The New Frontier Page 4

  “About the ‘mind control’ creatures.” She put air quotes around “mind control.”

  “What do you mean?” Lauren asked.

  “Just people say there’s something here on the station that controls our minds,” she said.

  Lauren rolled her eyes, piled her food on her tray, and walked off to a table to sit by herself.

  The rest of the day was almost as long as the first half for Lauren. Her mother waited for outside the school, as she did most days, so Lauren briefly stopped by to see her and her siblings and then walked to tennis center which was fairly close to school.

  She hadn’t been at this center very long, but she had already made an impression. On Earth, she had gone to several tournaments, getting to the semis or finals in a number of them, but here on the station things weren’t as competitive so she just tried to have fun with it. She was a pretty strong and agile kid, having spent her younger years in gymnastics, but then transitioning to tennis when she got older.

  Lauren stood at the baseline, hitting the balls as hard as she could, trying to take out some of her frustration. It was a good outlet. She simply put her headphones on, the ball machine fed her the balls, and she hit away. As she hit them, a little bot hopper scurried around after the balls, sucking them up and returning them to the ball machine.

  The girl from the lunch line stood at the side of the court twirling her racket. She watched Lauren hit a few forehands. Lauren hit a crosscourt shot that hugged the outside baseline and the girl clapped, “That was really good!”

  Lauren acknowledged her with a fleeting glance and a smile that said “Thank you.” The girl smiled back and wandered off to another court. The tennis center had 16 courts total with four on each floor. They were completely enclosed, different from the centers Lauren had grown up with on Earth, which were all outside. Here they had mostly hardcourts, but there was a grass and clay court for people looking for a change of pace.

  After tennis, she felt better. Today was Thursday and her dad was getting home early, so she decided to cut practice short and hurried to get back home.

  When she got home, her dad was in the back room talking to someone on the phone. He sounded angry. The other kids were in their rooms.

  “What’s wrong with Dad?” Lauren asked.

  “I’m not sure. Why don’t you get your homework done before dinner,” her mom said as Lauren set her bags down.

  “Ugh!” Lauren groaned. “I just got home! Can’t I relax a little?”

  “Just for a second,” her mom smiled.

  Lauren went straight to her room, where she found Julia working at her desk. Lauren retreated to her desk and began mindlessly perusing the Internet.

  Their dad got off the phone and walked out of the back room. They could tell he wasn’t happy, even from the other room.

  “Everything OK, Alex?” they heard their mother ask.

  “I can’t believe they make us bring these useless rocks back.”

  Julia perked up at the mention of rocks from space and crept out of the bedroom to see what her dad was talking about. As she peeked around the kitchen doorframe, he took a box of various-sized round rocks out of his bag and set them on the table. “I can’t find any reason for them to want these things. We’re not making any money on it, and it’s costing a lot to get them back here.”

  Their mom picked up one of the rocks, glanced at it, and said, “Well, why don’t you just tell them you can’t do it anymore?”

  “We can’t! It’s part of the deal. Since they’re letting us out there, they said we have to bring them back. Must be some covert operation—nobody seems to know what they use them for.”

  As her parents were engrossed in conversation, Julia snuck up to the pile of rocks and swiped one of them. She went back to her room and sat at her desk.

  She put the small rock under the stand of her microscope, moved the microscope into position, turned it on, and then turned to her computer. The rock came into view on the computer screen. It was unusually round, but it’s surface looked similar to some of the basalt rocks she had brought from Earth.

  She zoomed in on the rock 100X and started to see some differences. The surface was porous, as she would expect with a basalt rock, but it also appeared to be moving. Julia intently looked at the screen, trying to discern what was moving on the rock.

  She zoomed in even further. Now the surface of the rock looked like Swiss cheese with holes and pockets all over it. The things moving on the surface were some sort of microorganism, but none she had seen before. She isolated one of the organisms and tapped on the screen. The screen showed, “Searching …” and then after a few seconds displayed “Unidentified organism.”

  Some of the organisms were clinging to the inside of the holes on the rock. She zoomed in closer to the surface. It looked like they were eating the rock and then disappearing into the holes.

  “That’s strange,” she mused out loud to herself.

  “What’s strange?” Lauren asked.

  Julia quickly turned off the screen and swung around to see her sister. “Oh, nothing.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “It’s just a rock, Julia. Why do you keep looking at those things?” Lauren frowned at her sister. “Why don’t you clean up your desk? And while you’re at it, throw away some of these things—they stink!”

  Lauren made a move toward Julia’s desk.

  “No! Don’t touch them!” Julia shrieked, grabbing Lauren’s arm and pinching it.

  “Arghh! Fine! I won’t throw them away, but at least put them away where I can’t smell them!”

  “OK, I’ll put them away, just don’t touch them.” Julia started gathering her experiments and putting them in containers.

  Lauren spun around and walked out of the room. As soon as she had left, Julia turned on her screen again, looking closely at the organisms. She wanted to get a closer look, so she pulled out a small hammer to break away some of the rock. The first few taps on the rock yielded little, so she smashed the rock as hard as she could.

  With a crash, the rock crumbled. As she sifted through the debris, Julia noticed the center of the rock was made up of a crystalline structure. Fascinated, she swept up the pieces and put them under her microscope.

  To her amazement, the organisms seemed to be building the crystal structure from the basalt material they were eating. She could see the organisms frantically trying to repair the smashed crystal, like ants rushing to repair a broken mound in the wake of an attack from a kid’s wayward foot.

  The crystal didn’t look like a normal crystalline structure. It seemed to be a complex organic structure with intricate facets. It was like nothing like she had ever seen on Earth.

  Lauren burst into the room again. “Are you still playing around with those rocks?”

  Startled, Julia didn’t say a word, searching for a container to put the rock crumbles in. She found a partially used container that had some jelly-like residue stuck to the inside surface from one of her previous experiments.

  She wiped the rock crystals off her desk into the container, then put it back on her shelf. Intrigued, she turned to her computer to research crystals that grew in basalt rocks.

  Chapter 4

  Exploring the Station

  The next day, the kids went to school as usual. School got out at 3 PM each day, and parents picking up their kids waited for them in the atrium in front of the school. At their school on Earth, the kids’ parents waited outside the school doors with the other parents, and each grade had a pickup zone where the kids met their parents.

  On Cielo, things were a little different. For one, the school was smaller with fewer children so there were zones, but things were much less chaotic because there were fewer kids. Also, here on Cielo, there were chaperone bots for younger kids of families where both parents worked or for single parents who worked or for parents who were busy.

  The bots were robots that would pick up kids and lead them to wherever they ne
eded to go, like after-school activities or back home. Lauren and Julia’s mom didn’t like using the chaperone bots and would only use them when she was in a pinch and had an appointment that prevented her from picking the kids up.

  That Friday, their mom stood waiting for them to come out of school. When the bell rang, the kids spilled out into their respective zone and waited. Chaperone bots navigated the crowd, found their assigned children, and guided them off the premises. The kids who were going home with their parents sought them out in the crowd.

  Outside the school, Lauren looked for Julia. Julia was standing with her class chatting with a few classmates. Lauren ran up to her. “Are you ready?” she asked, grabbing Julia’s hand and tugging her in the opposite direction.

  “Sure, let’s go!” Julia said as they went to look for their mother.

  “Let’s ask mom if we can stop at the plaza before home, OK? Lots of the kids in class were talking about going up there after school,” Lauren said.

  Their younger siblings had gotten out of school earlier. Lauren and Julia found their mother talking to some of the other parents. Evan leaned against her, moaning that he wanted to go. Maia was wandering around close by. The sisters ran up to their mother. “Mom, is it OK if we go to the plaza before coming home?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “For how long?”

  “Not long. A bunch of kids were headed up there, and I wanted to go check it out. Please! Can we go?” Lauren pleaded.

  “Well, OK. But don’t stay too long. I’m taking Evan and Maia home right now, so just be home before dinner.”

  The girls nodded and then trotted off to the stairs to go up to the plaza. Their local plaza was on the surface at the top of the stairs. It was much smaller than the one at Central Station. It only had a few restaurants, but there was a nice playground for younger kids and a pond with park benches and tables for the older kids.

  The entire surface of the station was covered with parks and plazas. Each plaza was a little different from the others, with a mix of restaurants, playgrounds, parks, water gardens, and rocky knolls. Below the surface there were malls, apartments, offices, warehouses, and even factories on some parts of the station.

  The kids from school were hanging out at the tables talking, doing homework, and playing games. The sisters tried to fit in the best they could. They approached a group of girls from some of Lauren’s classes. The girl from the lunch line and tennis practice was in the group.

  One of the other girls looked them up and down with a slight scowl. “You’re in my grade, aren’t you?”

  Lauren timidly replied, “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?” the girl said, folding her arms and staring at the sisters.

  “Lauren. And this is my sister, Julia,” Lauren managed.

  “Are you new to the outpost? Or did you come from one of the other stations?” the girl interrogated.

  Julia piped up with a smile, oblivious to the girl’s argumentative disposition. “We’re from Earth! We just moved here last month.”

  “Ohh, you’re from Earth. Doesn’t that make you special?” the girl smirked. “I was born here, and so were they. Why don’t you go find some Earth girls to hang out with?”

  The girl from the lunch line pushed in front of the rude girl. “Sorry about her.”

  “No problem!” Julia said, still oblivious.

  “You can hang out with us if you want.” She invited them to sit down, to the disappointment of her bad-mannered friend. “I’m Alyssa.”

  The sisters sat down at the table next to them and scanned the plaza. They had come here a few times since they’d been on the station, but most days they had their after-school activities.

  In the plaza, there was an ice cream shop that had pumpkin ice cream, the girls’ favorite. Next to that was a pizza shop that had Chicago-style deep pan pizza, where their whole family loved getting a pie with pepperoni and black olives. There were a few other shops around the corner as well. Beyond the plaza was a park with rolling hills, trees, and a big grassy area where they would go play sometimes.

  All of these things made it feel almost like Earth to the girls, helping them grow more comfortable with station life as the days went on.

  “I’m going to go get some ice cream. Do you want some, Julia?” Lauren asked.

  “Um, yes. Pumpkin!” Julia enthusiastically answered, rubbing her belly.

  Lauren ran off to get the ice cream. In her absence, Julia tried to talk to the other girls, but they just weren’t interested, so she opened her fanny pack and started looking at some of her rocks with her microscope.

  This piqued Alyssa’s interest. “What are you looking at?”

  Julia replied, “Just some asteroid rocks my dad brought back.”

  “So your dad works out there?” Alyssa said.

  “Yeah, he’s gone a lot. But he brings back some cool things.” She put a few pieces of the broken rock out on the table. “These are basalt—like volcanic rock from Earth. See?” Julia held the microscope over the rock and showed Alyssa.

  Alyssa looked through Julia’s microscope. “That’s really cool.”

  Lauren carefully walked up with two scoops of ice cream on waffle cones. Julia set her microscope down and reached for her cone. Lauren handed it to her and looked at the microscope with horror. The last thing she wanted was for her sister to embarrass her in front of these new girls.

  Her fear subsided when she realized Alyssa seemed genuinely interested, but just in case, Lauren said, “Why don’t you put that back in your pack, Julia, so it doesn’t get lost.”

  Julia nodded and put it back in with her free hand. After that, neither of the girls said a word and just dove right into their ice cream, periodically wiping their mouths.

  About halfway through their cones, the mean girl started patting her pants and looking in her backpack. “I lost my phone.” She searched around her, patting the ground. “Where is it?” The girl glared at Julia. “I bet you took it! Let me see what’s in that stupid pack on your waist!”

  Julia looked surprised and then scowled and spat back, “I didn’t take your stupid phone. Leave me alone.” As she turned away, she put her free hand on her pack.

  The girl reached for Julia’s fanny pack and got her hand on it. “Give me that!”

  As the girl grabbed for Julia, Lauren’s blood began to boil. She threw the remaining ice cream cone to the ground and stood up between the girl and Julia. “You don’t TOUCH my sister!”

  The girl ignored Lauren and reached around her. Years of sports had strengthened Lauren’s wiry frame. Lauren seized the girl’s shoulders with both hands and tossed her to the ground. Surprised, the girl just stared up blankly at Lauren. The other girls didn’t offer much help to their mean-spirited friend.

  “Come on, Julia, let’s get out of here.” Julia dropped the remainder of her cone on the ground next to the girl. Lauren grasped Julia’s hand, and they ran off together toward the park.

  The girls ran deep into the park, past the edge of the fields, beyond the rock ledges that formed the boundary of the park and into a grove of trees. Not many people ventured beyond the rock ledges, as the thicket of trees wasn’t maintained and the undergrowth formed a significant barrier. This didn’t stop the girls. They found some obscure paths cut by animals and crawled on their hands and knees through the brush, eventually finding the perfect hiding place nestled between two new understory trees.

  “This is good, right here,” Lauren said. There wasn’t a soul around. When they stopped moving, they could hear the rustle of the trees and chatter of squirrels. Lauren heaved a deep sigh. “This almost feels like we’re back home.”

  Julia nodded, “Yeah, I miss home. I miss it a lot.” Lauren agreed without saying a word, reclining back on a bed of leaves. They closed their eyes and listened to their surroundings. They could hear the clanking of metal on metal faintly below. They assumed there was some sort of factory below the surface, as they were nowhere
near a residential grid.

  After several minutes of daydreaming, the two heard a rustle of leaves that didn’t sound like an animal. They peered out of the branches that hid them to see what it was. Two men walked through the woods with slow robotic footsteps. They entered some dense undergrowth and disappeared.

  The girls waited for them to come out, but minutes passed without any sign of them. Intrigued, the girls wanted to find out where they had gone. They walked right into the undergrowth, only to find a large rock wall on the other side of the bushes.

  “Where’d they go?” Julia asked. Lauren didn’t have an answer and shrugged.

  Julia studied the rock wall and reached out to touch it. As she reached, her hand went right through the rock. Frightened, she tumbled back, then cautiously crawled back to do it again.

  “What—?” Lauren asked in shock as Julia’s hand disappeared into the wall.

  To her horror, Julia stood up, stepped forward, and disappeared into the rocks. She heard a shout from behind the rocks, “Come on!”

  Apprehensive, Lauren stepped gingerly into the wall.

  Beyond the illusory boulder wall was a small rock enclave with a prominent metal door nestled between the rocks. The girls nervously approached the door. Julia reached out to touch it. Lauren did the same. It was solid steel with a red light above it and a nook that looked similar to the one in front of their apartment door. Suddenly, the door started to open.

  Lauren grabbed Julia’s hand and pulled her behind some rocks.

  The door opened and two men walked out, continuing beyond the false rocks.

  The sisters looked at each other and, without a word, leapt through the open door, just before it shut behind the men. They looked around to find themselves in a small corridor, standing on a steel grate.

  They ran down the corridor as fast as they could. At the end, the corridor opened onto a ledge that looked down into an expansive warehouse. The girls peered over the railing and saw hundreds of people operating large equipment.

  Conveyer belts carried huge rocks into a crushing hammer that pounded them with such explosive force they were smashed into rubble. The crushed rock was collected into giant bins at the other end of the conveyer belt. Huge lifts whizzed overhead, picking up the bins and carrying them through a doorway at the other side of the room.