The Curran Sea

The Curran Homestead

Jamie and Mary had stayed in Ibrahim's house, to make sure that the infant twins would be taken care of. There was, to their knowledge, no longer a lactating person to feed them, but they'd brought formula, just in case.
   Alfred and Judah had carried Shawn to his house, away from the chaos that could be Isla Ibra. Jonah didn't mind lending his sort of half brother his bedroom. "As long as he leaves my computer alone."
   Jonah was a writer, and very sensitive about his work. He was also quite protective of the device that stored his stories.
   The Smith-Alver twins had settled down, once they'd been told about the hyperbaric chamber in the basement. They were shown around the living quarters--which, had they memory to know it, resembled the old house fairly closely. It was larger, yes, but the same general layout.
   It was how his parents' house had been designed.
   The twins weren't allowed upstairs, or down in the basement. The upstairs was reserved for bedrooms, and the various skill building rooms that had been added on. There was no reason to need access to it. Even Hal forbade it.
   "Privacy is prized, in this household," it said. "Sometimes, a bit too much, but I am not allowed an opinion on the matter."
   None of them could reach it, to give it a pat; not even Liam. The ceilings were quite high. That was because Hal usually had free reign of the ceiling space, zipping this way and that. It only hooked up to the arm it was attached to, now, to charge.
   This was, technically, Hal 2.5. The 2.0 version that had arrived with the Curran clan was run down to its last jot of energy, by the time they had the solar panels on the roof repaired. There was a bit of higgledy piggledy in its mainframe, when they got a charging station set up. The sea air had had an effect they hadn't anticipated, so it'd had a complete overhaul to its exterior, to withstand the salty breezes. Now, any salt that crystallized on its shell actually amplified its power utilization... before it burned away, in the process.
   "Who carved these?" Mary asked, tentatively touching her father's statue.
   "That'd be Judah," Liam said. One never knew if he told the truth, but he seemed sincere. "Your dad was big on wood. It's Judah that fiddles with stones, and... not-stones." The latter seemed to make him uncomfortable. He unconsciously touched his bracer.
   "Metal is my bag," Cora said, flexing one lean arm. "Most anything metal you see, 'sides Hal, is my work. Only reason I can't take full credit for Hal is, I was a toddler at the time. Well," she drawled, "and Edi Sub. I've done some retrofitting, but again, toddler. Too young to help build 'er. She's a beaut. Maybe Ed'll let you have a tour later." She thumbed at the lean, blue-haired scientist, looking out the bay windows.
   "Ed?" Jamie asked. "I thought he was your other dad."
   "Yeah," she said, drawing out the word. "It was all too weird, the alien pod stuff. He clings to his bachelor 'vibe', waxing the sub, like he's still jetting off into space. Like, he knows we're his kids, but he prefers if we just call him Ed, Edison, or even Hancock." She tilted closer. "Just don't call him Eddy. All the adults get mad, if you do. Some school bully or other, I dunno."
   "Duly noted," he said.
   "Say, how did Tootie do?" Liam asked. "I doubt she's still with us, but... we kinda need to know how long she lived, so the rest of us old clones have an idea how long we'll live."
   Shawn shrugged, trying to pretend he didn't miss the ol' girl. "Five years after you guys blew town."
   "Longer than Bella, but also less time in the world. Hmm..."
   The clones had a lot to think about.
   If big dogs lived to be ten years old, and she was cloned at age fourteen, and she was sixteen when she died, her clone would, cumulatively, be twenty one... but the clone, herself, only lived seven of those years. The grand Currans had died at eighty, and ninety two, respectively. Their cloned sons were sixty two, now, but printed in Ibrahim's late forties. They'd lived fifteen years, so far, in the freshest clones. Did that mean that they would live the remaining twenty to thirty, to reach their template's parents' age? Or would they live out the remainder of the maximum lifespan Ibrahim would have had? How did they even calculate that?
   The mods added six years to Bella's life; almost one and a half times the normal lifespan. Ibrahim had had more work done than Bella, but could they go as far as double their parents' ages?
   Liam crunched the numbers on his gauntlet. "Estimate a hundred and forty seven, at her progression. Not his. Doubt that'll be our cumulative goal, but if it is, subtract forty seven--"
   "Forty five," Judah corrected. "He died two years before we left..."
   "The first time, you mean." Ed was still a little bitter about that.
   "We still need to count the two years, I suppose, 'cause that's when we were all re-printed. Minus the fifteen years we've lived here..." Judah went pale." I sincerely doubt we will, any of us, live another eighty five years!"
   "How come you guys still wear those gauntlet things, if you don't have clones anymore?" Mary asked. They'd been typing on them, and she wanted to know.
   It was a handy distraction!
   The Curran clan twitched. It was Ed who showed her his, how it displayed vitals on the inside. "We tend to forget to eat, in our various scientific pursuits."
   "It's easier to make yourself stop and do self care, if you see a bunch of yellow or red numbers," Alfred chimed in. "Or both..."
   Liam grabbed his arm, looked at the numbers, and shoved him toward the kitchen. Alf just turned his bracer, looked at his numbers, and dragged him with.
   More than a few people laughed. It took their minds off of the potentially very long future ahead of them. Six heads looked down, and four moved toward the fridge.
   Hal just clucked at the lot of them. "I have tried scheduling meals, but it simply does not take." They could have sworn it sounded aggrieved.
   "Since neither of you have bracers," Aiden said, "I have to ask: are you hungry?"
   Smells wafted out of the kitchen. Alfie was microwaving leftovers, and it made their mouths water. Ed was making a salad, which was the most he ever cooked, according to Cora. They could even swear that Andrew was pulling freshly-baked bread out of the oven, though neither of them had smelled food cooking.
   They looked at each other, grinned, and joined the crowd in the spacious kitchen.
   If some of that food went into the same hidden panel that their baby brother had disappeared, not thirty minutes ago, neither saw it.
   That was the point of a secret panel, though, wasn't it?