Kyle:

Jessica finally came back into the room. "Why didn't you come play with us?" she asked as she bounced onto the bed.

"I thought you were trying to distract her so I could work," I said offhand, paying attention to some paper I had been writing on as I thought.

"This is MY idea," Jessica pointed out. "Why wouldn't you be running distraction?"

"Cause you're better at it."

"Point." Jessica looked at the DNA tracker. "But that's still not why I played with her."

"Then why?" I asked rolling over on the bed. I was only mildly curious, but no sense in not satisfying that.

"She needed it, Tity. She misses her little kid. She needed to play with someone like she was still a mother."

"She's not the kid in the relationship Je- I mean Karen. She doesn't need to be played with," I said sitting up.

Jessica just shook her head. "First off, she's out of earshot, if you want to call me Jessica, it's okay. Second off, playtime isn't just for the kids. That's just what the kids think. You'll understand when you become a dad."

"I call you Karen to get used to it so I don't slip up when it matters. Besides your parents haven't been around for a while... how do you understand parents?" I asked. It struck me after saying that how insensitive it sounded, but it was out now.

"I- I don't know..." Jessica looked back and forth a few times, confused, like the idea of being offended didn't even occur to her. "Well... I think I'm just deep- or so crazy I come full circle and just look like it anyway." She continued. "So, I trust you came up with something, right?" I showed her my notepad.

"I did. You're right, we need to start building a profile." I started going over my notes with her. "So I figured a few things out. First off, Tommy is a homebody. You see, aside from when he's at school, I gather his mother is used to knowing where he is."

"That's not too unusual for a human child."

"Maybe not, but it gives us something to go on. You're right, he was probably lost at school. You'll remember Janet didn't seem too surprised that he got lost when she wasn't around, so he was somewhere she expected him not to be watched too closely."

"Didn't we already clarify this?"

"Stick with me," I said, gritting my teeth at Jessica derailing my train of thought. I flipped a page. "If Tommy isn't used to being without his mother then she's going to be a security to him, meaning he's probably not going to stray very far unless he thinks he knows where he's going."

"Fair guess."

"Stop interrupting," I sassed. "Now with all that in mind, I entered his mother's DNA in here as well, you see I scanned her when she was in here before you two took off." I showed Jessica the scanner. "This thing can show me where both of them went up to a year back. I isolated it to just the last two months of course." I flipped between a few sketches in my notebook of the screen of the DNA scanner.

"Oh of course," Jessica said. I gritted my teeth- okay that one she didn't even try to disguise.

I closed my eyes. "The comments don't add anything, Karen."

"No, they don't, but it's fun to see you react."

I don't know what irritated me more, what she did, or that it worked. I shook my head to stay on track. "Anyway... in the last two months, like one would suspect, everywhere Tommy goes, Janet is usually with him. Every so often not, but usually not if he goes much further than a mile or so, except, nearly every single day at the same time, each day." I pushed a part of the screen on the scanner, making it zoom in. "Check it out. These red dots represent traces of Tommy as you know, basically, they're when he touched something or something with his DNA on it touched something in this area. But there's something weird about these particular traces. They're all made eight hours apart."

"Hold up," Jessica said. "What do you mean "apart"?"

"I mean there's no trace of him in the area or leaving the area by any means for eight hours. He goes, leaves, and comes back, but he doesn't leave by means of his own feet or there would be traces where his shoes met the pavement." I showed her a few other quick sketches I made of a figure walking with an X through it and a circle with the words 'but he leaves this area' above it. "Now, I can guess he gets in a ride of some kind that keeps him from touching the ground while he travels to his destination. The ride is some kind of vehicle most likely." I showed her an image of what looked like a brick with wheels.

"Your drawing sucks by the way," she said, looking over the notes. I lowered my eyebrows at her. "What? You'll never improve without honest criticism. Anyway, what kind of vehicle?"

My brain was doing its best to switch between her quips and her honest questions- was that one supposed, to be honest? I had to pause. "Um... a floating giant moth named Jeremiah, how am I supposed to know?! Please stop interrupting! Again, anyway, I'm guessing his destination is this school you talked about. We go this vehicle stop, we might be able to get on the vehicle and go to the same school."

"And if we get to his school we can find out where he disappeared at."

"Exactly!" I said.

"Ya know, despite what people say, you really are kinda smart."

"Thanks... I think," I said. I looked around the room. "Well... no time like the present. You think it's possible to catch this vehicle now? Maybe it's a rail car that runs automatically. This device doesn't show what's in an area, just which direction we need to go in order to get there."

"They didn't have any automatic rail cars when I was here last." She noted looking up as if trying to think. "Maybe a few trolleys but kinda doubt that's what we're looking at."

"Yeah, and relying on your past experience has served us sooo well up until now," I said punching her arm. "Think we might be safe assuming that half of what you remember is going to be utterly useless to us."

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"That's not fair," Jessica replied.

"It was forty years ago Karen, this world has changed a lot since then." I paused, eyes widening as a thought occurred to me.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, nothing I guess. I was just thinking if you're lost here after forty years and these people don't advance near as fast as our people, imagine what it's gonna be like when we return home in two hundred years." Jessica's eyes widened as well. In my mind, I tried to visualize what we might see in two hundred years on Triad... I couldn't. Just random colors appeared in my head, my people changed so rapidly, especially in their technology. Allen envisioned flying cars showing up on earth soon enough- we already had about five thousand different varieties of flying personal vehicles and about two thousand different operating systems for them, some interchangeable... I was drawing a blank.

Jessica shook her head several times. "Okay, let's try not to think too much on that. Anyway, we can't just walk wherever we want. It's getting dark outside so I doubt Janet is going to let us just wander around on our own. We're younger than her own son in her eyes, remember?"

"Fair enough," I said, figuring that straight defiance and sneaking out would probably be ill-timed right now for a number of reasons. "But what do you want to do now?"

Jessica looked around. "Well Allen said he would pick us up tomorrow morning, so why don't we just wait for him and leave then?"

"In the meantime?..." I said getting up and shrugging. I waved at her.

"Hang around I guess... Janet wanted to show me this weird game, Parcheesi, I think it was called... looks like something I played a few times that they called "Game of India" when I was on earth last time."

(***)

Allen:

I pulled into the driveway of the house I had dropped Kyle and Jessica off at yesterday. The sun was just coming over the horizon and little Jaden lay asleep in the backseat. I kept thinking of the paradoxes of the existence of those two. Really, physically Kyle and my son, could easily be compared to each other. It was odd to think of my elder as a "cute little guy". And then Jessica... where would one even begin to try to understand her?

Another thought did occur to me. As I taught them a few things earlier, just how did they get along at all? What could they teach me?

I chuckled to myself and opened the door, walking over to the front door of the house. I knocked on the door. Young Tommy's house was not a bad-looking place. It was a one-story white home with a small front yard and shrubs that ran along the sidewalk. There was a walkway from the sidewalk that the kids had used earlier, but I decided I would be alright using the driveway this time rather than parking by the walk. After all, at this stage, I was a "friend of the family" wasn't I? Or at least "my kids" were.

A blond-haired woman opened the door, a huge smile beaming across her face, a young girl riding on her shoulders. The woman appeared somewhat relieved and also disappointed that I was there. She let her shoulders down at the sight of me but nodded as well. She pulled the girl off her shoulders saying "I believe this one belongs to you." She set the girl down. "Can I keep her? I don't have a girl... maybe you have another one..."

I laughed, taking Jessica by the hand. I thought about teasing and saying something like "sure why not" but-

Kyle wasn't escorted out. In fact, he came running out from behind the woman shouting, "Freedom! Let me out of here!" The woman watched him with wide eyes as he ran to the car, myself doing the same.

"I think he wants to leave..." I said, looking over at the boy. I shook my head and looked back at the woman. "Sorry I left in such a hurry earlier. You see-"

"And we should really get going now too... I don't want to miss the um... show." Kyle stuttered out. "About the... dogs that's um... on the radio."

The woman looked at him, "A dog show on the radio?" she asked.

"Yeah..." I said. It occurred to me that maybe Kyle needed some improve lessons. "The um...barking dog show. They figure out which dog has the best bark- not sure what he sees in it." Jessica turned a curious eye to Kyle as well. Kyle looked at me with pleading eyes. "I guess I'll get moving."

Back in the car, after I let the two kids in, Kyle in back and Jessica beside me, I decided to have a talk with Kyle. But he started talking before I could think. "Thank God you showed up finally!" he shouted.

"Kyle, what is wrong? Do you know how rude that was?" I snapped. I decided just now was not the time to follow up with "or how poorly executed?".

"I'm five!" Kyle shouted. "I'm too naive remember!?" The way he said this sounded almost fearful.

"Okay, maybe you don't like being babied, it's still no excuse to-" I began, but Kyle interrupted.

"Keep telling yourself it's uncalled for. We'll just have the nice lady dress YOU."

"You let her dress you?" I asked, starting to chuckle.

"I didn't have a choice... she even cut up my eggs for me... why would you cut up eggs?"

"Kid, she was mothering you. You weren't expecting it? You look five. I would do stuff like that for you too if I didn't know any better. I cut up Jaden's food all the time." Kyle looked at Jaden, still sleeping. "But I'm not Jaden," Kyle said. "I'm a hundred years old... that was embarrassing." I wanted to say something but looked at Kyle. The boy's eyes had grown to twice their normal size and the kid was starting to rock like an insane person. "I'm not five. I don't want to be five."

"I don't see what your problem is," Jessica commented.

"Of course not, you're seven. No one feels the need to ask if you need to be spoon-fed."

"Did she?" I asked.

"No... thankfully she let me eat my own food."

I still wanted to try to say something about being considerate, but I finally gave up. Honestly, I wasn't sure if this was hilarious or if I felt sympathy. Maybe both. "Ya know, that's so outside the norm, I'm gonna go ahead and say your reaction was okay. Did you learn anything?"

"I learned I don't want to be a kid anymore," Kyle said, looking out the window and staring at the house like a prisoner back at his hated cell.

Jessica shook her head. I pushed the car into gear and backed out the driveway.

As we drove out of the driveway, Jessica spoke up. "We figured out Tommy probably disappeared at school. I'm thinking during recess."

"Do you have any idea where school is for him?" I asked looking at them through the rearview mirror.

"Well..." Jessica said, trailing off and looking back at Kyle.

"Not as of yet, but we've got a plan. I've been looking at the kid's traces on my DNA thing here," Kyle said waving the device he had earlier dubbed a "DNA tracer". "It looks like he leaves this area from a designated spot every day at about the same time and leaves for about eight hours each time. I'm guessing that's when he leaves for school each day."

"Good guess," I said, nodding.

"I think the kid takes an automatic rail car of some kind. If you could take us to the place where he gets picked up, we could probably hitch a ride ourselves."

"A what?" I asked.

Kyle pointed in the direction of the rising sun. "Due east," he said enthusiastically.

I pulled out and started heading that way. "What in the world is an automatic rail car?" Kyle looked at me through the rearview mirror he seemed to just notice, just staring, a look of concern on his face. "What?"

"It's a rail car that runs automatically... what did you think I was referring to?"

I shook my head. "I suppose I guessed that," I admitted. "But that I know of, there's no such thing as an automatic rail car, on this planet anyway."

"How do you get to regular appointments?"

"We drive cars... or walk," I said.

"Those are the only choices?" Kyle asked.

"Pretty much. Can't think of anything else... I guess you can always run or take a horse."

"What in the- you mean you only have ONE method of accelerated transportation on this entire planet?"

"We have many different kinds of cars," I offered. Kyle just became quiet for a moment. I had to think of something... it was the sixties for crying out loud, we were pretty advanced! "Trains and planes if you're going cross country." That didn't get a reaction. "Um... manually operated bikes?" Yeah, they had those two hundred years ago I realized. I was out of ideas.

Kyle shook his head. "You guys are primitive."

I sighed, realizing his was a race where one person could live to be over a thousand years old, their Sir Issac Newton was probably still alive. What did I expect? Still, it was kinda insulting the way he said things. "Look... just tell me which direction you guys want to go. We'll see this rail car of yours." I said, lowering my eyebrows.

It didn't take long to get directions to the area with the "rail-car". I looked out my window at the area, seeing a street corner with a sign over it with a large yellow picture. I knew exactly what I was looking at. But just for kicks, I decided to let Kyle and Jessica out and watch them piece it together, pretending I had no idea what they were looking at.