The Silent Astronomer

Thomas Abbot

Director Helen Vaughn

Dr. Eleanor Hartwell

Dr. Marcus Weaver

Eleanor's Observatory Study

A cramped basement room beneath the Smithsonian Observatory, windowless except for a single skylight casting stark shadows across walls papered with her mentor's discredited solar charts. The air smells of old paper and mechanical oil from calculation devices.

The Weather Bureau's Crisis Room

A marble-walled government chamber dominated by a massive weather map where pins mark catastrophic events spreading like infection. Telegraph machines clatter constantly with disaster reports, their noise creating a soundscape Eleanor cannot hear but others cannot escape.

The Rooftop Heliograph Station

The observatory's open rooftop where Eleanor installs heliograph mirrors to attempt responding to the solar signals. Wind whips unobstructed, the city spreads below in miniature, and the Sun dominates the sky—no longer distant object but immediate presence.