First Flyght – Chapter 4

Bread, meat, cheese… Oh! Pickles. Yes, pickles too. I avoid the sketchily labeled ‘Burn Your Face Off’ hot sauce and reach for the mustard. Chips, olives… Is that cake I see?

I fill my arms with food from the fridge, stepping over a wandering rabbit and dumping it on the kitchen island. Frogger, my Spaniel mutt, looks up at me expectantly. Everyone’s asleep except for him and me (and the rabbit). I’m bad at sleep which makes me good for school and little else besides farming.

Farming. This farm. My home. Ugh. As stupid as it is, it’s really the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do with my life. And now that prospect is coming to a screeching halt.

My eyes fill with tears as I aggressively make a giant sandwich to drown my sorrows in. I slap mustard onto bread, sob a little, add meat and cheese, blow my nose into a napkin, slice the sandwich in half, and slide it onto a plate with a few pickles. Then I rip open the new bag of chips. Nothing like a meal at two in the morning when my world is falling apart.

What the hell am I going to do? I sit at the kitchen counter, pet the cat sitting next to me for a moment, and then dig into my meal. I have to get a job and make this money somehow, but that’s almost impossible. I have to find my brother and kill him, obviously. I’ve never hurt anything in my life, deliberately, but I feel confident I could hurt him and not regret it.

But there’s no job on Ossun that will earn me the money I need in the time allotted. Maybe if I went into a tech company in the Californikos system? I’ve heard companies on Laguna and Sonoma are always looking for women engineers.

I’m not an engineer, though. My specialty is in agriculture, hydroponics and aquaponics, and I have a degree in finance. Farming in the soil here on Ossun works really well, and as the Bread Basket to both the Brazilianos and Californikos systems, we grow a lot of produce for the Seven Worlds. But we also pioneer agriculture for other planets that don’t have the resources we do.

My jaw works up and down as the sandwich relieves the angst in my belly. Thank the gods for high metabolisms, or I’d be as big as an elephant by now.

Not that I’ve ever seen an elephant. Maybe someday I’ll make it back to Palo Alto and see one for myself.

I rip off a hunk of meat from my sandwich and feed it to Frogger who’s been waiting patiently while I evaluate my emotions. Tears fill my eyes again when I think of all the animals on the farm. I’ll miss them too. What are we going to do?

The shuffle-step of slippers gliding along the floor brings me out of my thoughts and back to the meal in front of me. I’ve rage-eaten half my sandwich already, so I move onto the pickles and chips.

“How did I know you’d be down here, fair daughter?” Dad glides his hand across the back of my shoulders and pulls my temple to his lips for a kiss. “A little midnight snack.”

“More like a two AM feast. Want some?” I push my plate of chips towards him, and he sits down, evicting the cat to the floor.

“Sure. I’ve got nothing better to do at this hour.”

We munch in silence for a little bit, just staring off into space. I’m going to wait for him to talk first. There’s not much I can say right now without guidance.

“I feel like I need to apologize again,” Dad says, and it’s not what I want to hear.

“Don’t. I don’t want apologies; I want answers.” I brush off more tears from my cheeks and sniff up before gnawing at the pickle. I take two bites before it ends up on the plate again.

Dad grabs a napkin from across the island and uses it to wipe his hands of the potato chip oil. His knobby knuckles remind me of the times he made dinner for me as a kid while Mom worked, his hands chopping vegetables or pulling potatoes from the dirt outside. His hair is graying now, and that’s really saying something about his age. Anyone here on Ossun with Japanese blood in their veins lives past a hundred years old without anti-aging regiments. Some as old as a hundred and thirty. The gray must come from the Brazilian side of his family. I say that with a mental wink because his family are ‘good people.’ We only joke about family lineage around here to poke fun at one another.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of answers. Tomu had been squeaky clean these past two years. No failed business relationships. No bailouts. I believed he had turned a corner.” Dad sighs and twists his hands. “It was so stressful on your mother, handling all the business while we waited for you to come out of school. We both agreed that his help was better than nothing. And it was much better than nothing. We saw profits grow. He was making some investments that showed promise. Mom had full confidence in him for the first time in ages.”

Dad takes his wadded up napkin and chucks it across the room. It hits a wall and then the floor, immediately pounced on by two cats.

“I cautioned Mom not to go too far, but she was happy and excited, and not stressed out for once.”

Guilt claws at my insides. I should’ve given up more sleep and taken over the finances along with my studies. I could’ve swung it. It’s not like I was dating or had any kind of social relationships that interfered with me doing more work.

“He conned us all.” Dad covers his face with his hands, and for a moment, I fear he may cry. I haven’t seen him cry since his own father died about ten years ago.

But when he pulls his hands away from his face, his lips are set and angry.

“We can’t let him get away with this, Viv. We can’t let him destroy our family, our legacy.”

His anger stokes my own anger, and the pit of rage in my belly grows. I devour the last of my sandwich.

“I want to get him and kick him in the balls.”

My dad flinches before chuckling. “Yeah, maybe that and get our money back.”

I feed a chip to Frogger, still waiting for scraps. “I don’t know how we’d do it, though. We’re now broke, losing our home, our belongings…” I glance over my shoulder at the empty space where our antique dining room table sat only a few hours ago. That, a few paintings, and my mother’s prized lacquerware are gone. They sold off the expensive stuff first to pay the fees the bank incurred. The rest will sit here until the auction. Only we’re not allowed to reside in the house much longer. We need to be out soon.

“I have an idea of what we can do. Your mother is practically catatonic and can’t make decisions, so I’ve come up with some alternatives.”

“Oh really? Do tell,” I say, turning to give him more attention.

“I’m not sure you’re going to like these ideas though. You’ve never been the… adventurous type.”

Adventurous? Is he joking? He must be.

“Hmmm, adventurous? I’m an adventurous eater, and that’s about it.”

Dad grimaces before sighing. “I know. I’m sorry that most of this will fall on your shoulders to fix.” Before I can ask him what he means, he grips my hand. “Are you up for a little field trip? It’s the main reason I came down here.”

I look him over again, and I now realize he’s dressed in jeans and an old t-shirt, not his pajamas. I’m in an oversized t-shirt leftover from my high school days and a pair of cotton pajama pants.

“I’m not really dressed for a field trip, Dad. Besides, I have cake to eat.” Across the kitchen island, the luscious chocolate cake is calling to me.

Dad gets up, circles around the island, and puts it back in the fridge.

“Come on. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Through the mudroom, into my boots, and out the back door, the main property is quiet this time of night. Farther out into the greenhouses, lights are on, and people are in the control rooms doing nightly maintenance, but around here? Not a peep. The chickens are in their coops. The cows and goats and many other farm animals we keep are in the barn. I peek into the pig pen as we pass and my pig, Stella, is snoring away. Good. No one touched the animals, it seems.

The night air is crisp but not too cold. I inhale a deep breath as Dad leads me out past the house grounds, past the barn grounds, into the woods that separates us from the rice fields. Everything for kilometers around here belongs to… or, belonged to us. When I was a kid, I tried to run away once, and I couldn’t even make it off our land. I huff a gentle laugh as I remember how Mom found me within an hour.

After a moment, I realize Dad is taking me to the family’s shrine. Like most Japanese settlers, by way of Brazil back on Earth, we never gave up our Shinto and Buddhist beliefs. Though half of our family became Catholics at some point, the family shrine is still important to many of us. I pass through the torii gate behind Dad and try not to show my impatience.

“Really, Dad? Did we come out here to pray? Because I’ve been praying all night already.”

Dad ignores my attitude and approaches the shrine. Even in the dark under the two rocky moons of Ossun, I can still see the outline of the Buddha inside. Someone has been here recently. Two fresh mikan oranges sit next to the pot of sand and ash. Dad puts his hands together, says a quick prayer, claps his hands twice, and then pauses before opening the door on the bottom of the shrine. He grabs a shovel from inside and holds it up to me.

“Come on.” He walks straight over to a spot between two trees and starts digging.

“What are you doing?” I hiss as I run up beside him. Dirt flies out of the hole, and I lean over to see what he’s unearthing.

“Your mother never wanted to worry about insurance plans. She’s just too much of an optimist to think anything bad can happen,” he says, grunting as he digs onward. “I’m the pessimist in the family, and you, my darling daughter, are the best of both of us. Always looking to the horizon, ready for the next challenge, while still looking over your shoulder and making sure no one is trying to trip you.”

His shovel hits something substantial, so he gets on his knees and pulls up a metal container.

“I feared something bad was going to happen. Call it intuition, but a month ago, I had a feeling I needed to stash something away.” He places the metal container between us. It looks like one of those long metal boxes from the safe deposit vaults at the bank. I lick my dry lips. “I’m really glad I listened to my gut.”

He flips open the box, and I gasp. Stacks of credits line the inside with some glass containers. I fall to my knees next to him.

“Dad,” I whisper, “what did you do?”

“What did I do?” He laughs, knocking the dirt off his hands. “I didn’t do anything.” He considers this for a moment. “Well, I did do something.” He pulls the credits from the box and dumps them into a paper bag that was underneath the bills. “This is eight hundred thousand credits.”

I nearly pass out from the shock of it.

“And I made it all myself.” He smiles, happy with himself for making so much money.

“Dad,” I say, a warning in my voice. “Why is it all in cash?”

My finance professors in school taught us about cash businesses, and why we should avoid doing business in cash. I can only imagine what he’s gotten himself into. He’s been a model Dad all my life, taking care of us kids, supporting Mom every day. I didn’t realize he even had a hobby besides biking, weight lifting, making hot sauces, and watching endless amounts of football.

I reach in and grab one of the glass boxes. Something inside catches the light of the moons. “Are there seeds in here?”

“Uh huh. This has been my pet project for the last eight years. I started it before you went away to school. These are my very best seeds. You can scan them with your wristlet and get all the information you need on them. But they’re yours now, Vivian. And trust me, you’re going to want them. The things I’ve found here…” He shakes his head and laughs. “I never realized those camping trips to the rainforests of Rio would be so fruitful.”

I squint at the seeds, but in the low light, I can’t make out any details.

“Between those and this money, we should be able to move forward with our plans to secure the rest of the credits we need to buy back this land.”

“What is this, Dad?” I left my wristlet next to the bed. I can’t scan these now.

He takes the money in the paper bag, shoves the metal box under his arm, and kicks the dirt back into the hole.

“This?” he says, throwing his other arm over my shoulder and guiding me back towards home, “this is Plan B.”