Real quickly, before the real action kicks in, I'll run through the current roster of my crew and our powers.
Aaron. Nerd. Annoying to me. He has gravity.
Jason. Chubby. Nice guy. He has friction.
Jack. He's my only real friend here. He's blond. He has distances between molecules.
I don't know if Cole or Robert got their powers yet, but I just got some sort of power, but I'm not sure what it is yet.
Now that we have that straight, let's cut to the Mars base.
Yes. Like a base on the red planet. Aaron and Jason apparently skipped class to create an entire base on Mars. And now we were there.
Now I have no idea how they were able to build or even steal a high tech NASA facility on the red planet, or how we all spontaneously transported there, but I was pretty sure it had to be something other than the powers Jason and Aaron had themselves. I mean, gravity and friction could not build a movie-esque base by themselves.
"How…? Wow," Jack commented. He walked around the movie Martian-like base in wonder and excitement.
I'm serious. Aaron made the Mars base look exactly like the "Hab" in the movie Martian. Such a nerd. Not that I wasn't just as much a nerd. I love that movie. It's Ridley Scott's best.
On the other hand, I was more worried about the explosion that probably killed a hundred high school students, teachers, and staff.
"What just happened on Earth?" I pointedly asked.
Aaron's stare went directly through my brain. "What do you mean 'what happened on Earth?' You set off a fire in the culinary room, herding all the students into an enclosed blast radius, and then sent the four of you to Mars somehow!" he screamed.
"What?" was all I could even process.
"You set off a chain reaction," Robert said. "You made me pull you out."
"Me? I did…. this?" I couldn't comprehend anything at that moment. As nice as it seemed to be the alleged mastermind behind this beautiful, um, I meant tragic, scheme, I was pretty sure I had nothing to do with it.
I stared at the coffee maker on the tabletop and concentrated hard on it, hiding from the incriminating stares from my crew.
And the coffee maker exploded.
More accurately, I felt the energy in the bonds of the plastic molecules, twisted them slightly, and released the energy in the bonds in a catastrophic exothermic chemical reaction. Which looked pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.
"Ah! What was that?" Cole screamed in his lisp.
"Chemistry," I whispered.
"Did you just–" Aaron started.
"Break the bonds in the long carbon-hydrogen chains that make up the plastic in the coffee maker? Yes," I finished.
"That. Is. Awesome," Jack said.
"Do you have any idea why are we on Mars?" Robert asked. As usual, he was the only one who didn't get caught up in silly things, such as massively nerding out. And he brought us back to reality.
"I don't know," Aaron said. "Claire's the one who rained on our parade. We didn't want the rest of you losers showing up!"
"Hey, I am at least half-certain that this wasn't my fault!" I defended. "And even if it was my fault, I just wanted to meet up with you guys. I didn't know you were on freaking Mars!"
"You didn't have to kill all those people," Cole pointed out. "They actually died. They died because of your little game."
"I can put them back together," I said, feeling for the reins of my power. "I think I can put them back together."
"You've only destroyed things of far," Jack said. "No offense."
"You're' right," I admitted. I concentrated on the pile of burnt plastic waste and tried to feel for a pattern, hopefully something coffee maker-related.
"Are you reassembling that?" Jason asked.
"Not. Yet," I lied, trying to concentrate. It didn't budge. I keep trying, nonetheless. There had to be some type of form left over, right? Something I could work with.
"Destruction is easy," Aaron said. "Creation is not."
I gave the murky mess of degraded plastic mulch one last shove, but it still didn't budge. I sighed, giving up.
"What's the point of decomposition and combustion if you can't synthesize?" I screamed.
"So you can't put those people you just killed back together?" Jack asked. "Bummer."
"I know, right?" I said through my teeth. I angrily shoved Aaron out of my way. My hand slipped on a red speckled white powder.
"What's that?" Cole asked, pointing at the substance.
I walked over to Aaron and rubbed a bit of it in my fingers. "What I need right about now," I said, smiling. "Hydrocodone and acetaminophen."
"You mean Vicodin?" Aaron asked. He tasted a bit of it. "Did you just make Vicodin out of my shirt?" 859Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoyfwW9ZPbi
"It appears so," I whistled.
"Now put those people back together," Jason said, excited.
"That was a combustion reaction," I explained. "Much harder to reverse."
"You're saying that you can reverse a synthesis reaction, but not a combustion one?" Aaron asked, his tone quick and bordering on mumbling. "I can't throw carbon dioxide and water vapor at you and get methane?"
"It appears so," I repeated. "Besides, carbon dioxide and water vapor is the product of like every combustion reaction. If I could do that, I could make any hydrocarbon."
For all of you who don't remember eight-grade science, I apologize. Synthesis, as used in the wonderful English language, means making stuff. Decomposition means breaking stuff apart. Combustion is burning stuff, or chemically combining it with oxygen gas. It is very hard to unburn something that was burnt. You don't exactly see people unburning trees, do you?
"I’m sure I'll be able to undo combustion reactions at some point," I said. "At least, I hope." I looked around for assurance, only to find Robert had disappeared.
"Where's Robert?" Cole asked.
"Don't know," Jason said. "He was here a second ago, right?"
"Just a sec," I said. In a big motion, I swung my backpack onto the crowded lab table and rifled through it for my phone. Shuffling, I went through one perfectly organized pocket after another finding nothing. My cell phone just wasn't there. I suddenly remembered exactly where it was. But I realized I wouldn't have been able to contact Robert even if I hadn't left my phone on my desk at home. There was no cell signal on Mars. Aaron and Jason wouldn't have thought about cell signal for their base. They were only here to do one thing.
And that thing would make my little stunt at school look like a firecracker next to Little Boy, the uranium bomb. 859Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCxXxRHB7fz
