DOROTHY WRITES ON PAPER

This is me, Dorothy, writing on paper.  Wow.  It's kind of weird.  What to say?  I mean, write?  Ophelia said to write something silly or stupid, just to get going, so the blank page won't be so intimidating.  Well, I didn't want to do that, but who knows, maybe I just did.  Anyway, on to more important matters.

Raymond has a pet rat.  I can't believe it.  Do-gooder, obedient son Raymond, snuck a rat out of the lab room in his pocket, and he's been keeping it secret in his room for days.  Mildred was the one who caught him with it, when she was visiting and my parents were both working in Building 3.  I had been working there too, getting the robots set up with their new, anti-rat programming, but finally Mom let me go home, and when I got there Mildred was already waiting for me, and she had already found out that Raymond has smuggled a rat into his room.  She basically met me at the door to tell me so.

"Raymond has a pet rat!" she said.

"Hi, Mildred," I said.

Mildred smirked a little, her shoulders slumped, and then she said, "Hi."  But her eyes were still lit up like Building 3 at night.  Raymond was behind her, probably thinking he could somehow intercept me, or Mildred, and somehow prevent her passing on the news.  No chance.  I looked at him, and he looked away.  He seemed kind of depressed, or maybe deflated.

"So, Raymond, what's up?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said, softly.

"He's got it in a storage bin under his bed in his room," said Mildred, kind of whispering in that might-as-well-be-shouting way she has.

I normally find Raymond a little annoying, because he's always doing everything perfect and he's mom's favorite, but just then I started to feel a little sorry for him.

"Does Ruth know?" I asked.

"No," he said, "not yet.  Mildred is not very good at keeping secrets, though."

"You didn't tell me, I found it out myself!" said Mildred.  She doesn't take offense at much, but I think she prides herself on being able to keep a secret, if she was sworn to secrecy.  "You're the one who isn't good at keeping secrets."

"How'd you find out?" I asked.

"He was trying to sneak a saucer of water into his room," said Mildred.  "Probably wanted to do it before you or his parents got home, and he thought I was not watching.  It seemed weird, so I peeked through the door and caught him giving it to the rat to drink from."

"You were doing something on your tablet," said Raymond, like he was embarrassed at how easily Mildred had caught him out.  Mildred rolled her eyes.

"Amateurs," she said.  "You would never make it as an anthropologist."

"Where is Ruth now?" asked Dorothy.

"She's playing a video game, with headphones on," said Mildred.  "I told her she could turn it up loud if she wanted.  I guess your mom normally makes her keep it turned down low."

"Yeah, that should work then, she won't hear what we're saying.  But we need to get it out of here, Raymond, it won't be just Mildred who notices."

"I can't just release it," said Raymond.  "They're planning to kill them."

"Is that why you kept it?" I asked, thinking it made sense that Raymond would do something goody-goody like that, rescuing a rat.  I'm not sure what he would have said, but Mildred was too excited to let him answer.

"No, he took it before then!  He took it when we looked at them in the lab!"

"Wait, before they had even gotten out?" I asked.

"They got out while we were there," said Raymond, "and you were the one who opened the cage and then tipped it over."  I started to get annoyed at him again.

"But we put them all back, or we would have, if you hadn't smuggled one out.  How did Mildred know that, anyway?  Did she see you do it?"

"No, silly, you think I would have been able to keep quiet about that for days?" asked Mildred.

"You said you were good at keeping secrets," interrupted Raymond, but Mildred ignored him.

"He slipped up when I was quizzing him about it, and admitted that he'd had it for several days, so that's too long for it to be the second breakout, that everyone knows about."

I stopped and thought about it.

"I think this calls for the whole crew," I said.  Raymond rolled his eyes and kind of groaned.

"But then even more people will know," he said.

"True, but it's better than Ruth, or Mom, or Dad finding out," I said.  "Which they will, if it stays here."

"What do we need Eugene and Stanley for?" asked Mildred, although she didn't sound as negative about it as Raymond had.

"To run interference while we transport, so no one sees it," said Dorothy.  "Also, to help brainstorm where to put it."

So, a few minutes later, the five of us were sitting in our dining cubicle, in full-on brainstorm/planning mode.  We knew we had to get going pretty soon; Dad would probably stay at Building 3 late, but Mom might be coming home soon, and we had to get the rat out before then.

"So, anywhere but Building 3, basically," I said.

"Or here, I guess," added Raymond.

"Or Building 17," added Stanley, "it might eat the chicken eggs or spook the chickens and draw attention to itself."

"What about Building 20?" I said.  "It's got plenty of space, and a lot of shelves to hide stuff in."

"Also, lots of people visiting it, who might find stuff hidden on those shelves," said Stanley.  "They never know where the thing they're looking for is, so they look around in every back corner."

"Ok, what about one of the unused buildings?" asked Mildred.  "Nobody goes to those."

"They also don't have air or heat anymore," said Stanley, "because they're not used.  The rat would die almost immediately."

"No!" said Raymond.

"Of course not, Raymond," I said, "we're just brainstorming, calm down.  We're not trying to kill your rat, we're trying to save it.  So it needs to be a building that is used, but not too much.  What about the server farm, Building 12?"

"Lucas has cameras," said Raymond.  "He would spot us."

"Why does Lucas have cameras in the server farm?" asked Mildred.  "Who would try to break into the most boring place in the Colony?"

"We would," said Raymond, "except that Lucas has cameras.  Anyway, he doesn't think it's boring, he thinks it's the most valuable place in the Colony."

"Ok, so not there," I said.  "And all of the industrial buildings are out, for similar reasons..."

"Lucas has cameras in all of them?" asked Mildred.

"No, of course not," I said, then I thought twice about it and looked over at Raymond.

"Not that I'm aware of," he answered.

"No, but they all have people in them, to do their work," I said.  "Building 26 also has too many people living in it.  So, Building 23."

"Is it still powered?"

"Yes, Sophia and William live there, and also Lucas and Amelia.  But that's it, most of it is empty, and not used much."

"Plus, it's got the recycling rooms," said Eugene, and we all looked at him, and then got very quiet for a moment as we thought about that.

The Recycling Rooms all used to be residential, but they became the junk rooms for everything that was basically trash.  If it was organic, it got sent to Building 3 to compost; if it was metal, it got sent to Building 15 to melt down and reuse, if it was reusable as is, it got put in Building 20 on the shelves.  Stuff we didn't really know how to reuse, got put in Building 23 in the Recycling Rooms.  It was Eugene's favorite place, I think, because no one cared if he broke anything in there, since it was all already broken.

In theory, everything that was put in there was photographed and stored in the recyling database, which was a big idea of Lucas' to help us remember what we had, and figure out ways to reuse it all.  So, you could ask the server what it had that you could use to, say, patch a hole in something, and it would tell you everything in there that was the right material to use for that.  Of course, once Eugene mentioned the recycling rooms, we all had the same thought.

Was there something in there we could use for a rat cage?  Or maybe a whole series of interconnected ones?

"Don't do it," said Stanley to Mildred, who had taken out her tablet and was about to use it to search what was in the Recycling Rooms database.

"Why not?!" asked Mildred.

"It will go in the search history.  You think that won't get noticed?"

"Who would bother to look through the recycling room search history?" asked Mildred.  "Nobody, that's who.  We should look."

"I've got him in a bin already," said Raymond.

"We could get a better one, though!" said Mildred.  "I bet there's a lot of stuff in there that would work great."

"Lucas might notice, actually," said Raymond.  "He looks at the search history."

"Why would he do that?!" asked Mildred, exasperated.  She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, with a cross expression on her face.

"To see what people are needing," said Raymond, "and then see if he can find ways to make it for them, if they can't find it in the recycling rooms.  It's a public feed, for this reason.  Anybody could look, in theory."

"Stench and leakage, Lucas is such a busybody."

"Hey," said Eugene, "I've got an idea, we should use the recycling room search page to see if there's anything we could use for the rat to live in!"  I've noticed that Eugene doesn't listen all that well.

"Ok, so we're not going to use the search function, then," I said, trying to move things on, "so we'll just have to look in person.  In fact, maybe that's the right place to store the rat, once we've found the right bin to keep it in.  It will just be one more bin out of hundreds, so it won't get noticed, and it won't be suspicious for us to be going in there, as long as we always come out with something we found, and a story on why we want it in case anyone asks."

"Won't that be a lot of stories?" asked Stanley.  "We need to feed the rat every day, don't we?"

"True, but we can come up with a story that we can reuse.  How about, um, we're going to make that Rube Goldberg device we talked about making last year, but didn't because it sounded like too much work?  Now we can do it, and that will mean we have an excuse to go there every day.  Also, if we type 'spring for Rube Goldberg device' or whatever into the search engine, that won't seem weird to anybody.  Or, it will, but not suspicious weird, just ordinary 'new soil crew' weird."

Everyone thought about this idea for a little bit.  Stanley frowned, and looked worried.  Eugene looked bored.  Raymond looked thoughtful, but not worried.  I looked up at the ceiling, which is what I do when I'm thinking about a plan.

"Ok then, let's move," said Mildred.  "Not you, Raymond, you have to stay and watch Ruth.  Don't worry, we'll take good care of your rat."

So we went along the passageways, with Eugene carrying the bin and the rest of us handling conversation with (i.e. distraction of) anyone who we met along the way.  In Building 29 that was pretty easy, and going through the tunnels we didn't meet anyone, but once we got to Building 23 it was a little more awkward.  That building is mostly empty, so it's hard to fade into the background; if you run into somebody, you're the only other people there, so they're guaranteed to notice you.  The part that made me the most nervous was when we met Lucas, but Amelia was with him and they were talking about something, so he didn't seem to take much notice of us.

Once in the Recycling Rooms, which are pretty well organized but still get stuffed to the ceiling with every kind of broken...anything you can imagine, we found enough pieces to make a whole network of pipes and chambers for the rat to live in.  The trickiest part was to make sure that it wasn't obvious what was going on unless you looked closely.  People don't go to the Recycling rooms as often as we probably should, but it does happen, so hopefully our camouflage work will do the trick.  We have five separate bins, connected by pipes, so the rat should have plenty of room to move about.  One of them has a light inside it, not very bright but that's good because that means it will last longer before the power cell needs replacing, and one of them has a bunch of shredded cloth for it to bed down in.

I still can't believe that it's my brother who did it.  We might make him into a true "new soil" crewmember, yet.