(From part of Chpater 2)
Deni sat quietly in the Dome of Eden. She had Maxi with her. A way off to the far end of the dome, Tini was working away at a new stretch of garden. Deni had made a dolls house out of broken bits of pottery and had decorated it with some flowers and vegetables. Maxi tried to help, but she was not as artistic as her human companion.
“There you are,” said Freddie as she approached.
Deni pretended she had not heard her, but Freddie came around in front of her and knelt down in the grass. Deni was a small girl, slender, fragile to look at, but surprisingly quick and agile once she got up a run. In the gym, she was the first one to learn to do a quad jump off a platform and land squarely on her feet in the soft sand. Watching her perform those tricks had been special, that is when everything was comparatively normal.
The gym had been a source of constant amusement for the children when they were younger. It had even been a place where the other colonies had been invited annually for the Olympus Games. Hundreds of children from age four to seventeen competed against each other in events such as Flyjump, Skydance, Loop-through and other aerial and ground events. Favorite amongst the spectators had always been the Skydance and Deni held the record for the most trophies in that category.
The skydance itself was an incredible spectacle, sometimes dangerous, but always beautiful. With special aero-dynamic, tight fitting clothing and stretched webbing between the legs, arms and waist, with their bodies spread wide, the competitors were able to glide like a sugar glider from a fifty meter high platform and perform various exotic maneuvers on the way to the ground in free-fall. The only thing to break their fall was the soft sand, together with the membranes between their limbs. Timed right, a competitor could fly down, summersault a few times, spin around, arch, twist and still land on their feet. On Earth, this would have resulted in injury or even death, but on Mars, the low gravity made these and many other feats possible.
Few of the children were brave enough to try it so young. Deni was the youngest ever to perform it first at age five. It was the first year she won the event and each year for three subsequent years, she beat children much older than her.
But this unassuming, quiet little girl, who usually always kept to herself, preferring the company of robots to others her age, carried with her deep emotional scars. She felt things, perhaps more than she should, certainly more than the others. She was sensitive to the point of being ridiculous at times. So it was not so unusual that she took the news of the disappearance and possible death of their parents especially hard. Over the coming days and weeks she rarely came inside, except to eat and sleep. She was up very early each day, playing or working in the garden dome. Sometimes, on rare occasions, she was spotted on her own in the gym, skydancing as if she were a bird and she had real wings. The way she so effortlessly did it was breathtaking and seeing her diver from such a great height, if you didn’t know any better, you might have believed she was a bird.
“How are you today Maxi?” Freddie turned her attention to the little robot which measured slightly smaller than Deni herself.
“I’m ok. The sun is shining. The animals are, well, they smell. Hehehe.”
Freddie smiled. Even though Maxi was every bit the robot, she had an infectious personality. Her cute voice and manner always managed to bring smiles and sometimes chuckles from the others. She was bright eyed, carefree, lively and intelligent. Aside from her many skills, she was the perfect companion for Deni and the two of them went everywhere together. Apart from Maxi, Deni also spent many hours petting the miniature goats and lambs in the animal dome. Maxi would help her feed and clean and care for the small animals, whilst the bigger children took care of the larger stock. It was the perfect world for a child struggling to fit in.
“And what about Deni? How is she today.”
Freddie and Maxi waited for a response. Deni turned slightly and then shrugged her shoulders. Freddie was trying hard to not let her frustrations show. She needed to get through to Deni. She was worried about her, naturally, but she was treading a fine line between being overbearing and loving.
“I don’t think Deni wants to say, Miss,” came the reply from Maxi. “She just wants to be left alone.”
Freddie gave an unintended sigh and her brow furrowed slightly. Maxi saw it and interpreted correctly her frustration.
“Don’t worry Miss. Deni will be ok. Maxi and Tini will take good care. You will see. We always take good care of our Deni. Don’t we Tini?”
A series of whistles was heard from the other end of the gardens and Tini stopped what he was doing for a moment and waved an arm. Then he continued working away. Tini was not like Maxi. He was a worker robot, small, robust, strong and designed to work long and hard. He communicated through Maxi, his surrogate robot. All worker droids had surrogates. They were connected wirelessly to them. Whatever one did, the other knew about it, whatever one felt, the other felt too. Not that robot feelings were like human feelings, but to a degree not so dissimilar. Worker droids by design had an agreeable nature and Tini was especially lively, though the only one apart from Maxi who understood him at all was Deni.
Finally, Deni turned and briefly met Freddie’s gaze. She gave a weak, but welcome half smile in an obvious effort to put Freddie at ease. It was also possible she just wanted to be left to her thoughts and was just appeasing her. Still, reasoned Freddie, it’s better than no response at all.
