Spinning and Swapping, Chapter 1

Ruby raised her hand. The teacher pointed at her and smiled.
“Forty-six,” she said. It was school. She was in seventh grade and the top of her class. She had bright red hair and bright, light brown eyes to accompany it. She was tall and smart. She had made it through her childhood nearly unscathed. The bell rang, and Ruby stood. She collected her books and headed for her locker. On the way, a voice taunted, “Look who it is, girls. Loopy Ruby, back from a trip to Crazy town!”
Voices chimed in, giggling. Ruby spun around and snapped, “You know, Janice, you would be no good on the science field, the police department, the fire station, as a doctor, lawyer, construction worker or any other important job. You don’t focus in school and you tease the ones who do. So either you’re a hypocrite or you’re going to be a criminal when you grow up. Is that what you want, Janice? Well, whatever your plans for the future are, keep me out of them. Okay?”
With that, Ruby turned back to her locker. Today would be a field trip to the science facility. Ruby wished it were the observatory, but the science facility would do. She loved looking into the night sky, watching the stars and moon. She liked to sit up at night and count them, and then laugh herself to sleep when she lost count. Ruby liked to imagine that she lived on another planet, and bullies like Janice wouldn’t bother her. Ruby sat on the bus, looking out the window. She watched the scenery pass by. She may be smart, but she had no friends to talk to like the other kids did.

The science lab was cool. Ruby grinned as she looked around at the experiments. There was an optional assignment to interview one of the scientists. Ruby watched the experiments and approached a tall man with frazzled gray hair and sober eyes behind thick glasses.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said. He turned and frowned at her.
“Yes, what is it, girl?” he snapped. “I’m very busy.”
“Could I interview you about your project for a school assignment?”
The man grumbled a bit but muttered, “Fine. What is it you want to know?”
Ruby took out a pen and notepad and asked, “First of all, what’s your name?”
“Doctor Benjamin Tile.”
“Wonderful to meet you, Dr. Tile. What it it you’re working on?”
“A machine.”
“Yes, but what does it do?”
Dr. Tile grumbled a bit and muttered, “Communication with interplanetary species.”
“Like aliens?”
“Yes, that is the term that the kids prefer nowadays, isn’t it? Yes, my machine allows you to communicate with ‘aliens’.”
“Really? Can I try it?”
“Of course not, idiot! Why do you think it’s still in the lab, on my workbench? I have not completed it yet! It could blow us all to smithereens!”
“And that’s all it’ll ever be good for,” taunted another scientist. “Don’t listen to crazy old Benny, kid. Aliens aren’t real. I’ve done the research and testing myself. There’s no such thing.”
“Says the snotty kid who’s young enough to be my grandson,” snarled Dr. Tile. “I’ve been in the science field since 1952.”
“Yeah, he joined back when people bashed rocks together and thought it was smart! C’mon, Tile, you’re Stone Age old!”
“Humph! You ignorant youths with your arrogant ideas and insults are getting in the way of modern science. This is why we haven’t invented time travel yet! Your generation is too busy studying evolution and transgender to bother with the important things, like curing cancer once and for all.”
The scientist just laughed that off and said, “You mean discovering the history of the world and solving an identity crisis among the people? I’d think that’s pretty important.”
“You are giving literal children the ability to decide what their gender is! Don’t you think that’s a little to much responsibility given to creatures who are so far from maturity? We came into this world as men and women, and we will stay men and women, not trans-men or trans-women or whatever other terms you can pin to this…this awful sin of mankind!”
Ruby listened intently to the juicy argument, scribbling down notes as she found necessary.
“The government allows it.”
“The government is full of lazy, hypocritical, lying and selfish men and women! It’ll be a miracle if our country recovers from this dystopia our government has brought upon us!”
Ruby’s eyes widened. The other scientist was obviously shocked, too.
“You...you would speak that way about our government?”
“Yes, and it is within my rights of freedom of speech to do so.”
The scientist abruptly turned back to his own experiment, and Dr. Tile rolled his eyes, muttering something about, “Those youths...all the same, they are.”
“Excuse me, sir?” Ruby said. Dr. Tile turned back to her.
“Oh, you’re still here,” he grumbled.
“Yes. I was wondering what kind of power supply your machine uses.”
Dr. Tile crossed his arms crossly and snapped, “Wouldn’t you and the other kiddies like to know? It’s extremely confidential.”
“Well, it must be an extremely powerful to reach so far into space that it’ll reach aliens. How do you intend to communicate with aliens when they don’t have one of these? It’s like a really long-range phone, right?”
For a brief moment, Dr. Tile’s eyes lit up with approval. Then he scowled.
“I believe that if I get the frequency right, it’ll connect with the...aliens’...superior technology.”
“Wow. And how will you know when it works?”
“I’ll check every frequency and send a simple message. If I receive a response given the appropriate distance from earth, the light will turn green and I will know that I have achieved contact with an interplanetary species.”
Ruby was about to ask another question about the machine, but then she heard the teacher call, “Class! Time to leave! I trust you all have had a nice time at the science lab?”
Ruby turned to go and called over her shoulder, “Bye, Dr. Tile!”