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bloodyrosemccoyPrologue and Index are here!
Previous Chapter!
It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!
In which The Author processes her school experiences, with a special emphasis on the dreaded Group Project.
The mimicking of behaviors modeled in visual media is specifically autobiographical, I should admit. I am something of an amalgamation of expressions, affects, gestures, and vocal tones I've seen on TV. I even echo/paraphrase utterances; I think that's why I seemed so hyperverbal as a kid. I talk a little bit about this way of constructing oneself/one's narrative, specifically with regard to Stranger Things, here.
Years on Feavah are fairly similar to Earth years, but regardless, let's just say I'm converting the time to things humans would understand. Don't worry about it.
The vaguely Dickensian names of these aliens just make me cackle, okay?
---
Evenings were usually quiet at our house, with Thoren doing homework, Dad reading, me doing puzzles, and Vilda out visiting or at her trick-whist club. The sky panels had already gone dark when the pleasant silence was broken by a shriek from the back door.
Dad, Thoren, and I all launched from our respective seats toward the noise.
Vilda stood on the walkway, clutching her purse as though she was going to lose it, staring in disgust at the stoop.
Dad flicked on the back porch light and followed her gaze. "Oh," he said. "Yes, there are drawbacks to having a sixcat."
It took me a second to connect the eviscerated station mouse on the doormat to his comment. Oh! I'd read about this! "Toast killed a mouse!"
"So it would seem," Dad agreed.
Previous Chapter!
It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!
In which The Author processes her school experiences, with a special emphasis on the dreaded Group Project.
The mimicking of behaviors modeled in visual media is specifically autobiographical, I should admit. I am something of an amalgamation of expressions, affects, gestures, and vocal tones I've seen on TV. I even echo/paraphrase utterances; I think that's why I seemed so hyperverbal as a kid. I talk a little bit about this way of constructing oneself/one's narrative, specifically with regard to Stranger Things, here.
Years on Feavah are fairly similar to Earth years, but regardless, let's just say I'm converting the time to things humans would understand. Don't worry about it.
The vaguely Dickensian names of these aliens just make me cackle, okay?
---
Evenings were usually quiet at our house, with Thoren doing homework, Dad reading, me doing puzzles, and Vilda out visiting or at her trick-whist club. The sky panels had already gone dark when the pleasant silence was broken by a shriek from the back door.
Dad, Thoren, and I all launched from our respective seats toward the noise.
Vilda stood on the walkway, clutching her purse as though she was going to lose it, staring in disgust at the stoop.
Dad flicked on the back porch light and followed her gaze. "Oh," he said. "Yes, there are drawbacks to having a sixcat."
It took me a second to connect the eviscerated station mouse on the doormat to his comment. Oh! I'd read about this! "Toast killed a mouse!"
"So it would seem," Dad agreed.
I looked up at him, my anxiety swerving onto a new track. "Toast is going into surgery tomorrow. She's not supposed to eat tonight. Will this mess things up?"
"I doubt it," Dad said. "She's been inside for a while. This must have been earlier today."
"Well, I'm not cleaning it up," Vilda said brusquely. "Toast is your pet, Dreedo. You take care of it."
She'd been saying that a lot, which was why I was taking the sixcat to surgery tomorrow before school. (Which made sense, but then she went on to tell me to stop fussing so much over it, which was weird because I was just planning how to go about an atypical day. I guess she thought I was planning at her for spite, or something.)
I looked back at the mouse. "Okay," I said, trying to think. "I'll get a …"
"There's a box of sheath gloves on my desk," Dad said, already heading back to the living room. "Bio pod."
"Oh." At least it was always fun to look in Dad's office, with all of his interesting models of neuroanatomy and some of the projects on the workbench. I lingered for a moment to run a hand over the books in the veritable library he had along one wall before grabbing a pair of gloves.
I went back out and stood on the stoop, eyeing the mouse uncertainly. Its abdomen was split open, and the insides glistened under the porch light.
I'd studied some anatomy in school—I even had an anatomy jigsaw puzzle, and of course there were Dad's models—but it was strange to see it in an actual body that had been alive recently. At first it appeared to be an undifferentiated mass, but when I bent down to pick it up, I could see some kind of sac and some tubes—probably intestines. With my finger safely sheathed, I poked a bit, feeling the organs squish around. A little wall seemed to separate the open section from the ribcage, so I couldn't see the hearts. At least, I thought I couldn't.
Why were the organs different colors? How could anyone tell which was which?
"For goodness' sake, Dreedo, don't play with it," Vilda said.
I almost dropped it, feeling the usual obscure guilt.
Right, bio pod. All food and yard waste went in there—Bright Beacon's composting system was robust. Really, I told myself, there was no difference between a roasted minipig carcass and a dead station mouse. But I knew I wasn't going to feel right right about it until the bio collectors made their daily rounds.
Plus, the sensation of its stiff body and slimy guts on my sheathed fingers stayed with me even after I washed my hands. I couldn't stop myself from shaking them, trying to dislodge the ghost of a feeling.
I returned to the front room to see Dad examining the Plan in my notebook.
"It helps me remember what I have to do," I said, face going hot.
"He's been fussing about his day tomorrow," Vilda said. "The way he carries on, you'd think it was a military operation."
"I'm trying to keep track of everything," I protested. "The Stay Organized! vid said writing things down was a good way to do that, and I want to be there for Toast as much as I can. She won't know why we're doing this, or that it's good for her. She won't know why she's hurting, but I want to be there for her, so she'll have a friend."
"Oh, nonsense," Vilda scoffed. "She won't care."
"She'll be hurting."
"She's an animal. They don't feel pain."
I stared at her, destabilized. "They don't? Really?"
She sighed. "Tell him, Dr. Grewell."
Dad jerked away from his contemplation of my Plan. "What?"
"They're arguing about whether animals feel pain," Thoren said from his stack of homework at the end of the table.
"Ah." Dad looked from Vilda to me. "They do react to unpleasant stimuli; they avoid them if possible. But they can hardly verbalize their inner responses to it, so there's no way to know what is there."
He smiled, but it seemed like a private thing. He was a scientist, so I couldn't really fault him for refusing to acknowledge unfounded evidence, but—"Doesn't avoiding pain count as telling us how they feel?" I asked.
"It's not an accepted assessment, but some have argued this, yes."
Vilda shot him a look I couldn't parse. Dad knitted his brow.
He looked to me. "Why do you ask?"
"Toast's surgery," I explained again.
"Ah." He shrugged. "I can tell you that she may be sore, but on balance it will save her and others a great deal of misery."
"I know," I said. "But."
Dad frowned. "Is Dr. Kellek not letting you watch the surgery?"
"You never asked him," I said.
He blinked.
"It's more like Mr. Sordell isn't allowing it, anyway," Thoren said. "We're starting our final projects tomorrow."
"Ah. That's unfortunate."
"It is," I said with feeling.
Thoren snickered. "Dreedo's worried about Toast."
"Yeah, I am," I said. "I read about it, but are they gonna slice her open like she did to that mouse?"
Dad considered. "Perhaps a visual understanding would help. Let me see if I can find some videos of the process."
Thoren and I shared a look as Dad went back to his office. It was always interesting when he deemed something from the wider Galactic Database worthy to show us. Obviously neither of us was a Focal Citizen with tech dispensations of our own yet, but Dad could use his discretion to offer us educational material.
But a few moments later, he returned emptyhanded. "Vilda, have you seen my tablet?"
"No. Did you have it earlier?"
"Of course I did. Boys?"
We both denied. I noticed he cast an extra, covert glance at Thoren, but my brother was absorbed in his homework again. (I never understood why it took him so long to do the busywork. That stuff was easy; I could do it during class.)
"I'll help you look," I said, stuffing my notebook into my bookbag. I had the Plan down, I told myself. Probably. I didn't have to keep rehearsing my busy day.
After an hour of searching, though, we still hadn't found Dad's tablet.
"You probably left it at work," Vilda told him. "You'll find it tomorrow."
"Most likely." But his hand was twitching rhythmically.
"It's not like anyone could get into it, anyway."
"True."
I knew how he felt. I hated not having a clear image of what was going to happen the next day. It was why Toast's surgery and the beginning of our school projects happening on the same day had me making battle plans.
But I was going to be fine.
#
"This project," Mr. Sordell said to the class, "is your first step toward becoming a Focal Citizen." (I thought maybe he was giving himself a lot of credit, since I'd decided to be a Focal Citizen as soon as I knew that Dad was one, but maybe others hadn't had that same, well, focus. And people were pretty careless about what they considered to be "first steps" to something, so maybe he was being metaphorical. And anyway, he was on a roll.) "It will involve civic awareness, scientific thinking, and knowledge of the history of Bright Beacon. You will be coming up with a project that will demonstrate what you can contribute to our community, and, thus, the planet to which we are integral."
Wow, I thought, no pressure. I glanced across the room. How could Thoren look bored? Maybe he had some ideas already.
I sure didn't. How could I contribute meaningfully to society?
But that wasn't even the only problem.
"You'll be working in groups of two or three," Mr. Sordell said. "I'm assigning this class period for you to find your groupmates and start considering your project."
The rest of the class erupted into activity. I sat at my desk, staring at my notebook with my day's battle plan on it. What sort of project could a thirteen-year-old do to make a difference in the community? Did I even know enough about our station to improve it without accidentlally making things worse?
How was Toast doing? I had dropped her off this morning; she'd looked pretty forlorn.
"Who are you going to be working with, Dreedo?" Mr. Sordell asked.
"Oh—" I looked around. "I … is it okay if I do it alone?"
He frowned. "Alone? Why?"
"Because—"
Because if you asked me, trying to work with people only multiplied the work I'd have to do tenfold.
I gave up. "Is it okay if I work with Thoren?"
"It looks like he's already got a group of three," Mr. Sordell said.
I looked around the room, throat tightening. All the little social units had sealed themselves off.
Mr. Sordell sighed. "I suppose one group of four is all right."
Thoren gave me an eyeroll when I shuffled over and joined them. Nielli Brones and Jod Coralym just eyed me.
"Mr. Sordell says it's all right," I said.
The others glanced at Thoren.
He sighed, too. "Fine."
I sat with them. "Do you guys have any ideas?"
Jod snorted. "Way to be helpful. Dump it all on us, why don't you?"
"No, I—I was just wondering if I missed anything."
"No," Thoren said. "Do you have any ideas?"
"I'm trying to think," I said. "How can we benefit Bright Beacon?"
"Let's put more railguns around it," Jod said. "So if the Techies try to attack us, we can blast 'em." He held up a pen, aiming it at the windows. "Pew! Pew!"
"But the war's over," I pointed out. "And the attack on Guidestar was an asteroid. You'd need a lot of railguns to get rid of one of those."
"We should get a lot!"
"Maybe we could calculate what we'd need," Thoren suggested.
I looked around at them all. "Are we supposed to be writing down our ideas or something?"
Thoren shrugged. "Go for it."
It was my turn to sigh as I flipped to a clean page.
"So," I said when nobody offered any more comments, "I'll write down 'defense calculations.'" Probably the Focal Citizens had already calculated that, though, after the Technocrats wrecked Guidestar. I'd have to ask Dad. "Anything else?"
"We don't have to come up with it now," Nielli said.
"That's literally exactly what we're supposed to be doing now," I said. "Come on. What needs improvement?"
"Power storage and transfer?" Nielli said halfheartedly.
Probably also something the Focal Citizens had worked out, but I wrote it down.
"Lift the teen curfew," Jod added. (His parents were big supporters of the curfew.)
"Better movies from the Greater Galaxy," Nielli said. "Not the baby stuff the theater gets now."
Thoren grinned. "Good one."
I wrote that down without comment. I liked the movies the theater got. They were usually safe to watch. Nielli probably wanted violence, or lowbrow comedies, or other brain-rotting, upsetting, nightmare-inducing junk.
"At least get rid of those loser Follow the Beacon vids before the movies," Jod grumbled. "Why do we have to watch something boring and corny first?"
"Good luck taking that up with the Focals," Thoren snorted.
I wrote that down without comment, too, but for different reasons. I wouldn't say I liked Beacon Studios' output, which was mostly Civic Hygiene fare. It was kind of funny to see familiar Beacon people on screen. (I thought I saw the Palbert boy in the background of a few of them, which was always a bit of a pang. Had he been interested in film?) But even though they always said there were no right and wrong answers, the Discussion Questions the vids posed clearly did think there were good answers and bad answers, and trying to figure out what they were, and why, fascinated me.
And the boring corniness itself held some kind of fascination, too.
Because Jod was right about that: they were excruciatingly boring and corny.
"I think Bright Beacon itself is pretty great already," Thoren said. "Though maybe they could rebuild the Ball court."
"Ooh," Nielli said.
"Yeah," Jod agreed.
Actually, most of the citizens probably would appreciate that. People got pretty worked up about Ball.
"Or we could do a study on whether we should bring back weather," Thoren added. I wondered if he remembered the rain puddles from our planetside days, too.
My thoughts drifted back to Toast. "Maybe something to help the feral sixcat population."
Thoren grinned. "That'd be easy. We can use Toast as a subject."
"Nothing mean," I said quickly.
"Help them how?" Nielli asked.
"Get rid of them," Jod said. "They're alien pests."
"They're a deliberate part of the ecosystem," I said. "They control the station mice. But Dad says they're malnourished. I wonder if we can fix that."
Again, I didn't think I knew enough about Bright Beacon's ecosystem, or ecoengineering in general, to really mess with it, but it seemed mean to leave the sixcats like that after we'd brought them here.
The ideas sort of dried up after that; the others got sidetracked talking about Ball. In the end, they all agreed that doing something with the sixcats was our best bet.
"We'll have to do more research to see what might be a good project," I said. "Maybe if we go to the library today …"
"We have practice," Thoren reminded me.
"Oh. Okay. Well, maybe another day …" I trailed off, at a loss again. I hated working around schedules.
"We'll figure it out," he assured me, and we left it at that.
#
I wasn't due to pick up Toast until a couple of hours after school, so I went to the library myself. There was a section on ecoengineering, but the books were either far too generalized or far too technical. I didn't have the dispensation on my card to reserve an hour on the Greater Computers—my class would get it next cycle, at least the responsible kids—so I left frustrated and worried. What if we couldn't find enough information on the topic? Would we have to change it?
At least Toast seemed all right when I picked her from the vet. She was groggy, but Dr. Kellek's assistant assured me it would wear off. I took her home and put her in her nest by the washer (I wanted to take her to the one in my room upstairs, but she might fall down them while she was still woozy), and she settled in among her toys quite readily.
Toast loved to collect toys. Mostly it was junk—bottlecaps and rubber bands—but she also liked shiny things, and once I had found Grandma's watch in her upstairs nest. Now, as I looked over her collection, a flash of silver caught my eye. I pulled it out with a rush of recognition.
Dad's tablet.
My first impulse was to triumphantly tell someone—but there was no one to tell at the moment. Thoren was at practice, Vilda had gone to visit a neighbor, and Dad …
Dad was out getting himself a duplicate tablet, since his work couldn't wait.
I sat on the bottom stair, absently pressing the button to wake it up. A fingerprint icon appeared by the sensor. Place finger on Bio-Lock, the text said.
I didn't think about it; it had asked me to do something, so I put my finger on the sensor.
The screen rippled. Welcome, Dr. Grewell, it said.
Then the desktop appeared, various apps still running and about half its battery life left.
I should close it again; obviously I wasn't supposed to have tech. But … surely, to look up some things for the project wouldn't be bad. Not like a game. I could practice being responsible.
Know what you're dealing with, Mr. Sordell had said.
I'd seen Dad look things up before, but I'd never done it myself. It took a bit of getting used to, but after a little bit of tentative experimentation, I found an infowiki. There had to be something on sixcats there.
This is only temporary, I promised myself, scrolling through a treasure trove of information. Sixcat biology, sixcat behavior, sixcat ecology, sixcat videos …
I also found Dad's notes on his latest experiment. That could help, too—it could give me a model to work toward.
It was so useful for this project. This was exactly what Focal Citizens got dispensations for!
With one last glance at my own sleeping sixcat, I went upstairs and started my project.
#
Next Chapter!"I doubt it," Dad said. "She's been inside for a while. This must have been earlier today."
"Well, I'm not cleaning it up," Vilda said brusquely. "Toast is your pet, Dreedo. You take care of it."
She'd been saying that a lot, which was why I was taking the sixcat to surgery tomorrow before school. (Which made sense, but then she went on to tell me to stop fussing so much over it, which was weird because I was just planning how to go about an atypical day. I guess she thought I was planning at her for spite, or something.)
I looked back at the mouse. "Okay," I said, trying to think. "I'll get a …"
"There's a box of sheath gloves on my desk," Dad said, already heading back to the living room. "Bio pod."
"Oh." At least it was always fun to look in Dad's office, with all of his interesting models of neuroanatomy and some of the projects on the workbench. I lingered for a moment to run a hand over the books in the veritable library he had along one wall before grabbing a pair of gloves.
I went back out and stood on the stoop, eyeing the mouse uncertainly. Its abdomen was split open, and the insides glistened under the porch light.
I'd studied some anatomy in school—I even had an anatomy jigsaw puzzle, and of course there were Dad's models—but it was strange to see it in an actual body that had been alive recently. At first it appeared to be an undifferentiated mass, but when I bent down to pick it up, I could see some kind of sac and some tubes—probably intestines. With my finger safely sheathed, I poked a bit, feeling the organs squish around. A little wall seemed to separate the open section from the ribcage, so I couldn't see the hearts. At least, I thought I couldn't.
Why were the organs different colors? How could anyone tell which was which?
"For goodness' sake, Dreedo, don't play with it," Vilda said.
I almost dropped it, feeling the usual obscure guilt.
Right, bio pod. All food and yard waste went in there—Bright Beacon's composting system was robust. Really, I told myself, there was no difference between a roasted minipig carcass and a dead station mouse. But I knew I wasn't going to feel right right about it until the bio collectors made their daily rounds.
Plus, the sensation of its stiff body and slimy guts on my sheathed fingers stayed with me even after I washed my hands. I couldn't stop myself from shaking them, trying to dislodge the ghost of a feeling.
I returned to the front room to see Dad examining the Plan in my notebook.
"It helps me remember what I have to do," I said, face going hot.
"He's been fussing about his day tomorrow," Vilda said. "The way he carries on, you'd think it was a military operation."
"I'm trying to keep track of everything," I protested. "The Stay Organized! vid said writing things down was a good way to do that, and I want to be there for Toast as much as I can. She won't know why we're doing this, or that it's good for her. She won't know why she's hurting, but I want to be there for her, so she'll have a friend."
"Oh, nonsense," Vilda scoffed. "She won't care."
"She'll be hurting."
"She's an animal. They don't feel pain."
I stared at her, destabilized. "They don't? Really?"
She sighed. "Tell him, Dr. Grewell."
Dad jerked away from his contemplation of my Plan. "What?"
"They're arguing about whether animals feel pain," Thoren said from his stack of homework at the end of the table.
"Ah." Dad looked from Vilda to me. "They do react to unpleasant stimuli; they avoid them if possible. But they can hardly verbalize their inner responses to it, so there's no way to know what is there."
He smiled, but it seemed like a private thing. He was a scientist, so I couldn't really fault him for refusing to acknowledge unfounded evidence, but—"Doesn't avoiding pain count as telling us how they feel?" I asked.
"It's not an accepted assessment, but some have argued this, yes."
Vilda shot him a look I couldn't parse. Dad knitted his brow.
He looked to me. "Why do you ask?"
"Toast's surgery," I explained again.
"Ah." He shrugged. "I can tell you that she may be sore, but on balance it will save her and others a great deal of misery."
"I know," I said. "But."
Dad frowned. "Is Dr. Kellek not letting you watch the surgery?"
"You never asked him," I said.
He blinked.
"It's more like Mr. Sordell isn't allowing it, anyway," Thoren said. "We're starting our final projects tomorrow."
"Ah. That's unfortunate."
"It is," I said with feeling.
Thoren snickered. "Dreedo's worried about Toast."
"Yeah, I am," I said. "I read about it, but are they gonna slice her open like she did to that mouse?"
Dad considered. "Perhaps a visual understanding would help. Let me see if I can find some videos of the process."
Thoren and I shared a look as Dad went back to his office. It was always interesting when he deemed something from the wider Galactic Database worthy to show us. Obviously neither of us was a Focal Citizen with tech dispensations of our own yet, but Dad could use his discretion to offer us educational material.
But a few moments later, he returned emptyhanded. "Vilda, have you seen my tablet?"
"No. Did you have it earlier?"
"Of course I did. Boys?"
We both denied. I noticed he cast an extra, covert glance at Thoren, but my brother was absorbed in his homework again. (I never understood why it took him so long to do the busywork. That stuff was easy; I could do it during class.)
"I'll help you look," I said, stuffing my notebook into my bookbag. I had the Plan down, I told myself. Probably. I didn't have to keep rehearsing my busy day.
After an hour of searching, though, we still hadn't found Dad's tablet.
"You probably left it at work," Vilda told him. "You'll find it tomorrow."
"Most likely." But his hand was twitching rhythmically.
"It's not like anyone could get into it, anyway."
"True."
I knew how he felt. I hated not having a clear image of what was going to happen the next day. It was why Toast's surgery and the beginning of our school projects happening on the same day had me making battle plans.
But I was going to be fine.
#
"This project," Mr. Sordell said to the class, "is your first step toward becoming a Focal Citizen." (I thought maybe he was giving himself a lot of credit, since I'd decided to be a Focal Citizen as soon as I knew that Dad was one, but maybe others hadn't had that same, well, focus. And people were pretty careless about what they considered to be "first steps" to something, so maybe he was being metaphorical. And anyway, he was on a roll.) "It will involve civic awareness, scientific thinking, and knowledge of the history of Bright Beacon. You will be coming up with a project that will demonstrate what you can contribute to our community, and, thus, the planet to which we are integral."
Wow, I thought, no pressure. I glanced across the room. How could Thoren look bored? Maybe he had some ideas already.
I sure didn't. How could I contribute meaningfully to society?
But that wasn't even the only problem.
"You'll be working in groups of two or three," Mr. Sordell said. "I'm assigning this class period for you to find your groupmates and start considering your project."
The rest of the class erupted into activity. I sat at my desk, staring at my notebook with my day's battle plan on it. What sort of project could a thirteen-year-old do to make a difference in the community? Did I even know enough about our station to improve it without accidentlally making things worse?
How was Toast doing? I had dropped her off this morning; she'd looked pretty forlorn.
"Who are you going to be working with, Dreedo?" Mr. Sordell asked.
"Oh—" I looked around. "I … is it okay if I do it alone?"
He frowned. "Alone? Why?"
"Because—"
Because if you asked me, trying to work with people only multiplied the work I'd have to do tenfold.
I gave up. "Is it okay if I work with Thoren?"
"It looks like he's already got a group of three," Mr. Sordell said.
I looked around the room, throat tightening. All the little social units had sealed themselves off.
Mr. Sordell sighed. "I suppose one group of four is all right."
Thoren gave me an eyeroll when I shuffled over and joined them. Nielli Brones and Jod Coralym just eyed me.
"Mr. Sordell says it's all right," I said.
The others glanced at Thoren.
He sighed, too. "Fine."
I sat with them. "Do you guys have any ideas?"
Jod snorted. "Way to be helpful. Dump it all on us, why don't you?"
"No, I—I was just wondering if I missed anything."
"No," Thoren said. "Do you have any ideas?"
"I'm trying to think," I said. "How can we benefit Bright Beacon?"
"Let's put more railguns around it," Jod said. "So if the Techies try to attack us, we can blast 'em." He held up a pen, aiming it at the windows. "Pew! Pew!"
"But the war's over," I pointed out. "And the attack on Guidestar was an asteroid. You'd need a lot of railguns to get rid of one of those."
"We should get a lot!"
"Maybe we could calculate what we'd need," Thoren suggested.
I looked around at them all. "Are we supposed to be writing down our ideas or something?"
Thoren shrugged. "Go for it."
It was my turn to sigh as I flipped to a clean page.
"So," I said when nobody offered any more comments, "I'll write down 'defense calculations.'" Probably the Focal Citizens had already calculated that, though, after the Technocrats wrecked Guidestar. I'd have to ask Dad. "Anything else?"
"We don't have to come up with it now," Nielli said.
"That's literally exactly what we're supposed to be doing now," I said. "Come on. What needs improvement?"
"Power storage and transfer?" Nielli said halfheartedly.
Probably also something the Focal Citizens had worked out, but I wrote it down.
"Lift the teen curfew," Jod added. (His parents were big supporters of the curfew.)
"Better movies from the Greater Galaxy," Nielli said. "Not the baby stuff the theater gets now."
Thoren grinned. "Good one."
I wrote that down without comment. I liked the movies the theater got. They were usually safe to watch. Nielli probably wanted violence, or lowbrow comedies, or other brain-rotting, upsetting, nightmare-inducing junk.
"At least get rid of those loser Follow the Beacon vids before the movies," Jod grumbled. "Why do we have to watch something boring and corny first?"
"Good luck taking that up with the Focals," Thoren snorted.
I wrote that down without comment, too, but for different reasons. I wouldn't say I liked Beacon Studios' output, which was mostly Civic Hygiene fare. It was kind of funny to see familiar Beacon people on screen. (I thought I saw the Palbert boy in the background of a few of them, which was always a bit of a pang. Had he been interested in film?) But even though they always said there were no right and wrong answers, the Discussion Questions the vids posed clearly did think there were good answers and bad answers, and trying to figure out what they were, and why, fascinated me.
And the boring corniness itself held some kind of fascination, too.
Because Jod was right about that: they were excruciatingly boring and corny.
"I think Bright Beacon itself is pretty great already," Thoren said. "Though maybe they could rebuild the Ball court."
"Ooh," Nielli said.
"Yeah," Jod agreed.
Actually, most of the citizens probably would appreciate that. People got pretty worked up about Ball.
"Or we could do a study on whether we should bring back weather," Thoren added. I wondered if he remembered the rain puddles from our planetside days, too.
My thoughts drifted back to Toast. "Maybe something to help the feral sixcat population."
Thoren grinned. "That'd be easy. We can use Toast as a subject."
"Nothing mean," I said quickly.
"Help them how?" Nielli asked.
"Get rid of them," Jod said. "They're alien pests."
"They're a deliberate part of the ecosystem," I said. "They control the station mice. But Dad says they're malnourished. I wonder if we can fix that."
Again, I didn't think I knew enough about Bright Beacon's ecosystem, or ecoengineering in general, to really mess with it, but it seemed mean to leave the sixcats like that after we'd brought them here.
The ideas sort of dried up after that; the others got sidetracked talking about Ball. In the end, they all agreed that doing something with the sixcats was our best bet.
"We'll have to do more research to see what might be a good project," I said. "Maybe if we go to the library today …"
"We have practice," Thoren reminded me.
"Oh. Okay. Well, maybe another day …" I trailed off, at a loss again. I hated working around schedules.
"We'll figure it out," he assured me, and we left it at that.
#
I wasn't due to pick up Toast until a couple of hours after school, so I went to the library myself. There was a section on ecoengineering, but the books were either far too generalized or far too technical. I didn't have the dispensation on my card to reserve an hour on the Greater Computers—my class would get it next cycle, at least the responsible kids—so I left frustrated and worried. What if we couldn't find enough information on the topic? Would we have to change it?
At least Toast seemed all right when I picked her from the vet. She was groggy, but Dr. Kellek's assistant assured me it would wear off. I took her home and put her in her nest by the washer (I wanted to take her to the one in my room upstairs, but she might fall down them while she was still woozy), and she settled in among her toys quite readily.
Toast loved to collect toys. Mostly it was junk—bottlecaps and rubber bands—but she also liked shiny things, and once I had found Grandma's watch in her upstairs nest. Now, as I looked over her collection, a flash of silver caught my eye. I pulled it out with a rush of recognition.
Dad's tablet.
My first impulse was to triumphantly tell someone—but there was no one to tell at the moment. Thoren was at practice, Vilda had gone to visit a neighbor, and Dad …
Dad was out getting himself a duplicate tablet, since his work couldn't wait.
I sat on the bottom stair, absently pressing the button to wake it up. A fingerprint icon appeared by the sensor. Place finger on Bio-Lock, the text said.
I didn't think about it; it had asked me to do something, so I put my finger on the sensor.
The screen rippled. Welcome, Dr. Grewell, it said.
Then the desktop appeared, various apps still running and about half its battery life left.
I should close it again; obviously I wasn't supposed to have tech. But … surely, to look up some things for the project wouldn't be bad. Not like a game. I could practice being responsible.
Know what you're dealing with, Mr. Sordell had said.
I'd seen Dad look things up before, but I'd never done it myself. It took a bit of getting used to, but after a little bit of tentative experimentation, I found an infowiki. There had to be something on sixcats there.
This is only temporary, I promised myself, scrolling through a treasure trove of information. Sixcat biology, sixcat behavior, sixcat ecology, sixcat videos …
I also found Dad's notes on his latest experiment. That could help, too—it could give me a model to work toward.
It was so useful for this project. This was exactly what Focal Citizens got dispensations for!
With one last glance at my own sleeping sixcat, I went upstairs and started my project.
#
EXP: IP262
DATE: 12.37.76
Micro-scale independent pre-feasibility study on the effects of the Grewell treatment on korano subjects. Subjects are genetically identical individuals with the Stroen-Bolskep gene cluster; see Fig. 1 for full workup. Experimental (E-)group has received treatment; Control (C-)group remains unmodified.
No further treatments or therapies will be applied.
While larger-scale pilot studies are forthcoming, this preliminary experiment will allow for further study design.
#
