“No,” I said again, keeping my voice calm and steady.

“Take a picture of the monitors showing the live voltage levels.”

“Show the actual, messy work being done to keep those blue pins active.”

“People need to see that clean energy isn’t a trophy to hang on a office wall,” I said.

“It’s a utility that requires constant maintenance and hard physical labor.”

Marcus nodded, his pen moving fast across the paper.

“That’s a much better angle,” he said.

“The polished founder story is tired anyway.”

“We see fifty of those a week in the technology section.”

My mother’s face tightened, a faint red flush rising along her neck.

She looked at Marcus, then at the photographer, who was now kneeling on the concrete to get a shot of the battery racks.

Neither of them was paying any attention to her anymore.

She looked at Derek, who was typing on his keyboard, ignoring her presence entirely.

She was standing in the middle of our workspace, completely ignored by the very people she had brought here to validate her own social standing.