“Alanis Morissette would have a field day,” I joke, trying to relieve some of the tension. “But this does feel like a big sign.”
Jack rocks back on his heels. “A sign for what?”
The start of something that will either make me or destroy me.
“I don’t know yet,” I finally say. “But I can feel it.”
Chapter 14
JACK
Welcome to your first suit-up. This is the clean room at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, or SAF,” I explain as I join Rooney outside the doors of the gowning room. After a couple of weeks of orientations and trainings, Rooney finally gets to experience what we do here.
We’re both covered head to toe in white bunny suits. She pulls at the protective thin material. “Think NASA will let me keep one? You know, as a memento?”
“I can’t endorse that,” I say. “We wear these to help minimize pollutants and airborne particles in this room. Dust, hair, fragrances, body oils. All of these things run the risk of contaminating the spacecrafts and potentially the environment we’re trying to study in space.”
“Isn’t that what the air shower was for?” Rooney asks, tucking her red sketchbook under her arm. “Because that was life-changing.”
“Exactly. It’s the last chance to get dirt, hair, and any remaining debris off before entering the clean room. Sometimes after, I feel cleaner than if I had showered with water,” I admit.
“What brand of air shampoo do you use?” she asks with a smirk.
“I prefer the one that makes the air body wash–shampoo combo. It saves time.” The joke slips out before I fully process our conversation. This is absolutely not the place for jokes.
“We’re cleaner than surgeons before they operate,” she continues. “It makes you wonder why doctors don’t have air showers, doesn’t it?”
I resist the urge to joke again.
“We have to do everything we can to avoid system and instrument failures,” I explain. “It’s very serious.”
“That would be so typically human of us to bring bacteria from Earth to another planet,” she says bleakly.
I cast a sideways glance at her, slightly amused. “Here we build and test most of our robotic spacecrafts. High Bay 1 is JPL’s largest clean room. It’s about eighty feet by one hundred and twenty feet. Forty-four feet high. I’ll be showing you around.”
Rooney rubs her gloved hands together. “Will I get to touch a spacecraft?”
“No.”
“One of the FATE gas stations?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Unfortunately not. But you can touch it with your eyes.”
“That’s my favorite way to feel,” she says sarcastically.
I watch her explore the all-white, warehouse-size space. Her gaze passes over the equipment, the Wall of Fame with images of previous missions, and the silver film spread over machinery and objects in the room to prevent contamination and transmission of electric charges.
“Can I do one of my installations in here? This space is incredible,” she asks.
I snort. “Dusty, the contamination control engineer who manages the clean room, would never allow it.”
“Wait. The guy who manages this place, his name is Dusty?” Rooney asks. “That’s perfect.”
“It’s actually Dustin. He prefers Dusty, though,” I clarify. “He thinks it’s pretty funny, too.”
“What do those vents up there do?” she asks, pointing toward the far end of the room.
“The air is kept clean by a special ventilation system. Clean air blows in from there, and the old air is sucked out and processed through filters before being blown back.”
