by Lela Oswald
Rex stopped reading his newsfeed and got back to packing for the airport. When they traveled Rex posed as a digital nomad tech consultant. There were plenty of digital nomads, so it was easy to use that identity. The identities purchased off the dark net were from two different families who had died while being digital nomads, one who was involved in the drug trade and was killed by the Chinese mafia and another who died in a boating accident while in Thailand.
Rex and Laney’s will said that if they ever died the kids would go to Rex’s brother Jim and his wife Laurel back in Michigan. Since Jim and Laurel’s kids were already grown, they would be ideal parents to Magdalena, Martin, Melody, and Milo if anything ever happened to Rex and Laney. But who knew what the government would decide to do with the kids in the case that Laney and Rex were alive but in jail for treason. Would the kids be split up? Would Carmela and Derek get some of the kids and then Jim and Laurel get others? Would Angela try and get custody of the kids as a political move? Technically she was their biological grandmother even though she had never met them and never even cared to try to meet them. For the sake of the kids, Rex and Laney had to be very careful while traveling to not let their cover slip.
Chapter 7: Melody Orville
Melody Orville sat in the hotel bed watching Wall-E with her little brother while their mom was in the shower. She was excited to head to a new country today, her mother had been teaching them geography and history lessons in their homeschool curriculum about their new adventure to South America.
Knock Knock Knock Melody heard at the door, “It’s me!” said Magdalena.
Melody paused the movie and got up from the bed to open the door.
“Is Martin in here?” asked Melody.
“No” said Melody.
“Do you wanna come with me to go look for him?” asked Magdalena.
“Ya!” said Melody excitedly. She started to walk toward the bathroom to ask her mom, but Magdalena stopped her. Just then they heard the shower turn off.
“Hey Mom, Melody and I are going over to my room with Dad, we’ll be right back. Milo is still here.”
“Alright” said their mom, “See you in a bit.”
Magdalena grabbed Melody’s hand and they scurried out of the room.
They left the room Melody followed, “Hey that’s not the way to dad’s room,” said Melody.
“We’ll go to dad’s room after, first we need to go check downstairs for Martin, I don’t know where he is. He’s not answering my pings. He was up at the pool with me but now he’s lost. And I just went to dad’s room to check, before I came to check mom’s room and got you. Martin wasn’t at dad’s room, and then he wasn’t in mom’s room, he’s got to be downstairs. Unless in the time I’ve been looking for him he went back up to the pool. We can check there after we check the lobby, let’s go.”
Melody’s mouth gaped open, “He’s lost!!”
“Well let’s not jump to any conclusions. First we have to check the hotel common areas. Maybe he’s in there. And keep your voice down, let’s not drawn attention to ourselves”
“You don’t think he ran away do you?” Melody whispered.
“No, I don’t think he ran away,” said Magdalena as they walked toward the elevators. “I think he’s probably off in his own little world ignoring us. But he’s risking blowing our cover. He’s risking us all missing our flight. We need to find him so that I don’t get in trouble for losing him and so that we don’t all lose our identities and go to jail.”
They arrived at the elevators. Magdalena motioned a zipped lips gesture and Melody nodded, she knew better than to talk on the elevators and draw suspicion.
The elevator door opened and they got in. A couple was in the elevator speaking French to one another. Then the elevator stopped and a man got on speaking German into his virtual glasses.
Melody stood close to her big sister. She looked up to Magdalena more than anyone in the world. They both loved dance and choreographed dances together. Melody loved making up musicals and choreographing dances with her sister, but that was mostly because she just loved spending time with her sister. Dance was mainly Magdalena’s hobby. Most of all Melody loved hair. She dreamed of having her own creative hair salon one day. Maybe she would open the first salon on Mars. Maybe it could be in Mars Disneyland like the Main Street Salon at Disneyland in California. Melody loved watching hair braiding tutorials online and trying out her own braids. She would add glitter hairspray and hair wraps to the braids to give it her own flair. She had longer and straighter hair than her older sister. Her hair was auburn brown like her mother’s. It was soft and silky and provided just the right texture for braiding but she enjoyed braiding her sister’s hair as well since her sister’s curly hair gave the braids more texture. Braiding Magdalena’s hair was more fun since those braids stayed in longer than Melody’s hairstyles which slipped out of place more easily. After they found Martin, Melody would ask if she could braid Magdalena’s hair before their flight
Melody thought one day Martin could engineer her a hair braiding robot and then her Mars hair salon could be full of robots braiding people’s hair in the styles Melody directed them to braid. In the meantime Melody would practice her braiding on her Disney dolls. Once the family was no longer in hiding Melody planned on having her own youtube kids channel on hair braiding.
The elevator opened and they stepped out. Melody followed Magdalena as they looked around the lobby area. The lobby was connected to a giant mall, so they headed toward the mall in case Martin had gone that way. The lobby featured escalators connected to more hallways with chandeliers and mirrors. There was a scattering of Chinese businessmen rushing through but it wasn’t terribly crowded. Melody tried to keep up the pace with her sister as Magdalena kept trying to ping Martin and getting no answer.
“He’s probably just lost in his own mind working on his Mars Disneyland rides and physics calculations. He’ll answer you soon, I think he will,” said Melody.
Melody had a calm confidence that things would always work out. And it was often the case that Martin did indeed get lost in his own mind while working on his ride and hotel calculations and schematics for Mars Disneyland. He would input his work into a software on his virtual tablet and then input virtual people into his rides and hotels and run model simulations on how the rides would turn out and what the hotel experience was like from the point of view of guests. The little people in his virtual world seemed to love Mars Disneyland.
Melody couldn’t help but think that maybe we were the little people in someone else’s game. While Martin played God to the people in his universer on Mars, maybe someone else was playing God with people on Earth?
“Magdalena, do you think we could be the characters in someone else’s video game?” aske Melody.
“We could be,” said Magdalena. “Maybe the programmer of our video game is the one who keeps giving me these dreams. It does sometimes feel like we live in a simulation. Like we’re the dolls in someone else’s dollhouse. The dolls of the Creator of the Universe. The characters in his, or HER, game. I do think we’re a simulation. A video game if you will. And the creator of the video game makes it such that we can never realize we’re in a video game until we die.”
“And then what happens when we die?” asked Melody
I don’t know, said Magdalena. Maybe we get to play again as a different character. Maybe we’re immediately assigned a new character and born into that character without any memory of our past lives. Or maybe we get to choose which character we want to be in the next life but the time we are born we don’t remember how the whole process works. Or maybe the creator lets you choose if you are good during your life but if you’re bad then maybe your fate is assigned and you don’t get to choose, you just become the characters no one else wanted to be.”
“But why does the creator make us at all? What’s the point?” asked Melody.
“I think it’s like watching a baby grow,” said Magdalena. “Like little Milo.
He discovers new things and that makes us happy. Maybe the creator of the universe made us so that he or she could watch us grow up and take joy in it. The way that we get joy from watching Milo figure out the world. Everything is so new and exciting to him. And to us things that are obvious are obstacles to him. Like playing hide and seek with a baby where you cover your face and they think you actually disappear. And then you peekaboo them and they think it’s the greatest thing ever since their brains can’t yet understand things that to us seem basic and obvious. Maybe it’s like that with God. Maybe things that are basic to God are just games we are figuring out. The great game of being human.”
Melody loved talking to her big sister. Everything made more sense. “Sissy, you know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. One day I wanna know as much as you.”
Magdalena laughed. “Aw thanks, Mel. You’ll be a big kid too one day. You’re getting older and wise by the day. And I’m just speculating. I don’t really have the answers. And I especially don’t have the answer to where Martin is. He doesn’t seem to be down here in the lobby area, we should probably turn around and head back upstairs and check with mom and dad at this point. I don’t care if I get in trouble for losing him, we just need to find him.”
Melody and Magdalena walked back through the nearly empty hallway toward the lobby. Melody noticed Magdalena looking especially scared, “Magdalena, maybe we just missed him, maybe Martin went back up to the hotel rooms in the time that we were down here looking for him?”
“I hope so,” said Magdalena. “This is all my fault. I’m the one who asked him to come up to the pool. What if he slipped and fell and got hurt? What if he fainted or had a seizure? I was just trying to keep an eye on him in order to make sure he was safe after my dream that he was in danger. And all I did was make it worse. This is all my fault!”
“It will be okay. Mommy and Daddy will know what to do,” Melody said as she took her sisters hand, as they walked through the lobby and back toward the elevator.
Chapter 8: Milo Orville
Magdalena and Melody arrived back upstairs and walked into the hotel room where their mom and Milo were. They knocked on the door and their mom answered. Milo came over walking up behind her as she answered the door.
“Sissy where’s Maww-teen?”, he said.
Magdalena’s face went white. How did he know? Did he have some sort of baby intuition? Did he also have the intuitive gift that Magdalena had and just couldn’t express it since he was so young? He was too young to tell the difference between real and pretend and dream and reality.
“Mom, Martin is missing,” said Magdalena.
“What! He’s not over in your dad’s hotel room or up at the pool or down in the lobby?” asked Laney.
“No he’s not. Melody and I looked all over, and then we came back here hoping he was here and he’s not. He’s gone!” said Magdalena. Melody was crying and staring to hyperventilate. Laney tried to ping Martin and got no answer. She left a voice-ping telling him to call as soon as he saw the ping.
Laney collected herself, “Okay, no one panic, we’re going to find him. He’s here somewhere, we’ll go look for him. We’re going to find him, we are.” Laney looked around the room, “Okay, Magdalena you stay here with Milo in case Martin comes back here. Melody you come with me, we’ll go to your dad’s room and then you stay there and wait for Martin there in case he comes back to that room while your dad and I go look around the hotel. Magdalena keep the video tablet feed on your sister to make sure she’s okay and you guys can talk while your dad and I go find Martin.”
Magdalena nodded and picked up Milo and squeezed him tight. He hugged her neck. Laney and Melody left the room together to head to Rex’s room. Laney regretted not taking Magdalena’s warning more seriously. Laney had tried for years to explain away her own psychic dreams. Rex said she just had a strong intuition and vivid imagination. But even Rex was often surprised by her prescient dreams. If only she had listened to Magdalena’s warning and not let Martin go anywhere without parental supervision!
It would all be okay, Laney thought to herself. She would go find Martin and all of this would be over. Magdelana would watch over Milo and Melody, while Rex and Laney found Martin. Soon they would all be together again, and they would all leave Hong Kong for a new chapter. Laney went to grab Martin and explain to him everything that was going on and drop off Melody in the room to wait and see if Martin came back there, while she and Rex searched the hotel grounds.
As Laney and Rex lef the room to go look for Martin she video pinged both Magdalena and Melody so she could see them. She waved at them through the video. Magdalena was already reading a story to both of them. What a sweet big sissy. Magdalena parenting her younger siblings in that moment reminded Laney of how she would be Sissy-Mommy to her little brother Joshy and her younger sister Alexa by reading them stories at night while their socialite mother was out dating around trying to find a new husband after her parents divorced.
Laney had grown up the oldest of three siblings, she had a younger sister Alexa, and a younger brother Josh, or Josheybaby as she called her baby brother. She was the mother hen and Sissy-Mommy to her younger siblings, so she was always thinking of their safety and well-being. She applied the same helicopter tactics to her own children and considered herself a proud helicopter mother than her children were always safe and well taken care of.
“Any sign of him?” Laney pinged Rex. “Nothing.” Rex pinged back. “I’m going to ask at the front desk. I won’t blow our cover, I’ll use the fake names and just give a physical description. His GPS location on his virtual shows that he’s in the hotel so he must be here somewhere.”
“Be Careful,” Laney texted back. “We’re going to find him.” Laney walked around the pool area for any sign of Martin. She saw couples lounging romantically together by the windows overlooking the city from 100 stories up. She saw families with their kids running around. She saw businessmen on their virtuals. She saw elderly people trying to nap. But no Martin.
She took another lap. She went over to the men’s restroom area and open the door, “Martin!” she yelled into the bathroom area, “Martin are you in there?” She tried to keep her voice at least somewhat calm and not panicky so as not to draw too much attention. No answer came. Where could he possibly be? He wasn’t in the pool area. He didn’t seem to be downstairs in the lobby area. Magdalena said he wasn’t in the hallway corridor connecting the hotel to the mall. Surely he wouldn’t have gone to the mall alone, he wasn’t one to disobey safety rules and run off. Where could he possibly be?
Surely he wasn’t kidnapped right? Who would take a child? The CIA wouldn’t steep that low would they? Laney couldn’t fathom the thought. She pushed it out of her mind. No, Martin’s not gone. He’ll be back any minute, Laney pondered. He couldn’t have been kidnapped in the hotel. Surely, he would have kicked and screamed. And the hotel security staff would have noticed. And he knows never to leave the building. Surely he was fine. He’s just lost in his own world with his Mars Disneyland designs in some obscure nook of the hotel and he must have lost track of time, or maybe he was working so hard on his ride calculations that he became exhausted and fell asleep on some couch somewhere and that would explain why he wasn’t answering his pings.
Surely he was here somewhere. He must be. His GPS showed he was at the hotel. It’s not like he was kidnapped. He must be hiding somewhere. Right? A kidnapper wouldn’t take him and keep him in the hotel. Or take off his virtual watch. Right? How could Laney let this happen? How had she dropped the ball? You WILL find him, she thought to herself. Surely he’s around here somewhere. Maybe he’s hiding as some type of joke or prank.
Laney thought back to her own kidnapping threats when she was a kid. How her dad always warned her of kidnappings. Her grandma had warned her too. Laney herself had grown up in a world where kidnapping was threats were a constant background fear. She was used to living in a world of high security. Laney’s father Marvin Roslin was CEO o
f an entertainment company and attracted the attention of many crazy characters. Laney’s mother Angela was socialite and daughter of Burke Vandervoss, a global industrial capitalist who had factories all over the world. Burke Vandervoss, was a former CIA agent and centi-millionaire industrialist celebrity philanthropist who attracted the ill will of many due to his controversial political donations and shady ties to foreign scandals. His wife, Laney’s maternal grandmother Cora, had taught Laney and the other grandkids what to do if they were ever kidnapped and how they should want until the kidnapper let their guard down or stopper for gas and then take over the getaway car and drive away to go get help.
In addition to the risk posed by Laney’s grandfather’s work, there was also imminent risk posed from Laney’s father’s work. Laney’s father, Marvin Roslin, received death threats regularly from wacky Hollywood types. Everyone from people who were upset that their movie deal didn’t go through to people who were obsessed with a certain celebrity Marvin represented. Or sometimes people who were obsessed with Marvin himself. As a kid, Laney had private security at the main family home in Indianapolis and the Los Angeles homes as well.
When Laney had been in preschool a man named Randall had sent a letter to Marvin saying “I know where your daughter goes to preschool.” which was meant to be a threat to Marvin by way of threatening Laney. Laney didn’t find out about that incident until she was an adult but Marvin was always extremely safety cautious with his three children, having security cameras in all his homes, at a time many decades before it was commonplace due the ease of smartphone devices.