Generations

 

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Generations

by Francis Rosenfeld

Digital Edition

Copyright 2014

Contents

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Chapter One

Of Mermaids

"Don't go near it, Lily, you know we're not supposed to!" Jenna squeaked, alarmed.

Lily smiled defiantly and stretched her toes to touch the delicate foam left behind by the ocean in its never ending rouse. Under Jenna's horrified stare she lowered her foot until her toes touched the surface of the water. It was warmer than she thought and had a dense, somewhat oily consistency, that lingered on the skin holding on a second longer before it dripped back into the ocean.

"Wash it off, you're going to get sick, I heard it burns your skin if you leave it on for more than ten minutes!" her little friend continued, in a panic.

"We're using the same water, silly, just desalinated," Lily thought, unperturbed. A little boy with a freckled face and pale blue eyes approached and bent down to touch the water surface with intense curiosity, trying to take in all its aspects through his senses: the water was warm, slick, very dense judging by the amount of refraction. The thick liquid made everything under the surface look blue-green and the water was so clear that he could see every detail as if magnified by a lens. The real sun came out from behind a cloud and the satellite started shining brightly again, dazzling in the coffee colored sky.

"Let's go for a swim!" Lily sent her intent through the neural interlink.

"You are not supposed to, I'll tell on you, you know I will, I'm going to call sister Sarah right now and you're all in trouble," Jenna started, bubbling like a little brook approaching a rocky bed.

"If you do we won't let you know what we found," Lily thought. Curiosity valiantly fought prudence and won: Jenna quieted down, watching over Lily and Jimmy's shoulders, trying to capture the experience vicariously. All around them a little group of tanned children gathered closely.

"What are you doing?" a familiar voice boomed from behind them, just as Lily and Jimmy were starting off into uncharted waters. Everybody froze in their shoes and quickly started compiling the most believable plan to get themselves out of their present pickle. Jenna would have liked to volunteer the commentary that she disapproved and was going to let sister Sarah know about it, but she got caught in Seth's gaze and figured she would be better off keeping her distance from the whole situation.

Seth was still waiting for an answer and looked to the children for the inevitable made-up story but she had appeared too suddenly and the kids, whose imaginations were impressive under regular circumstances, didn't have enough time to concoct one.

"Off you go, go home!" Seth uttered eventually, struggling to conceal a burst of laughter. "I told you to stay away from the water, didn't I?" The children shuffled swiftly on their feet and disappeared into the distance, relieved that they got away so easily this time.

Seth crouched at the water's edge and caressed the glossy surface with absent gestures, watching the slow liquid span the length of her fingers, as if she saw it for the first time. She stared intently into the deep, through the water so clear she could see every spec of sand on the bottom. For all their efforts the vast oceans of Terra Two were still a big unknown. They had brought fish from Earth, of course, but it was raised in fresh water ponds on the islands, the natural water of their home world was tested and found too salty and rich in sulfur to accommodate life. She sunk her hands into a shallow tide pool and the liquid closed around them, creating slow moving swirls on the surface and dipping slightly around the disturbance.

She advanced into the mellow waters carefully treading the bottom, one step at a time, trying to make sure the sea floor was solid before moving farther. Her shoulders tensed and her heart was pounding and she got angry at the thought of being afraid. She raised her chin and straightened her back and walked more decisively, failing to see the edge of the continental shelf in front of her feet and stepping into the void.

Seth had never wondered if humans could sweat under water, it seemed like one of those situations that one doesn't encounter often enough to inform oneself about, but she got the answer to this question nevertheless when she was instantly drenched in cold sweat as she lost her balance and got pulled into the warm and very fast moving rip current running parallel to the shore. She could swim but knew that even the best swimmers are often no match to the power of the sea. Everything happened so fast she didn't have time to panic, the water was moving her along the shore, swaddling her in a dense network of liquid turbulence. Even if she tried she couldn't sink. The salty water pushed her close to the surface and the closer she was the faster the waters moved her, picking up speed like a sled down a steep hill. In less than five minutes their village was completely out of sight and the water moved her farther from the shore.

"Sarah," she thought, hoping that the redhead or one of the other sisters had their neural interlink bracelet on and could hear her. Apparently this just happened to be the time when everyone decided to take a breather and be alone with their own thoughts for a change. It was only five and Seth had two hours until Vespers when she knew everybody would be in communication range. She still couldn't fight the current, she tried to move slowly towards the edge as she was taught on Earth but the viscosity of the water combined with the speed created a half pipe that threw everything back to its center. Seth could see several islands in the distance, the closest one she approximated to be about fifteen minutes away. She looked down to see the details on the rocky bottom which seemed very close though she knew there had to be at least a hundred feet of water under her by now. When she looked back up she saw the island zooming by and vanishing into the distance.

"How fast is this thing?" she shuddered. "Good thing I'm still on the planet, with any luck by seven o'clock I'll circle the world and get back home." She tried contacting the sisters again, with no luck.

The warm waters soothed her muscles and nerves while they carried her faster and faster past islands large and small and a strange euphoria sunk in, making her giggle. The water was making her feet tingle and ran through her hair like a brush, over and over again.

"A hundred strokes" she remembered, "who has time to brush their hair for so long every day" she thought. "A hundred strokes," she started laughing gently, carried by the current and feeling cozy and warm. "One, two, three, four,..." She started yawning. "Stop it!" she yelled at herself, but the brush strokes continued, tempting her to count them. "...fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen..." Her eyelids grew heavy and despite a titanic struggle she fell asleep.

***

The suns were high in the sky when Seth came to, around midday. She was laying on top of a large palm frond on a small crescent shaped beach strewn with driftwood. At its edge, behind a row of coconut trees, started the plantings of what looked like a small farm. Seth could see the house in the distance and hear the giggles of a small group of children approaching.

"Claude, Claude, come quickly, you won't believe what I found!"

Claude approached as fast as he could, scrambling through knotted tomato chords and pumpkin tendril curlicues. "What is it, Jose?" They stopped in fear and awe at the sight of the laying creature.

"Wow, dude, I found a mermaid!"

"Don't get close, I heard they bite! Do you want to go tell your parents?"

"Later. It has legs. I thought they were supposed to look like fish?"

"Shut up, Thomas, you know they grow legs when they dry up."

"Yeah, that's right, man, I forgot."

They approached cautiously from opposite sides, careful not to awaken the sea creature. Seth kept her eyes closed and summoned all her will power to prevent herself from laughing.

"Do you think it can hear us?" wondered Robert, a chubby kid with straw-like hair that moved with every breath of wind.

"I don't know, maybe. Dude, it looks human."

"Hi," said Seth, getting up. The little group ran away in wretched panic, trying to put as much distance between their tiny selves and the she-monster as they could.

"Can I talk to your parents?" asked Seth in the sweetest, most persuasive voice she could muster, forgetting that mermaids were famous for their mesmerizing voices. The children got the confirmation that they were indeed in the presence of the mythical creature and froze in fear.

"Do you think she is going to eat us?" asked Thomas with a voice so small even he could hardly hear it.

"Can you tell me where I am?" asked Seth, gazing deeply into the eyes of the kid closest to her.

The latter couldn't break eye contact, gulped several times trying to speak and then started crying with high pitched wails. Seth approached him gently to comfort him as the rest of the children watched her with pure terror, waiting for the imminent carnage.

She pushed the hair off the little boy's forehead, wiped his tears and set him back down, bending to his level to make herself less scary.

"Please, I am lost, can you take me to your parents? I really have to get back home," Seth asked sweetly.

The little boy hesitated, then reached for her hand, despite the horrified gasps of the others, and led her towards the farm.

"Tell me about your home" the little boy found the courage to ask. "Do you have gills?" he continued, with no regard for logic or consistency.

A cascade of questions and comments followed: did she have to come up for air every once in a while, did she have an underwater garden, how come the water didn't push her to the surface when she slept, was it dark on the bottom of the ocean, were there a lot of other creatures down there, what did she eat, did they cook in the boiling water from the volcanic eruptions, how did they tell time, did she have any friends, did she go to school, did she get along with her siblings, and last but not least, what were her magical powers.

***

By the time the small group arrived at the farm house the sisters were alerted to Seth's disappearance and were bombarding the airwaves with calls. Coherence got lost in the commotion and the leader was trying in vain to concentrate on one message or another while holding up the barrage of questions from the children and the somewhat awkward introduction to their parents. She signaled to the sisters that she was ok and will talk later.

"Papa," little Thomas said, "we found a mermaid and she is really nice. Can we keep her, please?" he asked.

Thomas's father looked at Seth and introduced himself.

"Jules Roget, pleasure."

He was frowning and smoothing his mustache, trying to assess how the stranger suddenly appeared in his back yard. As funny as the children's assumption was he had to admit that there was no way for somebody to show up on that beach without passing through the farm other than coming from the water.

"I got pulled in a rip current, the waters can be pretty treacherous if you don't pay attention," started Seth politely.

The farmer's frown amplified, carving a deep crease between his eyebrows.

"Nobody comes from the water." he said tersely.

"Where am I?", Seth asked.

"71 49'45.21n 29 39'23.86w" Jules answered.

"That's on the other side of the planet, they have a shuttle leaving for our camp in three hours," sister Jove laughed.

"Do you remember those fascinating patterns we saw on the surface of the ocean when we first approached Terra Two? They are spontaneously forming currents, too bad we can't control them, they are very fast." Sarah chuckled softly.

"You two do realize I will be back soon, right?" Seth retorted, annoyed that the distance didn't allow her to respond to the banter with one of her legendary stares.

"Didn't we tell you to stay away from the water?" sister Jove pushed her luck.

"Let's hope the children are not listening to these details," Seth sighed, resigned. "Now that they know they won't sink they are going to ride these currents endlessly and end up goodness knows where. We're going to spend all of our time fetching them."

The children were of course listening intently, careful not to miss important details about the rides that sounded like glorious fun.

"You wouldn't dare!" Seth addressed them, unconvinced. She raised her eyes and met the furious look of Monsieur Roget who didn't want to have this problem to worry about.

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Chapter Two

Of Hyperspace, Magnets and Cooking

Feeling the rush of water swoosh around her body sister Novis slid through the concave fluid track moving her right arm slowly, very slowly, careful not to spin out of control at that speed. The thrusters on her arms and legs applied a power differential to adjust for the change in direction.

"Steady at 383mph, left turn, recalculating torque, approaching boundary...Full stop!

Jimmy, what in tarnation are you doing here!?"

Jimmy scooped himself out of the waves, reached into the watery surface and pulled out Lily's hand, followed by Lily herself. The children looked surprised at the question and stared at sister Novis with large innocent eyes.

"We just wanted to try the new game," Jimmy said, apologetically.

"It's not a game, it's a simulation!" sister Novis grunted. "Another half hour down the drain. Sister Roberta, why are Lily and Jimmy in the bubble?"

"Sorry, dear," sister Roberta mumbled. "I must not have refined the brainwave scan enough." She readjusted the frequencies and applied another filter. "Ready to go!" she said.

"StreamPath simulation, take 198 in 3, 2, 1." Sister Novis was back at the beginning of the track, thrusters humming.

"How is it going?" asked Sarah, who had just stepped through the door and was quietly directing Lily and Jimmy out of sister Roberta's lab and towards the beach.

"Don't ask!" sister deAngelis whispered, and judging by the look on sister Roberta's face the latter was at the very end of her frayed nerves, begrudgingly hanging on to a very fragile thread.

"Stream speed 450 mph, Reynolds number 300. Linear drag, holding. Approaching boundary." The drag slowed her down as she approached the lip of her watery track and as she almost pushed past the slight indentation that marked the edge of the stream an unpredictable strand of high turbulence threw her back to the center of the half pipe and the speed jumped back to 539 mph.

"Darn it! Full stop!" sister Novis screamed, exasperated. "We made it here through hyperspace and we can't tame water flowing through a pipe, it must be a punishment, I tell you!"

Sister Roberta sighed, recalibrated the wave length modulator and restarted.

"StreamPath simulation, take 199 in 3, 2, 1," she said, with the enthusiasm of a disgruntled camel.

"Full stop!" screamed sister Novis. "I've had it with this nonsense, we're not doing anything else until we figure out why the turbulence is throwing me back. What am I, a human yo-yo? We could do this forever, even the kids got bored after simulation 143!"

Truth be told, the kids didn't get bored, they followed Sarah's direction out of sister Roberta's lab, circled the building and got back in through one of the back windows, unnoticed. They were sitting on an old spectrometer table, quiet as little mice, careful not to draw any attention to themselves. They found the energy in the room exhilarating and were not going to miss it for the world, the grown-ups were doing real work, the kind of work kids weren't normally privy to.

"The edge turbulence is completely random," sister Roberta apologized. "I tried every modeling equation there is and every time another random swirl pops up!"

"How is it going?" Seth popped in, not realizing that no amount of authority granted her the privilege to ask this question safely at this time. Both sister Roberta and sister Novis pinned her back with murderous stares and she quickly left the battle field. She had a lot of other things to do anyway.

"We could try a linear increase in thrust to keep your speed constant," said sister Roberta, unconvinced.

"We could also try to turn me into a human cannon ball," answered the other sister sarcastically. "Why don't I man the controls and you get thrown around, water can be pretty hard at four hundred miles an hour!"

"Because you don't know how, dear," answered Roberta, candidly.

Sister Novis mumbled, irate, and looked at sister deAngelis for support. The latter was staring at the equations, mimicking analysis. Nobody could understand sister Roberta's equations other than the sister herself, and sister deAngelis doubted that even the latter knew what she was doing half the time.

"I can hear you, you know. You have your bracelet on," Roberta replied patiently.

"What if we slow me down to 150 mph?" asked sister Novis.

"Have you ever switched gears from fifth to second?" questioned sister Roberta. Sister Novis had and didn't need additional clarification.

"Ok, so you're approaching the boundary at approximately 400 mph, the wall effect kicks in and the turbulence should become irrelevant at this point..."

"What wall effect?" asked sister deAngelis with a blank stare. Sister Roberta was about to start explaining the fundaments of fluid dynamics but she stopped abruptly.

"From the....oh, dear!" sister Roberta gasped. "It is not a pipe" she said. She looked down, trying to avoid sister Novis's gaze in order not to aggravate her.

"How is it going?" sister Joseph chimed-in with uncharacteristic cheerfulness.

"Get out!!" the choir screamed infuriated.

"So, what's with the pipe?" asked sister Novis, trying very hard not to get mad at the fact that she had run the same flawed simulation for the last seven hours.

"Of course turbulence matters, there is no solid boundary," sister Roberta faded into a blissful scientific world in her mind, completely oblivious to urgency and practicality.

"So, do you think you can fix it?" asked sister Novis, hopeful.

"Fix it? I can make it faster! Why, at the speed we can reach anything would literally take off, I can hardly wait!" she continued but then met sister Novis's stare and remembered the cannon ball comment. "On second thought we'll keep you at 400 mph, that should push you out of the stream."

"What if I fall in another stream?" asked sister Novis.

"We're counting on it, it would be very unpleasant if you fell on slow water. Welcome to our new transit system!"

"Are you sure I can jump safely? I don't think human bodies are designed to take this amount of shear. How do I get out when I reach the destination?"

"Details, dear! We'll work on that," said sister Roberta absentminded. Her brain was focused on solving the problem and a broad smile lit up her face. Sister Novis lifted her eyes to take a break from all the tension and saw Lily and Jimmy sitting quietly with eyes as large as saucers on the spectrometer table with the old spectrometer bound permanently to it, an endearing reminder of sister Roberta's early innovations.

"Just pray," sister Novis reassured herself. "Everything is going to be alright."

"I can still hear you, you know," sister Roberta added.

"Can I ask how it is going now?" Seth chimed in.

"No!", the choir replied.

***

The suns were really bright that morning, the light filtered through the glass enclosure and sparkled on the beveled edges diffracting into rainbows. The sisters were gathered in the central space, wrapping up morning meditations.

It was a habit they had taken on recently. Since they all spent some time in prayer in the morning they decided to do it together and use the time after service to catch up and coordinate their schedule. Work had become so automated that all of their time was divided between mindful introspection, teaching and research, so a morning get together didn't feel like an imposition at all, they all looked forward to this opportunity to socialize.

They had just concluded the blessings and were getting ready to leave when the serenity of the glass hall was broken by a terrible racket. It sounded like a herd of cats ran through the pantry and disturbed every pot and pan on the shelves.

"What on...", Seth said. "Sarah, where are your pupils?" she asked.

"They are not supposed to be here yet, the class is not in two hours," the latter said, confused.

Sister Joseph emerged from the kitchen all flustered, huffing and puffing like a locomotive with a stock pot in one hand and a giant ladle in the other.

"Here comes the cauldron," Sarah thought and was immediately interrupted by dirty looks from both Seth and a fuming Joseph.

"Whatever are you doing, sister?" Seth asked, too befuddled to be angry.

"Who left the pots in front of the refrigerator?" the latter roared, accompanied by the clatter of the last dropping lids. They were metallic and reverberant and made screeching noises as they reached the stainless steel countertops. Sister Abigail, who was on kitchen duty, mumbled something unintelligible under her breath and she threw a pan back on the stove. A hiss was followed by a thin wisp of steam which was followed by another unintelligible mumble.

Sister Roberta's heart sank. She had been running an empirical test to double check her fluid dynamics simulations and didn't put the pots back on the rack because she was planning to continue the experiment after matins. She didn't think there would be anyone in the kitchen, it was so early after all...

"There is ALWAYS someone in the kitchen, do you think breakfast cooks itself?" sister Abigail retorted. The admonition didn't have the expected result since it suggested to sister Roberta something new to try; her mind went off on a tangent and started designing an automated chef.

Seth got up, followed by the curious group, to attend to the commotion just as the children started arriving for class. On the large induction stove in the middle of the kitchen a large pot of oatmeal was simmering, giving off a little burnt smell.

"Great! She burned it again!" sister Novis thought.

"We'll wait until it is your turn for kitchen duty, then," sister Abigail replied, offended.

All around the kitchen, strewn in complete disarray over the shelves, the floors and the table tops lay frying pans, cooking utensils and storage containers whose partly spilled contents mingled on the counters. Sister Abigail was dusted from head to toe in vanilla sugar and cinnamon and looked like an enormous pastry treat.

"Breakfast is ready," she said, scooping heaping ladles of the runny glop into delicate bowls covered in fine tracery.

The aroma of fresh baked bread steamed out of the oven and sister Novis breathed a sigh of relief that there was at least something edible on the menu that morning. Sister Abigail did her best to remove the flour, couscous, nutmeg, tossed sugar, olive oil, cocoa and honey from the table surface so they could lay down their bowls.

"So, can I ask how it is going now?" Seth asked sister Roberta. The sister shuffled uncomfortably in the chair.

"There is the little issue of randomness," she coughed, slightly embarrassed. "If only I could figure out what makes those currents form it would be really useful. Otherwise we only got a solution to move fast across the water with no control over the destination at all."

"What's your theory?" Seth asked.

"Water temperature is an obvious factor but it's a merging of conditions that makes the shifts happen: depth, density, differences in water chemistry, tide. I spent the last two weeks looking at live satellite broadcasts and can't figure out repeating patterns. So far we can somewhat explain the phenomenon, but not replicate it," the sister continued.

"What were you doing with the pots?" Seth asked.

"Making life miserable for the rest of us!" sister Joseph snarled, still annoyed.

"I was trying to figure out how the viscosity changes with speed and temperature. It is a shear-thinning fluid, the faster it gets the faster it gets," sister Roberta said to a mystified audience who felt it had been punished enough with the runny glop that stuck to the pot to have to listen to the reasons behind the unfortunate kitchen occurrence.

"What is a shear-thinning fluid?" Sarah asked.

"This is," said sister Roberta, picking up a bottle of honey and squeezing it at her.

"Seriously, sometimes, sister!" Sarah protested, "use your words!"

"It gets more fluid when you shake it," obliged sister Roberta.

"Well, keep working on it, something will come up" said Seth, and she continued eating her oatmeal without joy or displeasure.

***

Despite sister Roberta's heroic efforts to figure out what laws of physics were generating the strange fluid dynamics phenomenon it was Louise, one of the children, who discovered by chance what made the water move. The kids were playing at the edge of the ocean dropping watercolor in it to watch the fascinating patterns that the paint created as it dispersed slowly in the silky waves. Louise bent down and stretched her hand to reach the ephemeral arabesques and her magnetic bangle fell into the water.

A magic thing happened: the random arabesques aligned themselves into long linear strands inside the circle of the bracelet, redirecting the flow.

"Goodness me, I think the magnetic field of the planet is creating the patterns, this water must be saturated with ions", gasped sister Roberta. "That's why the currents are so unpredictable, these suns are crazy, we couldn't figure out their paths either."

She went back to the lab in a hurry to study the implications of the findings while the children spent the rest of the afternoon painting the ocean with magnets and gouaches.

***

Sarah sat at one end of the long kitchen table watching chamomile steep slowly in hot water. The afternoon was mellow, one of those slow times that comfort the soul like a plush blanket. One could hear the peaceful sounds of the birds and little animals through the open door and the scent of kitchen herbs saturated the air. She poured the tea in a colorful cup that the children had glazed for her, featuring poppies, delphiniums and lily-of-the-valley, dragged the large bowl of potatoes closer and started peeling. Sister Roberta entered the kitchen with a preoccupied look on her face, holding a long and narrow glass container.

"What's that?" Sarah asked, more out of habit than curiosity because sister Roberta had been so fully immersed in the water propulsion project lately that whatever she was carrying couldn't possibly be related to anything else.

"I'm going to need a little space, I hope I'm not in the way," she started, and continued with her experiment without waiting for the answer. Sarah just nodded, didn't answer, and reached for another potato.

"Give me one of those, if you don't mind. Actually, can you peel a couple more and pass them over here?" she asked. The redhead didn't question the request, she just peeled two more potatoes and gave them to the sister who was too immersed in her work to explain the details. Sarah kept peeling.

"What's for dinner?" sister Roberta asked, moving around the table pushing levers, adjusting settings and inputting revisions into the gizmo.

"Latkes," Sarah answered simply.

"Can I have another potato?" sister Roberta asked, reaching her left arm to get it. Sarah grabbed a peeled potato and gave it to her, then got up and went to the pantry to refill the bowl.

"Are you trying to increase the positive charge?" Sarah asked, unsurprised.

"And the thickness of the fluid," said sister Roberta. "How much magnesium in a potato?"

"For that size, about 80 mg," answered Sarah. "And 1500 mg of potassium."

"You can have these back, then," she returned the last two potatoes and drizzled some cranberry juice in the water.

Sarah grated the last two tubers into the mix and started forming patties. Out of the corner of her eye she could see sister Roberta adjust the magnets to create linear grids, helical swirls, sinusoidal waves, circular whirls and angular direction changes. Sarah kept forming the patties and setting them down in layers on a large plate while her attention was completely absorbed by the unbelievable water puzzle that sister Roberta was so expertly playing with, painting patterns, changing velocities, blending different color streams into bright pastels.

"The oil is hot," sister Roberta advised, turning a dial to bend the linear patterns. Sarah jumped and quickly placed a few patties in the frying pan. The cool potatoes stirred the oil to a rolling boil and then slowed it down to a steady simmer.

"Is that the steering system?" Sarah laughed. Sister Roberta looked back bothered by the lack of seriousness.

"You know, for all the times you people laughed at me and were wrong I should really not explain any of this," she said. She frowned at Sarah to express her displeasure. The latter presented an appropriately reserved and respectful countenance but a impish glimmer sparkled in her eyes. The question still lingered, unanswered.

"Yes, it is!" sister Roberta finally responded. "The latkes need more salt," she said, irked, then grabbed a couple more for the road, picked up the container and left.

***

"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Ready or not, here I come!" Jenna said, turning around on her feet and looking for the rest of the children. Jimmy was still running about fifty or sixty feet away, trying to find a good hiding place.

"Easy pickings," Jenna thought, and started towards him stirring the warm brick colored silt of the beach under her bare feet. Jimmy assessed the situation and didn't want to waste energy running away since his friend was almost next to him. He turned around to face her and vanished slowly into thin air like a marshmallow Cheshire cat.

The surprise befuddled the little girl. "Where did he go?" she wondered.

"Jimmy?" she asked softly through the neural interlink.

"Yes," a little voice whispered, even more confused than hers. Jenna shook her blond tresses and pushed a stubborn strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked around and saw nothing but palm trees, silty beach and peaceful waves.

"Where are you?" she asked, worried.

***

"StreamPath simulation, take 452 in 3, 2, 1," sister Roberta yawned while she recorded the new test into her work journal. She was bored silly with the never ending fine tuning of the device. To her credit the prototype was progressing splendidly but the adjustments were incredibly fine, in a nanometer range that even her custom made sophisticated equipment had trouble modulating. She turned around and took another sip of coffee while chatting through the interlink with sister Novis and in the process turned a small dial all the way up without noticing. Nothing happened at first, so she continued her conversation with the insistent sister who wanted to know the latest details of her future test track.

"It is exactly how we ran it yesterday, only smoother," sister Roberta continued to reassure the inquisitive Novis, "We are getting into the .23nm range, it gets really difficult to calibrate the instruments," she continued and as she turned around she found herself face to face with Jimmy who was perched like a little bird on top of the equalizer with his hair in disarray and a perplexed look in his eyes.

Sister Roberta didn't react, used as she was to the children sticking their little noses into everything from uncomfortably close proximity, but was really annoyed at the possibility of having to rework the experiment so she picked up little Jimmy, ready to give him a piece of her mind.

"You are in real trouble now, mister, I already told you if I find you in here again I'll..." she didn't get a chance to continue, because little Jimmy started sniffling with an aggrieved look on his face.

"I didn't do anything, sister, really I didn't, I was outside playing with Jenna and she was about to catch me and..."

"What is going on?" Seth and Sarah interjected through the neural interlink almost simultaneously, but from different perspectives: Seth because she wanted to ensure the never ending testing of the prototype finally yielded something usable and Sarah because she had heard Jenna call for Jimmy and was relieved to have found him.

"Calm down and start from the beginning," sister Roberta restarted the conversation on a kinder gentler note. "What happened?"

"I was on the beach playing hide and go seek with Jenna, Lucy, Gabe, Mike,..."

"Go on," sister Roberta interrupted the listing of all of Jimmy's friends to get to the action.

"And she finished counting and she was running and I was going to start running away," Jimmy continued, still sniffling but otherwise unperturbed.

"And?" sister Roberta pressed, anxiously.

"And then I was here, and I really don't know how I got here and I really didn't do anything why doesn't anybody believe me," little Jimmy continued to argue his defense, since he already had a standing time-out for the remainder of the week and didn't want to extend the penalty.

Sister Roberta stared him down inquisitively. Little Jimmy also didn't dye the cats green with Sarah's drinkable hair dye, break his sister's glass art, use the redhead's Erlenmeyer flasks to house fish who subsequently grew to big to be taken out, slather butter on the bottom of the micro-titration plate to experiment with the angle of the table and the coefficient of friction, or sneak into the refectory to put water filled whoopee cushions on the chairs.

"I'm still waiting, sister," Seth commented from the other end of the interlink. Sister Roberta gave Jimmy a don't you dare move, I'll deal with you in a second look and turned to the dial board to double check the readings.

The little gasp was very subtle but didn't escape a keenly attentive Seth. The latter instantly absolved little Jimmy of any wrongdoing and braced herself for another one of sister Roberta's accidental discoveries.

"Well?" she asked, calm as always.

"Oh, dear..." sister Roberta started slowly, trying to delay a succinct account of the event that had a very clear cause but no scientific explanation yet.

"Sister, I have work to do. Jimmy, are you ok?" Jimmy eagerly gave her reassurance, happy to be off the hook.

"Don't go anywhere, I'm coming over," Seth deflated his enthusiasm. She showed up in less time that sister Roberta needed to put together a viable justification for what happened.

"What did you change, dear?" Seth asked.

"I think it was this dial, it looks like I pushed the magnetic field all the way into the maximum range."

"So you basically pulled Jimmy into hyperspace?" Seth elaborated, strangely calm. Sister Roberta didn't answer, trying to assess all the potential risks and safety violations. Seth was waiting, tense, staring intently.

"The energy field is too small to move him more than five hundred feet, although he could have landed in the water," the puzzled sister continued her train of thought, tone deaf of the fact that she wasn't really helping her argument.

Sarah and Jenna arrived at the scene while Roberta was still trying to put together a plausible theoretical model. Jenna quietly exchanged a few grimaces with Jimmy who was bursting with giggles but tried to keep quiet.

"Have you seen Solomon?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, so you think this is funny, don't you?" sister Roberta commented, offended.

"I'm sorry, sister, I couldn't help it," Sarah apologized, still laughing, and threw a pear at Jimmy, who caught it and started munching quietly, absorbed in the drama of the moment and following it like an action movie.

Solomon sketched a tentative meow from the top of the equalizer, then started grooming his back leg, managing to maintain his body in equilibrium in complete defiance of the laws of physics. Sister Roberta continued her internal scientific analysis.

"I stand corrected, Jimmy couldn't have landed in the water, apparently everything on the island comes out of hyperspace on this equalizer," she said, picking up Solomon, a few conch shells, a basket of fruit and two spoons from atop the equipment.

"Could you please turn it off, sister?" Seth asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry, was that still on?" sister Roberta turned the dial back down.

"Good thing that we worry about the children playing with your lab equipment," Seth continued. Sister Roberta looked down without answering, so she didn't catch the vindicated look in Jimmy's eyes, innocent whoopee cushion wielding youngster that he was.

"Can I play with the StreamPath now?" Jimmy pushed his luck. Seth's eyes thundered, so he reconsidered.

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Chapter Three

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Chapter Four

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Chapter Five

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Chapter Six

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Chapter Seven

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Chapter Eight

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Chapter Nine

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Chapter Ten

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Chapter Eleven

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Chapter Twelve

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Chapter Thirteen

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Chapter Fourteen

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Chapter Fifteen

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Chapter Sixteen

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Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Eighteen

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Chapter Nineteen

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Chapter Twenty

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Chapter Twenty One

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Chapter Twenty Two

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Chapter Twenty Three

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Chapter Twenty Four

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Chapter Twenty Five

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Chapter Twenty Six

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Chapter Twenty Seven

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Chapter Twenty Eight

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~

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