Dawn on Jefferson: Chapter Three, The Walk

just a reminder this was written with an 11 yo in mind. I hope you enjoy it and there are bits for adults that kids won't get, so keep your eyes open

Chapter One: Getting Up
Chapter Two: Where I Live
Chapter Three: The Walk

The walk to town was actually pretty boring. Especially that day. It’s not like we were really in danger, just that we were being careful. Taxitos are the real danger right now this time of year. There are bug sprays for them though and the sprays smell bad. Not too bad, but bad enough you don't want to wear it if you can help it.

When I get to school, I do straight to the pool and take a shower. I didn't like smell like bug spray when I went to class.

Even with the bug spray, it is best to still button up like we do for the walk. There is often that ONE taxito that won't take a hint with the spray. Maybe it just muscles its way through the gag reflex to try to get a bite of person. Maybe it’s the bragging rights? Can you imagine!?! A bunch of taxitos hanging out and bragging.

"I bit a cow once! Tasted terrible!"

"Oh yeah? I Bit a HUMAN!"

"Whoooooaaaa."

They'd be liars like so many kids getting together and trying to brag. But there would be that one taxito, one kid, who would go off and try what they were bragging about not realizing the others were lying. Then, well, if a taxito bites a person and sucks a person's blood, they die. Kids lie sometimes. It can do more hurt than kids often realize.

Adults lie, too, but they can cause even more hurt than kids, but it’s rarely lies that get people killed. Just hurts them really bad inside. Sometimes really bad. Sometimes they lie by telling the truth. That's the scary way to lie. However, now and again, a lie could kill.

Bragging, that's not something I like. I guess I have more reason to brag than most, but I don't. I like being one of the kids. I like dattention, but not like after that time. oh ok. We'll talk about it. After school.

Right then, I was on a walk with my Dad to school. Let's get back to that.

There is actually a creek between Dad's farm and the town. It borders the farm in the direction of town. Dad wanted to have the farm have the creek be inside the farm, but the land grant was based on geography and the surveyors, like they always do, wanted to use natural features for defining land and areas. Creek to the north. Hills to the east. River to the west. Another creek to the south.

Yep, he's right next to the river. I worried about flooding, but the place was built rather well. He had the bots build a huge berm around the central part of the farm to keep any really high waters out. He then sited the house on a rise so even if the waters even flooded up and over the berms, the house would still be fine. It almost looked like an impact crater where a meteorite crashed into Jeff from space when you fly over. It wasn’t, but it looked that way.

Actually, Earthers can look up Chicxulub Crater in Mexico. It might remind you of that. On a smaller scale.

Its far enough back it doesn't get noticed from the house. There are Jeff trees between the berm and the house and it only rises as high as the treetops, so you can't see it and it doesn't block light since its far enough from the farm structures. Walking up to the house and over the berm wasn't much fun, but the really cool part about the berm though when it snowed. We had our own sledding hill since there are no trees on it and my brother and I could have separate parties because of how big the diameter of the berm is.

We climbed down the far side of the berm using the stone stairs. Dad made them look old even though they were only a little bit younger than I was. Aesthetic reasons he said. Walking down the switchbacks five stories high wasn't bad, but going up was. Its good exercise.

Walking up and down it isn't as much fun, but we manage. Even so, the berm is a good 300 feet from the creek. The north creek, the creek in the direction of town, was named Leakey Creek - Dad thinks he's funny but I think there might be more to it - and the southern creek he calls Stinky Creek (it has a lot of wetlands...and the smell of rotting doughnuts is NOT yummy).

We built a bridge across Leakey Creek and used Earth wood. It was really expensive. Even the genetically engineered varieties cost so much. The reason we did that was because there are so few critters on Jeff that can eat Earth wood and so it will last a long time without needing a lot of treatment.

Dad would have said 'Tree-tment.' Dork.

Someday Dad might plan on replacing the wood bridge with stone, but the aesthetics and the sound: crossing the bridge was always fun. I loved the sound. The THUMP THUMP THUMP of beating feet on the wood. It was beautiful too. Dad's taste was interesting. He's a fun, serious, weird, infuriating man.

The walk through the forest beyond was fun. Listening to the twarpers is interesting. Take a bird song and mix it with harp music and you sorta have a twarper song. They'd actually not birds or even fliers. They are more like gliding frogs, if frogs had six legs, two for gliding with and four for walking. And if frogs lived on Jeff naturally. For a second I thought about telling Dad about the idea of frogs on Jeff, but think better. He might have thought about raising them for food. That doesn't sound appealing.

You have to be careful what you say: people can take words and get ideas and then run with them. Dad was often like that. It could be awesome. It could also be infuriating.

There were flying things on Jeff. However, most are not very big. Stuff like the taxito. Bugs or the local things like them. Yes, that meant the local equivalent of flowers have bugs pollinate them, but different than on Earth. There are some exceptions to the flying thing rule, but they…were not very common.

Through the forest. The JeffTrees are odd. Some looked like someone took an Earth ice plant and made it into a fractal Christmas tree. Others looked like they were wispy hair balls growing ever taller. Others looked like weeping willows with strands of hair drooping down.

The weirdest one was the sunhail though: these trees actually raised their branches upwards and outwards when the sun came up. This allowed them to get as much sunlight as possible while blocking out the other plants and trees. It also allowed them to drop their branches down to the ground at night. Jefferson, in the wrong season, could have strong winds around where Shadwell was.

All the trees, whether they were sunhails or any other, were red, yellow, pink and purple. None of the terrestrial greens.

Now imagine walking through that. It’s a strange experience for an Earther. For me, it was the norm. It was gorgeous. It was strange. But then, when you are a pre teen the world is still exciting and new.

The path was really a road. Sort of. The road was covered in cobble stones. These were taken from the local area and placed - by bot, of course! – from a point to a point. My father’s farm was at one end of this road and our town of Shadwell was at the other. The spur off to Dad’s merged with the main road, but even then it was still empty. Different spurs have go to different places and the main road goes off to the next town, a good 300 km (over 180 miles!) away. The road wasn’t busy though and we were undisturbed. Flying transport was the most common on Jeff. However, some things it was better to carry across the ground since it wastes less energy. Hence, we had a road.

In theory, the section next to Dad's was for sale, but no one has bought it. The cost is really the cost of building the infrastructure to support the farm or whatever. Dad picked his pretty far out and, in a direction, where there were few others. On purpose.

Too few people live in Shadwell and even fewer come out here.

Dad and I talked. We rarely didn’t talk. May be that was bad. Maybe that was good. It was what we did though. He promised me a tower, a place of my own on the farm. We had been arguing over when it will happen, how tall it ought to be and where it ought to be placed. I wanted it on the berm and Dad rejected that: he said it was Bard-dur, not Orathanc. I asked for outside of the berm and he rejected that. I asked for a very tall one and he's dubious but hasn't rejected it. On earth, this would have been all be a bit silly. However, after the robots did most of the work on Jeff and were not that expensive and there was lots of raw material, like wood and stone virtually for free, it wasn't tough to do. Or cost a lot.

This discussion went on for quite a while until a twarper misses its mark and smacked into me.

I screamed! Get it off! Get It Off! GET IT OFF!

I really didn't need Dad's help and I knocked the stupid thing off me as I was yelling. He actually cracked up and then stopped laughing, he took the stunned twarper and placed it on a tree. He kept his bemused the entire rest of the way to school.

He asked about Jack and if Jack would find it funny. I wish he'd not tease me about Jack. Jack whose sister is named Jill, funny parents. haha. Not as "funny" as my grandpa. I have an uncle Teddy. Jack Chakrabarti. He's cute and I used to like him, but I DEFINITELY didn't want him to see me with a twarper clinging to me in stunned terror: I might not like him anymore, but even so, word would get out. I gave Dad a dirty look.

We walked on and a bot drove by. Two drones also buzzed past. We were getting close enough to town now. If I wanted to I could have walked on my own, but we're not there yet. When I was younger, Dad and I used to make up funny stories. Faeries and goblins, trolls and more when we did the walk. It was fun. It was also what little kids do.

We waved at some of the farmer's own drones buzzing around. Sometimes they'd waggle their props at us and buzz on. We neared the Blasted Lands and cross through the gate. There's a wall all the way around. The Blasted Lands ought to have been called the Pasture, because it was all earth grass and plants. Pretty in its greenness. Jeff plants were many colors but green was not one of them.

We walked in and stopped at a coffee shop. I got a pastry. A savory one! Not sweet! Yuck! Dad got a cup of coffee. We warmed up a bit. Spring in Shadwell was cold still. And this was our ritual. We warmed up and chattered. He asked me about math. He didn't worry about my writing or my reading or other subjects, not even advanced biotech or robo command. Math. bleh. I wasn’t bad. I was even better than many of the kids. I just didn't enjoy it. He didn't let up. He never did. Everything was math. bleh.

Off we went, warmer than before and to the school. Shadwell was a small town, so all four levels for school are in the same building. Elementary, middle, high and college. Everyone from six until twenty-one. The entrance a giant arch. it says something in Latin:

NOLI CEDERE COGNOSCERE

Never cease learning.

I agreed! But! It was STILL school!