The calendar reads 1964, day 51. The smell of salt and sand came across the woman who inspected the calendar on the bulletin board in the unconditioned gas station near the shore. She fixes her hair a bit, taking her time to carefully look around for any snacks. Three men, dark from the sun gaze her way, speaking many mean things under their breath. That woman is not from Mexico.

She is pale and has short black hair. English, Russian maybe? She wears pants as if she has some sort of authority in this land. Another man outside the window is offended by her presence. She must be areligious. A heretic. She coughs after she catches the gazes with her own eyes, snapping the men’s mouths shut. She goes back to browsing. She knows she shouldn’t be here, but it’s been so long. Her jeans are dirty and slightly ripped, probably a new fad from the United States.

The woman picks up a bag that is brown and orange. She speaks the tongue of Mexico, but the men within the store know she is a foreigner and are wary about her presence. She quickly leaves after paying for the treat and almost scampers off into the city, as if she knows what she’s doing is wrong. Police stare the pale woman down. They could easily arrest her for wearing pants or not wearing her proper hijab or burka. She could be one of those progressives from France. They leave her alone.

She is finally free from the cityside men and their interrogative gazes. She sits down and enjoys her snack, famished from travelling so far. She looks down and unzips the bag to her side, checking her resume and making sure everything’s perfect.

Valentina sighed and read the admittedly short list. She hated spoofing her gender, but it’s the only way authorities take her seriously. Her head throbbed a bit when she thought back to a few munths ago where a group of English guards tried to decapitate her for that. Another sigh and a chill. She was lost, wasn’t she. Valentina knew quite little about Mexico, but they can’t be any more intolerant than the English.

The snack was spicy, but the air was salty. A weird mixture, but she was hungry and begging would get her arrested. The ten dollars she had when she started travelling was used up on the 50 cent bag that was detrimental to her stomach. Valentina quickly smirked at herself. Maybe she should have studied on the culture before coming down south. A bus pulled up and made the snack taste like a chimney. No longer appetizing. She boarded the bus pretending to be a wife of some man who was bringing four of his wives to a funeral even nearer to the distant but visible shoreline. Valentina needed to get there!

The bus stopped at a remote location a half hour later. He kicked her off and threatened to call the police before driving off disgruntled. His problem. She looked around and the waves looked more gorgeous than they did in the old textbooks from college. The complex couldn’t have been more than 5 kilometers away. A long walk, but now she could see it in all its glory! A vehicle assembly building, a landing strip for airplanes, a research centre! Valentina almost blushed. It was a scientist’s dream.

Two men were testing out a new rover the engineers brought out. The third rover that day, in fact. A tall man popped out from the small door and took a breath of fresh sea air. The vehicle was still moving pretty fast, but that was no trouble for the legendary pilot.

“Jebediah! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Bill, one of the engineers, shouted into his microphone to try and convince Jebediah to be a little more careful. Jebediah is never careful. Bill smacked his face with his hand and noticed a full layer of sweat.

“Yeah, wha-” Jebediah realised mid-sentence that Bill wouldn’t feasibly hear him. Jebediah looked down to the source of the problem. Bob, the field scientist, was hanging from one foot strapped to the locomotive. Jebediah laughed as hard as he thought he ever had, going so far to point at Bob screaming and scared for his life. Bill sat by, at the base of the airstrip with two other engineers discussing how to avert problems like this. Of course, that only led to Bill rubbing his temples.

Valentina walked by, noticing a ruckus near the airstrip. There was a man yelling in Spanish, but it was so quick she didn’t take the time to understand what he said. She went on by, walking towards the administration building to finally get to the scheduled interview. If they have a radio, maybe she can convince them to play some rock and roll. No, she thought to herself, these were probably old men. They wouldn’t take kindly to the “devil’s music”. She stared off and blanked out for a bit, walking without purposeful thought.

Valentina reached the administration building. The brochure showed it… differently… She removed the brochure from her line of sight to see what really lie there. It was a ramshackle trailer, almost. A new AC unit stuck out the side and the blinds were poorly managed inside. She would’ve been certain that the building couldn’t be it, but there was a glistening silver plate on the door.

“Administration Office,” Valentina uttered to herself. She took a deep breath and walked in, more nervous than she had been her entire life.

She hadn’t felt the sweat on her head until she closed the door behind her. It was like a wave of sultry air slapped her in the face. Five men sat at an arched table, each forehead sprinkled with sweat, looking over papers and talking among themselves. Each of the men had a little stand. Gus Kerman was the Lead Engineer. He looked as if he took a shower in oil and grease. Mortimer Kerman was the Financial Director, and was presumably in his late sixties. Walt Kerman was the Manager of Public Relations. Valentina anxiously bit her lip a bit after seeing a sexist commercial that he directed. He was going to tear her to shreds more than the other guys.

Valentina noticed the fourth man, sitting in the middle of the table. He was the famous rocket scientist, Wernher Von Kerman! She didn’t expect that the man who proved the globe was round would be there. The final man was young, much younger than the other four. She quickly squinted to see who he was. Linus Kerman, intern. He was wearing a white lab coat, she figured he must be a scientist intern to Wernher himself…

She sat down, finally noticing the cloud of ash from the men’s cigarettes.  “Well isn’t this a sight for sore eyes?” Gus croaked. Valentina shifted nervously in her seat.  “A woman wearing pants walkin’ around like she means business,” Gus continued and took a long inhale from his cigarette. Two of the others giggled under their breath.

“Now tell me, dear missy, what brings you to the big boy’s table?” Gus slyly exhaled, getting fresh ash and smoke into the air, watering her eyes. Valentina coughed as she unzipped her bag, taking out the papers that got dirtied from her encounter with the field crew.

“I am Valentina Kerman, for the interview,” She hacked as she set the papers down onto the table. The men’s eyes widened.

“Well damn, I should have known Valentina was a woman’s name, huh,” Wernher sighed as he took the resume to examine, subtly letting the other men he was being sarcastic. Linus felt some deep rage grow in him. The other men weren’t happy as well.

“Huh?! You thought, huh?” Linus grumbled to his superior. Wernher quickly shot down Linus. Gus took the papers after Wernher was done to make sure there were no discrepancies with the copies she sent. The resume went around the table. Mortimer would start the waves of questions Valentina had to answer, most of them she expected.

“Why aren’t you applying for a job in the kitchen?”
“Now, you do know this isn’t really a woman’s job, right?”
“I don’t believe you flew for 12 years. You lie to us about your gender, and you expect us to believe this shit?”
“We would love to hire you, but honestly the press would be up our asses for religious problems,”  “We already have a pilot, you could be a janitor,”  Valentina banged her fist on the table to assert herself.

“Well come on! Don’t any of you think that I’m worth more than that? A cooker, or a cleaner? I spent a very large portion of life training for this sort of material! You just need to-”

“Shut your mouth, woman!!” Linus yelled into Valentina’s face. Valentina stared back at Linus. Wernher took Linus’ collar and dragged him back behind the table, leading Linus to smack the hand away.

“Why are you even here? None of us want you here, well. You know the reason, don’t you? We also have Jebediah. We’re not going to replace something that doesn’t need fixing,” Linus objected. Wernher scowled at Linus. Valentina objected,  “W-Well I can be on par or better than Jebediah if you take me in, I can-”

“BITCH! YOU CAN SLAVE YOUR STUPID CUNT BACK TO THE KITCHEN! HOW DENSE MUST YOU BE TO NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME?!” Linus slammed his fist on the table and slapped Valentina. He returned to his seat and lit another cigarette as the other four men were frozen in shock. Valentina sat there unable to think, her hand comforting the sting that Linus made on her face. Her cheek stung, and oh… She felt hot tears running down her face. She hated crying.

She stood up after a heavy sigh and gathered her papers.  “I-I’m sorry for wasting your time..,” Valentina mustered up strength to not cry.  “You should really excuse my intern’s excursions, he doesn’t-” Wernher tried to comfort Valentina as she whimpered. She’s been through a lot to get to this point with no reward. Her suit’s all dusty and dirty. It’s like she got run over and left in the desert.