Kinetics (15 page)

Sear: Verb, to burn or scorch the
surface of something with a sudden intense heat.

There was a knock on my door.

"Come in." I closed the lid on
the computer.
Ronnie opened the door and sighed, looking troubled about something, "Can
we go for a walk."

"Sure, let me get a hoodie.  What's
up?" I got up, and put the computer on the bedside table.  I went to my
closet and grabbed a sweater pulling it on over my t-shirt. 

We left the house and started to walk
down the side of the road.  He didn't say anything, but he seemed like he was
trying to start a conversation few times.

"Would you spit it out
already?" I stopped him and turned him to look at me.

"I don't know what to say
exactly." he said wringing his hands. 

We started walking again. 

"Just say whatever it is."

"Well you see I have been spending
a lot of time with Rachel lately." he said stammering like a school boy
with a crush.

"You like her.  You want to hold
her." I said in a sing song voice.

"Stop Grace.  I'm serious." he
looked at the ground.

"Sorry." I backed away.

"I have feelings for her.  Feelings
that I have never had before." he smiled but looked like he was going to
be sick.

"What?  Do you want my permission
to date her?" I was amazed that we were even discussing his love life.

"Well?"

"Ronnie, what did I tell you right
after your fight with Josh at school?" I stopped him again, but less
forceful.

"Well, I just want to know that if
we really got serious, things wouldn't get weird between us." he had the
hardest time making eye contact with me.

"I will always love you like a brother. 
Nothing can change that, no matter what.  No matter who you are in a
relationship with, things will always get weird between us.  Now." I took
a breath, "Where was I.  Oh yeah… You LOVE her." again in the sing
song voice.

"So... What does this mean?"
we started back towards the house.

"We're still friends and now I get
to mess with you because, you love her.” I chuckled pushing him.

"Thanks." He playfully shoved
me back.

Rachel waited for us right inside the
front door.  He gave her a little nod and she grinned at me.  They walked into
the kitchen arm in arm.

I shook my head.

I returned to my room and surfed the net
until I fell asleep with the laptop on my stomach.

Ronnie and Rachel spent no time getting
close.  I sat at the table during breakfast a few days later trying to keep my
food down while being subjected to their displays. 

  I left the house and walked aimlessly
towards the town.  The sunlight felt wonderful on my skin.  Sam and Ryder came
out of Sam's office and as I passed by, their words fell to a whisper.

"Morning." I tried to
interrupt their conversation. 

"Good morning Grace." Sam
smiled but returned quickly to the hushed conversation.

"Hey." Ryder nodded.  The two
of them continued down the sidewalk. 

Once they had finished, Ryder nodded
then ran to catch up with me. 

"What's up?"  I stopped and
sat down on a concrete half wall. 

"I was hoping that we could go up
to the observatory tonight." he sat down next to me.  His phone went off
but he ignored the message.

"Yeah." We still hadn’t gone
up to the top of the mountain.  We had planned to, but things came up each
night, "What were you talking to Sam about?"

"Nothing." He kept his face
expressionless.

"Hmm... Ok, I've got your
number." I also remained straight faced, "Well how about this?  I
came up with a code name." 

"Really and that would be?" He
asked relieved for the change of subject.

"What do you think about..." I
paused for effect, "Sear?"

"Sear?" the words came flatly
and it irritated me.

"What?  I like it."

"It's good, it’s to the point."
he hopped down from the wall and pulled his phone from his pocket. 

"I'll see you tonight." I
jumped down and continued towards the area where there were a few small shops
set up.

"Wait." he held out his arm
trying to stop me but he didn’t look up from his phone.

"I'll see you tonight Ryder."
I held up my hand.

~//~

The hours seemed like they would last
forever.  I must have checked the time a hundred times, sure that any second
Ryder would call canceling on me again.

He didn’t call.  He knocked on the door
just as the sun was disappearing over the horizon.  We walked to the
observatory entrance bathed in the glow of street lamps. 

"So where do you want to get
started?" we rode the elevator up, and got out onto the landing at the top
of the mountain.

"We need to clean the mirrors and
we also need to reconfigure the computers." I clapped my hands together
and looked around the room.

"I'll take the mirrors, I think
that will be the safest thing for me to do." He went into a closet and
found cleaning solution and a bag of rags.  He disappeared into the first
dome. 

I sat down at the center work station
and booted the computer.  I set my computer up on the table next to the monitor
and booted it as well.  My laptop booted ten times faster.

Everything on the main computer was the
same as the first time we had visited the observatory.  I clicked on the
settings icon.  There were two options, manual configuration and the other was
automatic configuration
using last known good configuration
.  I didn't
click on either, the telescopes would start moving and I didn't want to get
Ryder hurt.

I joined Ryder outside in the first dome,
"How goes it in here?"

"Luckily the filth on the mirrors
is coming off very easily." he wiped sweat off his brow.  I had no idea
how he could be sweating, it was like less than fifty degrees in the dome.

I grabbed an extra rag from the stack
that he had sitting on the ground next to the door.  I put some of the cleaning
solution on it and then went to the next mirror. 

"You don't need to do that, go on
inside and turn on the heat." he smiled.  He got really close to me, and
looked over my shoulder at the mirror that I had started on.  The hairs of the
back of my neck stood on end.

He snatched the rag out of my hand,
"If you insist." I slipped underneath his arm and walked back into
the control room. 

I found the thermostat and turned the
heat to seventy.  Almost immediately, I could smell burning dust from all of
the vents.  I had a flash back to high school when they would fire up the
heaters the first cold day of the year.

I returned to the computers and started
to boot the rest.  I went to my laptop and searched for things that were cool
to look at in the night sky.  I found a few suggestions and bookmarked the
sites in the browser.  Each one had detailed instructions on locating the
anomalies. 

"All done." Ryder rejoined me
in the control room after replacing the cleaning supplies in the closet.

"Well let's see how this
works." I clicked on configure
using last known good settings
.  I
hoped that when the hard drives lost their data they didn’t lose the
configuration files. 

The computer started to work on its
own.  The first monitor showed two windows.  One flickered on and a live camera
feed from inside the dome appeared.  The telescope started to move around in
all directions.  A timer flashed on the main screen
2:00:00.

"We've got two hours until it's
finished with the configuration."  I swiveled in my chair to look at Ryder
who was leaning on a nearby wall.

"Well this is the perfect time for
us to talk." he walked out of the room.  When he returned he had two glass
soda bottles in one hand and a folder in his other hand.

"What's that?" I didn’t care
about the drinks, the folder worried me.

"It's something that is very
important." he handed me one of the bottles, and pulled up a chair.  I
opened it and took a sip.

He took a deep breath. 

"What is it?" I asked again,
he was getting very serious.

"I have spent some time with Sam
the past couple of days and we have been looking into Joseph Madison."

"Really? What did you find?" I
was suddenly very excited.

"Well he and his wife died two
years ago." he paused.

"You told me that." I leaned
back into my chair.

"I did, but I didn't tell you how. 
Until now we never needed to know why.  We found the police, and coroner's
reports, and the deaths are interesting to say the least."

"Interesting how?"

"Well, there was no cause of death,
and they died at the exact same moment.  The police were positive that it was a
murder, but without a cause of death, and zero evidence at the scene of the
crime, a hotel in Las Vegas, which I found weird, they had to drop the
case."

"So what do you think?"

"I think that they were killed by a
mod or nat."

"What else did you find out?"
I really wanted to know if I was his daughter or not and it felt like he was
stringing me along.

"Joseph Madison had two children,
Grace Madison and Isabel Madison.  We have already worked up your DNA, and
compared it to his.  You are his daughter."

I felt a tear in my eye, but I pushed it
back, "Where is Isabel?"

"I haven't been able to locate
her.  I did find this." he held up the folder, "this is Joseph's last
will and testament."

I took it from him, and opened it.  I
skimmed over most of it until I saw my name.

And to my daughter, Grace Madison, in
order to repay her for having abandoned her at such a young age, I leave her
every one of my worldly possessions, and any and all funds that may remain that
she may use it to have a better life .  I know that it cannot begin to repair
the damage that I may have caused in her life, but I would hope that she could
find it in her heart to forgive me and her mother for our actions.  We only
wished for her to have a life free of ridicule and shame.  The only thing that
I wish of her is that she should locate her sister, and try to create a
meaningful relationship with her.  We would like both of you to know that we
love you and will always be with you.

Tears had weld up in my eyes now, to
know a piece of my past, that I had family, was a great feeling.  Ryder had
moved beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. 

"I looked up some history, if you
want to know."

"Umm... sure." I wasn’t really
sure what he meant by history.

"Joseph owned a huge technology
company called AdvaGen Technologies, several factories across the world, the
whole nine yards.  He had this observatory constructed as a hobby for his wife. 
When his company was denied a government contract due to a technicality, he had
to put it all up for sale.  The observatory first and then the company."
he looked at the ground.

"Aurora purchased the company and
all of your father's brilliant designs.”

"So you are telling me that the
technology that they use was created by my father?" I could feel my face
turning red from anger.

"Things like vehicles.  Yes."

"What about the devices that they
used to give us these abilities?” I set my hands ablaze.

"I don't know." He shrugged
and gave me a little space.

"What about the other girl?  The
one that I saw back at the school.  Isn't she technically the real me
now?"  I changed the subject.

"She is the real Grace Ward
according to the government, but you are the real Grace Madison.  By making you
go by Ward, Joseph was doing you a big favor. When it came to your abduction,
Aurora replaced Grace Ward."

"I want to go to the house, see if
I can figure anything else out."

"Sure.  We may have to break
in."

"It's my house; I think that we
will get away with it."

I turned back to the main computer, the
configuration was finished, and all of the telescopes but two were working. 
All of the monitors were showing a panoramic, very up-close view of the moon. 
It was beautiful.

"It's wonderful."

"I think that I just found my new favorite
place." I grinned.

Given that we got home so late I was
surprised that I was up out of bed bright and early.  I was eager to check out
my father's old house.  I was primed and ready to learn as much about my past
as I could.