Chapter 10

"Help! I'm trapped!" Tasha banged and screamed at the door to no avail. She didn't notice the small monitor that hung in the center of the room wink on. Rosie's image appeared and stared at Tasha for a moment, hands on hips, shaking her head.

"Tasha, I can hear you."

Tasha jumped and whirled around at the sound of Rosie's voice.

"Rosie! How long have you been there staring at me?"

"I only just arrived. I sensed your vibrations through the walls of the station."

Tasha angrily walked toward the monitor, "Well, your stupid door's stuck. Would you please go tell those other bozos that I'm stuck in here?"

"Tasha, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't speak to me in that manner." Rosie's calm tone belied the true meaning behind her words.

"Well, I wouldn't have had to say it if anything in this stupid place ever worked. I mean what was Red thinking about..."

"Tasha..." Rosie tried to interrupt her.

"That she could actually live here? Just look at this place."

"Tasha, I just want to—"

"The lights don't work, the bathroom don't work, and the food, that's a subject I don't even want to get into."

Rosie's program began to go into overload with Tasha's ranting. Finally, she could stand it no longer and her emotion breakers kicked in.

Tasha wasn't even looking at Rosie when her eyes started to bulge and her features changed as her holo-driver started and the same bugged eyed monstrosity that came out before at Red now exploded from the monitor at Tasha.

"Tasha!" The huge image screamed and towered over her.

Tasha recoiled in fear and backed up into one of the bunks.

Just as quickly as the Rosie/monster appeared, it retracted into the monitor, replaced by the soft-spoken default Rosie.

"Now that I have your attention, Tasha, maybe we can have a rational conversation with one another."

Tasha sat on the edge of the bunk shaking. The normally surly expression on her face was gone.

"I, I'm listening."

"Thank you, Tasha."

Rosie looked to the right and to the left as if she was looking around the room for something.

"Tasha would you mind pulling that chair over there up in front of you?"

She pointed to a chair that lay overturned in front of one of the dressing tables. Tasha obediently went over, retrieved the chair and set it in front of the bunk on which she was sitting.

"Thank you so much, Tasha." Rosie said as her image was now holo-projected into the chair. She sat with her hands neatly clasped together on her lap.

"Now, I want to talk to you and I think it will be a little easier if I seemed a bit more real than just some image on a view-screen."

"Yeah, it helps a little," Tasha was a still a bit apprehensive talking to a hologram. "I guess."

"I've watched you and how you relate to the other children and it just seems that you're so mean and angry all the time. They don't seem to like you very much." Rosie's programming had honesty to a blunt fault written into it.

"Well, I don't like them very much either." She said defensively. "Besides, what's to like about them? They all have their own things. Mavis has her writing, Ethan has his food. Yavi and Farhad have each other. Alex..." She made an exasperated sound, "He thinks he has to take care of everyone and their problems."

"Tasha, I'm sensing that they are not the problem. I heard what you said to Alex before about your Mother and Father. That your Dad left a long time ago and that your Mom seems angry all the time."

"Yeah, so."

"I feel you must understand that your mother is not angry at you, but at the things around her."

"The things around her?" Tasha asked, "you mean like me?"

"Possibly, sometimes. But I'm speaking more of the things like your father and why he left. Or her job. Or the difficulty of raising a child alone." She paused for a second. "Tasha will you please go over to that terminal and put your hands on it?"

"How come?" Tasha got up and walked over to the small terminal on the dresser.

"I want to show you some things that you might not be aware of. Now rest your hands on top of the terminal."

Tasha did as she asked and Rosie closed her eyes. Her image began to slightly flicker and fade.

"Rosie? Are you okay?" Tasha started to get concerned.

"I'm fine my child. I was just absorbing your essence. It's something Garth's Grandfather programmed into me, but until my power reserves were fully recharged, I couldn't access the necessary programs."

"What do you mean, absorbing my essence?" She returned to the bunk.

"My programming has the ability to collect your thoughts and then extrapolate them to show you the truth. Kind of like a virtual fly on the wall."

Rosie closed her eyes again. A holographic image began to form in the middle of the room. Very fuzzy at first, it quickly resolved itself into a small office. A desk and two chairs took up most of the space.

"That's the principle's office at my school." Tasha was excited. It was like watching a movie of her life.

A man materialized into the chair behind the desk and a woman appeared sitting in one of the chairs in front.

"That's my Mother." Tasha was amazed, "and that's the Principle."

"I just don't know what to do Principle Roberts." Tasha's Mother reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue. "Tasha wasn't always like this, but recently life has gotten so tough for us." She dabbed her eyes.

"I understand Mrs. Ono, but you have to understand mine and her teachers position." He paused and clasped his hands in front of him. "Tasha's attitude is, how shall I say, less than helpful. Several of her teachers have complained to me about her talking back, being mean to the other children, and just a general sense of unhappiness."

"I understand. My job has required me to work longer than usual recently and I haven't been able to spend much time with her." She kept the tissue at her eyes.

"What about Mr. Ono? Is he around?"

"No, No I'm afraid he's not."

"You're darn right he's not." Tasha leaped up from the bunk.

"Tasha, they can't hear you." Rosie maintained her demure calm.

"Oh yeah, I, I guess you're right." She sat back down, slightly embarrassed at her mistake.

The hologram of the office began to dissolve and be replaced by another.

"Rosie, what's happening? Where's it going?" Tasha quickly looked from Rosie to the dissolving image and back again.

"Don't worry my dear. That image served its purpose."

The new image started to come clear. It was a dining room, small, but modest.

"That's my house on Folden." Tasha said excitedly.

Tasha's Mother sat at the table opposite her. Dirty plates in front of them as if they had just finished a meal.

"Tasha, I am tired of having to hear from your teachers about your behavior! I have enough to deal with at work. Can you just manage to be a civilized person for more than one day?" She twisted the napkin around her hand.

"I don't care what those teachers say! They're all a bunch of boneheads anyway. I hate that school, I hate those people and I hate this house!" Tasha pushed herself away from the table and stormed out of the room.

Wham!

The door to her room slammed shut.

Tasha's Mother jumped up and stomped to her door. "Tasha!" She screamed as her fist pounded on the door landing with a dull, thud. "I'm not going to take this from you! Open this door right now or you are going to lose so many privileges you won't have any till you're eighteen!"

Tasha's mother turned sharply and stomped back to the table. She sat down hard, her lips as tight as the knotted napkin twisted around her hand. She released her grip on the napkin, buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

"I hate this house!" Tasha screamed from behind the door. "I really hate it."

"So do I!" She raised her head from the table and screamed back, "So do I!"

Slowly, very slowly, the image became soft and fuzzy and then faded.

Rosie sat in the chair and watched Tasha who sat on the bunk slightly stunned at what she had just witnessed.

"Rosie--I had no idea. It was like looking into some kind of cruel mirror. Though, I'm still not sure what the point is."

"The point is, I know that with my motherly programming, no matter what other problems or difficulties lay in front, we always love our children though we may not show it properly. Tasha, your Mother needs you to show her how much you love and care about her." Rosie cocked her head and smiled at her.

"Hmmm." Tasha kept her head down.

Rosie continued, "Your friends out there, and they are your friends, don't understand you or why you act the way you do. They only want to show you love and friendship as well. Especially Alex."

If Rosie could have taken Tasha's hands and held them she would have. Her emotion program told her to hug Tasha, but she knew she could not.

Tasha slowly looked up at Rosie, her eyes filling with tears. "I... think I understand now."

Rosie smiled the biggest smile her programming allowed.

Red gradually pulled Rascal's thrust lever back to a slow crawl position. Her eyes went wide as she stared out the view-screen at the sight that laid in front of her little B. Around them were the wreckage and debris of things she had never seen before. Strange vehicles and large machines that were unlike anything she had scrapped from in the rest of the zone.

"I've never seen anything like this stuff in the rest of the Zone," her eyes scanned the junk in front of her and then to the instrument panel to check their course.

"A lot of it looks similar to stuff I worked on when I was at Lockheed-Epoc," said Garth "Look at that," he pointed off to the right at an object. "That's a Plasma distributor. They don't make those anymore."

"Betcha' I could get a pretty penny for it too."

"Yeah, and get yourself in a whole lot of trouble too. They're illegal, now."

Red moved the control stick forward and to the right and Rascal slid up and over a tremendous pipe with a piece of complex machinery that was sheered off with smaller pipes, conduits and wires dangling from it like wild tentacles. They rounded the side of another large hunk of salvage to reveal their destination. They both stared in disbelief.

"Would you look at that, Garth," she said in a low tone.

"I am looking and I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't staring right at it."

Seeing this remnant of The Fletcher and all the recent talk about it dredged up a lot of feelings in Garth that he hadn't felt in a long time. He was drawn to seeing more and repulsed by the memories of Fletcher, the man, at the same time. His need to feel safe was battling his need to know more, to maybe try and achieve some closure to that chapter of his life, which had been unfinished.

Red pulled the throttle back all the way and stopped the Rascal completely. What was in front of them were not some small random pieces of junk like she expected to find, but what seemed to be an intact, albeit much smaller structure, resembling the original ship. A portion of the same central triangular lattice work, about 150 feet in length, remained and attached to it were three undamaged agro-domes.

"Uh Red, am I seeing what I think I'm seeing. And I'm not just talking about the ship, but..."

"Yeah, Garth, I know what you're talkin' about. Those are lights on in that dome." She reached out began to push some buttons on the panel.

"I'm gonna turn on the forward camera and zoom in for get a closer look. It's no wonder the KP doesn't want you to come here."

The image from the camera mounted on the outside of Rascal came on one of the monitors located on the instrument panel. Red zoomed the camera into the one of the domes. Rows and rows of thick green plants, many of them ripe with fruits and vegetables, occupied the center part of the dome. Small trees lined the outer circumference next to the triangular grid of the dome.

"Take that patch cord," she pointed behind her head and to the left, "plug it into your helmet cam and send the pictures back to Rosie. We need to have a back-up recording of this, just in case."

Garth reached around behind him, retrieved the cord, and picked up his helmet. Without putting it on he spoke into the small mike located on the inside.

"Rosie, if you can hear me I'm sending some interesting pictures back of something we've found."

Rosie's image spoke from the monitor inside the control room. "Children, I am receiving a signal from Garth and Red. He indicates that he is sending some pictures back of something else they have located."

"What is it, Rosie?" Alex asked.

"It appears to be a portion of The Fletcher I was able to locate earlier." Rosie replied.

"You're kidding. That is so skiz." Ethan said.

The image from Rascal's camera came on the screen, Garth's voice behind it.

"You guys are not going to believe this, but what you're looking at are pieces of The Fletcher that seem to be reassembled into... something like the original ship."

The picture widened out a little so that the whole structure was brought into view. Garth continued, "The stranger part seems to be that there are lights on inside the domes."

"Lights on?" exclaimed Jody, "How can that be?"

"Yes. How can that be? We saw The Fletcher ship destroyed in digi-pix," Yavi added.

"I wish I had an explanation for you, my children," said Rosie, "But I am not able to detect anything else at this time.

Inside Rascal, Garth disconnected the microphone from his helmet.

"Red, I know you're not going to believe I'm suggesting this, but I think we should dock on that craft or whatever it is and check it out."

"Garth, old boy," Red smiled at him, "I couldn't have made a better suggestion if I tried. We'll make a scrapper out of you yet."

"Not just yet, thanks, if you don't mind." He plugged the microphone back into the helmet and spoke into it.

"Kids? Rosie? It's Garth. Listen, Red and I are going to take a couple of minutes and check this out. It won't take long and we'll be back soon after that. We'll turn on the helmet camera when we check it out."

"I do hope they're careful." Rosie said, a worried look on her face. "I don't have a good feeling about this." She then switched gears as if she had forgotten.

"Children, I have to tell you that Tasha seems to have gotten herself trapped in the living quarters and I am unable to free the door."

"Rosie, you're saying it like it's a bad thing." Alex chuckled to himself.

"Yeah," said Ethan, "it's been really nice and quiet without her here."

"Children, I don't like you talking that way about one of your peers. She needs your help."

Tasha sat on the edge of the bunk. She had thought a lot about her Mom recently. It just seemed that no matter what she did her Mom was always mad at her for something. Do the dishes, clean your room, take out the trash-nothing that she asked of her was unreasonable, it was the way she asked. Did she really behave as badly at school as Principle Roberts had said? Rosie's holograms made her see now exactly the way she was behaving, and how terribly she treated others around her. She smiled to herself; because now she thought she finally got it.

She sensed something, some small vibration occurring. She looked up at the door, and upon seeing Alex's smiling face looking back at her, she jumped up and ran to it.

"Alex! Alex! I'm here. I can't get out!" She yelled into the thick door.

Alex pressed his hands against the glass, his voice low and muffled, "We know. Rosie told us. Yavi and Farhad are gonna figure it out."

In the corridor, Yavi and Farhad studied the door. "What do you think, Yavi? Remove the switch panel and reconfigure the power..."

"Transfer unit?" She finished, "No I don't think that is problem. I think mechanism is blocked. We should..."

"Remove the floor plate and check the track grid. You're right." Farhad opened his small tool pouch, took out the small power driver and began to remove the screws from one end of the narrow strip in front of the bottom of the door. Yavi did the same thing starting at the other side. "Don't worry, Alex we'll have this off and fixed in no time."

"I was never worried. Rosie? Can you hear me?" Alex called into the air.