Chapter 14

I'm a little scared, but I know we're going to be okay. Yavi and Farhad are actually fixing the bus, with Rosie's help. They downloaded her into their Pocket Pals so that she can guide them better. Jody is also helping them. The biggest thing I don't understand is Tasha. Somehow, after she got locked in one of the living modules we freed her and she came out different. I don't know, it's really skiz. She's trying really hard not to be difficult or anything. But I'm really confused about Alex. I think he likes Tasha. He was really the one who got her out and she's being extra nice to him and he's being just as nice back to her. She even hugged him. Right in front of everyone! I don't know whether to hate her or like her cause she's finally behaving like a real person. I'm so confused. Anyway, I hope Red and Garth are okay. I was the one who figured out that Fletcher was the guy on the wreck. He looked really crazy. They'll be okay. Red would never let anything happen. At least not on purpose.

Alex stood in front of Rosie's central control panel with his Pocket Pal open and wired into her. "All right Rosie," he said as he punched some buttons on the small machine, "go ahead and download the coordinates of The Fletcher and I'll go load them into the buses nav."

"Very good, Alex." Rosie replied. "I'm sensing that Yavi and Farhad are nearly finished with the repairs. I believe that by the time you load this data they will be ready."

"Okay, Rosie."

"Alex?" Rosie smiled down at him from her monitor.

"Yes, Rosie?"

"I'm very proud of you. All of you." She beamed with electronic pride.

"Thanks... Mom" Alex was joking with her a little, but it just made her more proud. He turned and walked over to Tasha who was cleaning up some of the foodstuffs and containers from before. "Hey, Tash."

She stopped and looked up at him smiling.

"We're gonna be ready to go pretty soon. Could you go get Ethan from the galley?"

"Sure thing. I'll see if I can pry him loose from the processor." She turned and put what she was holding into a receptacle next to her.

Alex turned and started to head toward the airlock door, but stopped and turned to her.

"Hey Tasha. I just want to let you know... I like this Tasha better than the old one." He smiled at her.

"Me too, Alex." She smiled back at him.

Mavis stopped writing in her notebook to watch them and started writing again when they separated.

I think I'm gonna throw up, now.

Rosie watched Mavis as Alex exited through the airlock door and Tasha headed toward the rear of the Control Module, opened the access hatch and left. She had noted Mavis' behavior as being quite different from the rest of the group and could feel her difference in many ways. Rosie projected a holo image of herself into the room next to where Mavis was sitting. She stood and quietly watched her.

"Mavis. I've been observing you since you arrived and I noticed that you alone write in a book. That's very old fashioned, you know. Why is it you like to write that way?"

Mavis stopped writing and looked up at Rosie. "I don't know Rosie. It's just different. I like the way it feels when the pen moves across the page. I have a Pocket Pal, but I only use it in school when Ms. Braidon makes me."

"I think it's quite noble of you. It's important to continue practicing ancient customs, although when I was created, writing is what most everybody used."

"You think it's noble? Really?" Mavis smiled and looked down at the floor, pleased that she was being noticed.

"However, I have sensed a great deal of animosity between you and your brother, Ethan."

Mavis jerked her head up. "Well, he's a Neanderthal Pigboy."

"Mavis..." Rosie was terse. "I don't like it when you use those words to describe Ethan."

"I'm sorry, Rosie," Mavis began, "I just don't think he tries hard." She looked down at the ground.

"He's doing the best he can with what he has." Rosie moved closer to where Mavis was sitting. Her translucent holo image reached out and touched Mavis' journal book.

Mavis instinctually snatched the book from her ghostly image and held it tight.

Rosie was taken aback slightly as her sensitivity circuits kicked in. "I'm sorry, Mavis. It's a part of my programming. I can understand and grow by bonding with you."

"What do you mean?" Mavis asked as she watched Rosie's image in front of her.

"I simply mean that I can learn more about you and from you by making a connection with you."

"But how can you do that? You're a machine, not flesh and blood."

Rosie's holo-image flickered slightly. "It was part of Garth's Grandfather's programming." Rosie quickly ran through her memory circuits recalling the moments when Garth Holloway the first brought her online and allowed her to take her first 'electronic breath'. And just as quickly, she remembered the moments when he was forced to leave Alpha Station, abandoning her to the loneliness and cold of space. "In order for me to further my programming, I must be able to interact with humans. It is necessary for me to absorb your personality so that I may help you. That is what my original programming was geared towards; helping humans cope with loneliness and isolation."

"Well, I certainly feel isolated. That's for sure." Mavis clutched her journal tightly and looked down at the floor.

"Then let me help you." Rosie moved toward her with an outstretched hand.

Mavis loosened her grip and held the book up to Rosie.

Rosie's ghostly, holo-image, hand touched the book.

"Mavis," Rosie began, "I'm beginning to understand now.

I think you need to see something that your brother Ethan said about you in one of his classes."

In the middle of the room an image began to form and coalesce into shape. It was a classroom in the Folden Learning Center.

"That's one of our classrooms at Folden," Mavis said as she stared into the image. "That's Ms. Braidon and there's Pigb..."

Rosie looked sternly at Mavis.

"I mean Ethan," Mavis corrected, "Sorry, Rosie."

Nona Braidon sat behind a desk at the front of a room that was full of kids at their learning stations. Ethan sat at his station in the middle of the room. A bell rang softly from Rosie's projected image. All of the kids began to rise from their chairs and shuffle out of the room.

"All right everyone, we'll continue with this tomorrow," Ms. Braidon said as she stood. "Ethan will you come up here a second."

Ethan stopped and turned toward her. He looked worried as he moved slowly to her desk at the front. Ms. Braidon held a view-tablet in her hands.

"Ethan, don't worry. I just wanted to talk to you about this assignment." She looked down at the tablet, which held a paper Ethan had written a few days before.

"This assignment you wrote on the person you admired the most."

"Yes Ms. Braidon, what about it? Was it okay?" Ethan looked embarrassed, like he had done something wrong.

"No, no far from it. In fact I think it's one of the best things you've ever written in this class. I just wanted you to see this first." She handed him the tablet.

A large 'A' was marked across the top of the page.

Mavis was able to clearly read the first paragraph of the paper. Her eyes widened as she looked over to Rosie. "How can you show me this? It isn't my memory."

"My child, I have already absorbed Ethan's essence through his contact with the food processor."

Mavis began to read what she saw in the projected image.

The person I admire most in my life is my sister Mavis. While everyone else around us uses Pocket Pals, she likes to use pen and paper. She's not afraid of anyone else's opinion. She does what she feels is right. Mavis really cares about the world around her also. Even though we can't live on Earth anymore she still believes that we will one day figure it all out and be able to move back. I don't like it when she teases me about my weight and calls me Pigboy, but I know deep down she loves me...

Mavis looked up at Rosie as the holo-image of the Learning Center faded. "Rosie, I had no idea Ethan felt that way."

"Well, he does. I also sense that much of the reason he finds the need to eat as he does stems from the way you treat him." Rosie smiled at Mavis.

Mavis looked down and shook her head. "I never thought." She looked back up at Rosie. "I guess I'll try not to be so hard on him."

"I'm certain that will make a difference. Now, as for your other desires to live on Earth in the past as it once was. As much beauty as there was on Earth, there was also much hatred and ugliness. The Orbit Stations have none of that now. It is important for you to embrace the life you have now. Cherish the things you do have and work for the things you yearn for. You are a very special girl, Mavis. I can sense that deep down in my circuits, you are destined to do great things with your life."

"You really think so, Rosie?" Mavis smiled.

"I know so," Rosie's image smiled back.

Jody sat on the edge of the bus's access hatch watching as Yavi and Farhad jury-rigged the part of Rosie's thrust actuator they had scavenged. He was handing them the tools they needed and then taking them back. He had everything laid out very neatly, like a surgeon's table of instruments, along the edge of the open hatch.

"Jody... here." Yavi's hand jutted out from the opening holding a Walker auto-driver. Jody took the tool. "Can you give me spanner wedge, please?"

Jody picked up a long shiny tool that had two adjustable points at the end and placed it into Yavi's hand. "Here you go, Yavi. Are you guys almost done?"

Farhad answered back, "Yeah Jody. We just have to make some final alignments and then we can test it."

Inside the bottom of the bus the two of them laid on their sides head to head so they could work together easier. Yavi's Pocket Pal was propped up on a section of conduit running the length of the bus. She held the tool in front of a small disk with two small indents on the surface and slowly moved the adjustment screw until the points matched the width of the indents. Carefully she inserted the spanner wedge.

"Okay, Farhad, we are almost done. How much to turn?" It was warm in the bottom of the bus and small beads of perspiration formed on her brow.

Farhad studied the schematic on the small computer screen. Wires ran from it to an interface panel. The correct alignment was in front of him and as she slowly turned the disk he was able to view when the precise calibration was achieved. "Okay, turn to the left... keep turning. More. More." His screen flashed. "That's it. Right there."

Alex walked in the airlock entrance of the bus. "Hey, Jodes." How's it going?" He walked over to the nav and extended a wire from his Pocket Pal.

Jody looked up at him "Oh hi, Alex. It's going great. They're almost done. What's up with you?"

"Well, as soon as I get these coordinates loaded in then we can go as soon as the genius's are through." He plugged in the cord and started punching buttons on the keyboard.

"How's Tasha?" asked Jody.

"Well that certainly is going to be the strangest miracle of this trip. I sure would like to know what Rosie said to her. But she says that it's between her and Rosie. She won't tell me. I can live with it as long as she stays this way."

"You got that right," said Jody.

Yavi's hand thrust out from the opening holding the spanner wedge and Jody took it from her. Her hand stayed there, fingers spread. "Jody, give me a hand out."

Jody took advantage of her pigeon English, "I don't have any money on me right now, Yavi," he chuckled.

Alex smiled to himself, but still reprimanded him, "Jody!"

"Very funny, Jody," Yavi said, "We don't have time for jokes."

Jody grabbed her hand, "I'm sorry I couldn't resist." He crouched over the edge of the hatch and helped pull her out.

"Thanking you, Jody." She sat on the edge of the opening as Farhad's head appeared in the narrow access way. They both grabbed his hands and helped him out of the hole.

"Well, that should about do it." Farhad clapped the dirt from his hands.

Alex closed his Pocket Pal and unplugged it from the nav. "Me too," he said, "Why don't you guys close the hatch and give it a test. I'll go get the others." Alex walked out through the airlock. "Good work, you guys." He closed the door behind him.

Farhad and Jody lifted the plate back over the hole and onto the recessed lip. Yavi went over to the driver's seat and began checking the controls and gauges to see if what they had done would work. Farhad started screwing the plate down.

"Far?" Jody said, "You think it'll work?"

"Of course it'll work. Have you ever known anything we have done not to work?"

"Farhad?" said Yavi.

"What," replied Farhad.

"It is not working," Yavi said dejectedly.

"What do mean it's not working?" Farhad immediately stood and walked over to Yavi.

"Look here," she pointed to a couple of the panel indicators, "The coil magneto is not registering."

"Did you adjust the polarity inverter?"

"I thought you did?" asked Yavi.

Farhad lowered his head and shook it from side to side. "Come on Jody let's take the panel off again."

"Wow Farhad, it's nice to know that even you guys can make a mistake once in a while," Jody said.

Farhad looked up at him in all seriousness. "Don't you dare tell anyone about this."

"Me? I wouldn't say a thing. Mmmm-mmmm, not me. No sir," Jody smiled and chuckled to himself.

"Come on darling, just a little more," Ethan's voice bounced off the metal walls inside the machine. "I know you can do it."

Rosie watched him as he poked and prodded the machine. She found Ethan curious. He seemed so preoccupied with sustenance that she felt she needed to find out more about him and what made him so.