Justin has vanished. He has woken up. He won’t be coming back for fourteen or sixteen hours.
Charlie has vanished. He has also woken up. He also won’t be coming back for a long time.
Joy is in bed, fast asleep. We had put her to sleep in Justin’s old room, but she’d woken up in the middle of the night and moved back to her room on the ship.
She is fast asleep.
It’s been a long, long first day. Suzy and I are in our son’s dream, apparently, and this is our new home. We are grandparents to a daughter who only lives in the Dream. We’ve had a funeral. We’ve had to absorb changes.
Everything is different.
“You know,” Suzy tells me. “I don’t feel tired.” She’s standing near the living room window and looks at Bonny’s Revenge, parked outside.
“Me neither.” Usually we’d be completely exhausted after so many hours. But I’m not even a little bit tired. “I think Justin created us that way. I think we don’t need to sleep.”
“Still so much to do,” she looks aside. “Tend to the garden, look at the waves - you know I love doing that.”
“Hmmm. I think that’s how he built us, too. He created us so that we’d be happy with our lives here.”
She turns away from the window and looks at me. “Well… We have all this time alone…” she takes a step towards me. “We’re not tired…”
“Oh?” She’s really close now.
She puts her arms around me. “We may have more time to ourselves in this place.”
I smile as she leans in to kiss me.
“May I watch you?” a robotic voice startles both of us. It’s Master Mind, the strange robot. He’s standing in the entrance and is looking at us. Jeez, he practically gave me a heart attack.
“I’m sorry?” Suzy straightens her shirt.
“I have never observed humans aside from the Pirate and the Little Pirate.” He means Justin and Joy. “You are not humans, but I assume you behave as you would in this ‘real world’. Is that correct?”
My mouth is hanging open. I can’t gather my thoughts enough to think how I could possibly answer him. Suzy is faster than me. “That is correct, Master Mind. And as humans, what we really like having in the ‘real world’ is privacy. So kindly go back to Bonny’s Revenge, as we would like privacy now.”
“How is it more private if I am there and not here?” asks Master Mind.
Once more, I am stumped for an answer. Suzy is not. “For one thing, here you can see us and hear us. And over there you can’t.”
“That is incorrect, Grandma Suzy, if I may call you that,” he says. “I can’t see you from over there, but I can hear you just as well.”
Suzy’s face grows red. “Well…” she begins, but apparently now she is the one at a loss for words.
“Ah, Master Mind, can you turn off your hearing?” I ask. He’s a robot, after all.
He considers this, then says, “I cannot.”
He takes a few steps in and sits on the large sofa in our living room. “I will remain here, then.”
Suzy and I look at each other. Oh, boy.
(To be continued…)
—Told by Grampa Walt