The Tipping Point

“Time has a tipping point.”

Soft wisps of light fell into the living room, saturating the carpeted floor and accentuating the continuous pattern of stains. An old, box shaped television coated in a layer of dust was broadcasting a news report. The woman on the screen, her eyes locked into a solemn expression, held the microphone to her lips.

“Time has a tipping point,” she repeated again.

Eve sat on the carpeted floor and gazed at the pixelated screen through the dust in the air, which was illuminated by the strong morning sun.

The reporter continued, “Due to the recent rise in sea level, communities in Central America are moving to the North and South as coastal property is lost.”

Eve dug her adolescent fingers into the soft carpet, and looked up. “Aunt Donovan?”

A woman with long blonde hair to her waist that was braided tightly behind her back turned around, and looked at the screen with an expression that matched that of the reporter and her solemn microphone.

She was older, but her skin and vibrant hair still glowed in the Virginia sunrise, a dozen times brighter than the dust in the air.

She sat down beside Eve, her niece which she bared little to no resemblance to, down to the color of their skin, and they looked at the television together.

“What does that mean?”

Donovan didn’t have a soft or motherly voice, and talked to Eve as more of a friend than the child she was. “Well, the Earth heats up due to fuel emissions trapped in the atmosphere and thermohaline circulation and stuff, so its melting all the ice in the water. If there’s more water, it rises up on shore.”

“And things sink?”

Donovan didn’t answer, and they watched the broadcast together. As the screen circulated with images of military leaders and controversial economic events, the creaking sound of a front door opening filled the space of that Saturday morning.

A woman with skin and hair like Donovan’s and brown eyes like Eve’s came in, her blue scrubs clinging to her exhausted shoulders.

Eve waved at her mother, who smiled and proceeded to glare at Donovan.

She said, her voice reminiscent of the night shift she had just worked, “Why are you watching this? Do you want to give her nightmares?”

Donovan rolled her laid back blue eyes, “Relax Kate. We watched the news growing up.”

Kate rubbed her eyes with her left hand, the ring she always wore glittering in the light from the window. She glanced back sharply at a framed photo of a man with dark skin in a military uniform. She made sure never to look for too long.

Donovan continued as Eve stood up and walked over to embrace her mother, “It’s the economic report, she’s fine.”

Kate listened to the sound of the reporter’s voice coming out of the audio box, “As the number of politicians in favor of legalized execution increases, researches are searching for a more cost effective method.”

Eve turned around, “What’s that?”

Donovan shook her head innocently, “I swear that wasn’t on a minute ago.”

“Turn it off,” Kate snapped as she lifted Eve in her arms, which grew harder the older she got. Now at eleven years old, Kate had to strain to get her off the ground.

Donovan continued to argue, “Come on, Kate, the news was all that was on when we were growing up and we’re fine. We were watching stories like that since before we could talk.”

Kate nodded to the couch behind Donovan, “I see you want Daniel doing the same.”

Donovan glanced over her shoulder and flinched when she saw Daniel, Eve’s five year old brother, sitting upright with a blank face.

“How does he do that? I swear he was in his bed five minutes ago.”

Kate shook her head and left with Eve in her arms through a door to her left. Through the door, was a kitchen suit that had been converted into a makeshift lab. There was plastic tarp over everything and sterilizing chemicals and sharp tools on all the high shelves. Kate placed Eve on a stool and pulled a microscope over to her. Eve had no idea what she was looking at, but she could look at the miniscule details through those lenses for hours.

Donovan went back to flipping through channels, and Daniel soundlessly crept off the couch and into Kate’s lab. While she and Eve were looking through the binocular shaped eyepieces, both trying to look with one eye and laughing, there was crash and she sound of glass breaking and Kate saw Daniel standing next to a trash can that he’d knocked over. He didn’t look bothered by what he did in the least.

“Donovan!” Kate exclaimed.

“I’m sorry! I don’t know how he does that,” Donovan said from the other room.

Kate went back into the living room. The annoyance she felt was evident from the way she arched her eyebrow. “Donovan, I get that he’d a weird kid and you have zero attention span, but you realize I can’t have him in my lab?”

“You just measure the chemicals in rainwater, he could get just as contaminated by going outside.”

“That’s kind of the point of my hypothesis,” Kate snapped.

Donovan didn’t respond, and pointed at the back door, with was slightly ajar. “Did you open that?”

Before Kate could respond, the sound of glass cracking came from her lab again and Eve started crying from the minor cut the lense had given her. While Kate comforted her and Donovan made snide comments about how kids shouldn’t go in the lab at all, Daniel wandered around the living room.

He had lived in that same room all his life, and yet he inspected every little detail of his surroundings like he was seeing them for the first time. When he came to the open back door, he stepped outside and onto the cement steps of their little backyard. A man with a small audio recording device in his hand was standing behind their wire fence.

Daniel waved at him, and he stoically waved back.