← Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
The Transfer Student V3 - Part 18 🛸
00:19:39
A regular bedtime series featuring our favourite Martian Red, and her brother Blue
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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 and Blue are working together When Red went into Blue's room to see what he was working on, they both sat and went over the information together. Was it possible that what Blue discovered was really true? The next morning, they talked to their mom. The transfer student, volume 3, part 18. The next morning, Red and Blue came downstairs together. Red something that had just about never happened before in the history of their family on Earth. Usually Blue came down first, looking like he'd fought with his pillow and lost. Then she'd appear 20 minutes later, already angry because he'd left some gag on her phone. Their mother looked up from the counter, looked at Red, looked at Blue, looked back at Red. Okay, she said. What happened? It wasn't really a question. Red sat down. Blue sat down. Red looked at Blue, which meant you start, and Blue looked at Red, which meant no, you start. And their mother watched this exchange with the patience of someone who had been watching it her whole life. Red Planet rising, red said finally. On Math Minds, the math forum Blue uses. Their mother waited. It's dad, blue said. Their mother didn't move, maybe didn't even blink. Red walked her through it. The notation, the charts. Blue held them up without being asked. The timing. Red Planet Rising posted six minutes before they sent the transmission. The decoded message. Well done. Their mother listened to all of it without saying anything. She had her tea in both hands, not drinking it, just holding it, perhaps a bit too tight. When Red finished, there was a long pause. He's been watching the facility, their mother said. Not a question for a while, blue said. Maybe a long while. Like we think he might have made it easier for me to get in. Another pause, longer this time. Red watched her mother's face. She'd gotten good at this, reading the expressions her mother tried not to show. Right now she looked like someone who wasn't quite as surprised as maybe she should have been. Your father, their mother said slowly, is very careful, which wasn't really an answer, but it was something. Blue opened his mouth. Don't, red said. I want it on record, he said, that I solved most of this. You work for me as a consultant. A consultant who did basically everything. Go get your backpack, Blue, their mother said, and her voice had that particular quality that ended conversations. Blue went to get his backpack. Red stayed at the table while her mother moved to the stove without saying anything. The smell of honey cake slowly filled the kitchen. Blue reappeared in the doorway 30 seconds later, backpack on, took one sniff and sat back down without anyone having to ask him. Their mother didn't say anything about that either. They ate breakfast together, the three of them, quietly, without Blue saying anything annoying, which was either a record or a sign that something had genuinely shifted. It's a good day, their mother said. The school day was fine, which felt a little strange given everything, but also kind of right. Mr. McCaskill was telling a joke about Shakespeare that Red was pretty sure she'd heard before. Charlie was explaining a new theory about something. She caught the words vending machine and statistically impossible, and we owe it to ourselves as investigators, and normally she would have leaned in and let him run with it because Charlie's theories were always at least entertaining, even when they were completely wrong. Today she just smiled and and let him talk. Kurt ate two lunches and part of Alexa's. Alexa had a new spreadsheet, so she didn't bother explaining, just held it up briefly like it was self evident, and went back to typing. Rachel read a book so thick Red couldn't see her face behind it, Everything exactly as it always was. Red looked around the cafeteria, the noise, the smell, the particular chaos of 400 kids trying to eat lunch at the same time, Charlie still talking, Kurt reaching across the table. She thawed. About 40,000 people in Sector 7 going about their day. She thought about her mother saying it was a good day. Maybe it was. Mom's office door was open when Red got home. It had never been open, not once since all of this started. Red stood in the hallway for a second, just looking at it, the ordinary room, the small lamp, the bookshelf with its carefully disguised Martian text, and then she went in. Her mother was at the desk. Blue was already there, sitting on the floor with his back against the bookshelf, which meant he'd been home for a while and had already done the thing where he positioned himself somewhere and waited to see what happened next. There's a reply, their mother said. She turned the tablet around so they could both see, just the regular screen this time. A short formal message. Careful language, nothing extra. Red. Reddit. The Scientific Oversight Council confirmed they had received the data. Independent analysis was underway. The Habitat Authority had been formally notified through official channels on record, now documented. Impossible to quietly make disappear. Sector 7 residents will be informed and given time to prepare. It didn't say everything was fixed. It didn't make any promises about what came next. It was careful and measured and said exactly what it meant without saying anything extra. Red read it twice. Is that enough? She asked. Her mother thought about it, actually thought about it, which Red appreciated more than a quick, reassuring answer would have been. It's a start, she said finally. The right people know now. That's what Yava needed. That's what I needed. She paused. 40,000 people have time now that they didn't have before. That's not nothing. Blue was quiet, which was still unusual enough that Red noticed it. What about Dr. Soren? Red asked. Do you think she's okay? I think Yava is very good at taking care of herself, their mother said. And I think she knew what she was risking when she sent that first message. She closed the tablet. I think she'd be pleased. They stood there for a second. It smells less stressed in here, blue said. Their mother looked at him. Rooms don't smell stressed. This one did, Blue said. Their mother made a nice dinner that night. She used the spices from the back of the cupboard, the special ones she bought when they just arrived that reminded her of the tastes of. Of Mars. The kitchen smelled like something Red couldn't quite name but recognized immediately. Like home. Their other home. They ate and talked about normal things. Blue complained about how easy homework was. Red mentioned a book Mr. McCaskill had assigned that was actually pretty good, which surprised her. Their mother asked about Kurt's tournament and whether Charlie had managed to keep his socks matching for a full week yet. It was nice, just straightforwardly nice. After dinner, Red was doing English at the kitchen table and Blue was pretending to do homework while actually drawing diagrams of something that definitely wasn't homework when their mother's tablet buzzed on the counter. She picked it up, read it, put it down, picked it up again. Come here, she said. They came. She turned the tablet around it was from dad. Not through any old channel, not through Math Minds, not through anything complicated. Just a regular aid communication official monitored completely above board, the kind that got logged and filed and read by whoever read these things. It said, heard the Council is active again. Good news for everyone. Hope the family is well. Blue, I hear you've been working on some interesting puzzles lately. Well done, Blue. Read it. Read it again. Well done, he said quietly. Yeah, red said. Their mother was smiling at the table in the way she did when something was both hard and good at the same time, which Red was starting to recognize as one of her most common expressions. Actually, Blue straightened up. I want it on record that I solved most of this. You work for me, red said. As a consultant. A consultant who did basically everything technical homework, Blue, their mother said. I'm just saying homework. Blue went back to his diagrams, which were definitely not homework. Red went back to her English. Their mother sat at the table with her tea. The kitchen was quiet, in a good way. Red went upstairs after she finished her reading and sat at her desk for a while without turning on her lamp. Outside, the neighborhood was doing its evening thing. A car, someone's dog, the distant sound of a kid being called in for bedtime down the street. Normal Earth sounds that she'd spent the first few months here barely noticing because she was too busy missing the sounds of home. She noticed them now. She thought about sector 7. 40,000 people going about their evening same as her, not knowing yet that somewhere on Earth a tired scientist and her two kids had spent a week doing something that might matter. They'd find out eventually. Not tonight, maybe not this week, but eventually. Someone would knock on doors and explain that things were changing and that there was time to prepare, that someone was paying attention. That was something. She thought about Dr. Soren. Wherever she was, she hoped she was okay. She thought about the message that had started everything, sent through a channel that technically shouldn't exist anymore by someone who risked a lot to send it. She hoped it had been worth it. She thought it probably had. She thought about her father somewhere inside the AID right now, monitoring a math forum, sending puzzles to his son before he'd need them, planning ahead the way he always did for things he hoped would never happen and prepared for anyway. She thought about how weird it was to miss someone and also feel like they hadn't entirely gone anywhere. She thought about her mother sleeping properly for the second night in a row. She thought about Blue, who had made 17 charts and not told anyone. Then her phone buzzed Charlie. Ok, so I know you said no new mysteries, but hear me out. Red looked at the ceiling. Then she looked at the message. Then despite everything, she laughed, actually laughed out loud, alone in her room, which startled her a little because she hadn't been expecting it. She typed back, what is it, Charlie? The reply came immediately. A photo of the school's new vending machine, a very suspicious dent in the lower left panel. Three question marks, then a fourth question mark, then a fifth because Charlie didn't really believe in restraint. Then she typed, let's talk about it tomorrow with the gang. She put the phone down on the desk, opened her physics journal and found her page. Outside, the neighborhood settled into its quiet evening sounds. The refrigerator hummed. Downstairs somewhere Blue was almost certainly not doing his homework. Everything exactly as it should be. And that is the end of this part. Good night. Sleep tight. Sa.