Chapter 53: Dawn on Crucible

The loud tone the AI used for an alarm woke me. I sat up and noticed that all of my ladies were waving their hands as the wakeup call continued to ring out.

I rolled over and used my hands to lift up my torso. Once my shoulders were off the floor I brought my legs in and slowly stood up. My back felt tight, so I stretched and looked around as the rest of my ladies just covered their ears.

“Turn off the alarm,” I said quietly. “What is the temperature outside?”

“The current temperature is sixteen point seven two degrees,” the AI said firmly.

“That’s cold!” Erica said as she slowly sat up. “Are we really going out to see the sun rise?”

“I believe the AI was using Celsius. It’s sounds like a typical spring morning. It won’t be warm enough to sit around in a bikini, but it won’t be that cold. Let’s get some clothing and head out,” I replied. “AI, does the replicator have the formula for some simple black fleece sweat pants?”

“The replicator does have that pattern,” the AI replied.

“I’ll take the sweat pants and a white t-shirt in my size. Also underwear, socks and a pair of athletic shoes,” I said. “Erica do you want the same?”

“Yes!” the girl said enthusiastically.

“Quiet,” Lenore moaned. “Some of us want to sleep.”

“You’ll miss the sunrise!” Erica crowed. “At least let Angelique see it!”

“If she wants to get up, take her,” Lenore muttered. “I want to sleep in.”

Erica immediately walked over to where Angelique was curled up on a sleeping bag. She reached down to run her fingers through the black hair of the four year old.

“That tickles,” Angelique responded sleepily.

“Daddy is up. He’s going to take us outside if you want,” Erica whispered just loud enough for me to hear as I walked over to the replicator.

The replicator supplied two sets of clothing. One included a pair of panties. I carried that over to Erica who was helping Angelique sit up.

“Take yours,” I said. “I’ll change and then we can head outside.”

“Where do I change?” Erica asked.

“I’ll use the bedroom,” I said. “You can use the bathroom.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Erica said as Angelique stumbled to her feet. The four year old smiled at me and immediately fell over, landing on Tatyana’s legs. Tatyana grunted, but continued to lie on the floor with her eyes closed.

Erica took the outfit from me. I turned towards the bedroom door and made my way to it, carefully stepping over my still slumbering ladies.

The bedroom was clean. The lights came on in the room as I quickly removed the pajamas the girls had convinced me to wear while we were watching the movie the night before. I immediately slipped on the clean clothing provided by the replicator and stood up to look around.

“How soon will dawn be?” I asked.

“Dawn will occur in twelve minutes,” the AI said.

“Can you provide a cup of hot orange spiced tea in the replicator in the main room. Also, my concubines and dependents can enter and exit the pod at will. My only requirement would be that they inform me if they are going to be out for an extended period,” I said.

“Would you like that rule to remain in place once Corsica leaves orbit?” the AI asked.

“If I’m allowed to have it in place,” I replied.

“No concubine may leave the planet if they are unescorted, but they are permitted to wander the planet. There should be no hazards in the vicinity of the pod,” the AI replied as the door opened allowing me back into the main room.

I walked along the walls of the room, avoiding the bodies of my still slumbering concubines. I had just reached the replicator when Angelique ran up and grabbed my leg. “Daddy,” she said sleepily.

“Yes,” I said fondly as I collected a mug filled with tea from the replicator. “And let me guess you want hot chocolate with some whipped cream.”

“Does the replicator provide that?” Erica asked.

The door to the replicator slid open to reveal two mugs. The top of the liquid in the mugs was covered with a large dollop of whipped cream. I just smirked as I moved to the side so the two girls could collect mugs.

“Careful,” Erica said to Angelique when the four-year old hurriedly brought the mug up to her lips. “You don’t want to spill it.”

Angelique giggled as I led the two girls to the door to the pod. I glanced back and then shouted. “Dawn is in ten minutes if you still want to come watch.”

I saw a hand rise up from the pile of sleeping bags and slumbering bodies, but no one spoke. Disappointment ran through my mind as I turned to the front door and watched it open.

The first thing I saw through the doorway was a very faint light in the distance. I looked and could see that the horizon was glowing with a pale light. I stepped out of the pod to look around a bit more.

“It’s dark,” Erica observed.

I used the mug to point off into the distance. “You can see the horizon. I believe we’ll start to see more light in a moment.”

“It doesn’t look right,” Erica said. She leaned forward and raised the mug to just above her eyes, so that her forearm rested on her forehead. “But I can’t tell why.”

“I guess our doorway faces East,” I said. “I wonder if we face the playing fields or the lake.”

Angelique walked forward a few feet. “I think I see water Daddy,” she said.

“Lake it is,” I replied. “Angel, stay close to me. Your mother would kill me if you got hurt.”

I stood silently watching Angelique drink her hot chocolate. The four-year old would walk a few feet away, sip from her mug and then walk back to put a hand on my thigh. She seemed amazed by the dark red rocks we stood on.

“What kind of rock is this?” Erica asked.

I glanced down. The light from the horizon was brighter, but it was not enough that I could really see the ground clearly. What I could see was a brownish-red. I squatted down and put my free hand against the rock. It was rock rather than hard clay.

“I can’t say,” I said. “I’ve never seen something like this before.

“Daddy?” Angelique called out. There was a bit of fear in her voice. “Why is the sky purple?”

I looked up at the horizon. The first sliver of our new planet’s sun had finally appeared. The sky near the horizon was a pale indigo that was slowly getting brighter as the sun continued its ascent.

“Wow,” I said. “I’ve never seen this. Must have something to do with the atmosphere.”

“Does that mean we’ll have trouble breathing?” Erica asked. She sounded terrified.

“If it did, we’d notice,” I pointed out as the sun continued to rise. The shadows on the ground were starting to fade and we could finally see the lake the AI had mentioned.

The pod door was directly facing an inlet in the lake. We were standing no more than two hundred feet from a shoreline that included a small beach that appeared to be made of sand. The water was lapping against the shore in the quiet morning.

There was a clear path leading from our door down to the shoreline. I looked at the stone and rocks between us and the water. It took a few careful glances, but I finally found a flood line about twenty feet below our feet and close to sixty feet away from our door.

“Mark?” Erica asked as I walked to the north, trying to see more of the flood line.

“I was trying to get an idea of how high the water will get during spring floods. It looks like we’re well away from danger. It also looks like the floods are over if this is springtime,” I said.

“Can we swim?” Angelique asked.

“Later,” I said. “How about we walk around the pod and see the area set aside for the fields. We can also look for all of the other pods that were supposed to land around us.”

“It’s so quiet,” Erica said. Her voice was filled with wonder. “And the water is purple too. Why?”

I looked out at the lake. The sun was high enough in the sky that a few beams of sunlight were striking the lake directly. Where the shadows had left the water was a purplish-blue.

“It must have something to do with the strength of the sunlight. I can’t remember what we were told about the star in this system,” I said quietly.

I looked up at the sun. It was still touching the hills to the East, but enough was visible that I could tell that it was orange rather than the yellow one would expect on Earth. I nodded and then started walking northward.

“Mark?” Erica asked as she scrambled to keep up with me. “What did you see?”

I used the mug to point towards the rising sun. “Notice how the sun is orange?”

“Sure,” Erica said. “It’s also a bit larger than what I’m used to back on Earth, but what does that mean?”

“Our sun is a K-class star. They are not as bright as Sol, but scientists say that they burn for billions more years. If this is a young system humans might be able to survive here for a long time,” I said.

“Wow,” Erica said.

Angelique ran past us. I noticed that her hands were empty as she raced to the corner of the pod. She touched it and then turned back to look at us. She was jumping up and down.

“I beat you, I beat you!” she sang out.

“Ugg, someone is too happy,” I heard someone say from the doorway behind us. “Mark? Why is the sky purple? Did we die and I didn’t get the message?”

I paused in my walking and looked back over my shoulder. Constance was standing in the doorway wearing a diaphanous robe over the t-shirt that had been her pajamas the night before. She raised an oversize insulated cup to her lips and took a sip as I watched.

“It looks like the sun is a bit weaker than Sol. And the refraction of light from the atmosphere is a bit different. So we have an orange sun and a purple sky,” I said.

“Crash, bam, alakazam,” Ashley sang as she stepped around Constance. She was barefoot and quickly started dancing on the rocks. “Cold, cold, cold!”

“It’s dawn on a spring day,” I said. “Of course its cold. And that song goes with an orange colored sky.”

Ashley held her hands out, showing off the t-shirt she was wearing. “But wonderful me stopped by!”

Constance took another sip of her drink and glared at the younger woman. “Girl,” she grumbled. “You are entirely too cheerful considering you haven’t had any coffee.”

“I’m with the man I love,” Ashley said as she pranced in my direction. She quickly caught up to me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

I held up the cup containing the hot tea. It was starting to cool so I quickly gulped some down and then looked at Constance. “Do you want to join us?” I asked. “We were going to walk around and see the other pods. For some reason our door faces the lake.”

“I love it,” Ashley said. “We just need a few lounge chairs and a beach umbrella or two and we can catch the morning sun. The only sad thing is that all I see is rock and dirt. There are no plants at all.”

“The AI warned us about that,” I said. “Now let’s look at the rest of our new home. I believe we were promised some sports fields. They won’t be in place, but we can see how far away they are.”

Ashley released me and ran forward. Angelique immediately gave chase as they rounded the side of our home and vanished. Erica laughed as she started jogging after them. She was taking a sip of her hot chocolate as she followed them around the corner and out of sight.

I walked slowly. Constance caught up to me and slipped her right arm around my left. I looked over to see her holding her coffee in her left hand.

Constance ducked her head. She blushed as she reached down to pull at the robe over her t-shirt. “Sorry, I couldn’t take the t-shirt off. It was a bit cold in the house.”

“It’s not that warm out here,” I said as we reached the corner of the pod and turned to the west. The others had all moved out of sight, but we could now see several other pods in the distance.

“It is warm in your arms,” Constance said fondly. “You’ve given me a home.”

“Not much of one,” I said. I pointed to one of the other pods. They looked like someone had stacked a couple of oversize cargo containers on top of each other. There was some rounding of the corners, but it still made a rather ugly picture against the bare stone surrounding it.

“Do you think we might be able to ask the AI for some paneling?” Constance asked as we continued to walk. We could hear Ashley and Angelique’s loud cries ahead of us. They sounded happy so I slowed down and looked at Constance.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You remember my father? Or at least I’ve talked about him. He worked in advertising mostly, but that meant he had people over to the house. I swear the man was all about appearances,” Constance said.

“You’ve hinted at that before,” I said.

“True, but what makes that important, is that I understand how important making the pods look nice really is. If the replicators can make big enough pieces, we can design something that would fit over the pod,” Constance said.

“And I’m guessing you want to make the pod vanish?” I asked.