The Administrator Took My Badge Beneath The Closed Telescope Dome

Edwin Talley held my badge by its string, as if he had pulled it from a drain.

"We found the copper losses," he said. "You won't be going upstairs again."

Behind him, the dome at the Marsh Light school observatory shone white against the Beaufort sky. The morning air smelled of wet pine and salt. I had arrived early to clear moth dust from the entry lights.

I was fifty-five, a Puerto Rican woman with brown skin, a thick gray braid, and wide shoulders under a faded blue work shirt.

For fifteen years, I had been the contract cleaner and trained optical-surface caretaker at that dome. I cleaned floors, checked dust seals, and cleaned approved glass when it needed it. I never put a rag near the big mirror.

"Which copper?" I asked.

"Wire. Grounding braid. The spare reels. Don't play games."

Edwin was a white American man of fifty-four with a pink face, thin sandy hair, and a square belly above sharply pressed trousers.

He wore his district keys on his belt. When he wanted someone to stop talking, he rested his hand on them.

I rested mine on the kitchen timer in my pocket.

It was yellow, with one chipped corner. My mother had used it for rice. I used it to time each cleaning pass. Eight minutes for the entry. Six for the control desk. Long enough to finish, short enough to notice a change.

"When did it go missing?" I asked.

"Security matters aren't your concern."

"You just made them my concern."

He handed me a letter marked CONTRACT ACCESS SUSPENSION. It said three losses, worth an estimated $2,140, had occurred in November. It called me the person with "routine and exclusive evening access."

"My badge stopped working after nine in September. You changed the schedule."

"The system doesn't lie."

"Then please keep what it says."

He smiled without showing teeth.

"Mrs. Padilla, this is district property. You push a mop here. You don't audit us."

My timer rang inside my pocket. A small, dry bell.

I had set it for the walk from the bus stop.

Edwin stepped back as though the sound had insulted him.

"Collect your cart. A custodian will escort you."

He had made the charge in front of two office workers. He made me collect my things in front of six students waiting for the science bus.

One of them, June Bell, held a paper tube painted with stars.

"Are you still helping Sunday?" she asked.

The students had planned their Geminid meteor night since spring. They would watch meteors outside, then take turns seeing Jupiter through the telescope. They had sold seed packets to buy hand warmers and cocoa.

"I hope so," I said.

Edwin answered for me.

"We are adjusting staffing."

Upstairs, the telescope drive gave a short hum. I knew that sound. Someone had parked it too close to the east stop.

I started toward the stairs.

Edwin blocked me.

"You heard the instruction."

I looked at his keys, then at the narrow office window. Zora Mays stood inside, holding a stack of sky charts.

She was thirty-seven, a Black American science teacher with quick eyes and a voice that carried across a room without a microphone.

Her mouth opened. I shook my head once.

Not here. Not with children watching.

At home, I put the suspension letter on my kitchen table. Then I took a small blue drive from the tin where I kept contract receipts.

Years earlier, the dome engineer had asked me to save the controller event files after each service visit. The office kept changing computers. I kept showing up.

My contract renewal still listed me as the off-site holder of the maintenance copies. The files held no student information. They recorded motors, doors, power faults, and service entries.

Edwin had signed that renewal in July.

He had never asked what the extra line meant.

I opened the November folder. Three service-hatch entries sat in the event list, each after midnight. Beside each was code T54.

The old service sheet identified T54 as Edwin's assigned code.

That was a lead. It wasn't yet an answer. Codes could be shared. Clocks could drift.

I wrote those two cautions on a fresh page.

Then I found my badge record in the same building gateway export.

DISABLED: CONTRACTOR NIGHT WINDOW.

On the first missing night, it had even recorded my failed attempt to come back for the timer I had left behind.

Zora called before lunch.

"He told me not to involve you," she said. "So I'm involving you carefully."

"What happened upstairs?"

"He says the old drive assembly is scrap."

My hand tightened around the phone.

"Which old drive?"

"I'm sending the list."

The page arrived with Edwin's signature at the bottom. Collection was set for Thursday at five in the morning.

The working telescope drive was item seven.