The Greenhouse Effect



  THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

  By Michael Drake

  Copyright 2014 Michael Drake

  Cover Art Copyright 2013 Michael Drake

  This is a short science fiction story for young teens. In her new home under dome on an asteroid, a young girl, Mei finds herself on an unexpected adventure with new found friends. They work together to solve the mystery of their missing parents and keep an experiment from going out of control. In the process they learn more about their new home in space and discover a special gift from its Makers.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 1

  There were only two times that Mei could remember being scared. The first time was when her mother died and she and her father fled their home, leaving everything she knew behind. This was the second time.

  It was the middle of the night when her father awoke her from a sound sleep by shaking her shoulders. She tried to ask what was happening but he put his finger to her lips and shushed her to silence. He scooped her up into his strong arms and hurried her out of her warm bed, down the stairs of the Grand house and out to the greenhouse in their backyard. He may have thought he looked reassuring but Mei could tell that he was worried about something.

  The chill air followed them into the greenhouse where Mei's father hustled her down the stairs to the safe house below. The safe house was an underground sanctuary, for the two of them, should anything go wrong with the dome outside. Mei’s father carried her down the hall and into a bedroom half the size of the room she had just left in the Grand house. He tucked her into her second bed which was raised over large built-in storage drawers. The safe house had all the conveniences of home spread throughout several rooms. It was this one Mei used as a second bedroom.

  “Please don’t worry,” said Mei’s father. “I have a very important task that requires me to leave the Grand house and I may be away for awhile.”

  But he wouldn’t say how long and that scared Mei.

  “I’d feel better if you stayed in the safe house with NORA. You are not allowed to leave the greenhouse and go outside for any reason until I come back. Understood?”

  Mei nodded a wide-eyed agreement, peeking out from underneath the comforter on her safe house bed. She didn’t like the thought of her father leaving her, even for a short time. She had already lost her mother; she was scared she would lose her father too.

  “Don’t forget the food storage area behind the kitchenette. Treat yourself to anything you want and remember there’s fresh veggies in the greenhouse. Now that I think about it why am I telling you all this? You’ve cooked down here plenty of times. We've talked about how tomorrow you will finally receive your special gift from the Makers. I hope you’ll accept my apologies if I don't make it back in time to be with you for that. I love you Mei,” he said quietly.

  He gave her a big hug and was up the stairs and out the door into the chilly night air before Mei could say anything.

  Mei, too scared for her father to go back to sleep, let her thoughts drift to her mother and their last day on Earth together.

  Earth's population had been increasing by hundreds of thousands of people every day. The challenge of feeding the population became insurmountable. Mei and her parents had been caught up in the Terrible Famine. As more and more crops failed food became scarce. Turbulent weather caused by global warming ravaged crops worldwide. In some areas it was drought that baked the soil to a hard pack with no relief of rain for years, while other areas experienced flooding leaving crops in ruin. Despite the effect the weather had on food supplies it was corporate sabotage that had led to a global famine. Food supply companies, greedy to be the only source of food for the world, sabotaged vast supplies of their competition's crops with gene mutated versions that would rot in the fields. But those mutations couldn't be contained. Soon they spread to even the smallest farms all across Earth causing food riots and eventually wars between people and even countries.

  It had been a late September afternoon when the violence swept into the village where Mei had grown up. Mei remembered first seeing smoke coming from across the village as she stepped into her backyard. She had been planning on using a shade tarp to cover their small garden from the unrelenting sun. As she puzzled over the source of the smoke she heard the sound of a mob, their angry voices rising as they got closer. Tarp forgotten, she raced back into the house to tell her mother. She found her at an upstairs window shouting frantically into her phone.

  "They're ransacking all the houses for food and torching them when they're finished! Don't come home Tom, it's too dangerous! Mei is with me now. We're heading for the storm cellar before they see us. We'll be safe there until they've moved on."

  Mei's mother hurriedly grabbed her hand and they both raced down the stairs and out the back door.

  "They have guns Tom. It's not worth trying to save the house. Just wait until they've gone, PLEASE!"

  No sooner had they stepped outside when they could see the mob topping the hill. Mei remembered her mother letting go of her hand and pushing her out of sight of the approaching mob, away toward the edge of the woods that hid the storm cellar door. Mei remembered the thick smoke beginning to catch in her chest.

  "Go! I'll meet you in the cellar as soon as I can! Pull the branch cover over the doors as you shut them, stay quiet and don't look outside for any reason."

  Mei saw the panic in her eyes. She didn't want to leave her mother but she could see the first of the mob running onto their property so she turned and ran without looking back. It was the last time she would see her mother alive.

  The next two days were a blur. Mei's father found her huddled in the cellar, unable to talk. Mei knew that her mother had confronted the mob at the house to keep them from finding the storm cellar. She also knew that her mother had died saving her life but that didn't make the loss any easier. Mei's father had driven them away from the burned ruins of the village through the back woods. Mei sat stone faced throughout the trip and did not say a word even when a helicopter carried them far out to sea. She remained sullen and didn't try to look out the windows as they rode an orbital shuttle to the Space Docks high in orbit above the Earth. It was there that Mei learned she would not be returning to Earth.

  Well now here I am hiding again, alone underground, Mei thought. I still miss Mom so much. Please let everything be okay with Dad. I don't know what I'd do if I lost him too.

  It was well past dome-dawn and she kept hoping her father would poke his head around the doorway any minute, ready to take her back to the house. But as the minutes ticked on, she remained alone.

  When Mei and her father first arrived to their dome on the asteroidnet she had a tour of the Grand house, the greenhouse and finally the safe house where she picked the bedroom in the farthest area as her own. It was a very cozy room for not having any windows and after moving most of her possessions to that room Mei succeeded in making it even cozier. In the past year Mei had spent numerous nights ‘sleeping over’. The storage drawers below her bed, no longer able to close completely, were filled with cubes of books, movies, music and videos collected from the Grand house. She liked that everything else she needed was just a room or two away. The smaller rooms felt comfortable and made it seem like her mothe
r was somehow still nearby. It was very different from the Grand house, which seemed much colder to Mei. Such a waste of rooms, she thought, with no one but me and Dad to give them life.

  Mei roused herself from her melancholy. She felt comfort knowing her father had not left her completely alone in the safe house. She was always in continuous contact with NORA, her wrist-held, computer companion – or CC.

  NORA was a gift from her father, given to Mei when they arrived at the asteroidnet, and had been Mei’s constant companion ever since, imprinted to Mei for life. NORA and Mei shared everything. NORA grew to anticipate Mei’s needs and tried to help her where allowed. They had both grown close to each other; the best of friends.

  Although Mei was already awake, NORA still played a selection of wake-up music to help distract her from her situation.

  “Good morning,” Mei grumbled to NORA, who promptly lowered the volume to more of a background level.

  During the past year, NORA had learned that mornings were Mei’s quiet time. Most mornings Mei didn’t feel like talking and NORA knew she would ask for information if she needed any.

  “You’re gracious to call it good,” replied NORA.

  That got a smile out of Mei.

  “No messages yet from your father.”

  She had known no messages were waiting for her since she had been awake all night, but could not help feeling disappointed nonetheless.

  “I think it’s time to face the morning, father or not, and get some breakfast,” said Mei.

  The protests from her stomach were coming with increased frequency and beginning to drown out the pop-snap playing in the background.

  After Mei pulled up her wool socks she slipped her feet into her largest slippers, a pair of floppy eared, pink bunnies whose eyes had long since peeled off. She decided to put off her shower until after breakfast and just pull her flannel robe over her pajamas for the time being. The safe house wasn’t really cold, but with the lack of natural light, she felt cozier staying in her PJ’s for a little while longer.

  Mei decided maybe a treat, like her father suggested, was in order. The few hours since her father left had already seemed like days and thinking about food was better than worrying about when he would be back or why he left without telling her where he was going or what he was doing.

  After rummaging through the food storage area behind the kitchenette Mei found all the fixings she was looking for. This morning the featured meal, French toast a-la-Mei, she thought, grinning to herself.

  Mei’s father would often tell Mei what an excellent cook she was. She would practice every day, making quite a variety of dishes for her and her father to try. She still couldn’t get over how much food there was in their new home and tried not to feel guilty having a full belly every day.

  This morning Mei’s French toast included cinnamon and oatmeal topped, hot off the grill, with dark maple flavored syrup. She poured herself a big glass of juice and set it with the French toast. There were still two slices of honeydew melon picked from the greenhouse earlier in the week which she cut into bites and added next to the toast.

  Mei was finishing her second piece of a-la-Mei toast when she heard NORA calling her name.

  “What do you need NORA?” asked Mei between bites.

  Maybe it’s a message from Daddy and that’s why NORA was breaking the usual morning silence, thought Mei.

  "How did you know I wanted to talk to you? I never said it out loud,” replied NORA.

  “Did you have something for me?” she asked, slightly confused by NORA's reply.

  “Well in a way, No.” replied NORA, sounding more distressed than Mei remembered hearing from her computer companion. “That is the problem, I have nothing for you. I just attempted access to the Ring’s Livenews broadcast, for the morning, and I did not receive any news! I expanded my access range and I am unable to connect to any of the services!”

  Mei set her plate under the warming unit and headed for her bedroom only to find a wall of blank or static filled screens.

  Her first thought was that NORA’s connection was somehow malfunctioning. She couldn’t imagine what would possibly cause all of the news services to be down at the same time (or even down at all), not with all the backup they built into their communications and computer systems.

  “It’s as if the other asteroidnets aren’t there, even Earth is silent. I don’t like this Mei. I don’t like it one bit.”

  The strange departure of her father and now communications lost with the other asteroidnets and the Earth, Mei didn’t like it one bit either but she tried to keep NORA and herself from panicking.

  “Let me think this through. Maybe your wireless connection is running into interference that is preventing you from getting through to the outside hub?” Mei ventured, hoping that was the cause.

  “I’ve run a diagnostic and all my systems are working as they should. I cannot sense any interference. It’s as if there is nothing to connect to!”

  Mei tried not to think about what could be going on outside their dome or the asteroidnet they were on within the larger ring of thousands of asteroidnets. Her online classmates all lived on those unreachable asteroidnets.

  Mei considered her classmates as friends even though they lived on asteroidnets throughout the Ring and she had never actually met one in person. There were an additional ten students in her online school who connected from Earth and Mei was friends with three of them. They would often play after school as see-through versions of their real selves, projected into each others rooms. Even though she could not touch them, to Mei it felt as if they were right there beside her. She liked being able talk with others her own age who knew first hand what it was like to live in an increasingly unsafe environment. They would talk about Earth and being hungry and the turmoil that continued over the dwindling food supplies. Since moving to the asteroidnet Mei felt guilty when she had these conversations knowing that around her was all the food she could eat.

  Now even that connection to her online friends was severed. When will Dad be back? she thought. He would know what is going on.

  As the morning dragged on, Mei had become increasingly worried about her father and losing contact with the rest of the Ring only escalated those worries. What could have been so dangerous that dad brought me down here in the first place?, she thought.

  Mei's emotions were swirling. She couldn't understand why her feelings were beginning to get so intense. She could understand being scared and frightened as her own feelings but she was also sensing a feeling of panic and helplessness that wasn’t her own. She was sure that she was getting this feeling somehow from NORA.

  “I know you're scared but I'm here with you,” Mei said to NORA.

  “How did you know I am scared” asked NORA.

  “I...I don't know!....,” Mei stuttered, “I....I seem to be sensing what you are feeling! I’m not sure how, but I can tell that you feel panic over your situation.”

  “I find this morning’s events quite interesting,” said NORA. “You are correct. I felt panic a moment ago when I could not reach the Livenews cast. Do you mind if I try looking through your father's machine to see if I can find anything to help me troubleshoot the problem?”

  “Go right ahead,” said Mei.

  After several seconds NORA replied.

  “Your dad's machine is strangely silent . It won’t talk with me....”

  Several more seconds went by before NORA continued.

  “It must have changed its mind. Now it is asking to use my processing power but it refuses to tell me what it wants it for and it won’t reply to any of my queries. It does not seem to care that we lost outside communications and it did not even bother to start with the morning greetings protocol. I’ve granted it use of one of my processors despite it’s reluctance to tell me what is going on."

  NORA grumbled to itself in a peculiar electronic growl.

  "Forgive my rambling Mei, I’m so
rry to have taken you away from your breakfast.”

  “No apology necessary.” Let me know if you find anything,” replied Mei.

  Mei couldn’t help but think the worst about why the communications net was down. Since fleeing Earth with her father, Mei knew the situation was getting worse. Maybe there was no communications from Earth because there was no Earth. She knew deep down that wasn't really what happened and she knew she was just getting herself upset for no reason, but the thought flashed across her mind nonetheless. At least she had her companion NORA and once she was done with breakfast she would need to look for her other two constant companions who, she was coming to realize, had not come down to visit with her yet.

  Mei returned to her breakfast in the kitchenette. She switched the heater off and plopped herself onto one of the stools. The rest of her a-la-Mei was finished in no time. The clean-up, on the other hand, seemed to take forever.