A butterfly flitted by, almost getting nailed by the ball as Steven was tossing it up. Steven grinned. Next time maybe, he thought to himself. The smell of the tropical dandelion flowers was intoxicating. They were in full bloom this time of year, more than usual. The meadow was practically covered by the rich yellow flowers. He just noticed, after all the years he has been visiting the meadow, that their presence seemed to ebb and flow with their own season. The depths of his imagination always presented unexpected surprises to him, so much that he no longer considered this an imagination but his own private sanctuary. He tossed the ball up again and a dainty hand reached out and caught it. Looking up, he saw Asherah waving the ball at him. She giggled and took a few steps back as Steven got up, then she turned around and ran around the tree screaming and laughing. Steven chased her and as he was catching up with her she gave a yelp and tossed the ball up. Steven caught it and wagged a finger at her as she gave him a mischievous look. "Naughty girl," Steven chided. Asherah giggled again and followed him back to his favorite spot.
"Today's your birthday again, isn't it?" she asked, catching up and skipping alongside him. "Are you having a party for Sally?"
"Sally?" Steven looked at her, confused. Then he remembered. According to Asherah, they don't celebrate their own birth on their birthdays, but instead they honor the parent that birthed them. In his case, Sally was the closest he had since his own mother was missing. Asherah's own mother was missing too, so she had never been able to celebrate her birthdays properly, either.
"Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know. But yep, today's my birthday. Fifteen years old today, and still no idea what I want to do with my life." Steven sighed and sat down. Asherah sat across from him, facing him, and tucked her feet under her. She grabbed one of the tropical dandelions and started nibbling on the leaves while she listened. Steven was in another funk.
"That's easy. Do what you like and are good at," Asherah said. "Wow. It doesn't seem like it's been five years already." She looked at him. He was definitely taller now than when he was only ten years old. So was she. Several times Steven had caught himself staring at her as she danced around the meadow or read her studies. She was cute back when he was ten. Now, she was gorgeous.
"I like hanging out here with you. But I'm not sure if that will pay the bills." Steven sighed. "I'm supposed to start my college classes tomorrow." He fiddled with the ball, frowning. "It's been a year since I finished school and I still don't know what I want to do." It took Jonah a year to find a suitable correspondence school for Steven.
"Why?" Asherah asked. She still had trouble grasping the concept of bills and money, but understood his indecision about what to do with his life.
Steven wasn't sure. "I've spent all this time looking for my parents and haven't gotten anywhere at all." He tossed the ball up and caught it. "I practically own the internet and still not a single lead." Asherah nodded, listening quietly while Steven worked things out. "I haven't given any thought to much anything else."
"Well, make a list what do you like doing for fun. Besides annoying me." Asherah grinned.
Steven smirked at her. "Well, computers, of course. Not that I'm going to get anywhere with that in college." He leaned back on his elbow and bounced the ball off the tree. "Sally and Jonah want me to get into agriculture," he pouted.
"You love plants. They love you. Everything you touch grows." Asherah tickled Steven's nose with the flower. He batted it away.
"Yeah. I don't hate it. I just wish I had a choice." He looked up at the tree house. It was showing its age as the tree had grown and the weather demonstrated its ruthlessness to it. The branches had large tufts of snow on the pine bows and there was a little snow on the eaves of the tree house that didn't slide off the steep roof. It was starting to represent a place of failure, however. Steven was growing frustrated with the futility of his search.
"You can also draw." Asherah loved watching him draw, especially when he was drawing her. "You're really, really good."
"There's an abundance of starving artists here already." Steven frowned.
"Artists are starving?" Asherah was shocked. She couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"It's just a saying. Most artists don't make much of a living from their art and have to do other stuff, too." Steven looked at his sketches. He'd never considered doing that sort of thing professionally. "I don't know. Art is very personal for me, Asherah. I don't think I could just put it out there like that."
"What about bees? You keep a lot of hives and people love your honey." Asherah loved the honey too and he often brought a jar with him to the meadow for them to snack on. She got a double-sweet charge by dipping the ne're temore flowers in the honey and eating that. Steven tried it and found it too sweet for him. The flower was already fairly sweet on its own.
"Well, that would be agricultural and I'm already making a fair living off that. I've actually saved a lot of that money for the search." Steven did make a pretty decent income from selling his honey. His godparents would be tickled if he just expanded on that.
"Well, there you go then. Keep bees and draw me for fun." Asherah made a silly pose and Steven laughed.
"That's actually not a bad idea. I mean, I'm really pretty content in that regard. Brandon's getting into law school and the kids in town are all rushing around trying to figure things out. But you know, I think you've got the right idea. I'm already doing what I love right now and making a decent wage from it." Steven smiled, feeling better.
Asherah was tickled to see his mood lift. She hated seeing him distraught and stressed. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "You're welcome."
"Shuh." Steven wiped his cheek as she sat back, blushing. Well, she did help. Bouncing ideas off her had proven invaluable many times because of her insight and instincts.
Asherah looked down at the flower for a second, then smiled. "You want to climb the tree?" He sat up and looked up the tree. They often raced each other up the tree, and she beat him often. But today he was feeling lucky. "Like a monkey!" Dropping the ball, he erupted from where he was laying and was clambering up the lower branches before Asherah could respond.
"Hey!" Asherah called after him then followed him up the tree. They sped up the tree, pulling themselves up on opposite sides of the trunk as fast as some would run until Steven reached the top and grabbed the topmost bough. Her hand grabbed his a bare instant later. "You cheated!" Asherah looked sternly at him.
"You snooze, you lose." Steven grinned. They climbed down to thicker branches and sat on them, looking out over the meadow. The view never got old and Steven soaked it in.
Asherah appeared confused. "What's a... monkey?"
Steven looked at her for a moment, then laughed. She looked sheepish, then laughed with him. "Sorry. It's... well, they're creatures that like to climb." He had trouble nailing it down. There were so many kinds of monkeys out there and the phrase was more generic than anything.
He got serious. "I wouldn't mind growing things and keeping my bees. I love it here." Steven fiddled with a pine bough. "But I still think I would do much better doing computer stuff. Bret has been coming by and offering me a summer internship. Maybe that's what I need to get somewhere in my search."
"I think that would be great!" Asherah hid a brief look of disappointment, but Steven caught it.
"It's not like I'd be gone all the time. This is my most favorite place ever," Steven consoled her. He lifted her chin and looked in her eyes earnestly. "Really."
She smiled, looking at him then out at the meadow. "It's mine, too."
Steven looked out at the waning sun. He'd been late getting to the meadow today, so his time there was short. The sun over the meadow was just a little behind his own sun currently. He sighed and climbed down. Time to go home.
"Is it time to go already? You just got here!" Asherah called after him. She started climbing down after him and before long they were racing again. They both started skipping branches, and then descended two yards
or more at a time in a barely controlled fall until they dropped the last twenty feet onto the spongy soil below, their feet hitting almost simultaneously. Steven grinned and wagged his finger at Asherah as she gave him a curtsy.
He reached down and put on his jacket, a little dejected about how short his time at the meadow was that day. "Yeah. It's time to go. Perhaps I'll get to look at the curriculum and get some ideas from it." Steven picked up his ball and turned to go. Asherah pouted and Steven almost felt it. "Don't pout. I'll try to be back tomorrow." Steven turned and looked at her.
She smiled and hugged him. "You better."
He waved as he walked away, and Asherah waved after him. As Steven left the meadow the tropics faded to a snowy field behind him with a tall snag protruding from the center. He looked up at his tree house as he passed by underneath. He had new searches in progress but they haven't been going long. Hopefully tomorrow he would have something new to look at. He grabbed his staff that was leaning against the tree and took off in a trot, heading back to the homestead.
Sally cleared the supper dishes from the table as Jonah came back into the room with some books. "Here you go." He put the textbooks on the table in front of Steven as he was wiping his mouth. "These are just the basic core classes to start off with." Steven looked at them. He fingered through all of them, confused. "They all have online requirements!"
Jonah looked at him for a moment, then sat down. "Yes. Yes, they do."
"I thought you hated computers." Steven looked at Jonah. He actually knew a bit more background than that from sneaking a look at Jonah's notes, but he wasn't supposed to know. He had to be mindful of what he said.
"I don't hate them. They just got very dangerous for us..." he hesitated, "...and for your parents."
Steven leaned forward. A new detail about his parents? Sally had slipped out quietly and returned carrying a box and a large ream of papers and placed it on the table between Jonah and Steven. She sat down, somber. Jonah grabbed the ream of paper. It was bound with steel rings into a large booklet. Steven was already familiar with it, having a copy of it up in his tree house, but gave no indication of recognition. Jonah looked at the thick booklet, caressing it with his hands. "Your parents helped me discover this." He looked up. "I've told you a little about the dangers of computers, but not much about the why." He sat back, contemplating the book but clearly somewhere else a long time ago. "I only suspected the truth, but your parents are why I know what I know. The computer chips..." he looked up, "...all of them. They are all compromised down to the very material they're made of."
Steven swallowed. It was one thing to read about it in his notes, but another to have his godfather tell him directly. There were always gaps left out of these notes and texts that got filled in by these talks and Steven was eager to find out more, especially where it concerned his parents.
Jonah grinned wryly. "I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, computer chips?"
Steven's heart jumped. Did they know about the tree house? "Huh?"
"Playing games at Brandon's?" Jonah raised an eyebrow. Steven tried not to look relieved. He could handle getting in trouble over playing on computers at Brandon's house far better than having his secret project discovered.
"I've read about them at the library, and the textbooks you gave me." Steven tried not to stammer. Jonah only suspected about the games and he tried not to confirm it. Jonah gave him a knowing look and Steven fidgeted. "How did you find out they are all compromised?" Returning to the subject seemed prudent to Steven about now.
Jonah grinned, then got somber again. "Your parents already suspected it when they first came to me. They really deserve most of the credit." He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small plastic case. Inside was a chip that had its surface abraded off and was chemically etched to the base layers. "This was the final clue. Someone had written the circuits before they were even made into chips. Chips on chips, basically. This is part of the substrate before the chips are even written to it." He looked at it. "On this are complete computers that are almost impossible to detect, and hints of circuitry that we are unable to even see. Incredibly advanced stuff." He put the case down on the table and Steven peered at it closer. It looked like a tiny fleck of glass. "Someone has created entire computer systems on every chip being manufactured out there and through them they have completely indefensible access to every computer in existence." Jonah was very serious. Steven tried not to smile, thinking of his own complete freedom on every connected network he had access to.
"Quantum computers?"
Jonah picked up the plastic case and put it back in his pocket and looked at Steven. "Yes. Beyond that even, I think. We really only scratched the surface. It took some pretty powerful scanning electron microscopes to get as far as we did and it was still obvious that there was much more that we didn't see." He fell quiet for a while, then continued. "It was way beyond anything we could have even imagined. And it rendered anything we could consider security completely moot."
"They can arbitrarily access, and perhaps even control anything, with a chip." Jonah leaned forward. "Do you understand what I'm saying? Why I say computers are dangerous?"
Steven didn't answer and just looked at Jonah.
"We were the only four that knew of this. Now there are only the two us. And now you." Jonah frowned.
"My parents are missing because of this?" Steven was confused. "Why haven't you told me this before?
"As brilliant as you are, Steven, we didn't feel you were ready," Sally chimed in quietly.
"Brilliance does not equal maturity." Jonah sat back, looking at Steven. "We weren't sure that you'd be able to resist looking for your parents. I'm still not sure." He sat there silently for a moment while Steven took it all in. "There are people out there that don't approve of us having this knowledge. If they knew where we were, all of us would be in serious danger."
"And you don't trust me?" Steven was a little hurt. With few exceptions, they've had a really good relationship. So this came as a bit of a surprise. He always suspected there was more that they weren't telling him, but to not tell him because they thought he'd do something foolish, that was a little offensive to him. But then, he was actively looking for his parents already, after all. So just how offended could he be? He chided himself for his mixed feelings. He was proof of why they didn't tell him.
Sally leaned forward and enveloped Steven's hands in her own. "Dear, it's not a matter of trust. This is the time for you to make wrong decisions and learn from them. It's just a fact of life. For most kids, it's usually fairly harmless. Unless they're trying to jump across ditches." Sally smiled, referring to the many times she had to clean Steven's muddy clothes. "But for you..." she stopped, looking at Jonah,"...for us, it is not harmless. Not with computers." She looked at him with her sweet, blue eyes, and smiled wistfully.
Steven nodded. It made sense and he felt a little guilty. But not regretful. He looked over at the box. "Is that..." He hesitated. Never would he have imagined his godparents doing this. Jonah opened the box and pulled out a new laptop."Wow," was all Steven could say.
Jonah looked sternly at Steven. "There are rules." Steven wasn't surprised. Jonah leaned forward."It is imperative that you respect these rules, and now I hope you understand why."
Steven opened the laptop and turned it on. It was slower than his own upgraded system, but was a special gift to him nonetheless. It represented a new connection with his godparents. "Cool."
"We won't have online access here. The only time you will be allowed to get online is at the library and with Dmitri, myself or Sally present, okay?" Jonah said firmly. Dmitri was a natural choice since he ran the library and his computer shop was part of the library. Steven was even more pleased as he nodded. Dmitri was already his computer mentor surreptitiously. "Other than that, you can take the laptop anywhere you want and do your homework." They knew he had favorite places out in the forest to hang out and study.
"Just remember what
we've told you, honey. We are in hiding and need to stay hidden." Sally said. Steven could tell how much they regretted the way things turned out and how their limitations had affected Steven's childhood.
"I understand." He looked at the laptop for a moment, thinking and looked at the both of them. "Thanks." They both smiled. Even with the restrictions they've placed on him and their life out in the sticks, he felt content with their situation. They were comfortable and happy and enjoyed each other. How many other families had that?
"Okay." Steven closed the laptop and dug the case out of the box. "I'm going to the library now."
Jonah laughed.
"After your morning duties tomorrow." Sally patted his hand and got up to finish the dishes. Jonah sat there for a moment then also got up, carrying his notes back to his little library. Steven packed up the laptop and carried it back to his room.
"You forgot something!" Sally called from the kitchen.
"Oh, yeah." Steven ran back to the kitchen and scooped up his textbooks. "Good night." She grinned at him as he rushed back to his room.
"We're doing music tonight if you want to join in!" she called after him. He was their favorite guitar player and would be sorely missed if he chose to hide back in the bedroom playing with his new toy. She smiled as she heard him groan. But he liked their time together playing songs and goofing around after dinner. He walked out slowly and grabbed his guitar from the corner.
"Good to have you join us," Jonah said as he pulled out his bongo drums and checked the skins. Sally pulled out her own guitar and began tuning it.
"So. What do you want to start with?" Steven tuned his guitar.
"Something challenging. Do you know the 'I'm a Little Teapot' song?" Jonah smiled broadly.
Steven grinned. "Why, yes I do." Sally laughed as she started strumming an abridged version of the song. Steven could tell this was going to be a silly session as he added his own guitar to the song and Jonah provided the beat.
Crow - The Awakening Page 9