The Journey Begins

by Dan Eaton

  I said, “Sure, Sandy, I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  Mom smiled at Sandy and said, “Hey Sandy, how about you join us for dinner tonight. We can go over the paper work after we eat.” Sandy said that would be great and headed off.

  School today was a mixed bag. Miss Gayle as usual made things very interesting and we were all settling into our individual study plans. The school part was great, the dealing with individuals, especially girls wasn’t that great. Yesterday I couldn’t get either Nina or Myra to give me the time of day. I thought after spending time with Nina, Sunday night, she might have loosened up a little and been easier to talk to but during school she was very focused on her lessons. I tried talking to Myra but she was being pretty aloof except if Adam or Willie needed something. Then she was just a big flirt. Willie was just eating it up, but I had no idea what was going on in that girl’s head. Today, Nina remained focused so I figured that’s just the way she was going to be at school. I’d have to find a way to spend time with her away from school. Myra had defrosted a little and was at least talking to me. Maybe if the meeting tonight didn’t go too long I could talk her into trying the loping with me. That would help settle her down and maybe I’d get lucky and Nina would be out there too.

  That evening after dinner Sandy pulled out his E-Pad to get down to business. Mom had hers along too.

  Sandy started explaining, “So, uh, guys. This is how I suggest we do this. We form a company with you Cheryl as the CEO. The company will rent wall space from the Habitat for a yearly fee paid on a quarterly basis. The contract will specify that our company has exclusive access to any current and future wall space. The company will then install vertical garden hardware on all of the rented wall space and cultivate crops on the vertical gardens. We will sign a contract with the Habitat to provide oxygen and CO2 scrubbing based on the amount of garden space under active cultivation. In addition, the Habitat will have first choice on buying any of the crops produced by the company. If the Habitat choose to purchase less than the full amount of crops cultivated the company retains the right to sell the extra crops on the open market. “

  Sandy took a drink and then said, “My role will be as a private investor owning a 25% share of the company. I’ll provide the regolith, biochar, and anything else you need to create the soil. I’ll provide the cables, anchors, trays, and material to make however you are holding the soil. You provide the manpower to install everything. You provide the expertise in what crops to grow, the manpower to plant, harvest, and reset the gardens. I know that was a lot, are you still with me?”

  Mom looked at Dad and then told Sandy, “Yes.”

  Sandy said, “So, uh, let’s start building this thing. First up, what’s the name of the company going to be?”

  Mom thought for a second and then smiled and said, “Sandy, I want to call it CDB Farms. The whole family is going to be involved in it one way or another, so we’ll use our three initials. We’ll have multiple plots under cultivation so it’s really a bunch of farms so the name will be CDB Farms.”

  “That works for me,” Sandy said with a smile. “Uh, so, if it’s okay with you I’ll have my lawyer draw up the paperwork for us to sign. You of course can have your lawyer look it over. After it’s signed, we’ll get permission for CDB Farms to short term lease the interior wall between Section 4 and The Garden section. In the meantime, if it’s okay with you I’d like to use the wall outside of my office as a testbed for the hardware. We can use it as a ready made example, if the Habitat council has questions when we ask about the bigger wall.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Mom said, “How long is the wall?”

  Sandy thought for a minute and said, “It’s about five meters long. We don’t have to use the whole thing if you don’t need to. Bryce, this is what you’ll be doing at work tomorrow night. Cheryl, why don’t you give Bryce an hour’s head start and then come on by? We should be ready to start mounting things by then and you can make sure we’re on the right track.”

  That was how CDB Farms started. Mom and Sandy got the long term lease they asked the Habitat for and Dad and I spent all of our free time for about a month installing the supporting hardware. Mom, Myra, and Adam spent all their free time preparing and planting the gardens. Then it settled into growing food, harvest food, reset the garden and repeat.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Time Flies

  Good morning fellow NLH residents. It’s Friday September 18th, 2037.

  In Habitat news this morning, today we celebrate Ananyu Patel’s birthday. Please wish her a Happy Birthday when you see her today. There will be a party this evening at 18:30 at the main cafeteria for her friends.

  In NLH High School news, tomorrow is the Home Coming Dance. Dr. Johnson is extending a special invitation to all NLH residents to come and enjoy the dance with our NLH High School freshman class. Non-Alcoholic beverages will be served.

  Deena Cortez and Toby Bark would like to remind everyone that they will be setting up to provide haircuts along Grand Boulevard on Saturday, September 19th between 09:00 and 14:00. They are offering a Home Coming special for any attending the Dance tomorrow night.

  Lyn Craig would like to remind everyone that she will be providing manicures in conference room 419 on Saturday, September 19th between 11:00 and 16:00. She too will be offering a Home Coming special.

  In financial news today, on the Lunar Stock Market shares of Mussconny Machine are trading steady at $20.37 a share, Mussconny Fabrication at $17.59 a share, Hotel Whipple shares are rising at $6.45. O’Reilly’s Shellfish Company is up at $12.57 a share and CDB Farms is trading steady at $6.50 a share.

  They say that time flies when you are having fun. I must have been having fun since so much had happened since we got to the habitat. Mom had set up CDB Farms with Sandy and had got Myra and Adam to work for her. She tried to get Willie but he had already been hired by the guys running Hotel Whipple. He didn’t get paid as much as the rest of us, but he didn’t have to do as much either. Mom also tried to hire Nina and Ananyu but Ananyu was working for her father. Nina didn’t want anything that could get in the way of her grades, but she did volunteer to work for my mom when things get really busy as long as it didn’t interfere with her school work.

  It was almost the end of the first quarter of school and despite how much fun Miss Gayle made the classes, I was ready for a little break. I wasn’t sure how much of a break, I would get because Mom had a number of things in the vertical gardens just about ready for harvest. The plan was for us to harvest and then reset the gardens as much as possible during the two week break. Even Nina was going to be working with us which was something for me to look forward to. Then when I wasn’t working for Mom, Sandy wanted me to spend more time at Mussconny Machine so he could train me on how to run a lathe. He was actually talking about taking off early from his day job for couple of days just to be able to spend time training me. I had a feeling that between him and my Mom I might be really grateful when the second quarter started up.

  Tonight I had a special dispensation not to go to work. It was Ananyu’s birthday and there was a party scheduled for tonight. Ananyu’s dad was a chef and he was making the food for the party. Despite a limited selection of ingredients he managed to make up some great tasting food and no one wanted to miss out on the food he made for his little girl’s birthday. Sandy had shut down Mussconny Machine so we could all be there. That was something I really liked about the Habitat. We had celebrated Willie’s dad’s birthday at the beginning of the month with a big party, then Adam’s dad’s birthday on the fourteenth, and now Ananyu’s tonight. The people at the Habitat worked really hard, but they also took time out for each other and played hard when an opportunity came up.

  Mom, Dad and I headed on down to the cafeteria a little earlier than normal. We were going to eat dinner early so the three of us could help Mr. Patel get the food and presents down to the cafeteria for the party. Nina had volunteered to keep Ananyu busy before the
party by taking her and Adam up to the Viewing chamber. The views of the lunar landscape from there were so breathtakingly different than what we saw in the habitat that I had a feeling they’d actually be late for the party. When we got to the cafeteria, I ended up choosing a salad and the Fried Shrimp Dinner. Mom and Dad decided to split a deep dish pizza. If nothing else was going on I would have gone for the pizza also but I wanted to leave some room for the good stuff Chef Patel was making. With the extra ingredients Mom was able to provide from the vertical gardens the pizza was pretty tasty these days, a massive improvement over what it had tasted like when we first arrived.

  We finished eating and headed back to the Patel’s. Ananyu’s dad Abuyomi, owned a number of restaurants in the Sacramento, California area. He was used to dealing with rushes at the restaurants which was a good thing because he had a lot of cooking to do for the party in a short amount of time. Since he wanted Ananyu to be out of the picture while the party preparations were completed and since his wife, Kiara, was on duty in the Medical section until just before the party started, Mom and Dad had volunteered to help fill in. Mom took the stack of presents and party decorations while Dad and I helped Chef Patel carry the boxes of good eats ready to be finished cooking off to the cafeteria’s kitchen. We tried helping out in the kitchen and did what we could, but I had the feeling Chef Patel, while appreciative of the help, was more than happy to be able to send us out of the kitchen with the food when it was ready.

  The birthday party was a blast. The finger food and cookies Ananyu’s dad had created were delicious and like all the other parties a far larger number of people than I expected turned out for the party. Besides the presents her parents gave her, Myra gave Ananyu a top she’d had printed at the Habitat Supply and then Myra had hand embroidered Ananyu’s name on it in a flowing script that made her name look like a piece of art. I was pretty impressed by what Myra had created and it was obvious that Ananyu loved the shirt. I wished Ananyu happy birthday and then gave her a hug. I wanted to stay longer at the party, but Sandy wanted me to work for a couple of hours in the morning and Willie and I had scheduled a Gogo game with others for tomorrow. Mom had some chores for me to do and then of course there was the Home Coming dance tomorrow night. The only way I could fit it all in was to go in early tomorrow, so I reluctantly left the party so I could turn in early.

  Saturday morning I got going early and made it down to the cafeteria before Mom and Dad were even up. I grabbed a plate with some biscuits and sausage gravy and scarfed that down quickly before heading off to Mussconny Machine. It took me a little over an hour to clean all the chips out of all of the machines and then sweep the floor. Sandy was in by then and we spent the next hour with him training me on how to run a metal lathe. Metal lathes are cool in what you can do with them, but they are also dangerous. Even the relatively small lathe Sandy was training me on could cause a lot of harm if you weren’t careful.

  Sandy had very carefully explained the hazards to me before we even went near a machine.

  He said, “Bryce, rule number one in my shop is to never, ever, leave the chuck key in the machine. There’s a lot of ways to get hurt on a lathe but one of the more common ways is to leave the chuck in and forget it.”

  The chuck was the round cylinder of metal with jaws on its face that you used to attach chunks of metal to the lathe to be worked on. A powerful motor spun the chuck when the attached metal was being cut. The chuck’s jaws were loosened or tightened using a chuck key which for this lathe was a tee shaped handle about twelve and a half centimeters wide by seven point six centimeters tall. The round center body that the top of the tee attached to ended in a square shank that fit down into the adjustment screws on the chuck.

  Sandy continued, “So, uh, what happens is somebody will leave a chuck key in the chuck and they get busy doing something and forget about it. They reach over to turn on the lathe and that chuck key gets whipped around by the chuck and flung off at high speed. I’ve seen one that was embedded into a concrete wall next to the lathe because it got flung with such force. I’ve been real lucky I haven’t seen the results of what happens if someone gets hit with one and I don’t want to change that so always take the chuck key out.”

  Sandy kept a close eye on me while I was practicing with the lathe and so far I haven’t forgotten the chuck key. I hope I never do.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Home Coming Dance

  The rest of the day went by in a flash and then it was time for the party. Mom had made sure I was home in plenty of time to get cleaned up and dressed up. She had been fussing over me for the last month and had ordered a dress shirt, tie, and slacks for me especially for this event. She even got dress shoes for me and had insisted I wear them around the house for the last couple of weeks to break them in. Then there was the dancing. I may have mentioned before that my Mom likes dancing. I guess when she was in high school and there was a dance there was always a shortage of boys who could actually get out on the floor and move to the music. She was bound and determined that her son would know how to move on the floor whether, I wanted to or not. If I was in the house, she’d turn on the music and make me dance with her. Fast music, slow music, ballroom dancing or modern, it didn’t matter. She made me learn them all and not knowing anything before I got here may actually have helped me. Dancing in one sixth gravity is different than dancing on Earth. The old standby, shuffling back and forth to slow music still works pretty well, but anything fancier requires you to move softly versus dancing hard. Putting too much energy into your moves and either you or your partner may go flying. I really wasn’t that into dancing, but it made my mom happy so I did it for her and in the end I guess it wasn’t really that bad.

  Miss Gayle and Christine had explained to us earlier how this Home Coming dance was going to work. Miss Gayle had definite ideas about how the event was going to go down. Since the six of us were the closest thing to Alumni the school was going to get this evening, we were elected the guests of honor. We got to sit together at our own separate table away from our parents. The first dance was going to start out with just the six of us dancing.

  Miss Gayle commented, “Unless there are some romances going on that I don’t know about it would be good for the V-Blog if Ananyu and Adam as the V-Blog co-hosts were a couple for the first dance. Willie, why don’t you and Nina pair up, and Myra, you and Bryce pair up? Then for the next two dances each of you grab a different partner so you all get a chance to cut loose with each other. After that, you can do what you want, but I do hope I get to see you guys out on the floor after that occasionally.”

  Adam was quick to pipe up, “Miss Gayle, are you coming to watch us. I’d like a dance if you do.”

  Miss Gayle laughed and said, “Adam, I’d love to come and I’d be honored to boogie with you, but I’m afraid it’s just not in the cards.”

  Mom had just about finished fussing over me when there was a knock at the door.

  Dad glanced out the door and said with a mischievous smirk, “Bryce, I think it’s for you.”

  I went to the door and opened it in absolute shock. There was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen standing there in a gorgeous dress with her hair falling in soft curls around her face. She looked kind of familiar, but I had no idea who she was when she spoke up in a no nonsense voice and said, “Bryce, my Mom insists that she gets some pictures of me and my “date” for Home Coming. I tried to explain to her that none of us are dating but she wants a picture so as the boy next door you’re elected.”

  Mom whacked me in the arm to remind me to pick my jaw up off the floor. Holy crap, that wasn’t a strange, beautiful girl, that was just Myra. We went out and Mrs. Cherneski posed us for what seemed like a dozen different pictures. Then my mom decided to get into the act and we had to take some more pictures. I might have objected to all of the attention, but Myra smelled as good as she looked so I really didn’t mind standing there with her.

  With the pictures out of the wa
y, we headed down to the cafeteria. It was still a little early, but Mom and Dad were expecting a crowd and wanted to get a good table. The Cherneski's went down with us with Myra’s parents deciding to sit with Mom and Dad. I kept glancing over at Myra not quite believing the transformation in her. Myra had been working a lot for my mom on the vertical gardens. It was hard work and I had seen her numerous times in a pair of dirty jeans with an old shirt stained with sweat, her cheeks smudged and hands dirty from working with the plants. The girl I saw in school was clean and casually, but nicely dressed. This creature beside me this evening was something totally different than what I was used to.

  We got to the cafeteria and it had been transformed as well. Not quite the jaw dropping transformation as Myra but it sure did look different. There were bunting and banners in the school colors of blue and gray decorating the walls and ceiling. Hanging across the end of the cafeteria was a large banner announcing the 2037 NLH High School Home Coming Dance. The tables had all been moved in towards the serving area to create a dance floor. The table for the six guests of honor was clearly marked out with decorations, but all of the tables in the place had been decorated and there were real flowers on each table from my Mom’s gardens to spruce up the place. It really looked surprisingly nice. Normally Home Coming is for Alumni and the current school attendees. In this case, Christine had extended the invitation to everyone at the Habitat. Judging by the attendance at the birthday parties I was pretty sure this place was going to be packed tonight.