Chapter 26
They settled into a new routine fairly easily, over the next few weeks. Simon spent his mornings back in Harmony, teaching some of his new apprentices about programming and electrical engineering. Unlike Argent's building company, which was already contracting several buildings in the city, there wasn't an urgent need for such skills just yet. Still, Diana had reminded Simon to charge them for his classes. They needed a steady income, now that he was too old to get an allowance. He did so reluctantly, and kept on prodding Argent for possible ways that he and his apprentices could make themselves useful with construction. Every building did need electrical wiring after all, and some of the more expensive ones being planned would have their own computer systems he could program.
After those classes, he could come home for the rest of the day. She was usually busy in the simulator working on difficult turns and weather events, so he would content himself trying to puzzle through various programming issues.
He'd told her about the Easter Egg hidden in Noah's programming, and was intent on solving it. Diana suspected it was an ego thing. He wanted to prove that he was up to the task: a worthy successor to whoever had programmed it in the first place. Noah had refused to let him work on his base code again, but he had allowed Simon to copy the whole database, corruption and all, and work on it from home.
They still had various social functions to deal with, though. Sarah and Adam had invited the entire first class to their... admittedly impressive home, just last week. She'd laid out a feast for them, no doubt subsidized by Argent's garden. Or Alan and Carnegie's garden, Diana had to remind herself. It was delicious, and Diana had thanked Sarah for it genuinely, for once. Maybe them both being married would make it easier for them to get along with each other. Nah, it was probably because they no longer had to live within a stone's throw of each other.
The other weddings happened too, and other housewarmings to follow. Diana hadn't actually attended all of those, now that it was possible to refuse. The best part was, whether she stayed or left, at the end she could always return to a blissfully quiet, child-free home. Now she could see why Simon was so optimistic compared to her. They both loved the quiet, and now she could have it too!
Even more importantly, she could now study as she saw fit. Simon had also copied the other databases and set up a kind of one-person classroom in their home. He'd made sure it was entirely separate from the network that Noah used to teach the kids back in Harmony, so she could use it even when Simon was off training them. No one would know it was her using the database and not him.
He helped as much as he could, when he was present. He wasn't a good teacher, but at least he was patient, willing to try and explain things in different ways when he was being incoherent.
Thanks to her improvised education, Diana's interests were expanding as well. Flying would always be her first love, but she'd developed an appreciation for playing some video games with Simon, trying and repeatedly failing to make clay pots, reading philosophers like Nietsche and Freud, and playing the cello. Fortunately, some of the trees Noah had planted in year one were now big enough to chop down and make into various kinds of wooden objects. Simon had requested that he make a cello, and Noah had eventually delivered. Simon claimed to like hearing her practice, but she was fairly certain he was humoring her.
Before long, the underlying feelings she'd been unable to identify had started coming to the surface. It was partly wonder; at the sheer enormity of subjects she could study. It was partly jealousy that Simon had been studying them all, with varying degrees of success, for his entire life. It was partly fear that someone would find out what they were doing and take that opportunity away from her again. But mostly... it was anger.
This was Simon's birthright, not hers. It was a male inheritance only. She could already tell that she was a better student than him, and could pick things up faster. She deserved the same education he'd gotten, at the same time he'd gotten it, but that was against the Faith Doctrines! And as angry as she felt about how she'd been treated; she was even more mad about the others! Diana had been lucky, compared to her sisters, because Simon had felt bad for her and been willing to remove her from that life. How many of them would have been even better students than her, but would never get the chance, because that was just how the Faith said it would always be? And that wasn't the only example, either.
"Take the work week for example," she elucidated to Simon one day, after being angry for most of the morning. "You've got your own company now, with a few employees, so you only have to work a few hours every day. But they have to put in at least a solid forty every week without fail. Why? Because that's how it is."
He nodded slowly. "Less than forty—sorry, 'fewer' than forty—and we start to get lazy." She'd been pushing him to use better grammar recently. Not because he needed it personally, but because he'd be a community leader soon, whether he liked it or not. He would be expected to be a public speaker, and those skills would be useful to him. She'd also been encouraging him to dress more formally, and to not slouch as much, though she didn't expect much progress on that last one.
"Yeah, but it doesn't have to be that way! Noah's drones can handle almost all of our mundane tasks just as well as we can, and in some cases even better! Noah's a better cook, cleaner, doctor, farmer, electrician, engineer, and babysitter than any of us could be. Yet we all have to learn those skills anyway: different skills for me than for you. I get that we need to know how to do it, in case Noah breaks down again, but why do we need to do all those things if he's working just fine?"
Simon just shook his head. "You're asking the wrong guy."
"I know. It's just frustrating to see. We have all this convenience, but we have to do things by hand anyway, just because that's how 'things are'. I wish we weren't the only people who could see that!"
"Maybe we're not," he suggested. "You're still in that book group with Sarah, Naomi and Abby, right? There are a few others too, I think you told me. I doubt Sarah's going to say anything against the Faith Doctrines, but what about the other ladies? Have either of them given you any hints that they might be unhappy too?"
"Are you kidding? Right under Sarah's nose? No, they haven't. Still," she added thoughtfully, "they might be more open if she wasn't around. The trouble is she's like a spider—the slightest ripple in the web of her house's flow of conversation and she knows instantly. Probably because she knows all of us so well." Spiders had been added to parts of the communal greenhouse back in Harmony, and they'd creeped Diana out right away. It was small wonder she'd associated Sarah with them in her mind.
"She doesn't know you," Simon reminded her with a smile. "Not as well as she thinks, anyway. If you want to get the others alone, why not start a different kind of activity? Noah's always encouraging us to start our own gardens, so maybe a gardening club? If you have to invite Sarah, at least it can be done somewhere other than her and Adam's place. I have a black thumb, myself, but maybe you can grow something tasteful here. At least gardening is a quiet activity."
"It could work," she admitted. "If I invited everyone and then 'accidentally' give Sarah the wrong time, I might be able to get some hints from the others. I'll think about it."
"As for the housework, I want to show you something." He stood up and left the room abruptly. "Stay right there. I'll be right back."
Diana chuckled as she looked back at the screen in her little classroom. Her life was so very different here than it had been. Here, she wasn't just waiting to become a wife and mother. Here she was a friend, and an equal partner. Simon never made any big decisions without talking to her first, and he expected the same from her. They made meals together, and ate together or separately as they wished. They cleaned up together and went to their own bedrooms at the end of the day. A dangerous, even heretical arrangement, which would have been scandalous and unacceptable to the rest of their society.
At first, she'd thought he was just a kind person, but now she knew better. He liked the company too. When confronted, he'd confirmed that he also liked the lack of pressure. Back in Harmony, he and the other boys had always been held to very high standards. First from Noah, and now from each other. Not just academically, either. He'd confessed that it felt good to just relax with someone and talk about whatever he'd seen or felt during the day. He couldn't do that with any of the guys, even Argent or Bez. There had been several excursions out of the city over the past few weeks and months. They were usually instigated by Argent or Adam, and attended by five or six other guys. They'd gone hiking up into the hills and pitched a tent. Bez had helped build an oxygen condenser to allow for longer trips away. They'd even gone boating with Rhys, in his new watercraft. With Simon's help, he'd put an outboard motor on it and they'd brought along fishing rods and coolers.
Not that there were any fish to catch just yet. The oceans and rivers had plenty of oxygen, but Noah was still seeding the algae, coral, insects and aquatic nematodes that the fish would need to eat eventually. No, Simon had admitted that it was just to see what a fishing trip was supposed to be like. For some reason it involved drinking a lot of beer and complaining about women. Simon had been evasive when asked how much he'd drunk and what he’d said. Diana wasn't concerned. Argent had only set up a beer brewing company recently, and it wasn't that strong yet. A few years and it would probably be another hot product for him though.
Simon came back into the room, carrying one of the rolling drones. A modified one, from the looks of it. "Remember my school presentation, where I had this guy navigate a classroom?" He slapped his forehead with one hand. "Right, you weren't there. Sorry, but I'm sure I told you about it afterwards."
Diana nodded understandingly and gestured at it. "You've been doing some tinkering?" She nudged him verbally.
"Oh, yeah. This is kind of a scaled down version of one of Noah's caretaker drones. See?" He pressed a button and a pair of small hands popped out from either side of the box. Diana leaned in to get a closer look and could see that they were designed just the same as the caretakers she knew. Only smaller. "If I put this one on the ground and tell it to vacuum the place, it can do so in like half an hour. If I put it next to the sink and tell it to do the dishes, it takes a bit longer, because it has to reach up. But I tested it yesterday and it works."
Diana was impressed despite herself. Living with Simon, she'd come to expect technological marvels every few weeks, but this was something special. "I know you've designed stuff like this before, but how did you program it? Vacuuming is one thing, but complex tasks need a little something else, don't they?"
He nodded. "It took the Cradle programmers years to come up with Noah's heuristics and problem-solving skills. I'm not up to their level yet, but I'm working on it. No, this," he hefted the drone slightly, "is an example of me cheating. I kinda stole its code from Noah himself."
That wasn't quite the explanation she'd been expecting. But then she thought back to all that time Simon had spent back in Harmony, poring over Noah's source code and mostly oblivious to the outside world. "You... copied Noah's source code? Back when he didn't know you could shut down the trackers?"
"No, I wouldn't be able to store more than a fraction of Noah's code. His whole thing is huge—part of a mountainside, remember? This is just a tiny bit. The automatic response system used by some of his drones. I used it to get this guy up and running. It took some tweaking, but I can get it to do most housework except laundry. It's not tall enough to load the washer."
Diana looked at it with renewed interest, and a little fear. "Won't Noah be upset? He forbade you from going near his source code again."
"What's he going to do about it? Sue us? He lost all authority over us the moment we turned eighteen. Besides, he doesn't know. I've isolated this guy from the usual drone network, so as far as Noah's concerned, it's invisible. That means I have to select the task manually, but it's a small price to pay for a household helper, don't you think?"
"I can see the value, believe me," she admitted. "Can it cook meals for us? If you made it taller, that is."
"Eventually. I was thinking I could make more than one. If you get any of the other ladies interested in, uh, your way of looking at things, we could find a way to get one of these drones to them. That way they wouldn't have to cook and clean and such."
Diana gave him a wry look. "I think this is a cart-before-horse situation. We don't even know if any of the others feel the same way I do. And your drone is a long way away from being an effective helper."
"Fair point. I just figured if you're right, and all the hours most guys put in and the housework most girls do is all pointless, shouldn't people have the option to just... not do it?"
She nodded. "They should. And God willing, they will have that option someday. It just won't be today."
He agreed, and took the drone back out of the room again. Diana shook her head fondly. He did understand, in a small way, what her life was like. He was trying to be a good friend. But in the end, if she really wanted their society to change, it would be on her to get things started.
-.-
Then one day Simon came home early, his eyes shining and breath racing. He kicked off his shoes at the door, as they'd both agreed at the start, and ran into the simulator room. She was actually in the kitchen, watching him run past with some confusion. When he finally found her, he took a few seconds to get some air, and lifted something with his left hand. It was a data storage module. She'd seen him use them to transfer simulator files, movies, books, and other data before.
"You gotta see this," he said shallowly, and gulped in more air.
A little bemused, she followed him into the simulator room where he isolated one of the monitors and plugged in the module. It was aerial footage. From its speed, it had probably come from one of Noah's reconnaissance drones.
He explained as he sped up the playback. "This happened yesterday, about fifteen hundred kilometers to the southwest. All the way out on one of the smaller continents down there, actually. Noah's been sending drones out ever since he landed, but it's a big planet. Some areas are still completely uncharted, except for what he saw from orbit when he first got here. And there's only so much he could have learned from up there. It's just—”
"Simon," she cut him off. "I get it. Just watch with me, ok?"
He nodded, and they both looked back at the screen. The drone was turning slightly to its right, probably as part of its patrol. Then it slowed, as if something had caught its attention. Or Noah's attention, really, since he maintained real-time communication with all his drones. It came to a hover in midair, and the camera refocused on a specific area on the ground below. She'd seen one of those before, from personal experience. It was a crash site. Twisted metal had been strewn out from a long trench dug into the ground. Whatever it was had been moving pretty fast when it hit the surface.
She paused the display. "I thought you said Noah hadn't charted this area before. Why is one of his planes crashed out there?"
Simon's eyes were still shining with excitement. "That's just it. That's not one of his!"
She stared back at the screen, and hit play again. The drone approached it, circling slowly and giving them a better view. It had definitely been a plane of some kind, though torn apart by the crash. The wing configuration was a little odd, though. As if they were retractable, or so she guessed. Diana took a deep breath, feeling her own eyes widen at the possibilities. "Are we thinking this is something... alien?"
Simon shook his head. "No, the drone gets closer. Here." He fast-forwarded a bit, and the drone's footage showed specific symbols. He paused after another few seconds, and Diana gasped. One of them was an American flag!
It was unmistakable. Fifty stars on blue, and red and white stripes on the rest. "This came from Earth??"
He nodded. "Noah thinks it crashed here like fifty years ago or so. The drone didn't find anything else, so it flew back, but three more are on their way out there to get a better look right now."
"So, what is it?" She insisted. "Another probe sent out from Earth? There are no records of it in the Faith histories. As far as they knew, they were the only people who discovered a semi-habitable planet out here."
"This isn't just any probe. Noah recognizes it! He saw its schematics back on Earth, when he was still in the Cradle." Slowly, Simon rewound the playback until it showed the whole crash site. "That thing... is Noah's older brother."
