, mat slap. She bests him again and again and he leaps up for more.On the way to the trailer, she rehearses her pitch. I’m ready to accept your offer. The timing is perfect, with your recent expansions. I’ve been working on a business plan. That’s a lie, but she can brainstorm in the car on her way back to Baltimore. You always say go big or go home. Let’s gear up and revolutionize this filthy industry.He’ll ask, What about the hydrology and geology? Once she leaves academia, who will be willing to collaborate? She’ll throw some names around. Certain she can convince at least a few of them. Money talks.Her chest is tight. She hacks a dry cough. Takes a swig of water. Curse this place that is already so cursed. Her childhood asthma was dormant for years before she started coming out here. The occasional stress-induced flare-up was easily managed with a puff or two of albuterol. Or caffeine in a pinch.Inside, James and Scott confer over a large map spread on the folding table. Scott is a burly man in faded navy coveralls worn at the edges. The second “t” of his name scripted on the chest pocket frays an accordion of white threads. James wears a buttery silk sportscoat and black jeans, no tie, open top button.Grace announces her entrance with a dry hacking cough. Scott looks up. “You okay?” His dark face is lined from a lifetime of outdoor work. She imagines a tattoo on his bicep, something old-school, an anchor or a heart.“Yeah, just, all that dust.” She coughs and swigs more water.“The air here sucks,” James says. “No offense, Scott.”“None taken.” He smiles.Grace is self-conscious around Scott, reluctant to launch into her pitch. She waves her thumb drive. “Need to plug in for a few, Scott.”“Be my guest.”She inserts the USB into Scott’s computer. James pushes back the metal folding chair, making it screech on the worn linoleum.“Sorry,” he says.Grace drags and drops files. “Busy?” She hasn’t heard from him in weeks.When James doesn’t answer, Scott clears his throat and says, “Mr. Cowan, Senior. He passed.” His vibe reminds Grace of her high school biology teacher. A kind man.Grace looks up from the computer screen. James’ eyes are closed. His body has stiffened. “Oh, that’s . . . I’m sorry,” she says. “Was it . . .?” She runs out of words.“Sudden. Yeah,” James says in a monotone. He opens his eyes. A storm clouds their usual balmy Caribbean blue. She’s never seen him like this. He’s usually beyond confident and well into cocky.“I’m sorry.” What else do people say in situations like this? The air in the trailer smells like burning plastic. “Did he . . .? Were you . . .?” Ugh. It’s none of her business. What is she doing? She wants to exit and reenter. She wants to start over.“I’m okay,” he says. “Or I will be. I guess.” His lips waver between a weak smile and the grim truth. They settle on pressing together in a straight line, then betray a quiver at the corners. If the flaring wasn’t so loud, Grace imagines hearing his teeth grind.How is he here instead of wherever you’re meant to be after your parent dies? Where she herself will be soon enough. She uploads her data to Scott’s computer, pulls his logs from the past week, removes the thumb drive, and plugs it into her laptop. She can’t think about her mother right now. Grace’s lab assistant Barbara pushed for weeks for a second opinion, but Francesca’s trust of doctors borders on worship. Her mother will discuss two subjects only: Grace’s career and her dating status. Last time they spoke, Francesca offered to introduce Grace to one of her co-workers. The man hit a trifecta: a newly divorced middle school teacher with two kids. Grace declined; she will never be that desperate. Not ever.Another coughing fit makes her eyes stream. Grace finishes her water and pulls out the thumb drive. She longs to get in her car, puff on albuterol, and drive back to Baltimore. Her afternoon class isn’t going to teach itself.Scott shows no signs of leaving, so she catches James’ eye across the table and says, “I know this isn’t great timing, but I’m. . . I’m ready to accept your offer.”His face is a mask. “My offer?” He leans forward, elbows on the table. He smells like cloves and pavement after rain.She blinks, coughs. “Yes. I’ve thought it over and, given how fucked your well casings are, and with your expansion and my other discoveries—”“Hang on. What are you talking about?”She shoots a look at Scott, who raises his brows and makes an exaggerated shrug. He shuffles over to the tiny closet that serves as a kitchenette, as far as he can go without stepping outside.“You’ve been saying all summer, it’s time to gear up. Go big.” She coughs, feeling lightheaded. No inhaler yet. Focus. “Expand to the next dozen sites and beyond—"“No way I can bring you in now.” He sits back shaking his head gingerly, like he’s got a raging headache. “Everything’s up in the air with the succession in dispute. It was meant to be me, but now Hank’s lawyered up. He’s running around all, I’m the oldest, it’s not fair.” The last bit delivered in a schoolyard nyah nyah nyah voice.Scott snort-laughs from the closet, which twangs Grace’s tightening chest. She laugh-coughs.“Hang on.” Grace bends over her backpack to extract the inhaler. Her mouth waters, anticipating sweet relief.“Losing a parent has been eye-opening,” James says. “I’ve been so locked into advancing my career, I neglected everyone who matters. I saw my father as a god, then as a rival. I never saw him as just . . . my dad.”The first Albuterol hit does nothing. Grace takes a second puff. Her breathing is marginally better.James leans forward again, his features busy with worry. Or grief. Grace doesn’t know him well enough to distinguish. “I’ve been obsessing over what I want from life,” he says. “What am I here for, really?” He shakes his head again. “All I know is, life’s too short for this s**t.”Grace scours her mind for something, anything, to say. “But that’s why this is such important work.”“Is it though? I mean—with all this science and engineering, all the technology at our fingertips, we still don’t know a damn thing. I don’t want to waste my life on being less bad. I want to do some actual good, y’know? When’s the last time you were so excited about something, you couldn’t wait to get up in the morning?”When I was a kid, Grace wants to say. Sweat prickles her upper back, forehead, lip. Her chest is tighter than ever. The inhaler reads 14 doses left. Think, Grace, think. Her mind is gummed with creeping fear.“Do you even know why you’re doing all this?” he asks.Grace could swear Scott rolled his eyes behind James.Barbara’s always asking her this, too. What’s your why? It’s annoying. Grace resents the assumption that she’s sleepwalking through her life like everyone else. The idea she could be like everyone else depresses her. She was called gifted so often as a child that she came to need and dread the word. Terrible thing to do to a child, tell them they’re special, make them equate cleverness with worth. Achievement as prerequisite to love.“Well, then, I’ll talk to Hank,” she says. “Make the case for expanded—”James laughs, but his eyes are steely. “Not Hank. Unless it’s a path to power, he gives no f***s.”“When he sees all the money you’re wasting, all this fugitive methane, venting and flaring—.” She coughs out all her remaining breath. It’s an effort to force air back in.He shakes his head. “No f***s means zero f***s.” He shifts on the hard chair. “You’re better than this, Grace. I hate to see you throw your life away.”Anger flares. What a presumptuous prick. “You have no idea what’s best for me.” She takes a third puff. Tells herself she feels better. She doesn’t. She wants to hurl the useless inhaler against the far wall. “Every choice carries a cost. This is mine.”“It’s too high a cost. You look like hell.” He’s barely audible, but his eyes have warmed. Look how easy breathing is for him.“You okay?” Scott asks. He stands behind James peering at her.“Maybe. Got any Mountain Dew?” A nasty wheeze has started. The flaring is too loud for them to hear the rattle vibrating her chest. “Or Redbull?”“Late night?” James asks. He’s sitting straight, concern creasing his face.“Always.” Grace’s exhaustion is a vise squeezing closed.“All we got’s coffee,” Scott says from the kitchenette. “Pour you a cup?”Grace wheezes and pushes down panic. “Please. Black.”She downs the cup, barely registering its heat.Her heart races. She tries to calm herself by focusing on James’ face. “I’m strung out with. The data analysis. On the instruments. I’ve got.” She jams inhales between choppy verbal exhales. “I can’t. Staff up. Without—” cough hack wheeze. She swallows a slime of bile. Calms a wave of nausea. Tries again to wheedle some breath in. “In-house. Join. Your. Team.” The last word is a gasp.James frowns. “I can’t bring you in-house, but I can try to help in other ways.” He leans forward to place a hand on her wrist. In all these months, he’s never touched her. “You sure you’re okay?” His hand is smooth with manicured nails. She nods. “If you’re serious about expanding your scope, the best I can do right now is find you more money. Would that help?” He doesn’t get it. She can’t do any of that now.He squeezes her wrist gently. It barely registers. She needs more coffee. Her head is abstract, offline. She stands. Sways.“Hey. You okay?” James asks. He’s on his feet, reaching for her.She nods yes, no, maybe. No. Jealous that speaking is so easy for him. She steadies herself on the edge of the table, then staggers to the hotplate in the kitchenette. The trailer is five times longer than before. She drinks three more cups of bitter sludgy coffee, ignoring the men. Finishes the pot down to the dregs. The caffeine yields marginal improvement, but she has to fight to keep it down.She sips breath. This is it. She longs to be normal, to finish negotiating with James. In her head, it all makes sense. In addition to air monitors, we need baseline and ongoing water tests on streams and household wells. Grim speech-versus-oxygen cost-benefit analysis. Small words only. Short words. How to say, we’ll distinguish drilling’s thermogenic methane from biogenic methane, but in single syllables. Clumped-isotope geothermometer and higher-chain hydrocarbons taunt her from another dimension. One where breathing is easy and automatic.She manages, “We. Should. Test. Water.” Her chest answer-squeezes, Leave. Now. She’s frozen in the kitchenette doorway. Willing the backpack and laptop to levitate to her.Both men stare. Scott reaches a hand toward her. His fingers are thick and calloused.Grace drags tiny breaths as if through a flattened straw. She wants to speak, oh, she wants to. But words are too greedy. Her body turns to stone: throat, collarbones, shoulders, upper chest, mid-chest, waist, back. Her head floats off in search of a better host.“You okay?” James asks. “This lighting sucks but you look. . .”“Blue,” Scott says. “Her lips are blue.”I need air, she wants to say, but her legs and feet have become hollow paper tubes.“Hold up,” James says, lunging toward her. He grabs her forearm with an Aikido-strong hand, but momentum carries her down. “Call 911. I’ll—”She’s flat on the gritty floor staring up a flat rectangle of light. One of them is standing on her chest. Get off, a*****e. Off.Blue-black darkness crushes her vision and steals her final scrap of breath. Tired. Rest. Sleep.Shuffling. Shouts. Motion. Rattles. Siren. Radio squawk. Images. Earth from space. Fragile veil of air wrapping a rock. Slant of sunlight on wall. Tapestries red, gold, blue. Rembrandt’s self-portrait with velvet beret and mild surprise. Five-minute pause in Mahler’s Second Symphony. Face the emptiness or become it.storm stirs sky, heron launches airborne, trees respire, butterfly emerges wetice melts to water escapes to vapor waftscold tile garish lights orange plastic chairsNext chapter ➡️One of the best things about reading serial fiction on Substack is the community that gathers around. This is slow reading at its best. Twice a month, everyone experiences a new chapter and gets to weigh in on what’s happening in real time. When I’ve read stories this way, whether short fiction or whole novels, the interactions with both readers and authors is one of the most enjoyable aspects. Join in the fun! FLUX will always be free to everyone. If you’ve enjoyed it, please share and help spread the word.Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season, it’s the Center for Humans and Nature, where they explore what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Track past and current recipients here.Reimagining What’s Possible: Even amidst collapse, there’s still room for connection, for creativity, for hope. Join us as we imagine a different way forward — tender, joyful, and grounded in wonder. Subscribe to Homecoming and step into a story where we belong. Get full access to Homecoming at juliegabrielli.substack.com/subscribe