Generations

by Francis Rosenfeld

  Sister Roberta stared him down inquisitively. Little Jimmy also didn't dye the cats green with Sarah's drinkable hair dye, break his sister's glass art, use the redhead's Erlenmeyer flasks to house fish who subsequently grew to big to be taken out, slather butter on the bottom of the micro-titration plate to experiment with the angle of the table and the coefficient of friction, or sneak into the refectory to put water filled whoopee cushions on the chairs.

  "I'm still waiting, sister," Seth commented from the other end of the interlink. Sister Roberta gave Jimmy a don't you dare move, I'll deal with you in a second look and turned to the dial board to double check the readings.

  The little gasp was very subtle but didn't escape a keenly attentive Seth. The latter instantly absolved little Jimmy of any wrongdoing and braced herself for another one of sister Roberta's accidental discoveries.

  "Well?" she asked, calm as always.

  "Oh, dear..." sister Roberta started slowly, trying to delay a succinct account of the event that had a very clear cause but no scientific explanation yet.

  "Sister, I have work to do. Jimmy, are you ok?" Jimmy eagerly gave her reassurance, happy to be off the hook.

  "Don't go anywhere, I'm coming over," Seth deflated his enthusiasm. She showed up in less time that sister Roberta needed to put together a viable justification for what happened.

  "What did you change, dear?" Seth asked.

  "I think it was this dial, it looks like I pushed the magnetic field all the way into the maximum range."

  "So you basically pulled Jimmy into hyperspace?" Seth elaborated, strangely calm. Sister Roberta didn't answer, trying to assess all the potential risks and safety violations. Seth was waiting, tense, staring intently.

  "The energy field is too small to move him more than five hundred feet, although he could have landed in the water," the puzzled sister continued her train of thought, tone deaf of the fact that she wasn't really helping her argument.

  Sarah and Jenna arrived at the scene while Roberta was still trying to put together a plausible theoretical model. Jenna quietly exchanged a few grimaces with Jimmy who was bursting with giggles but tried to keep quiet.

  "Have you seen Solomon?" Sarah asked.

  "Oh, so you think this is funny, don't you?" sister Roberta commented, offended.

  "I'm sorry, sister, I couldn't help it," Sarah apologized, still laughing, and threw a pear at Jimmy, who caught it and started munching quietly, absorbed in the drama of the moment and following it like an action movie.

  Solomon sketched a tentative meow from the top of the equalizer, then started grooming his back leg, managing to maintain his body in equilibrium in complete defiance of the laws of physics. Sister Roberta continued her internal scientific analysis.

  "I stand corrected, Jimmy couldn't have landed in the water, apparently everything on the island comes out of hyperspace on this equalizer," she said, picking up Solomon, a few conch shells, a basket of fruit and two spoons from atop the equipment.

  "Could you please turn it off, sister?" Seth asked.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, was that still on?" sister Roberta turned the dial back down.

  "Good thing that we worry about the children playing with your lab equipment," Seth continued. Sister Roberta looked down without answering, so she didn't catch the vindicated look in Jimmy's eyes, innocent whoopee cushion wielding youngster that he was.

  "Can I play with the StreamPath now?" Jimmy pushed his luck. Seth's eyes thundered, so he reconsidered.

  Chapter Three

  Of the Effects of Gamma Rays on Infinite Purple

  "Are we finally ready?" Seth asked, pushing the muslin curtains to observe the large group of people that had gathered on the shore to witness the first launch. They looked very excited, as always when sister Roberta came up with something new. The kids were more energized than the rest, giggling and shoving each other and rousing unconvincing indignation out of their parents. The latter passively corrected the offending behaviors more out of habit than actual irritation and went right back to staring at sister Novis. She was wrapped in a wet skin tight bodysuit that made her look like a giant seal and tried to fend off nervousness by stretching, bending and twisting, supposedly to warm up for the test.

  "Just a second, I need to recalibrate the range," sister Roberta said, fixated on the little dials, completely missing Seth's impatient looks out the window, at her timepiece and at the chaotic movements of the suns. "I'm not sure this is going to work, we could have used another week, you know, just to get it right", sister Roberta continued with great conviction.

  "Now you're telling me? You've been working on this for six months and ran the same simulation six hundred and seventy eight times that I know about. Do you want me to go outside and postpone the launch?" Seth asked.

  "All set!" sister Roberta shouted, as if the previous conversation never happened. Seth shrugged.

  "Everything is set. Are you ready?" she suggested gently to sister Novis.

  "As I'll ever be," the later retorted. Seth could feel the tension in her thoughts, no doubt amplified by the vivid memory of a spectrometer permanently fused to its support.

  "That's not fair!" sister Roberta protested, suddenly very sure of herself.

  "Can I play with the StreamPath now?" Jimmy's thoughts jumped on top of the pile.

  "Not now, Jimmy!" Seth's nerves bounced for a second, then she returned to the launch.

  "You're good to go, sister!"

  "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!" sister Roberta said out loud, despite the fact that there was no way for Novis or the crowd to hear her through the walls.

  The crowd watched sister Novis advance slowly into the ocean, which was a little anticlimactic considering the parallel between this fortunate endeavor and a space shuttle launch. The sister jumped forward, was suddenly pulled by a very fast stream and disappeared from sight in a matter of seconds. Roberta felt Novis's rush of adrenaline and instinctively tightened the grip on the controls as if she had to counteract the real pull of the stream, like a captain pushing a rudder against the waves.

  "Stream speed 550 mph, Reynolds number 289. Linear drag, holding. Are you ok, sister?" Sister Novis returned a very sharp "yes". The monitoring of her vital functions was registering in the upper range of normal because of the stress, certainly justifiable under the circumstances.

  "That's 100 mph faster than you said, sister!" she thought, irritated. Sister Roberta didn't answer, focused on the controls.

  "Approaching boundary, speed 560 mph. Hold steady and gently lift your left arm. I said gently!" she snapped. Sister Novis tensed but followed the directions. She swerved out of the water like a dolphin, which would have delighted the viewers if she weren't already a few hundred miles out of sight, and fell almost without sound into another stream, getting a little whiplashed from the unexpected change in speed.

  "Sister, are you trying to kill me?!" she protested.

  "Stream speed 470mph, Reynolds number 312," Roberta continued, unperturbed. "Are you happy now? You've reached the right speed!" she asked the fuming Novis. "Just keep calm, you'll be at your destination soon."

  "I can see the shore, I'm slowing down," said Novis. "100mph, 50, 12, 5, I'm out." She reached down to touch the silty bottom of the ocean, no more than two feet under her torso, crouched and got up.

  "Did you check the coordinates?" sister Roberta asked.

  "Yes, just as planned." The island was glowing in the sunset, rosy and golden and covered with palm trees. Cockatoos and monkeys were making a racket in the branches above, drowning the soft swoosh of the waves with their screeching cries.

  ***

  "Can I play with the StreamPath now?" Jimmy asked again in a tiny voice, soft as a marshmallow, hoping that the sweetness of his tone might entice Seth, Sarah, Roberta, or any one of the other sisters to give in to the request. He was so eager to try this new and exciting game and he had seen it so many times he could almost run it in his mind, every detail perfect! "Grown-ups have no sen
se of adventure!" he thought. He wanted to prove Seth wrong, he just knew he could do it as well as sister Novis, if not better!

  "No, Jimmy. I'm sorry!" Seth said, feeling kind of bad about it. "I'll ask Roberta to make some changes so you guys can play with it. Reducing the speed, for one. Have a little patience, ok?"

  Reducing the speed? What fun would that be, they already had the roller coasters, the waterfalls, the space jumps, the speed skating. Nothing was as fast as the StreamPath and he really, really wanted to be the first to try it.

  "But sister, please, just this once, just for a little bit, it is so much fun!" he pleaded.

  "Jimmy, I said no." The conversation was over and there was no appeal. Jimmy mumbled something and went outside to let his disappointment smolder on the beach. The suns were at high noon, making every spec of sand sparkle. The light glimmered on the water, so appealing that little Jimmy's gaze got lost far away into the distance in a daydream of speedy waves, glorious valiance and endless bragging rights.

  "Wanna play catch?" a familiar voice resonated behind him. Jimmy shook his head, disheartened. Jenna sat down to keep him company, she had gotten bored inside the house and was happy to see her friend.

  "What is it, Jimmy?" she asked.

  "The StreamPath, they won't let me play with it. Why can't they understand that I'm really good at it, I watched it so many times!"

  Jenna empathized, she knew how stuck-up grown-ups could be. Her mother wouldn't even let her make cupcakes, everything had to be sooo perfect!

  "It's not like you are going to be in the REAL ocean, we can always stop the program if anything goes wrong," she said. Jimmy stared deeply into her eyes, entranced by the sudden revelation.

  "You wouldn't dare!" Jenna gasped. "If anybody finds out you will be grounded for a week, no, a month, what am I saying, forever! Besides, you need a bodysuit!"

  "Sister Novis is not that tall, her suit will do!"

  "She is twice your size, you'll drown in it. Even if it did you any good, how are you going to get it?" she asked.

  "Don't you need some additional clarification about the metabolic rates of the stinging nettles? I'm sure that if you can't find Sarah, sister Novis will be happy to help you."

  "Oh, no, I'm not getting involved in this, what if something happens to you?" Jenna protested implausibly.

  "Common, Jenna, you know how good I am, they will never let me try it, what could possibly happen, I can't even sink, remember?"

  After a few more minutes of coordination the fiendish plan was outlined with all its details addressed and synchronized to the second. Jenna got her clarification on the metabolic rates of the stinging nettles and Jimmy successfully procured for himself sister Novis's body suit, a little long in the limbs but perfectly usable. To Jimmy's credit, he took into consideration the wild effects that the flopping "flippers" of extra-long sleeves and pants could have at that speed and adjusted the suit around his body with duct tape until he achieved the perfect fluid-dynamic shape required for the feat.

  "Here we go," he said, and that's the last Jenna heard from him before the swift waters pulled him in.

  Jimmy was ecstatic, what a rush this was, how cool, oh, just wait until he told his friends, whoo! The stream carried him faster and faster, and if the maps he studied while hidden in the lab served him right, heading northwest, to an island with a large zoo filled with strange animal hybrids that he heard about but had never seen.

  The suns were shining so brightly they hurt his eyes and he got this idea to flip over and see what was on the ocean floor. The stream was carrying him at almost five hundred miles per hour and flashes of purple sparked before his eyes, moving and rearranging in different patterns, like a beautiful mobile painting. He got scared at first, fearing the suns' intensity damaged his eyes, but when he calmed down he noticed that the purple patches were real, very intense and iridescent in the sunlight, glowing with a light of their own. They were everywhere, as far as he could tell, covering the bottom of the ocean in vast colonies, like indigo snow dusting the underwater landscape.

  "Jimmy, you're in so much trouble! Don't make any plans for the next month, you are grounded! Actually make that two months. And no VR privileges for six!"

  The verbal scolding rudely pulled Jimmy out of his reverie.

  "Do you have any idea where you are? Listen to your neural interlink, Jimmy, are you listening?"

  "Yes, sister."

  "What does it say?"

  "17.75°21' N, 226.61°20'E"

  "Follow the current until it drops you off. We'll pick you up in six hours. Oh, by the way, Jenna is grounded too, so you know."

  ***

  Jimmy carried out his chastisement with stoic decorum, he even offered to do Jenna's chores for her, to make up for the misfortune of the extended punishment which the little girl brought up at every opportunity. He tried very hard to stay out of trouble and never asked about the StreamPath again. (after all he had braved the real streams of the ocean, how cool was he!)

  Anyway, he started gravitating around Sarah's herbalist shop in order to keep out of sight. He liked spending time there for two reasons: she didn't go on and on about the error of his ways and all the cats were gathered there. He was done sorting the lab glassware and was looking for reasons to linger around the shop a little longer.

  "I put away the flasks, sister, what should I do next?"

  "Nothing, Jimmy, we're done. Do you want to help me record the DNA sequence of this fungus? I would like to teach you guys how to synthesize antibiotics next week."

  "It's purple," Jimmy noticed, "just like the bean plant."

  "Yes", Sarah nodded, "it is purple, but it's not like the bean plant."

  "Not immortal, you mean."

  "That's right. There is only one shimmery square foot of immortals, that's the entire population."

  "What about the purple dust in the ocean?"

  "What purple dust in the ocean?" Seth asked through the neural interlink. The sisters quit every activity and gave the conversation their undivided attention.

  "There is a ton of it, the entire ocean floor is covered in it, I thought you knew," answered Jimmy.

  "Nobody ever looked down?" Seth asked, finding it hard to believe that they've all been oblivious to such a widespread phenomenon. The sisters pondered for a while, bewildered.

  "Good job on your plausible story about the square foot, Sarah, it flies in the face of every evolutionary law ever postulated," Seth snapped at the redhead.

  "You didn't question it when there was no evidence to the contrary," Sarah protested.

  "That didn't make your theory valid, though," Seth just had to have the last word. Sarah let it go.

  "Of course they are in the ocean, that makes perfect sense, why didn't we think of it before?" she thought.

  ***

  "Make arrangements with sisters Joseph, Jesse and Benedict, we're going to explore the purple fields. Figure out the equipment with Novis and Roberta and let me know when we're ready to go," Seth ordered as she passed through Sarah's shop on her way to the meteorological station. She didn't stop or address her directly, just kept going, busy as always.

  "Heaven forbid somebody said please or thank you in this blessed group," Sarah thought to herself.

  "Please? Thank you." Seth replied from a distance.

  They started out early in the morning, each fitted with one of sister Roberta's magnetic gravity devices to help with their descent to the bottom of the ocean.

  "We are going to try and slip under the currents, I don't want us to get too far if we can help it." The light bounced off the shimmery purple floor, diffracting in a liquid whose density increased to reach the thickness of honey the closer they got to the bottom. The group advanced slowly through the dense matter which yielded and became more fluid with their passing. Sister Joseph stopped watching the randomly changing patterns and couldn't take her eyes off one of the members in the discovery party (she guessed it was Sarah), who was s
tirring up a real light show as she floated above the purple ground.

  "So help me, is that you, Sarah?" she asked.

  Sarah lifted her head and waved in acknowledgement.

  "If I didn't know any better I'd think they recognized you," sister Joseph offered, unconvinced.

  Everyone stopped to watch Sarah light up the ocean floor like a gigantic electronic display when she floated over it, a luminous carpet that reflected her every move, shadow, and propagating wave.

  Sarah swung her arm in different sequences of sharp and slow moves and the floor rendered them into similar recognizable patterns. She paused and the floor paused with her, softening its shimmering purple to the deepest indigo.

  "Do you think it's sentient?" sister Jesse asked.

  "I think it's trying to communicate with us," Seth said, stunned. "It's been waiting right under our noses for one hundred and ninety four years, how dense can we be!"

  "Not with us, haven't you noticed?" sister Joseph pointed out the obvious. "They are trying to communicate with Sarah, they must think she's one of them."