Chapter 46

Dear Will,

Well, I know you worry, but for now I'm safe, and I'm sure my family will be very safe. I have to applaud the people who decided where to drop everyone. I think I told you that Wadi was a water world, with very little land, well, that doesn't really describe it. The planet is very smooth compared to Earth. The seas rarely get more than one thousand feet deep and the highest hills are just over one thousand feet high. There are no mountains or deep abyssal. The planet has two moons, but they are small and so far away that the tides are measured in inches rather than feet. I looked at an old Earth tide chart and the different between high and low tide could be seven feet, for Wadi, a big difference is two feet, but we do have multiple tides due to the effects of having two moons.

Our home pod is already being turned into a home. We were set up on an island. It actually looks like it might have once been the rim of a shield volcano, because the island is shaped like a ring and has a large lagoon in the middle. Our island has the thirty pods belonging to members of third company. We have seven groups of three pods each, two of four, and then the single pod for Erica and me. There is one administrative pod that's on the far side of the ring from my home. It contains two medical pods and a teleportal.

The land we do have is nice. It probably started out as lava, but wind and waves have turned the lands into a large stretch of black sand that runs a quarter mile or more wide in a giant ring. There are two gaps in the ring that allow the ocean to flow in and keep the lagoon filled. For some reason, the pod Erica and I live in is set up on pontoons in the lagoon, and our front door opens into the section between the two gaps. It gives us a front yard that has enough space to stage multiple soccer games. Meiling and Katya are already plotting out where to plant our garden, and have been working with the replicator to try to get some better topsoil set up.

At first no one could swim in the lagoon, the oceans here are teaming with life and some of that life is very carnivorous. Larry suggested that we string nets across the two gaps to make sure nothing new could get in and then use some sonar pulses to knockout or kill anything in the lagoon. Fabio eventually got the planetary administration to spare a shuttle and a few drones. The shuttle lowered some kind of electronic device into the water. We could hear several low pitched booms and then fish started floating to the surface of the lagoon. The drones collected everything and fed it to the recycler at the administration building. We've been told that all our pods connect to it, and it is connected to the main power generation and recycling stations.

I'm glad to hear you put your foot down in regards to Lily. As I said in my last letter Erica and I have been very lucky to have Louisa. She's never been a mother, but she knows what is required to deal with tantrums and people trying to take charge when they are not supposed to. If it wasn't for the fact that I can't see how to arrange it, I'd suggest that at pickup any family that does not have an experienced and successful mother be given a high CAP grandmother to help provide the stability and discipline necessary. I can say that without Louisa, Erica and I would be having no success with Phoebe and Barry. John wouldn't be too much of a problem, except for encouraging him to study. He's like most young boys and wants to play all the time. Louisa suggested that we set up a reward system where he gets more and better toys if he studies hard. I hate to admit this, but he now blows your scores away. Just yesterday he took a tenth grade chemistry exam and got a perfect score. The reward he wanted was for us to set up a chemistry lab for him to play in. Erica and I refuse to have it in our home pod, but the AI agreed to replicate a shack he can use in the near future. We are going to limit what chemicals he can have, and the AI has said he'll make sure no chemicals leave the shack without us knowing. At least John is careful so far when he experiments.