The Unstoppable Wasp

by Sam Maggs

  Nadia gently set the crystal down by her boot, then zipped her suit back up, adjusted her helmet, and pressed the button by her thumb.

  Already tiny, Nadia shrank.

  And shrank.

  And shrank.

  And shrank.

  She became so small that she could see the space between the atoms that made up the pink crystal. She watched them vibrate and separate and swirl and meet and part. She held the journal out in front of her. And, with it, she walked right into the crystal.

  Nadia grew up in the Red Room. But the place she felt most safe in the world was a calming pastel pink.

  “Millennial Pink,” Priya had called it.

  One of the only television shows Nadia had been allowed to watch in the Red Room was an animated show called Sailor Moon. The girls discovered it by messing with television antennas and receptors until they picked up Televiziunea Româna˘—Romanian State Television. Their handlers were strict about what they could watch on their stolen signal, but Sailor Moon was deemed acceptable because it was essentially about teenage girls who murdered people (good role models!). Though Nadia understood that the show had originally been made and recorded in Japan (because you could still hear the original Japanese track, if you listened to the show carefully enough), the version she saw in the Krasnaya Komnata was also dubbed over in Romanian. One man played every single girl on the show, using slightly different voices. Nadia was obsessed with it.

  And it had taught her Romanian, too!

  There were many things Nadia loved about Sailor Moon; Sailor Mars was her particular favorite, though she had a soft spot for the brainy Mercury. But Nadia especially loved the title character’s home in thirtieth-century Tokyo, the Crystal Palace. It looked like it had been carved directly from a giant piece of quartz. It was gleaming and clean and brilliant; when Nadia closed her eyes at the end of a long day in the Red Room, it was where she imagined herself, serenaded by the deep, masculine tones of Sailor Moon and her Sailor Scouts.

  So, of course, when Nadia had the opportunity to create her own special home in the Microverse, she decided to create…the Crystal Lab.

  Though Nadia was smaller than any other human in the entire world, the Crystal Lab still loomed in front of her (proportionally) like a massive place of worship. Except here, Nadia worshipped science. And, okay, also Sailor Moon, really. The lab’s exterior was all pale pink and blue and purple, like a piece of quartz come to life. A massive two-story door was framed by equally tall windows. Matching bell towers framed the structure. Jutting out of the center of the palatial Crystal Lab, elegant but sturdy pink supports suspended a massive, multifaceted crystal sphere. It was a globe; a brain; the universe; the center of all things. It represented the never-ending search for knowledge.

  Also, it looked extremely cool.

  Nadia raced up the crystalline steps to the lab, taking them two at a time like she had in her own house. The rubber on the flat bottoms of her boots kept her from slipping on the glassy surface. Nadia looked down as she ran, checking the inside of her left wrist where a digital clock face flashed 10:04 PM at her in block numerals.

  NADIA’S NEAT SCIENCE FACTS!!!

  When a person, say, me, since I am the one doing it most often…so, yes, okay, when I want to escape reality, I—No, well, usually when I feel this way the first thing I do now is call my therapist. Progress! But, say, okay…

  Let’s start over. When a person (me) shrinks to subatomic size—so small the human mind can barely comprehend it—my compressed matter is forced through an artificially created nexus into the Microverse. (The Microverse is also where my excess matter is shunted whenever I shrink at all.) This parallel dimension operates on a quantum scale; everything is in measurements of mere nanometers. This means that the laws of physics, the way most humans understand them, do not always apply.

  Because you are (I am) so, so small within the Microverse, time passes differently. I can compress whole days into just hours. I can spend all night inside the Crystal Lab, and only minutes will have passed for everyone else. As you can imagine, this becomes quite dangerous for someone with bipolar disorder. Which I have. Having bipolar means (for me) that I can have periods where I am very low energy and sad and empty and I don’t eat and I can’t remember appointments and even if I did remember them I wouldn’t be able to keep them. Those are depressive episodes. But then there are other periods where I am extremely energetic and wired and focused and excited about what I’m doing!

  But these manic episodes are actually just as troubling as the depressive episodes. Extremes aren’t good in either direction, and mania (for me!) also often means that I forget to eat or take my meds, I stop sleeping for days, I lash out at the people I love, and I can even do things that put me or the people around me in danger. For a certified workaholic (again, like me!), you can see where it would be a slippery slope from a three-day work binge in the Crystal Lab to “I haven’t taken my medication in a week and when Priya tried to come get me I punched her in the face.”

  To be fair, that only happened the one time, but I would very much like to never do it again.

  And that’s why having bipolar in the Microverse can be dangerous. Brain chemistry meets time dilation. Science!

  But Nadia wasn’t focusing on time or brain chemistry right now. She wasn’t focusing on much of anything, really, except her need to be somewhere quiet, with the journal still clutched against her chest. She burst through the great double doors and into the lab, passing 3D printers and leaping over the cables that criss-crossed the floor. She took the stairs (still two at a time) up to the right bell tower and used her wings to slow her momentum as she skidded to a halt at the top.

  “Breathe, Nadia,” she reminded herself, stopping to regulate her heart rate. “Breathe.”

  She hit a button on the back of her neck and heard the familiar psshhhh of depressurization as her helmet disconnected from her suit. Nadia sat on the edge of the bell tower, her feet hanging off into nothingness, crystalline mountains small and far below. For the first time since she found it, Nadia set the journal down next to her. She pulled her helmet off and shook out her bob, then set her helmet down on her other side. It was black and cherry red, like the rest of her suit. Nadia had modeled it after the Red and Black Mason Wasp, an American variety of wasp that stung (oh, it stung), but also helped to pollinate plants.

  Helpful and beautiful…unless you became a threat.

  Nadia’s heart had slowed, but her hands still shook as she picked the leather journal back up, hardly believing that she was holding a deeply personal piece of the mother she had never known.

  It felt nearly impossible to Nadia that this thing, these words, had once belonged to her mother. Not for the first time, Nadia was struck with a heavy feeling, holding this thing that her mother had once held. She felt a sense of connection, sure, but it walked hand in hand with a suffocating feeling of loss, of missing a bond entirely unknown and unknowable to Nadia.

  Nadia thought she’d come close. There’d been a time, earlier in the year, where someone claiming to be her mother had gotten in touch with her. It had filled her with hope, an almost desperate and unspeakable hope, that she might actually get to meet her mother. That her mother might be alive, after all. But it had all been a plot by A.I.M. to try and bring Pym Labs down. They’d impersonated her mother, and when Nadia discovered the truth, there was devastation where the hope had been. Evil scientists—there was no depth to which they would not stoop.

  After a lifetime in the Krasnaya Komnata, Nadia knew that for a fact.

  But there was no way A.I.M. could have infiltrated Hank’s secret laboratory. The solid layer of dust in his bedroom was proof enough of that.

  Swallowing, Nadia cracked open the front cover again. There it all was—the bookplate, the signature, everything.

  Maria Trovaya.

  In the same neat, measured handwriting Nadia recognized from the few log books Hank had kept.

  Nadia flipped
to the first page, not sure what to expect. Diary entries? Tirades against Hank? Entomology notes? Song lyrics?

  She found none of those. Instead, she found herself staring at…a list.

  On the first page, it was a to-do list. People to call, things to remember. The page after that, it was a list of appointments and dates. The page after that, a list of potential places to visit on a honeymoon.

  Page after page, Nadia saw list after list comprising her mother’s life. Nadia loved lists, too. They kept her focused, helped her get things done. She was a meticulous list-maker; Priya had taught her how to create a “bullet journal,” and Nadia used it nonstop to keep track of her duties with G.I.R.L., her driving lessons, her family dinners, her friends’ home addresses. Nadia would be lost without her lists.

  And it seemed Maria had been the exact same way. No time to waste on extra words or sentimentalities. Those were better expressed in person, Nadia always thought. Writing things down was a matter of practicality; telling someone how you felt or what you needed to their face was always a more expedient, meaningful, and effective method of communication.

  Nadia had spent years rejecting the Red Room’s brainwashing about her genetic similarities to her parents. But here she was, faced with Hank’s organized chaos and Maria’s list-making. Maybe that didn’t have to be something bad, something she had to reject. Maybe it was okay if there were a few things they had in common—even if they happened accidentally.

  With a smile, Nadia kept flipping through the pages of her mother’s journal. What a beautiful gift Hank Pym had left her, and completely by accident! Hank had never known Maria was pregnant before she was taken by the KGB—he had never known Nadia even existed. Knowing or not, Hank had left a piece of Maria behind for their daughter. It was part of why Nadia was so grateful to Janet; she had no real blood connection to Nadia, but chose to love her regardless. It was the kind of selfless, unquestioning love that Nadia tried to embody in all her relationships.

  It might even have been a better gift than the Pym Particles. But, in fairness, Hank had never given those to Nadia. She’d figured out how to make them on her own.

  Like she did most things.

  Grocery list. Recipe ideas. Phone numbers. Addresses. Future potential pets. Where to go on vacation. What to do on the weekends. Genetic anomalies in Dolichovespula arenaria.

  Future potential baby names.

  Nadia stopped. She skimmed the list. There it was—“Nadia,” about three-quarters of the way down. It had “Hope” written next to it and circled with red pen. Nadia wondered if Hank had ever seen this list, or if it had just been a flight of Maria’s own fancy.

  Nadia also became immediately relieved that her mother had gone with “Hope” instead of some of the other contenders. Boglárka? Nadia was no buttercup. Csenge was all right, but she shuddered to think of the way that Americans would butcher the pronunciation. (CHEN-geh, for the record.)

  Nadia closed her eyes for a moment and hugged the book back in to her chest. You couldn’t know someone through their things—but maybe, just maybe, it was possible to know someone through their writing. Even if it wasn’t flowery prose. Even if it didn’t start with “Dear Diary.” Even if it was just a series of relatively utilitarian lists.

  Nadia immediately, already, knew more about her mother than she ever had, and she’d only begun to skim the journal. She knew that her mother loved to cook—perhaps the Chicken Soup book on Hank’s shelf had been her influence? Nadia knew that her mother wanted to go on vacation and that her favorite idea for a pet was, for some reason, a chinchilla. Nadia knew that her mother loved going to a certain café when she wasn’t working. And she knew that Maria Trovaya wanted a child, one day.

  Nadia had never really come face-to-face with the full weight of losing her mother. Or her father, for that matter. After all, it was difficult to mourn someone you’d never known. For most of her life, Nadia had been on her own. Sure, she’d been around other girls in the Red Room, but in the space where her parents would’ve been, there was no one to look out for Nadia. To love her, the way parents usually did. Until Janet. And Bobbi. And Jarvis. “Family” had always been an evolving concept for Nadia, and now this physical evidence of her mother’s fondness for her, even before she was born, was working at the edges of that concept, challenging and expanding it.

  Nadia tilted the book open again, thinking about her mother and only half paying attention as she flipped the page again—and she almost dropped the book when she saw the next list:

  Things to share with your future potential child.

  “Lumea se clatina,”* whispered Nadia.

  It was one of the longest lists in the whole book. Nadia read aloud, not wanting to miss a single letter, a single piece of punctuation. She wanted to feel every syllable.

  Things to share with your future potential child.

  Teach them to make palacsinta† and paprikás

  Nadia laughed. Of course the first item would be food-related.

  Go on a roller coaster

  Visit the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion

  Attend disznóvágásról‡

  Have a picnic in Central Park

  Go bowling (very American!)

  Trip to the New York Hall of Science

  Listen to ABBA

  Read Frankenstein

  See a football game (which football? Nadia wondered)

  Watch all of the Star Wars

  Watch the stars

  Teach them chess

  Plant a vegetable garden

  Play in the rain

  Make a family

  And so it went, item after item, a brilliant and completely random combination of Hungarian traditions, a European’s perception of American traditions, completely normal mother/potential-future-daughter events, and things only a geneticist and entomologist* would think to include. Nadia loved it. More than Nadia loved most things.

  Hastily, Nadia wiped away a tear that had fallen onto the page. She sniffed and blinked hard, trying to get herself under control. She was feeling a lot of different things at once and it was hard to think clearly through the whirlwind in her brain. She was thrilled. And she was excited. This was the most she’d ever had of her mother. Nadia had mostly only ever heard about what happened to her, not about who she was. And here she was: Maria, on the page. Nadia suddenly knew that they both loved Frankenstein. It was impossible. It was a miracle.

  And yet Nadia was still desperately, uncompromisingly sad. Sad that her mother never got to do any of the things on this list. Sad that Nadia never got to do them with her. Sad that she had this list, even though she was also in love with this list. But it was the only thing she had, and it still wasn’t enough to really know her mother. Not to have her here, in person, to listen to ABBA with and to laugh and to play in the rain with and to smell and to know what she would have thought of Hank’s Lucky Charms. For a scientist like Nadia, it felt…confusing. It felt inapplicable, like trying to know a ghost. Like there was no physical experiment she could do to really know her mother. It was all so good and so terrible and…

  For perhaps the first time, Nadia felt the bone-deep hollowness of really knowing, understanding what she’d lost when she lost her mother. These words—her mother’s words—made Maria feel more real than she’d ever felt before. And in the same breath, even more gone.

  Nadia knew that even before she’d taken her first breath, she was loved. Wholly. Unconditionally.

  Nadia took a shaky breath, focusing every bit of her energy on not collapsing under the weight of all of this. It was happiness and profound sadness and love and loss and joy and pain. It was feeling like her family was still a part of her, and feeling immeasurably lonely, smaller than anyone else in the universe and completely alone in the one place in the world where she was almost untouchable—unfindable, for better or worse.

  With a snap, Nadia closed the journal. There was an experiment she could do to get to know her mother. At least a lit
tle. Standing up with a renewed sense of purpose, Nadia knew she had a new list to add to her own already never-ending to-do list. The Red Room had robbed her of so much—of a childhood, of her parents, of any chance of being a Cool American Teen until now. But this list—this was Nadia’s way forward. This would be a new way for Nadia to reclaim what she’d lost and to build her own future. This was everything she had been missing from the house, and it had been waiting for her inside of it all along.

  Nadia snatched up her helmet and leapt from the edge of the bell tower. She let herself fall for a second—and another, and another—before her biosynthetic wings picked her up again.

  * Literally? “World Shaking!” (One of Nadia’s favorite Sailor Uranus attacks.) Less literally? “Holy She-Hulk.”

  † An Eastern European crepe.

  ‡…Er, literally? “Pig slaughter.” Colloquially? Also that, but it’s a tradition. Not unlike Thanksgiving! Well. Actually, kind of not at all like Thanksgiving, except it usually takes place in late fall and involves preparing food.

  * The study of bugs! Fitting, right?

  “You’ll never guess what I found—” Nadia burst through the doors at G.I.R.L. before stopping dead in her tracks. All the lights were off. The place was deserted. “Oy.” Nadia smacked her forehead and checked the back of her left wrist. The numbers were still there, but now they flashed 10:37 PM.

  Nadia felt like it had been an eternity since she’d found Maria’s journal. She’d run to the Crystal Lab, and sat with the journal nearly all night before returning to Pym Labs. In the Microverse, the whole thing had taken hours. In the real world, it had taken around twenty minutes. Nadia hated losing track of real time like that—especially since it messed with her medication times. She would have to remember to take them five hours earlier than usual.