Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Wes cleaned up the kitchen while Adam settled Gus in, getting blue-and-red fingertips for his trouble, and made some mint tea.
When Adam came back in the kitchen he draped himself over Wes’ shoulders and squeezed him.
“You angel,” he murmured, and kissed his neck. “Thank you for cleaning up. You really didn’t have to.”
“’S okay,” Wes murmured.
Christmas music still issued faintly from Adam’s phone, a tinkly song Wes recognized but couldn’t name. He stood and pulled Adam against him, rocking to the rhythm of the song. With Adam’s cheek on his chest and his arms around him, Wes felt perfectly at peace.
The wind whistled outside, but Adam was warm and smelled so good. They were half dancing, half swaying, and went on that way for a song and a half, until the music cut out and Adam swore.
“Phone died,” he muttered.
“Doesn’t matter,” Wes said.
They settled in the living room with their tea.
“Guess what,” Adam said.
“Hmm?”
“The plant was glowing just a bit when I turned the light off.”
“Oh, good. I was worried it might not work and she’d be disappointed.”
“She was really excited. She wanted to come back out and show you but I made her go to bed.”
Wes hummed with quiet satisfaction.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Mmm-hmm, anything.”
“I don’t know how to say it exactly, so forgive me, but, do you do things with what you create? Like, do you sell them to someone? Are you employed by someone?”
“I’m still in the experimentation phase, mainly,” Wes said carefully.
Adam’s question had been gentle, if clumsy, but Adam was not the first one to point out that Wes hadn’t actually done anything yet.
“I didn’t mean to be mean about it,” Adam said, putting a hand on his arm and sounding so much like Gus that Wes smiled.
He shook his head.
“Not mean. I...I know it’s weird that I just work out of my house. I, um. I had a job offer a few years ago, but it wasn’t a good fit.”
He’d had many over the years, in fact, all contingent on compromising his research in order to rush to sale.
“I got a big grant in my last year of grad school and that’s what I used to initially fund most of my research. But since then, I’ve used the money I had in the bank from Edge of Day. I didn’t like to use it, but all the companies that are interested in bioluminescence want me to design a product for them to sell rather than just funding research. There’s a lot of money in green marketing. A lot of people who will pay handsomely for alternative energy and feel like they’re offsetting their carbon footprint or whatever.”
Wes rolled his eyes.
“But I’m not interested in selling it. Not like that, anyway. My goal isn’t to make glow-in-the-dark nightlight plants for Pasadena kindergarteners. This science could rewrite the way we use energy, period. Did you know lighting accounts for twenty percent of worldwide energy consumption? Sorry, did I already tell you that? Anyway, it’s huge.”
Adam nodded.
“And that usage is public as well as private. And on the public side of things, there are huge discrepancies in where lighting is used. There are neighborhoods in LA where you could read a book in the middle of the night—rich, heavily surveilled neighborhoods. Then there are ones where the streetlights got smashed or burned out years ago and were never replaced. Or where the city just stopped routing electricity to lights altogether. It’s the same in every city in the country. Poor neighborhoods, neighborhoods the city government considers dangerous or unimportant, they don’t get the same budget for lighting, which makes them more dangerous, less desirable. And on and on.”
“I saw it in Boulder too,” Adam agreed.
“Or rural areas where houses are too far apart for the county to want to light the road—they have so many collisions with animals or other cars. But imagine if we could light those neighborhoods the cities underserve, or those rural roads the county has dismissed, with something that is self-sustaining and doesn’t require any fabricated energy source, like trees. It could revolutionize the way people experience their environments.”
Adam threw himself into Wes’ lap and kissed him.
“You’re so damn hot,” Adam said. “Seriously, you’re just amazing.”
“I...thank you,” Wes stammered, not knowing what to say to that.
“Would you ever want to—Never mind.”
“What?”
Wes cupped Adam’s face.
“Nah, you just said you wanted to revolutionize the world. This isn’t that.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, it’s really small, but... I was talking with one of the other parents at Gus’ school the other day when I dropped her off, and in the winter, the bus stop for her daughter is dark because the sun rises so late. So she waits with her because it’s kind of scary in the dark. I guess I was thinking maybe there was a way to light them. Never mind,” he said again.