Providence – Part 3
I have to take my son to daycare.
For most of you who are parents, I’ve basically just said “I have to breathe air”. You’re left staring blankly at the statement, waiting for the point.
The point is this: I have to take my son to daycare, and I am not a morning person.
My preferred bedtime is about two or three AM.
My son is a morning person. Very much a morning person. He’s a “Oh hey a single ray of sun has touched my windowpane and now I am the most awake human being on the planet mommy and daddy you need to be awake and I’m jumping on your bed now and why are you crying daddy?”
Yeah. Yeaaaaahhhhhhh.
This morning, my son slept in until almost 8:30. Yawn. Crickets.
You’re not hearing me. My son, the up at 7 AM regular as a German train, slept in until 8:30. And he wasn’t sick. He was perfectly happy. Content, even.
I got to sleep almost two full hours past what I normally get, and so you get to reap the benefits. You are the one who gets to enjoy my sons largess. This post? This post is thanks to whatever spirits or gods may be that allowed the sun to stay behind the clouds long enough for me to get a good nights sleep.
Praise be.
Providence – Part 3
Clan Inoue’s main office complex was a marvel of engineering that would have made even the most ambitious old Earth companies blush. It was a single, gravity-controlled disk roughly the size of Earth’s Moon. Atop it sat the wealth of Clan Inoue, people and ideas and goods stacked in buildings and living quarters whose architecture, colors, and spacing were a riot covering all that human ingenuity could imagine. All told, nearly ten million souls called the complex home as it orbited a nearby star which had only one other celestial body to call its own. Janet admired the beautiful curve of the multi-layer forceshell which coated the entire upper half of the habitat as she waited in line at the branch exit.
All branches worked the same within the Tube. They exited only into the gravity well of a star, and it was at a fixed position relative to the size and gravity generated by the heavenly body. Nobody knew why or how, but it always followed the same pattern, regardless of where the star was located within the galaxy. Which was why Janet dolefully sat in line, flicking her lapels and buttons as she sat with nothing interesting to occupy her. The enormous guns, complex weaving of forceshells, and the titanic, immobile juggernauts which guarded Clan Inoue’s branch exit were as imposing as ever, but she had long since lost the silent thrill which used to fill her when she saw them. Now all she saw was a few hours of tedium before she inevitably ducked out of the line and left whichever customs agent was working her case to drop their jaw in alarm at just how high her security clearance truly was.
Several hours, and one rather abrupt five minute secure coms call, later and she was zooming through the branch gate locks, free to swirl and dive and whoosh about to let loose the pent up energies of waiting. A few minutes of that as she covered the distance to the enormous complex. She shot directly towards the office building which dominated the center of the enormous complex, a series of towers interconnected until it looked like nothing so much as an enormous castle made of spires. She beamed another secure com towards the heavily guarded gate closest to the complex. It was a gate only reserved for those given clearance to run the Clan, either politically, economically, or scientifically. Clan’s didn’t really have armies, not officially at least. Not if they wished to remain signatories of the Human Enclave. Being barred from the Enclave meant being isolated from other trading partners and being targeted inside the tubes for the more polite forms of espionage which existed only there. That was why Janet’s position was off the books, and her only sign of status among the Clan the top shelf security clearance she had been granted when she had taken the offer of Mother Hinshiro the III, current Clan leader and chief spokeswoman.
Janet whistled while slightly perplexed looking guards waved through her obviously lethal cutter directly into the beating heart of Clan Inoue, cleared all the way to the top by express will of Mother Hinshiro herself. Janet swooped into the sheltered docking bay that technically wasn’t there and would therefore never be searched or otherwise troubled by security, and made her way along passages and other locations not on the official public map, or on any of the high security maps. Only six people at any one time knew about these hallways, and Janet’s strut only grew more confident as she climbed stairs and passed through dimly lit hallways. Eventually she reached her destination, peeped through the discreet viewing panel which would alert her if there were visitors, and burst through the door with arms akimbo, hands on her hips.
“Mother, I have returned, bathed in the blood of our enemies! You may begin praising me now.”
A groan met her, as her mother put the hand which wasn’t clutching her heart over her face.
“Janet Magrathia Hinshiro, could you PLEASE not do that? I can’t be Mother if I sprawl over dead from a heart-attack.”
Janet only grinned, and soon Octiva Hinshiro the III was doing the same.
With Janet, surrender was always the best option.
To be continued…
Motherfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
