You’re standing in the DC atrium, looking up at the strange winged contraption dangling above your head. Is it a kite? The sails of a ship? You think about journeys, about strangers, about traveling beyond the limits of your knowledge into the great unknown. A tap on your shoulder breaks your reverie. It’s Alex, finally free from their last class of the day. “Hey!” they say. “How’s it going?”

“You know, Da Vinci had designs for a flying machine in his notebooks,” you muse aloud. “Based on the movements of birds, dragonflies, maple keys. None of them worked, of course. It was more than 300 years before the Wright Brothers finally built a successful airplane in 1903.”

Alex rolls their eyes. “I mean how’s it going with you?”

“I just told you,” you shrug. “Thinking about flight.”

“Right.” Alex zips up their coat, and the two of you walk out of the building, instinctively bending your bodies to cut through the wind. “What do you think happened to Dr. Valentina?” they ask, as soon as you’re out of earshot of the other students.

“I don’t know,” you say, honestly. “Maybe she died. Maybe it was an enormous trap, and the Spinners tortured or killed her. Maybe she went insane, and went off the grid, and is still out there somewhere wearing a tin foil helmet and scribbling on the walls.” You gesture at the photocopied page of her journal you’ve been trying to decipher while you waited for Alex to get out of class. “I mean, these don’t necessarily seem like the writings of a reasonable, scientifically-minded person.”

“You don’t really think that, though, do you?” they ask, with a sad look on their face.

“I’m not sure what to think,” you say, wrapping your arms around yourself. It’s already getting dark out, and the first few stars are appearing above you. “But I want to believe she’s still out there, somewhere. Having adventures. Traveling far beyond our solar system.”