by Alexie Aaron
Murphy, who was never affected by the weather, felt a deep chill.
“The other answer is that dogs just know when people need hugs, Mom. Everybody knows that,” Brian said, patting Maggie lightly on the head.
Mia’s attention wavered as she spotted Dieter coming out of the PEEPs office. He looked dejected.
“Will you, gentlemen, excuse me?” she said, easing herself off the swing. Maggie walked with her as she left the porch and walked over to the two teens. “What’s up?”
“Ted was supposed to take us to the climbing center, but he and Cid are stuck.”
“Stuck?”
“Go and look,” Dieter said.
Mia bypassed the office door, walked through the open barn door, studied the mass of machinery parts, and the two human males frantically working.
“Whoa,” was all that came to mind.
Ted looked up at his wife.
“What’s happened to the robots?” she asked.
“They’re here,” Ted said, his hands on two piles of circuit boards.
“And there,” Cid added, pointing to another pile of robot limbs.
“How long until you get this sorted?” Mia asked, watching Ted’s eyes as he calculated the minimum time in contrast to the amount of time he wanted to spend fixing this problem. She knew he would give her a number somewhere in-between. “Wait. If it’s longer then ten minutes, raise your hand.”
Both men raised their hands, and to Mia’s surprise, one of the robot hands, left intact on an arm, did too.
“Tell you what. I’ll take the boys to the climbing center.”
“What about Brian?” Ted asked. “How about Murphy watching him?”
“No, I think Brian has spent enough time with Murph for today. I’ll take Brian with us.”
“Are you sure?” Ted asked.
“I’m pregnant, not an invalid,” she said. “We’ll be gone a few hours. Will that be enough time to fix whatever this is?”
Ted and Cid gave Mia a thumbs-up. The robot gave her a so-so.
Mia was about to take the family car when she remembered she needed to put gas in it. “Guys, let’s take the PEEPs van. Just put your stuff in the back. I’m going to grab a few things to keep Brian happy while you climb.”
Mia picked up her go bag, adding a few puzzles and books to the contents.
Brian had promised to be on his best behavior, although he did push the bag of contested marbles down in his pocket where his mother couldn’t see.
Murphy walked him over to the van. “This is an opportunity for you to show your mother that you can be a responsible person.”
“I’m not even two,” Brian reminded him.
“But your brain is much older,” Murphy pointed out.
“My brain is the reason I get into trouble,” Brian admitted.
“My mouth is my problem,” Murphy commiserated. He lifted Brian into the car and watched Brian securing himself in the car seat. His little tot fingers were managing complex actions that Murphy wasn’t so sure that he as an adult could do. Mia had confided in the ghost her fears that the parents of the children, Brian would be peers with, may think that Brian was a freak. He told her to talk about it with Susan Braverman. There was no better source for figuring out the townsfolk of Big Bear Lake than Brian’s babysitter.
“You’re right,” she had said.
Murphy liked when Mia acknowledged that he was right. These days, these moments came few and far between.
Mark walked over and offered to sit beside Brian in the van.
“Nope, I already called it,” Dieter said as he squeezed his long frame in the back of the van. “You sit up there, and give Mia directions.”
Mark happily climbed in the front. He enjoyed going places when Mia was involved. Besides being impulsive and fun, she never lied to him. He could ask her anything. If she didn’t know the answer, she would say, “Google it.”
Mia was wearing what she called her mother uniform. She normally wore cargos, a tight black tee and black combat boots. Today, she was wearing Ralph-approved Capris with a loose-fitting, maternity, short-sleeved shirt. She carried a lightweight sweater just in case the center’s air conditioning was on the cooler side. Her hair was a mass of platinum braids combined into one large braid, secured behind her with a colorful ribbon. Her boots had been replaced with sensible summer sandals.
Mia caught Mark staring at her. “What’s wrong? Do I have mustard on my face?” she asked, pushing down the visor to check her face in the mirror behind it.
“No, I guess it’s just you look so different.”
“Still the same Mia, just in disguise. And fat,” she added.
"You’re supposed to be,” Dieter said from behind them. “In my village, fat is the sign of wealth.”
“I guess there are body-conscious people all over the world,” Mia said. “Tell me about the climbing center?”
“It’s called The Rock because it’s built on a large granite shelf, over one of the largest gravel deposits in northern Illinois,” Dieter began. “The building, where the big climbing walls are, is actually part of an old gravel depot. They used to load up train cars with gravel.”
“Whoa, that you’re going to have to explain,” Mia said. “I guess I assumed that trucks dumped the rock in.”
“Not there,” Mark said. The miners would dig out the loose gravel and send it to the surface. Another group of workers would dump the rock onto these moving conveyor bins. It would be taken to the building, and dumped into these large vats, and taken up either to be stored in the tall building or immediately loaded into the train cars from above.”
“I take it, there won’t be any trains today,” Mia said.
“Don’t worry. There aren’t even tracks anymore. Just the building,” Dieter said. “The tallest wall is three stories high.”
“Yikes.”
“Don’t worry, Mia. No one is allowed on that wall until they pass tests on the smaller walls and is properly harnessed. It’s like skiing, where you have to prove yourself on slower slopes before the instructors will let you try a steeper one,” Mark assured her.
“Mark’s been climbing for real,” Dieter said proudly.
“I used to go with my dad down to Starved Rock,” Mark said. “He taught me so much, but he was fun too. Not a ‘do this because I said so’ type of person. He would explain why his way may be the better choice. My dad was…” Mark’s voice wavered a moment before he continued, “He was special that way. I would give anything to have more days like that.”
“You will again,” Mia said softly.
Mark looked over at her and then down, so she wouldn’t see the tears brimming his eyes.
“Jake, run back the simulation, and put it on the workshop monitor,” Ted requested. He watched and shook his head. “Cid, look at the left arm of bot 2.”
They watched as the bot, programed to sweep the floor of the workroom area of the barn, stopped and put its hand on its trunk.
“It’s got a backache,” Murphy said. “Mia does the same thing when she’s vacuuming.”
The two scientists turned and looked at Murphy.
“Bots don’t feel any pain,” Ted said.
“We did program observational learning into the motor skills software,” Cid said, thinking. “Jake, what did we use for the aping program?”
“Mia cleaning house. Mia sweeping the kitchen. Mia vacuuming,” Jake replied.
“Why?” Cid asked.
“There was so much of it. Ted has been covertly filming Mia since her first dizzy spell,” the ghost in the computer system explained. “You wanted your bots to have more of a human feel to them. It made sense to have them ape Mia.”
Ted rubbed his face in frustration and then smiled. “The bot’s got a backache. Murphy, you called it.”
Murphy was pleased.
“You mean we took apart both bots because of your voyeurism?” Cid said, not yet decided if it was funny or frustrating.
“Guess
so. Jake, let’s take out the Mia influence, and let’s put in film of Cid doing the chores.”
“I calculate more problems with using film on Cid,” Jake, using the Marvin the Martian voice, announced.
“Show me,” Ted ordered.
Jake split the screen into four and showed Cid dancing around the kitchen, doing some kind of country line dance, vacuuming and staring at himself in the polished floor of the kitchen while posing.
Cid turned red.
“Don’t sweat it. I’m sure I’m talking nonstop.”
“That would be correct,” Jake agreed.
“In your opinion, who would be the best candidate for film integration for the bots?” Ted asked.
“I have three.”
“Best candidate,” Ted requested.
“Stephen Murphy.”
Murphy slapped his knee.
“He’s hard to see. Next,” Ted ordered.
“Ralph Mendelssohn.”
“Run film.”
Jake chose a sequence when Ralph was helping Mia tidy up the aerie.
“He does have a certain flair,” Cid observed.
“Maybe too much flair. Who is your third choice?”
“Susan Braverman.”
Jake showed a series of her in the kitchen, the nursery, and helping Mia spring clean. “Cleaning sequences not complete.”
“Well,” Ted said, looking at Cid. “I’m going to see if Susan would like to earn some money teaching our robots how to clean properly.”
“I’d like to be around when you ask her,” Cid said.
“Why?”
“I want to see her face when you tell her why you want to film her cleaning.”
Ted chuckled to himself. “I think she’ll take it in good humor. After all, she puts up with Brian’s constant questions and Murphy. The woman has the patience of a saint.”
Mia was surprised by how large the forest preserve they were driving through was. “Here I was, thinking it was either farmland or gravel pits out here.”
“Maybe it was once,” Dieter mused. “Stephen says that nature always finds a way to reclaim the land.”
“He would know. He’s been around a long time,” Mia said.
They pulled out of the preserve, and the view opened up. They were still on a higher elevation than the sporadic fields, nestled in what was mostly a rugged landscape in the valley below. The only building for miles was the converted depot, highlighted by a darkening sky.
“I take it, that’s our destination,” Mia said. “And not a moment too soon. I have to use the bathroom.”
“Me too,” Brian said.
“I know it’s a long way to come, but I think you’re going to be impressed,” Mark said.
“It looks like we’re in for some rain,” Mia said, studying the sky.
“Storms were forecast, but lately, they’ve been hit or miss,” Dieter said.
“I’m sure a place like this is prepared for bad weather,” Mia said, although she started mentally making plans of her own if the weather turned severe.
Chapter Three
The parking lot was filled. Mia dropped the teens off at the door so they wouldn’t be late for their climbing lesson appointment. She pulled into one of the last available spaces and looked at Brian in the rearview mirror. “I was wondering if we should take the stroller.”
“Mom, I’m a big boy.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about you. I was going to put my stuff in it so I wouldn’t have to lug it all the way into that building.”
Brian turned around in his seat and looked. “It is pretty far. I’ll help you push it.”
“Why thank you, kind sir,” Mia said and got out of the van.
Brian ended up in the stroller but made her promise that she would stop before they got to the doors so he could get out and walk in. Mia pushed him leisurely, taking into account that the more time outside, the less time running after him inside. She stopped to read a monument that had been carved into a large piece of polished granite and placed just to the right of the entrance to the building.
“What is it, Mom?” Brian asked.
“Evidently, in 1939, there was a disaster in the gravel pit. Several workers lost their lives. The company that owned the pit put up this memorial on their behalf.” Mia pushed the stroller down the sidewalk behind it and over to where an observation deck had been built. The wooden platform overlooked a large deep pit with a small body of water in the center. In the middle of the pond was an elevated block of granite, scraped flat on all the exposed sides. Mia craned her body and head around so that she could see that parts of the pit were dug under the very area the old railroad tracks and the depot were built upon. She backed up the stroller and moved to get a better look at the situation.
“What are you doing? The building is the other way,” Brian complained.
“I’m looking at what’s holding the building up. It appears to be a granite shelf jutting out into the pit. This must be the rock they named the climbing center after.”
“Uncle Murphy says that when you’re digging a hole and you hit a granite shelf, ‘You may as well move on and pick another spot,’” Brian said.
“I imagine this is what happened. Although, I’m sure they tried to blow a hole through it first.”
“Why?”
“Greed,” Mia said. The breeze picked up and Mia smelled rain in the air. “Let’s get inside before it rains,” she said.
Mia was greeted at the door of The Rock and helped into the building with the stroller by an energetic young man in his twenties. His nametag displayed the name Clench.
“That’s an unusual name,” Mia remarked.
“It’s a nickname. We all have them. I got mine because I won the hanging-by-one-hand record in a competition out west.”
“Mine would be Splat,” Mia said, flexing her hand.
It took Clench a moment to get Mia’s dry humor. “What brings you to The Rock today?”
“My son and his friend have a climbing lesson. Dieter and…”
“Mark. Mrs. Leighton, your son is amazing.”
“Dieter is mine,” Mia corrected. “I’m Mia Martin.”
Clench looked embarrassed.
“Don’t worry, there isn’t much family resemblance.”
“He is much taller than you,” Clench said.
Mia lifted an eyebrow and left it at that.
“Is there a viewing area?” she asked.
“Yes, let me give you a tour.”
Brian made motions to get out of the stroller.
“You may want to stay sitting down. Actually, you’ll have a better view than most,” Clench explained. “Most of the climbers are going to be above you.”
“Really?” Brian asked.
“Yes, follow me.”
Mia mouthed a thank you to Clench. He nodded in response.
They followed Clench out of the reception zone into a humungous open area. There were about a dozen walls for beginners to progress on. Each had a very alert attendant or coach manning the safety ropes. He led them through a low-ceiling bridge.
“This is where the gravel would be dumped into the train cars below us from the tipping wagons. Now, on the other side, is a very tall building. We think it stored sand or salt. It was pretty much a wreck inside when we started. It’s my understanding that, normally, the building would be made of wood or metal like the silos you see farmers use to store grain, but the owners of the mine decided to show off their materials.”
Mia and Brian couldn’t help their jaws dropping as they saw the transformation inside. The walls were not only tall but jutted out over parts so the climbers could experience the thrill of mastering an outcropping. The roof was made of a series of skylights that had moving blinds to control the sunlight and could be opened to handle the rising heat of the space.
“It’s breathtaking,” Mia said.
“Wow!” Brian added.
“Now you see why it’s cooler to be in that moving seat than
walking. This way, you don’t get a crook in your neck,” Clench explained. “There’s a ramp down this way,” he directed Mia.
Mia followed him down into the climbing area and then up to a raised annex where there was a low-walled waiting area. She could sit down and order a soft drink and snacks while they watched the climbers. “Thank you. The bathrooms?”
“Back behind the counter. There is a family bathroom between the men’s and women’s changing rooms.”
Clench left, and Mia took Brian to the bathroom. She was happy to see that he had been successful in keeping dry.
“You’re amazing,” she praised her son. “If your brother is half as easy a kid, I’m going to have a dozen more.”
“That’s not what you told Dad,” Brian said, washing his hands. “You said, if he mentioned more kids, you were going to tie his wee wee in a knot.”
Mia flushed in embarrassment. “You heard that?”
“No, Uncle Murphy told me.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed. “Murph seems to have turned into quite a gossip.”
“He likes to share.”
“Share?” Mia questioned.
“It’s what Susan says gossiping is, sharing.”
“Are you sure she didn’t say oversharing?”
“Don’t remember,” Brian said, dodging the question. “I want to go climbing.”
“When you’re old and strong enough and learn to listen to directions. Not make up your own.”
“But I can, most times, see a better way.”
“Maybe, but sometimes experience is the right way to go in order to be safe.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Well, you just earned yourself a treat,” Mia said.
Brian followed her out into the lounge area and slowed to watch a group of teenagers playing something on a coffee table. It turned out to be a board game.
“What are they playing?”
“Risk. It’s a game of world domination,” she explained. “I’ve tried to play it with your uncle Cid and Dad, but they are too good.”
“Uncle Mike and I play the car game.”
“I’m not sure… car game?”
“Life.”
“Oh, isn’t that a bit advanced?”
