******
Maggie sat at her large kitchen table with Rachel and Morgan. She looked up as Jade came in. She was the youngest of Maggie’s five children.
All children could legally move out after the age of fourteen if they met certain criteria, and although most waited until they were eighteen to do so, Maggie hadn’t been surprised when Jade chose to leave the day after her fourteenth birthday. She was also not surprised that Tally, her foster Cat child, went with her. Those two, along with her second youngest child, Alex, had always been as thick as thieves.
She smiled as she reminisced. Alex left at fifteen, after getting a job at the company a lot of young people started out with, the same one Jade and Tally now worked for - Nuisance Apprehenders, Inc.
She looked around her cheerful kitchen with its white cabinets and yellow and white ruffled curtains. It had been mostly quiet and peaceful since moving here from the much larger house in which she’d raised her children. Of course, from time to time, she had to deal with various duties or concerns having to do with running the village and, because of her unusual position of also being on the ruling council, the problems inherent with that. But she had been content here.
All of that might be about to undergo a drastic change. If what Jade and Tally had found turned out to, in fact, be what they thought - and the scans indicated they had at least gotten through a Spot - things were going to get a lot more interesting.
It would change their entire world.
Jade pulled out the chair next to Morgan and sat down. She looked around the table.
“Healer Chen says I’m fine, I just have to take it easy for a day or so” - she paused - “and no more psyscans!”
Then she smiled wryly. “Well, he said not any time soon, anyway. And I am to continue to drink tea for the sore throat.”
Rachel, who was drinking coffee, blew out a relieved sigh.
“There’s plenty in the pot, dear, help yourself.” Rachel was a confirmed coffee drinker. She’d make tea but she wouldn’t drink it.
Maggie, on the other hand, hated coffee. Tea had been the only hot beverage served in the Lowry household when Jade was growing up.
Jade got up and went to the tea pot on the stove and poured a cup.
Maggie smiled as she studied her. She had her rich caramel complexion though it was a bit darker. Actually, Jade resembled her a lot, even had her dimples and her thick, kinky hair. She was wearing it close cropped these days and seemed to have changed the color recently, from black to a dark brown with little golden highlights. Or maybe it was just lightened by the sun from working outside all day. She was thin but she was still young, she’d fill out. She had her father’s deep brown, almost black, eyes.
“Jade, could you tell us exactly what happened yesterday?” asked Morgan, eyes glinting.
“Sure, Uncle Morgan. Where do you want me to start?”
“Where ever you think best, Monkey.”
She ended up telling them of the whole incident, starting with the water not working at the first rest station and ending with her and Tally standing in front of what appeared to be a door in the Dome.
“Wow!” exclaimed Rachel. “That’s incredible! Just getting on the other side of a Spot is amazing enough. Imagine if that really is a door. I sure wish I could see it.”
The implications were tremendous. It would literally expand their world. And they’d be able to get to the ships, see if anything useful was still aboard; maybe at least enough would be there for them to be able to fill in the gaps in their records. So much had been lost during the Turmoils. And maybe they would be able to contact Earth. Maybe outside there would be some sort of clue as to who had put the Dome up and why.
“I can show you what we saw, Aunt Rachel,” said Jade.
She looked within her mind, saw the Spot, went through it, saw the other side, including the door, and she made a mental holo of the whole thing. She projected the images to Rachel.
Rachel sat up in amazement. “Jade! I didn’t know you could do that. This is fantastic, it’s like being there!”
Maggie and Morgan wanted to see too, so Jade sent the images out to them.
“That’s a neat trick, Jade,” said, Morgan. He’d seen some of her image jokes but nothing like this.
“You’ve always been good with projecting images, Jade,” said Maggie, “but I must say, this is a whole lot more sophisticated than your usual.” She smiled thinking about a few jokes she’d seen Jade do when she was younger.
“This is getting into an art form. Better than a holo-cast. If you don’t mind, I’m going to send these images to Sparrow, I want to see what it thinks.”
“Go ahead, Mom. Sparrow’s going to need to know anyway, I guess.”
The big Elvwist, in addition to being a family friend, was also a ruling council member.
“I’ve contacted Sparrow,” said Maggie, a few minutes later. “It wants to send someone to investigate where you and Tally got through the Spot. Do you think you can find it again?”
“Sure. Give me a map and I’ll mark the location for you.”
After Jade identified and circled it, Maggie took the map, and she and Rachel went to her office to contact the other ruling council members. They were going to see about getting a contingent out to the cottage within the next couple of days.
Tally got back in time for dinner, and afterwards, he and Jade left to walk to their cottage four blocks from Maggie’s house.