Well, I actually finished the draft of this (the book, not this chapter) yesterday, so perhaps you'll get to see something else in the future. No robots, exactly, but at least you get to see an alien.

 

 

 

 

A Rose, by any other name, still has thorns

 

GeorgeAnn was scheduled to take the late bus home. It would mean that John Jacob and the twins would be home before her, so she left peanut-pistachio pretzels on the kitchen table for their snack before leaving for school. Under no circumstances did she want her brother poking through the larder for snacks. Larders required order and when it came to food, John James had none.

It was do or die time with respect to choosing a club. Her birthday was next week, Dad already had what he described as her penultimate birthday present, and none of it would happen if she didn’t show up for at least one club meeting. Well, she’d probably still be a year older, but there’d be no celebration to mark the occasion. And the stupendous gift, whatever it was, would just go on a shelf in the store and become someone else’s wonderful possession.

Her last class of the day, world history, was over. Her things, except for a small notebook and purple gel pen, were stowed in her locker. The last early bus was leaving the school parking lot. This won’t be so bad, she thought to herself. She looked up, set her eyes on the cafeteria door, and walked into the drama club meeting.

It was a noisy place. Kids were busy moving tables to one side of the room and chairs to the other. She thought she ought to introduce herself to a teacher, but saw no one who resembled that status. So she helped move chairs. The last dozen or so of the chairs were set into a circle in the open space in the center of the cafeteria.

A person, female, she guessed, with spiky blue hair and a cosmic pink whistle strung around her neck, stood in the middle of the circle counting bodies and chairs.

“Mike, two more chairs, please,” she said. She didn’t shout, but her voice boomed to every corner of the room. A kid, Mike presumably, who had been showing another kid something on his phone, immediately stopped that and ran for two more chairs. Madam of the blue hair was the teacher component of this club. Time to make an introduction.

“Ah, you must be GeorgeAnn Walker. Welcome to drama club!” The teacher, with a smile from ear to ear, waved with a flourish and pointed to a chair. “Take a seat. We will begin shortly.”

“You know me?” GeorgeAnn did not know her. She ought to remember having met someone with hair like that.

“Well, of you, of course. You’re the maker of that lovely display, Inspiration City in Al’s store.”

“I don’t remember seeing you in the store.”

“Not in this get-up. But I get down there regularly. Your mom pointed you out. She’s very proud of you. I’m Mrs Clark.”

As much as she wanted to hate being here, Mrs Clark’s personality made it difficult not to feel welcome. So far, she was the first teacher at this school to make her feel that way.

“Seats, everyone. The drama club meeting is called to order,” Mrs Clark began. Everyone took a seat in the circle, even the teacher. She did not have a special place to sit. “Now, since we have several new members today, we will begin with introductions. Those of you who have been here for a while know the drill. Newcomers, the rules are simple. When it is your turn, come to the center of the circle, state your name, then tell us one thing about yourself and, finally, make a salutation. And pay attention, because everyone’s salutation must be different. Also, remember that you are in a circle, and you must address all of us, so be sure to turn around!” She looked to the boy sitting to her right. “Roger, why don’t you start, then I will follow, and we’ll go around the circle.”

Roger, a scrawny black-haired boy, stood and walked to the center of the circle of students. As he looked around at everyone, he made a timid smile. “Hi. I’m Roger Bird. Besides drama club, I like singing in my church’s choir.” He made a deep bow, turned ninety degrees, bowed again, and repeated the action twice more. Then he went back to his chair. 

“Good job, Roger,” some of the kids called. “Well done.” Everyone clapped.

Mrs Clark got up as Roger walked back to his chair. Before doing anything else, she did a pirouette, blowing imaginary kisses into the crowd. “Good afternoon, my name is Mrs Clark. Something that you may not know about me is that I love antiques.” Then she sat back down and the next kid, Mary Saunders took her turn.

It was fun watching all the kids doing crazy bows, curtseys, and other welcoming gestures. Then it was GeorgeAnn’s turn. And the thought of following all of that petrified her.

“Um, I’m GeorgeAnn. Uh, Walker,” she started. This was awful. She turned slowly to stare at each of the faces in the room. “I have four brothers and sisters.” She turned again and waved a timid little wave. Dad would be so embarrassed for her acting like such a chump. She ran back to her chair. 

“Good job,” Patti, who was sitting next to her, said. “The first time I had to do an introduction, I couldn’t even remember my name.” 

The introductions continued. Once done, 

 

GeorgeAnn sat on the floor of the loft surrounded by piles of paper. The twins, who were generally good with making things were completely befuddled by printing, collating, stitching and trimming. [Sidebar: how to make a booklet] So, here she sat among the contents of ten travel books-to-be looking for page nine. It was here, somewhere. She’d seen it print.

Ah, but it was so much more interesting to look at the buildings along her Main Street of Inspiration City and wonder what it would be like walking down the street of a real city like that. The biggest city she’d ever been to was Hartford and, while it had some tall buildings, it was hardly a big city. Not like New York, or London or Rio de Janeiro.

“You busy?” Paul Simon stood just outside the circle of paper.

“Why?” Obviously she was busy, but importance was relative.

“I thought we could go to Inspiration City.”

“Hmm, well, why don’t you sit down over there and tell me a little more about it first.” She could make this work. Multitasking was a wonderful thing.

Paul Simon found the defective dog bed she used for sliding heavy things around and made a seat of it. “Ok, but it would would be so much easier to just show you.”

“I have to have these done for tomorrow.”

“I get it.” He looked at the bank and trust building. “Their buildings aren’t the same kind of white. They are just as bright, maybe brighter, but the color is different somehow. And they are really, really big, with a bunch of room around each one.”

There was the stack of page nines. Just where it should be. “So, did they glow, or something like that?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Or perhaps it was the way the sun hit them. You know, how colors look different, different times of day.”

“Interesting. Did you go in any of the buildings?”

“No. No time. I was only there for a few minutes, you know.”

It hadn’t felt like a few minutes to her, but this was his story, his sense of time. “You met Mrs —”

“Fuglst”

“Right away?”

“Yea. I don’t think she was looking for me or anything. But I kind of stood out.”

“How so?” Now that she had the pages in order, it took almost no time to collate them.

“Hum,” he thought for a minute. “I don’t think there were any other kids around. Plus, I didn’t see anyone there wearing blue jeans.”

She stacked the collated booklets crosswise. The next step was to stitch them together.

“Can we go now?”

“Sure.” The next step on the booklets was going to take some time and she was ready for a break. “What do we do?” She assumed this would be rather like one of the twins’ tea parties, although Paul Simon had never played a game like this with her before.

Her little brother stood up. “The trans dimensional teleport portal. But I don’t think we can both fit in at the same time. I’ll go first. You follow.”

In what seemed like less than two steps, that kid could move so fast, Paul Simon was grasping the door and entering. He turned to look at his sister, “The handle is a little fragile, so be careful with it.”

He closed the door. She could hear him turning about inside the small box, then muffled, “Here I go!” From outside, she could see the control arm moving first up, then down. The lights on the box lit up, it shook for a few seconds as the compressor started, then all was quiet.

“Paul Simon?” This was when he should come out of the box and give her the next turn. Nothing happened. This was so unlike her little brother. She knocked first, then opened the door to the trans dimensional teleport portal. There was no one inside.

“Come on, not again.” How did he do that? Well, she agreed to play the game, so he must be around watching from somewhere. She scooted into the box and closed the door.

It was close, but not so cramped that she felt claustrophobic. “Here goes nuthin,” she said as she grabbed the control handle. “Up, up and away.” She moved the handle up, then down, felt the compressor do its little thing and looked around. The box suddenly felt bigger. Much bigger.

The door, which had only reached a little over her waist before was now tall enough to fit an adult. It had a handle. A substantial one. She opened it.

Outside, Paul Simon was standing there all smiles. But the loft was gone. She looked up and down a long hallway with a silver terrazzo floor and doors down either side.

Paul Simon grabbed her hand. “Come! Let’s go outside. It’s so cool!”

His legs might be shorter, but he was running and dragging her fast enough that she had to run to keep from falling. At the end of the corridor was a blank, white wall. An apparent dead end, but when they got close it dissolved and they were in a large open space that was roughly circular. One half was all glass windows, the other half faced dozens of corridors all looking like the one they’d just come from. 

As she thought about it, this looked something like the building she’d created for her version of Inspiration City. She’d titled it, in her mind, as the space port. But she’d imagined space behind for spacecraft and airplanes to take off and land. That was something people of this Inspiration City did not need.

And then she realized, there was something wrong here. They were the only people here. The place was otherwise empty.

“Where is everyone,” she wondered.

Her brother led her to the glassy side of the space. “Outside. They don’t use this place much any more.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask Mrs Fuglst. I think she lives next door.”

Outside, GeorgeAnn understood what her brother meant by the color of the buildings. They were white, but opalescent. The sun’s light washed the structures with muted splashes of color. They were brilliant.

This version of Inspiration City looked like hers the way Mom looked like a Barbie doll (I.e., only in Dad’s mind). The buildings were bigger and brighter. Of course, hers was in a poorly lit loft, so would never look all that bright. It was both humbling and confusing. How could a figment of her imagination become real? She grabbed more tightly onto her brother’s hand. No matter what all of this was, she was not going to lose him.

 

 

There weren’t any doors. Paul Simon led and they walked through a glassy area and were outside. The air was cool and just a bit sweet. It was odd describing the air as sweet, but that was how it seemed. GeorgeAnn had never thought of air as having a taste before.

They stopped, rather GeorgeAnn stopped and Paul Simon had to, because she would not let go of his hand. Other than the two of them, there was no one else on the wide street. There wasn’t much differentiation between the street and anything else. All the space between the buildings was paved with the same smooth geometric pattern. There wasn’t anything like sidewalks. The buildings just came up out of the ground in mostly, but not perfectly straight lines. There was a lot of space between buildings and each was huge, almost as if each one occupied a full city block. Even so, they were spaced far enough apart that there was plenty of sunlight, despite how tall and wide they were.

GeorgeAnn let her little brother drag her toward the next building.

“Watch this,” he said.

They walked about ten steps and suddenly the other building was close and the one from which they had come was much farther away—much more than the distance they’d walked.

“Cool, isn’t it. All you have to do is have your destination in mind, and you get there really fast.”

“How does that work?” She wondered. It was as if this was a kind of dream space, not the real world.

Oh, I assure you, this is very real.

In front of her was an odd looking woman, who’d spoken inside her head, and not with a voice. GeorgeAnn’s heart skipped a few beats as she tried to reconcile the new sensations.

“GeorgeAnn, this is Mrs Fuglst. Mrs Fuglst, this is my sister GeorgeAnn. She built the trans dimensional teleport portal.”

A very talented young lady. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.

“Likewise.” I think. Did she just say that or think it? She assumed Mrs Fuglst was a woman because of what her brother had said. The stranger’s head was wrapped in a light blue scarf and she wore a sort of baggy one piece body suit of a darker blue. “Where is everyone?” She asked.

There are a few of us left, but most everyone has gone to other places. Inspiration City was built as a place for people to come together to solve great problems. But there are hardly any problems here left to be solved, so they have all gone elsewhere to where they are more needed.

“Oh. How sad.”

I suppose. But growth requires change. Everything must grow in order to survive.

“Can we see inside your building?” Paul Simon asked. He squirmed to get loose from GeorgeAnn’s grip, but there was no way she was letting go.

Perhaps another time, young man. As I explained to you the last time, we don’t have a direct portal built to your origin. If I don’t get you back before the buffers degrade, you may never get back to your home.

“So it’s not really safe to come here?” GeorgeAnn asked. 

I will have to think about that. If you come back at this time one week from now, I may have some answers.

It felt good to be back in the port building, even if she didn’t recall walking there. It was warmer there, not as warm as being up in the loft, but the October air in this Inspiration City, if it was even October here, felt more like the end of the month rather than the beginning of it.