Chapter 6: Home Sweet Home

Perseverance City, October 11, 2131
Home Sweet Home

Ray, Alan, and Christa watched the big, rugby ball shaped rocket take off surprisingly fast. Ray shook his head. That guy was wasting a lot of fuel trying to reach orbit that fast. Ray usually didn’t care about freighters, even the ones that were able to land on Mars. It was the passenger and military ships that he worried about. The fat rocket was still visible when the train pulled into Perseverance City.

Alan and Christa were suddenly transported to a magical world they didn’t realize could exist. Moving sidewalks, statues, large clear panels hung from the ceiling and words appeared on the panels: sports scores, traffic issues, entertainment news. All over the place were green things. The two kids were so impressed that Alan temporarily forgot his anger. “What are the green things?” asked Christa.

“Which green things?”

“You know, with the feathers.”

“Feathers?” Then Ray saw what she was pointing at. “Those are houseplants and we call those feathers leaves. They take carbon dioxide from the air and release oxygen.”

“Like reverse breathing!” said Alan. Photosynthesis isn’t taught in Martian schools until the senior grades because plants on Mars are few and far between.

“What’s traffic?” asked Christa, as she read the board above them.

“When you get a lot of people moving at the same time in the same area, it’s called traffic,” said Ray. “Stay behind me and step where I step,” and he stepped onto a moving sidewalk while hauling a bright orange suitcase with dinosaur stickers all over it. The kids followed, hauling a suitcase each and when they caught up to him he said, “Ok, we’re going to move to the left belt. It moves faster than the right belt so be careful.” And he stepped over to the left belt. He decided to stay on this belt and wait until the kids were ready to move to the innermost belt, because it moves pretty quickly. He gave a travelogue on Perseverance city and suddenly they entered an area with high ceilings and enormous windows.

“Look! A canal!” cried Alan. In the center of the large open area was a body of water with water jets that sprayed water into the air.

“That’s the George Abigale Washington fountain, he was the first US president to die in an atomic blast,” said Ray. “He was the father of large space colonies and he approved the original design for Bradbury Canal before he was vaporized. The fountain symbolizes Lake Erie, where he was fishing on a yacht when the bomb went off half a mile away from him.”

“Everyone knows that” said Alan, but he was mesmerized by the sight of water being squirted into the air.

Ray led them to a more residential part of the station. “There’s a playground right there, not far from where we live.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a place where you can play,” said Ray. “It’s fun.” Alan and Christa gave him an odd look, having never seen a playground before. “Trust me, you’ll enjoy it.”

They got to his apartment and found it a messy disaster. “I’m sorry, but Tammy was a pig,” said Ray. Filthy dishes were stacked in the sink and garbage was everywhere. He led them to the bedrooms. The room that Sheila was using smelled like sex, but wasn’t too bad. The other small bedroom was in good shape. Ray went into the main bedroom where all of his clothes were thrown on the ground and somebody took a dump on his bed. “That fucking pig. I hope she gets what coming to her.”

The next morning, the apartment was nearly spotless. Ray had been up all night cleaning and doing laundry. He made the kids breakfast, and Christa said, “Sorry about your wife.”

“We weren’t really married; it was a marriage of convenience. She needed a place to live and I needed somebody to hang off my arm at official functions at work.”

“Can I go look around?” she asked.

“Be sure you have your personal telephone on you,” said Ray.

“I just want to look at the playground.”

“Ok. I’ll be right here. Alan, can we talk?” said Ray as Alan started to follow his sister out the door. Alan stopped and glared at Ray. “Did I say or do something wrong?” Ray asked.

“You spied on my parents at work.”

“Pardon?” asked Ray.

“You gave them paperweights with TK-1237 circuits embedded to collect data with instructions to download to your recorder after a specific period of time.”

“And where did you get this idea from?”

“Noxie,” said Alan.

“Pardon?”

“Noxie the Robot, you gave me Noxie for my birthday. I programed it to show me RF signals and it showed me the signal between the paperweight and your recorder.”

“How?” asked Ray. “How does it show you? Show me.” Ray brought out the paperweights and placed them around the recorder.

Alan held his robot over the devices and pushed a button on the back of the robot. The robot’s eyes glowed blue and in the blue circle of light Noxie projected, Ray saw it, waves of different shades of blue from one of the paperweights and the recorder flashed softly ... was that a signal that it was recording the radio waves from the paperweight? A number appeared above the paperweight, TK-1237, the circuit that powered the transmission. Above the recorder could be seen the number RK-802, the receiving circuit. Under normal scrutiny, RK-802 would appear as an innocuous circuit on the recorder. Maybe a noise filter.