← Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
The Transfer Student V3 - Part 17 🛸
00:21:44
An ongoing bedtime story series about Martian kids on Earth
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Hello friends. Before we begin, there's a quick ad and then we'll get right to the story. It's the carefree days of summer, but we know it doesn't always feel that way for parents. You've scheduled the camps, booked the vacation, but what about all those other hours in the day Meet Next Playground, the active game system where your body controls the play. Kid safe gaming means no ads in app purchases or mature content, and no online chats or friends you don't really know. Playground comes with five experiences ready to play, add play, pass, and unlock over 50 games, many with characters your kids already know and love. They even have an the Last Airbender game centered around the Earth Rumble Tournament Practice rock bending while dinner bubbles in the crock pot to fill those long summer days with active play. Check out nextplayground.com that's nexplayground.com to learn more. Hello friends, and welcome to sleept Stories. Red, Blue, and their mother have decided that the only thing to do now is for Blue to access the facility and try to send the information to the Council on Mars. When they have finished looking at the data in the facility, they see what is really happening and know that this is their only choice. Once they send the information, they wait for something to happen, but nothing does. They eventually get up and do their regular things, but it feels weird. The Transfer Student, Volume 3, Part 17. The transmission took 4 minutes and 37 seconds. Blue had a timer running, because of course he did. When it finished, the screen just went back to normal. No confirmation, no fanfare, no little animation of a rocket flying toward Mars or whatever. Just a blinking cursor, like nothing had happened at all. That's it? Red said. That's it, Blue said. Their mother nodded slowly, still looking at the screen, and then the three of them just kind of stood there. Red wasn't sure what she had expected. Maybe a signal that it had worked. A confirmation message. Something saying that the right people had gotten it, that 40,000 people in Sector 7 were somehow already a little safer. Inside, the kitchen looked exactly the same as it always did. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car went past. Blue's empty cereal bowl from this morning was still in the sink because nobody had gotten around to washing it. Their mother started wiping down the counter, which was already clean. Blue flipped his pen around his fingers twice, then opened his homework folder, then closed it again. Red put the kettle on even though nobody had asked for tea. So now what? Blue said. Not really a question. Now we wait, their mother said. For how long? I don't know. Blue looked at Red. Red looked at Blue. This, blue said, is the worst part. M, Red agreed. The kettle started to heat. Their mother finished wiping the already clean counter and moved on to straightening things on the shelf that didn't need straightening. Red got out three mugs. Nobody said anything else for a while, but it felt different than it had for weeks, which was something at least. The rest of the afternoon was honestly kind of weird. Blue said it felt like one of those loading bars that just sits there doing nothing, which he had strong opinions about. Eventually their mother made dinner. Just regular pasta with some kind of meatless chunky sauce that Blue had a disgusting name for but didn't bother to use tonight. They ate and talked about basically nothing. Blue complained about a substitute teacher who treated him like a regular student, which obviously you know he wasn't. Red mentioned an English test coming up. Their mother asked if anyone needed anything from the store. Normal stuff, which was fine. Actually, normal was good right now. It mostly worked. Red did English homework until nine, which was harder than usual because she kept reading the same paragraph over and over and retaining approximately nothing. 15 minutes of English homework usually felt like too long. Today it felt like forever. Eventually she gave up and read her physics journal instead, which was way more interesting than English anyway and actually helped her brain slow down. Theoretical physics always help. She turned off her light at 10 and stared at the ceiling for a while, which was kind of becoming her thing lately. Around 11 she got up and went downstairs to get some water. The hallway was dark. She glanced at her mother's office door out of habit and stopped. No light. She actually stood there just looking at it for a second. Which probably sounds weird, standing in a dark hallway staring at the bottom of a door. But three weeks of that thin glow showing up every single night, the kettle going at midnight, and now just nothing. She got her water and headed back upstairs. Blue's door was dark too, except not totally. There was the glow you get from a tablet screen when someone's looking at it in the dark. Red did this all the time. Their mother had definitely noticed and definitely not mentioned it. She knocked. Yeah, blue said, which wasn't exactly come in but meant the same thing. He was cross legged on his bed, surrounded by approximately every book he owned, three granola bar wrappers and a single sock that didn't seem to belong to anything. Blue held up the tablet without saying anything. There was a new message from Red Planet rising on Math minds. Red looked at it for a second. Okay, red said, stepping over a pile of math competition printouts and dropping down onto the floor with her back against his bed. Show me. Okay, so, blue said, handing her the tablet. You know how I said Red Planet Rising was probably nothing? I said that you never thought it was nothing, right? Okay, I said it was probably something, so. He leaned over so they could both see the screen. They posted a new problem tonight, like an hour ago. Red looked at it. It looked like a regular math problem. Complicated, a bit challenging even for her, but regular. So. So look at the notation. The bracket thing. Red looked closer. The nested bracket stack that Blue had been going on about for weeks. The one Red had found in the Earth textbook and declared totally normal. Except tonight, after spending an entire afternoon staring at Martian atmospheric data with their mother, Red could see what Blue had been seeing the whole time. This wasn't an Earth math convention. Oh, red said. Yeah, that's Martian. Specifically, it's the same encryption pattern that dad showed me. You know, as a puzzle, blue said in a very specific tone of voice. Red looked at him. You made a chart, didn't you? Blue reached under approximately four four books and pulled out two sheets of paper covered in his handwriting, different colored pens, and what appeared to be a fairly detailed comparison diagram. I made several charts, he said. Of course you did. Do you want to see them or not? Red took the charts. They were honestly pretty good side by side comparisons of the notations from the math mind problems versus the Martian encryption pattern going back through every single problem Red Planet Rising had ever posted. Blue, red said slowly. How long have you been working on this? Blue suddenly became very interested in a granola bar wrapper. Blue? A while, he said. Like a few months, maybe. Red looked at the charts again, then at her brother. You knew before tonight? I suspected, blue said. There's a difference. Blue had made a lot of charts. Like a lot. Red flipped through them on the floor while Blue ate what was apparently his fourth granola bar of the evening and explained his methodology. Which took a while because Blue's methodology was always complicated and he always wanted to explain all of it. Okay, but the key thing, blue said, is this bracket here. See how it closes before the exponent instead of after? That's not how Earthmath does it. Like, ever. I checked. You checked? I checked a lot of textbooks. The one I showed you had it wrong. Yeah, I went back and looked. That footnote about the 1970s formatting convention. Totally made up. Like that convention doesn't exist anywhere else. I think whoever wrote that textbook just made an error and nobody caught it. Red looked at the chart again, then at the math minds problem on the tablet, then back at the chart. Okay, she said. So it's Martian notation. It's the specific Martian notation Dad showed me. He showed you a lot of things. Not like this. This was specific. He made me practice it. Said it was a puzzle, which, okay, dad calls everything a puzzle. But he made me do it over and over until I could read it without thinking. Blue paused, which is a weird thing to do with a puzzle. Red didn't really have an answer for that. Okay, sew together then, she said. They went through it properly, Blue translating the notation out loud while Red wrote it down in actual words. It took a while because Blue kept going back and checking his own charts, and Red kept asking him to slow down, but eventually they had said, data received. Council notified. Watch for reply. Well done. They looked at it for a while. Well done, red said. Yeah, that's a pretty dad thing to say. Super dad thing to say. Red put the pen down. Outside, a car went past, headlights crossing Blue's ceiling and disappearing. They just sat there for a bit, just looking at the words. Well done. Okay, so, Blue said finally. He taught me, like, the encryption, like on purpose. As a puzzle, he called it. But. But it wasn't really a puzzle. I mean, it was a puzzle, but also not just a puzzle. Blue picked up one of his charts and then put it down again. You know what he did before we left Mars? Like right before he gave me this tablet? Said it was for the journey, to keep me busy on the ship. I thought he just didn't want you driving everyone completely insane. Okay, first of all, I'm great on long trips, Blue. The point is, every single thing loaded on that tablet was an encryption problem. Every single one. I didn't even realize until months later. I just thought he'd found me some really interesting puzzles. He paused. He was teaching me the whole time. And. And I didn't even notice. Red thought about that. Their dad, who they basically never saw, who sent messages sometimes that didn't really say much, and who their mother got kind of quiet about whenever anyone asked when he was coming back. He'd gone and planned all this before they even left Mars. Teaching Blue something without ever saying why, just in case, way ahead of time. That's so dad, Red said. I know, right? Like incredibly, almost annoyingly. Dad. So dad, Blue agreed. They were quiet for a bit after that. Downstairs in the kitchen, they could hear the refrigerator do its annoying noise thing. He's been watching the whole time, Blue said. Like months of Math Minds problem. He's just been there. Yeah. Watching out for us. Kind of. Yeah, red said again. Like their dad was literally somewhere inside the aid right now, keeping tabs on them through a math forum, because apparently that was the only option and he just went with it. That was so completely him. Should we tell Mom? Blue asked. Red thought about the dark line under their mother's bedroom door. She likely hadn't slept in weeks. Tomorrow, she said. Let her sleep. Blue nodded. Red got up and stepped back over the math printouts. Blue, she said from the doorway. Yeah? The other sock. Where even is it? Blue looked around his room with the expression of someone who genuinely had no idea. Probably under something. Yeah, red said. Good night. Night, said Blue. Red was almost at the door when something stopped her. She didn't know what exactly. Her brain just went hang on. She went back and picked up one of Blue's charts, the one with all the Math Minds problems listed in order. Dates down the left side, notation, comparisons across the middle. What? Blue said. Hang on. She looked at the dates, then at the decoded message on the paper in her hand. Data received. Council notified. Watch for reply. Well done. Then back at the dates. Blue, when did Red Planet Rising post this problem? Like what time exactly? Blue leaned over and checked. Um, 4:52pm today. Yeah. Red looked at the transmission timer Blue had running. 4 minutes 37 seconds started at she did the math. We sent the transmission at 4:58, she said. Blue stared at her. So? So Red planet rising posted 6 minutes before we sent it. Neither of them said anything for a second. That's Blue started. Yeah. So he knew we were going to send it before we sent it. Which means he was watching the facility's systems, Red said slowly. Like watching them in real time. He knew when you got in. He probably knew the whole time we were in there pulling the data. Blue went quiet. For how long do you think he's been watching? He said. Red thought about that. The facility, the transmission systems. Blue getting in that afternoon like it was almost easy. Almost easy. Blue, she said. What if it wasn't just this afternoon? Blue looked at her. What if he's been watching that facility for a really long time? And that is the end of this part. Good night. Sleep tight. Sa.