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Stories from the Verse
Re Verse All
Chapter 69: Beam 78
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 35
Beam removed his glasses and flopped on his back on the bed, his arm raised and crossing his forehead. He did not like the way this was going, but it was definitely going that way. Sophia lay next to him, and tickled the bridge of his nose with her finger.
“What am I going to do?” he asked.
“Something that works,” she answered.
He nodded, lying there another few seconds, then rolled to his feet. “Absolutely,” he said, and went to the computer in the living room.
He had barely gotten started when Bron called from the door. “J.D., they’ve returned.”
He paused long enough to save and sign out his work, and called, “Let them in” as he rose and started toward the door. It was the same three that had been at the meeting. That was good. Then, as if he didn’t know the answer, he asked, “What did you decide?”
The girl spoke. “We’ve agreed to become your tribe, and acknowledge you as Manner.”
He nodded. “Then we have a lot of work to do, and it will probably take a couple days to get everyone settled. Complicating it, I’m going to have to understand how your family groups work, or at least you’re going to have to understand what that means well enough to work with me. But we should start with a tour.”
He pointed around the room. “This area where my team and I live is called an apartment. There are eleven other apartments in this compound, which is not enough so we’re going to take over the compounds to either side. The apartments are roughly the same but that they are different sizes. This one comfortably houses seven people. We could fit more, but it would be crowded. It is one of the largest. The others get progressively smaller down to a size comfortable for two people. We will have enough space that we don’t have to fill them all, but we don’t want to waste it. All of them have common features, and we are going to go over those very briefly right now so you have some understanding of the place. This room,” again pointing in the immediate area, “is what we call the living room. It’s a sort of shared common room for people to relax and interact with each other. Come with me.”
He went to the kitchen. “We are going to have to teach you a lot about this room,” he said. “This is a kitchen, where you prepare and store food. As important as it is, it’s not the first priority. That way,” he pointed to the hall, and led to the bathroom.
“Every apartment has a living room, a kitchen, and at least one bathroom. This is the room in which you dispose of your body wastes and wash yourselves. The larger apartments have two. This, I think, will be the first thing we show you. Meanwhile, back out,” he followed them back into the hall, and opened the doors on the laundry, “these machines are for cleaning your clothes.
“These other rooms are what we call bedrooms, places where you will sleep. We have three different kinds of beds, the large double bed for two people, usually a married couple, single beds for individuals, and bunk beds for putting two people in one room without taking up too much space. O.K., that’s the gist, back to the living room.”
He wandered slowly behind them. He knew he was well into it now. Getting out into the living room, he sat and indicated they should do the same. They did so a bit awkwardly.
“An apartment,” he told them, “is intended to house a family unit--parents and children, brothers and sisters, some group related to each other. You live together, eat together, sleep together, pretty much make this a cooperative home where you work together to make it work. You three are going to be my section leaders. Most of the time you will deal with the people for me, each of you in charge of one third of the group, housed in one of our three compounds. Your first task is to divide those people into family apartment groups. We have thirty-five apartments, don’t have to use them all, but you’ve seen how they work. I have to go talk to the computer to get things set up so we can move people in, but you need to get people organized for the move.”
He stood. “Any questions?” They stared at each other. “Well, we’ll be here if you need us. Go put our people in order.”
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with five other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #379: Character Conundrums. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
