The magnetic field coils sang quietly as they reached operational power.
From his station in the fusion control room, Scotty Gardner stared at the plasma readouts on the central display; a perfect, stable ellipse spinning in real-time, locked within the reactor's vacuum chamber. Just where it should be.
[Plasma temperature holding at 152 million Kelvin.]
[Magnetic confinement field at 98.7%.]
[Neutron flux nominal.]
He didn't blink, eyes boring into the read outs, flicking from one screen to another.
"Maintain current parameters for the next three minutes," he said, voice even, precise.
Around him, the team moved like clockwork. Engineers, analysts, techs, all quietly focused, immersed in data. The only sound was the low hum of machines and the tapping of keys, flicks of switches, taps on screens. Every eye in the room looked toward him after executing their commands, waiting for the next.
Scotty leaned forward slightly. Not because he was nervous, but because this part mattered.
They had run simulations for months. But today was real. Controlled fusion. Steady-state burn. No trips, no spikes, no surprises.
This wasn't just a milestone for the reactor. This was his milestone.
[Confinement duration: 120 seconds... 150... 180...]
The lead operator glanced over. "Three minutes holding, sir."
Scotty scanned the diagnostics one last time. Heat exchange, fuel input, magnetic stability, neutron output — all green.
He gave a small nod and gently sighed. "Begin shutdown protocol."
A few keystrokes later, the display dimmed as the plasma cooled and the field coils powered down. Silence fell across the room, save for the slow, collective exhale of the control team.
"That's it?" one of the junior techs asked, voice tight with disbelief. "We actually did it?"
Scotty allowed himself a breath. "Yeah," he said. "We did."
Applause broke out, brief, tired, sincere.
He didn't join it.
He felt a hand pat him on the shoulder a few times. Scotty looked over to see Chris, his only real friend he'd made here.
"You did it, man! I can't believe it's actually viable! That patent completely changed the direction of this project and now we're here!"
Scotty gave him a small half smile but it didn't reach his eyes. He couldn't look at his face full of elated enthusiasm.
Instead, he turned his gaze toward the upper-left screen, a split cam feed of the reactor housing itself. A massive steel cylinder, wrapped in superconducting coils and buried ten meters below ground. It sat quiet now, but just minutes ago, it had been a miniature star.
His star.
The applause had died down. The team dispersed. Briefings and paperwork could wait.
"Scotty! We've got to celebrate! You want to go out to that bar down the road I always invite you to but you never come to? If there's ever been an occasion it's this one!" Scotty turned toward Chris, a small smile that actually had a spark of emotion.
"Maybe after the last safety test tomorrow. If we get through that, then you can get me wasted for all I care. Right now though, I think I'm going to go pass out on the couch in my office."
"Hey I'll hold you to that!" Chris laughed joyously, like he finally won a long battle of attrition. "Well you get some rest then, because you won't be getting any tomorrow night if I have a say in it! Maybe I'll invite my girlfriend's friend Monica. I know she's been stealing glances your way whenever were all together." Chris wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
"Ha!" Scotty barked out a laugh. "Yeah, maybe that's just what I need to cheer myself up and celebrate, to get laid." Scotty couldn't help the smile from forming on his face.
"Now you're talking my language!" Chris put his arm around Scotty as they walked out of the room. "I'm gonna show you the world Scotty!"
"Oh I'm sure," Scotty snorted out.
Once him and Chris parted ways, Scotty finally stepped into his office and let the door seal behind him with a soft hiss.
Silence.
It was a large room — executive-tier — but sparsely decorated. No personal photos. No plants. No clutter. The walls were cool steel and matte white. The shelves held awards he hadn't displayed. Glass dry erase boards filled with equations were near his desk, a smart holographic table in the middle of the room to display 3D prototypes. A digital display on one wall looped a rendering of the reactor core from today's test — the peak of modern physics, captured in neat rotations and color-coded readouts. A leather couch was against the wall. The wear on it suggested that he slept more here than he did at his nearby condo.
Tonight was probably going to be the same. He had to prepare for that safety test tomorrow.
He walked to the window. It didn't overlook a city or skyline, just the reinforced hangar where the reactor sat in cold shutdown. He watched the engineers below celebrating, hugging, shaking hands as they walked out to go home for the day, back to their families.
Then he turned away. That wasn't for him.
His eyes landed on the small velvet box resting at the corner of his desk. He reached for it slowly, like his hand knew the motion before his mind caught up.
He opened it.
Inside, a silver locket. Weathered but polished. His mother's initials were etched on the back, elegant, old-fashioned script. Inside, the photo: a young Scotty with her, both smiling. Real smiles. The kind that weren't scheduled.
He traced the edge of the locket with his thumb. Still warm from the last time he held it.
It had been three months since she passed.
Pancreatic cancer. Late-stage. Fast. Brutal.
He wasn't there.
Conference calls. Reactor briefings. "Just one more trial," he had told himself. "Just until this prototype is ready."
By the time he got the call, she was already gone.
He hadn't even made it to the funeral, they'd buried her while he was stuck in transit. A weather delay on the East Coast. Just one more excuse that didn't matter.
Everyone said, "She'd be so proud of you."
Maybe. Probably.
But would she forgive him?
He sat down heavily in his chair and stared at the locket, still open in his hand. He didn't cry. He hadn't yet. Not even at the news. That bothered him more than anything.
After his accomplishment today he should have felt something. Joy. Sadness. Relief. Pride.
Instead, the silence in his chest was deafening.
The room around him buzzed softly with idle electronics. Somewhere outside, he imagined the celebration rolling on, promotions being toasted, careers being made. He was the man who just helped bottle a star.
And yet.
"You won, Scotty. So why do you still feel so lost?" he muttered to himself.
He closed the locket and set it gently back in the box. He stared at it. Almost willing himself to cry. The tears never came.
Scotty closed the locket's box and sat in silence, fingers loosely folded, elbows on the desk.
Across the office, a single sheet of reinforced glass looked down into the test chamber — or what passed for it. The containment shell dominated the space below, still humming faintly from the successful run. The last of the technicians moved through the facility with a relaxed energy, the kind that came only after brushing against history.
He watched them without really seeing them.
The reactor was beautiful in a way only a physicist could appreciate — a fortress of superconducting coils and vacuum insulation, built to cradle a miniature star. The numbers from the test still looped across his internal recall: energy output exceeding input by a factor never before seen. The breakeven barrier — the holy grail of fusion technology — had finally been cracked.
And it had been his idea that made it possible.
A single patent. A novel way of stabilizing the plasma sheath by layering electromagnetic frequencies — counterintuitive, elegant, and almost dismissed by the review board as theoretical fluff. Until he proved it worked.
That was supposed to be the moment. The triumph. The one that rewrote textbooks and lit the future, pave the way for a better planet.
So why did he feel like the room was getting darker?
He leaned back in his chair, eyes still on the darkening reactor chamber. His mind drifted — not to the breakthrough, not to the accolades surely coming — but to the path that led him here. The choices. The trade-offs.
He'd been top of his class, always. Graduated from MIT before most people figured out what they wanted to major in. Started postgrad work early. Skipped holidays. Declined vacations. Ignored birthdays. While other people his age were falling in love, screwing up, getting heartbroken, living, he was calculating thermal tolerances and magnetic envelope designs. He even used to be an avid watcher of anime, reader of manga and fanfiction, player of video games. His career demanded otherwise. These were normal activities.
He didn't have time for normal.
Everything in his professional life had to have a purpose, a goal. No wasted motion. No indulgence.
And now, at twenty-six, he'd helped build the first commercially viable fusion reactor in human history.
And yet... nothing.
No rush of fulfillment. No weight off his shoulders. Just the faint, familiar ache behind his ribs. The one that had been there since the funeral he didn't attend.
"You can build a star," he thought, "but you can't light up your own life."
His reflection stared back from the glass — lean, sharp features, tired eyes that hadn't seen proper sleep in weeks. A man carved down to the essentials.
Below, the last of the lights in the reactor chamber powered down, leaving the reinforced shell in shadow.
Scotty didn't move from his chair for a while. Luckily, it was comfortable.
XXX
The office lights were dim, save for the low blue glow of the standby displays. Somewhere nearby, the building's HVAC system murmured like distant wind.
Scotty blinked awake.
His neck ached from the angle he'd slept in. The couch under him — cracked leather, well-worn — groaned as he sat up and rubbed the grit from his eyes. The locket box still sat on the desk, untouched since last night.
He didn't look at it.
Instead, he stood, stretched once, then moved toward the building's on-site facilities. A quick rinse in the sterilized staff shower room was enough to shake off the heaviness from his chest — if not his mind. Cold water, synthetic soap, standard-issue towel. It wasn't comfort, but it was routine. And routine kept things together.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back in a fresh change of clothes — black slacks, pressed shirt, lab coat — hair still damp as he entered the command room.
Everyone was already in place.
Today was the final safety test.
The last box to check before the future arrived. Right as he was about to walk out, he glaces at the box on his desk. He made a decision, and continued on his way to the reactor control room. The velvet box on his desk now sat empty.
Inside the control room, monitors displayed the familiar plasma ellipse, spinning in the vacuum chamber, but something felt off. The glow was steady—but the edges seemed twitchy.
"Magnetic field at 98.3%... slight drop in coil strength," Chris reported over the comms.
Scotty's eyes narrowed. "We're within tolerance," he said—but an internal alarm pinged. Subtle, perceptual.
"Heat exchange holding steady," said another engineer. "Neutron flux nominal—but plasma edge fluctuations increasing."
That catch-word flipped a red switch behind Scotty's eyes: edge instabilities. He remembered reading about edge-localized modes, where turbulence at the plasma boundary could suddenly eject bursts of energy into the containment wall
He tapped a series of commands. "Let's adjust the frequency modulation again—layer electromagnetic sheath by 0.75%."
A few seconds passed. The edge jitter eased. But then the display spiked.
Scotty's gut roared.
"Alpha modulation spike—plasma shift! Safety factor Q cooling—shut it down!"
The spike intensified. Alarms began to chirp. Scotty's mind raced—another surge could trigger a catastrophic disruption.
"Chris!" he yelled into his headset. "Get clear. Now!"
Chris sounded calm, even cheerful. "You sure it's serious? We got buffer reserves—"
But Scotty didn't wait. "I said run! Get to the blast doors!" Chris wasn't taking this seriously, like he did most things in life. Scotty knew he wasn't going to listen.
Scotty bolted from the control room, darting past a host of frozen, wide-eyed engineers, before scrambling to shut down the reactor as fast and as safe as possible. Behind him, the comm crackled with uncertain alarm calls. He raced down the corridor, heart pounding like heavy machinery.
Midway, the corridor shuddered with the reactor's heart-beat—power coils thrumming. He stopped. This is real.
He sprinted on, vision blurred, adrenaline surging.
Ahead, the maintenance hatch opened. Chris stumbled out, holding his side.
"Scotty—"
"No time!" Scotty scooped him up. Chris was conscious, pain visible, blood seeping.
Scotty turned and practically ran toward the reinforced blast door.
But then alarms doubled in intensity. On the feed behind the door, he saw it: the plasma was bulging, brighter—necklace-thick flank forming at the edge. He realized the core was going critical. A major disruption was imminent.
He shoved Chris through the blast door's safety threshold. Chris yelped in pain but cleared the line.
Scotty raised his arm, phone in hand, and tossed it—hitting the automatic door-seal button.
The door sealed with a hydraulic click just as the second surge hit.
Scotty saw the door closing in slow motion. His shadow being cast by a blue, ethereal light. Scotty knew, yet, despite the adrenaline, he didn't feel much. No fear. No anxiety. No peace.
Nothing. The locket in his hand that never left, was squeezed just a bit tighter.
There was an eerie silence, then absolute white, and a pain so excruciating yet so brief, it's almost like it never existed.
Then, black.