Chapter 6
“Hi, Hon, I’m home!” Kyle Nakimoto liked to greet his wife as if they were in a 50s television show. He said that as long as they were reliving Lost In Space, they might as well throw in Father Knows Best and the rest of those shows! Actually, his world now was a lot closer to those shows than it was when they lived on Earth. When they left behind the ultraconservative religious zealots who dragged education and everyday life back to the Dark Ages, they also left behind all those things the zealots fought against and used as their platform: drug usage, homosexuality, AIDS and similar diseases, and all the social conditions that television ignored in the 50s but broadcast 24/7 until the change. He kissed his wife and children and asked “What’s new?”
“Sister Evangeline died this morning. They say she was murdered. The cops came here to ask questions.” The children stared at their mother in awe at this last bit of information. Those people had been here! In this very house! Did that mean that they were going to go to hell for associating with heathens?
“What did they look like?” everyone asked at once. The children were curious because they were rarely out of the human sector. Kyle was curious because he still carried the television image of cops in his head, and that didn’t match what he saw of the locals every day. Were they simply huge, green people in blue uniforms?
“As near as I can tell, they just look like all the others. They were women, and had their heads covered. It never occurred to me to cover mine until after they left.”
“But what were they wearing?” her husband reiterated.
“Really, they wore the usual shapeless long robes of that shimmery stuff. They had some kind of weird flower things on their head scarves, and I’d swear they were moving, but I didn’t want to stare. Plus, of course, they’re taller than me, so I couldn’t see much until they sat on the couch. They weren’t too happy about sitting on it, either. They’re not that much bigger than us!”
“What did they want to know?”
“They already knew about the school. I’m willing to bet it isn’t going to be there much longer, if they have any say about it! But the sisters had told them all this ‘what a sweet nun she was’ nonsense.” The children tried to stifle a choke at the sound of someone calling Sr. Evangeline a ‘sweet nun.’
“You know, we discussed this before. I’m not against our children going to their school. We’re obviously going to be here forever, and they can’t just hide in this one little spot on the planet. I leave every day to go to work in their sector, and lots of them have tried to be tolerant in their own way.”
“But we wanted our children to have a Catholic education. That’s one of the reasons we left!”
“Kellianne, you remember St. John the Baptist. Are Riley and Rhiannon having anything like our school experience?”
“Um, no, not even close. I snuck up into the school one day, and they’re right. They sit at tables all day and recite Latin nonsense. They don’t even learn math or reading.”
“Then maybe this is a Godsend. Not Sr. Evangeline dying, of course. But since they might close the school anyway, we should take the children out now, sort of in a pre-emptive way. After all, there really might be legal ramifications.” Kyle kissed his wife. “I’ll take off work tomorrow morning and go with you to register them. Maybe they have classes so you can learn the language too.”
Kellianne looked like learning the new language was the last thing she was interested in, but she sighed.
“Besides,” Kyle reminded her, “I’m half Irish. We should be hanging out with green people!”
Pawny's Pen 