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“How was therapy?” Shay asked around a mouthful of cake, careful not to get any frosting on her purple suitcoat, complete with tails and a black-and-white bowtie. Shay was always dressed well, but Nadia recognized this as a clear “special occasion” outfit choice. When she wasn’t busy with making theoretical physics non-theoretical, Shay was a thrift-shopping alterations-making mastermind.
“So good; thanks for asking!” Nadia responded, grabbing an N slice. “Dr. Sinclair has been so helpful. It’s been really nice having someone to talk to. Not that you’re all not wonderful to talk to,” Nadia corrected in a rush. “I wouldn’t be here without—”
“No, we get it,” Tai interjected dryly. “You’re all right, but I don’t want any of you adjusting my meds, either.”
“Exactly.” Nadia smiled. Every girl in this room had played a huge role in helping to get her to a place where she was able to receive a diagnosis, and she would never stop being grateful for that. Even if she wasn’t always the best at expressing it with her words. “Now…” Nadia waggled her eyebrows. “Can we start the real party?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” Priya laughed, tucking her long, dark hair behind one of her ears. Priya was so gorgeous all the time, but doubly so when she laughed. Nadia knew that Priya was one of those girls who even looked amazing when she cried. She was so gifted in so many different ways. Priya had even been teaching Nadia how to do cat-eye liner and Nadia almost had it mastered.
On one side.
The other side…Nadia preferred not to speak of it.
The streamers and balloons abandoned, the G.I.R.L. squad moved to the far side of their lab, cake plates in hand, chatting idly about their respective days. Priya worked in her parents’ store (boring, uneventful, save for a brief sighting of a very average human Captain America imposter who was on the receiving end of a full-on Captain America–size punch from someone who, apparently, does not like Captain America very much because his cosplay was that convincing); Ying had spent the afternoon sparring with a heavy bag (Nadia felt for the bag); Shay had been responsible for the cake and décor (she excelled in nearly all things, and the funfetti choice was proof that this was no exception).
And Tai had been in the lab, getting ready for this moment.
“Okay.” Tai took a deep breath. “Over here.”
The girls all gathered around a table in one corner of the lab, under a makeshift banner that read LIKE MINDS. Well, it was less of a “banner” and more of a “single sheet of 8x10 printer paper with letters cut from magazines taped to the front.” Ying had made it. Priya expressed that she felt pretty strongly that it looked like something a serial killer had made, which just made Ying like it even more. Nadia thought it had a certain creative flair. Shay had added some glitter, which kind of just made it look like something a deranged serial killer had made, but, you know. Group projects are like that sometimes.
Like Minds was a Stark Industries think tank comprised of students from all over the world. The program had different divisions and initiatives, and their latest objective was to find ways to make neighborhoods more sustainable on a local level. Tony and his team at Like Minds had hand-selected groups of teen scientists from cities across the globe to participate in a big experimental sustainability showcase, and in New York City (well…okay, New Jersey, but as a newly minted Jersey girl, Nadia figured it was close enough), Like Minds had chosen G.I.R.L.
For weeks, Nadia and her four lab partners had been working toward strategies and solutions to present at the Like Minds showcase, which was over Thanksgiving weekend this year. As a new American, Nadia was kind of obsessed with Thanksgiving. It made absolutely no sense: It was entirely ahistorical; you ate a bizarre combination of foods to excess; enormous, vaguely threatening floating cartoon characters were a crucial part of the experience; and most people celebrated it even though doing so caused them great emotional distress. It was like the perfect distillation of the American experience.
The G.I.R.L.s still had eight whole weeks ahead of them to prepare for the showcase, but that kind of time passed quickly when most of your team was focused on passing their classes and the rest of it was busy trying to save the world from A.I.M. and maybe aliens, depending on the day.
So far, they’d all been developing projects independently. Shay had been combining biopolymer electrolytes (like from vegetable oil) with solar cells to maximize clean neighborhood energy. Priya was figuring out how to develop genetically enhanced bioluminescent plants in the hopes that they might be able to replace streetlights. Ying had been busy putting together a chemical marker that could be deployed into sewers to warn people about…Okay, Nadia had stopped paying attention at that point. Sewage treatment was not her specialty, though she respected it deeply.
Nadia hadn’t been able to settle on an idea for her own contribution just yet. She had so many ideas, but they were big ideas. After escaping the Red Room, she dreamed about changing the entire world. By comparison, making Cresskill, New Jersey, a bit more energy-efficient just seemed a little…small-time. “Starting small; thinking big.” It was even on the Like Minds pamphlet. Apparently, it was a quote from Tony Stark himself.
Nadia wasn’t sure she believed that. Mr. Stark probably had better things to do than come up with pithy campaign slogans for teen think tanks. Especially a slogan this…dull.
Despite her own indecision about the project, Nadia was excited, as always, to see her friends’ hard work.
And this was Taina’s moment to shine.
On the table in front of the girls sat a Raspberry Pi motherboard connected to what looked like a very mechanical lazy Susan on wheels. The circular tray had three robotic arms attached to it, each with a small grip at the end. Tai rolled her chair over to the table and picked up a remote.
“So,” she started, confidently, “what we have here is a self-transporting, easily rotating plant pollination device. Or…” She paused. “The Bee-Boi.”
“Does this—” Priya started, but Tai was already way ahead of her.
“It travels through city parks and gardens and pollinates high-energy, low-yield plants, freeing up actual bees to do much more useful, helpful work for their hives,” Tai explained quickly. “It has three pollinators that can activate simultaneously, and each arm has a camera that can recognize flowers and other plant matter that requires pollination.”
NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!
Tai is completely right, as per usual! We are in a bee crisis. Thanks to a brutal combination of viruses, fungi, habitat destruction, pesticides, pollution, malnutrition, and various many other elements, honey bee populations have been dwindling across the globe for years. Apiarists and entomologists say some of these factors could be driving “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, a phenomenon where the majority of worker bees disappear and leave the queen bee behind in her hive. Some bees are dying as a result of CCD, and others are at risk of extinction because of human-driven factors.
And if we don’t have any bees, we’ll lose some of earth’s most crucial pollinators, and three-quarters of all crops depend on pollinators to reproduce! (Basically: The sex bits from one plant have to make their way to the sex bits of another plant to make a new plant, so the bees carry the sex bits from one plant to the other, honestly kind of by accident! They’re helping plants sex and they don’t even know it. Bees rule!) While Tai’s design is ingenious and could absolutely assist bee populations, we should remember that it’s up to us to explore other sustainability options, like being smarter about pesticides and focusing on ecological farming, to really save our bees long-term!
Because I would like for us to always have garlic. No bees, no garlic.
Can. You. Imagine.
Priya whistled. “Tai…that’s extremely cool.”
“Is it as cool as the poop thing, though?” Shay teased, nudging Ying playfully.
