Nineteen minutes. Nineteen minutes and four seconds to write a masterpiece. She couldn't cheat anymore.

They'd told her it would be easy, driving the clouds away from the city and its people before their noxious fumes enveloped and suffocated them all. They'd given her a datapad with enough music to vibrate the air at the proper intervals (between 2093.055 and 16.351 Hz) for twenty-four hours. All she needed to do was fly the SSO in a continuous loop and check in with them once an hour.

23.68 hours later, she'd nearly fallen asleep twice and inoculated herself with eleven extra-strength lattes, and the clouds were only beginning to dissipate. Clearly, the vibrations weren't working.

She scratched behind her ear, took a deep breath, and flew up into the clouds. The SSO was a sturdy thing, but the rapidly changing air nearly shook it apart. She engaged autopilot anyway. For what she was about to do, she needed two hands.

There was a reason she'd volunteered for this mission, and it wasn't that her mother had had the same job and saved them all from the acid rain fifteen years ago. Well, maybe it was, just a little. She, like her mother, had a gift.

At least, she hoped she did. With 1.56 minutes left on the transmission, she cut it off, turned on the microphone and began to sing.

The SSO was shaking a little less by the time she added chords to her melody, and when the cool voice of the autopilot informed her that she had run out of stored energy and would be forced to pilot herself to a landing or crash, the clouds had nearly gone.

As she released the keys and returned her attention to the controls, she let her voice soar one more time. She'd be unable to speak tomorrow, but she had done it. She had won. Her mother would have been proud.

Picture:
Love Letter