The podium is in place. The chairs are set up, filling the foyer. We haven’t put everyone in a room together like this since Father’s funeral. After dinner, they’ll all start to filter in. I review the presentation in my index for the dozenth time, cross-referencing hundreds of index entries I’ve put together over the last few months, making sure I didn’t leave out anything important. I don’t know why I get nervous in front of the little sibs. Maybe I’m afraid they’ll all see through me somehow. They all seem to think that I’m great, looking up at me with those little smiles, and I know how wrong they are.
I form a large screen on the wall behind me and put the map of the Mekong basin up there. The nursery kids are finishing up their meal in the small dining room down the hall, the one for the kids that are too small for the seats and tables in the cafeteria. Out on the commons, the first few sibs just came out of the cafeteria doors and are headed this way. The kids that are three and under are optional for this presentation. I left it up to the nannies if they thought each one could sit and pay attention for half an hour.
Little Nate comes down the hall with Nanny April holding his hand. They head for the front row. My index tells me Nate is about to turn four. He’s cute as can be, with dark curly hair and dimpled cheeks. April is cute too, but more in a girl-next-door kind of way with her blonde hair in a pixie cut and her pleasant smile. Her picture in my index shows her with longer hair. She must have changed it lately. I capture her image and update her entry with her current look.
“Hi, Noah,” Nate says once he sits down next to April.
“Hey, Nate,” I greet him. “You’re getting so big these days. What are they feeding you?”
“Spaghetti!” he declares proudly, and I see from a red stain on his shirt that he did, in fact, have that for dinner tonight.
April smiles and puts her arm around him. He snuggles into her and puts a hand on her lap that she covers with her other hand. Like most of the nannies, she seems to genuinely love the child in her care. I suspect most of the ones that didn’t already left the Institute when they realized they’d never get a chance to fulfill the set-for-life clause of their contracts by bearing a Butler child. April wasn’t one of those. My index tells me that she seemed more relieved than anything when I told her that sex with an old man was now outside of her job duties, even if it meant that her pay would go down closer to market levels for a full-time caregiver.
Emily, one of Nate’s classmates, rushes in and takes the chair next to him, followed closely by Bobby and Jimmy. Their nannies hurry in behind them. Phil and Stan pop in through the front doors, talking excitedly as they claim seats near the back. The trickle turns into a flood, and soon the room is nearly full. I feel Marc in the cafeteria waving the last of the sibs still in there out towards the Residence. In a minute or two, everyone is ready.
I take the podium.
“Welcome, everyone,” I announce, using my bots to give me some amplification. “Is everyone ready to learn about our next big operation?”
An affirmative cheer resonates through the room. I give my siblings the smile that I practiced, the one I wish I felt.
“In honor of our dear, departed Father, I need to ask: what is our mission?”
Can I pull this off? Can I capture the magic that he once had? Can I make them all feel like he once made me feel? Like we’re really going to save the world?
“Preserve life!” comes the booming reply from everyone. “End suffering! Elevate humanity!”
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I feel a giddy rush, they’re feeling it.
“Good,” I declare, my smile feeling less fake now. “You all still remember.”
“We say it every day, Noah!” shouts Nate.
“Of course you do,” I say, stepping around in front of the podium. “And you should. It’s important to remember.”
The four-year-olds all give me big smiles as I step up near them.
“Now, brothers and sisters,” I say, right to Nate and Emily. “One of the causes of suffering for millions of people is pollution. Especially pollution in rivers, since they provide water for drinking and growing food for a lot of people.”
Nate and Emily and their classmates nod seriously, all of them doing their little best to show me they know how important this stuff is. I take a step back and take in the larger crowd. So many eyes staring right at me. Trusting me. I am such a fraud.
No. I can do this. Help me, Mom.
Andrea smiles encouragingly from the back. Marc and Louise look at me expectantly. Evan gives me a look that tells me I’ve got this. He’s right. I pop the next set of images onto the screen behind me.
“Our next project focuses on one of the longest and most important rivers in the world,” I continue, reciting the script from my overlay. “It goes by many names as it flows through six different countries, such as the Lancang Jiang or the Mae Nam Kong, but we’ll refer to it as the Mekong River. This river is essential to the people of Southeast Asia as a source of power, water, and food. It collects water from an area nearly 800,000 square kilometers and moves over a quintillion liters of water every year into the South China Sea.”
That last line gets me some blank stares. Some of my sibs don’t seem to even recognize that as a number. “That’s a billion billion of those big water bottles,” I explain. That seems to get through. I cycle in the next set of pictures of river scenes and waterfalls.
“The Mekong River is home to more species of large fish than any other river on earth, and those fish are an essential part of the food supply for tens of millions of people. For many, the fish from the river provide the only protein they have access to. Other than the Amazon river, it’s the most biodiverse river on Earth, and it supports thousands of endangered species in the surrounding area.”
I pause and let pictures of frogs, lizards, fish, and birds parade through the air behind me as I step back behind the podium.
“But the pollution levels are getting deadly. Millions of people every year are getting sick or dying from pollutants in the river. Despite the best efforts of some governments and diplomats, the dumping, dam construction, and other activities upstream have continued to have a devastating effect on those downstream. Sediment flow is blocked by dams, leaving the soil downstream depleted. Rice crop yields are falling in recent years despite improved farming techniques and technologies. Without our help, the region is doomed to hunger, deforestation, and conflict.”
Pictures of black water and garbage piles along the river move into a tiled pattern across the wall behind me.
“So what will we do about it?” I ask rhetorically. “We’re sending our oldest two classes to take care of things. We’ll be installing our special water filters along the length of the river and along all the significant tributaries that will remove pollutants from the river. We’ll be providing tools to reduce pollution to the industrial sites upstream. We’ll give them scrubbers, containment systems, and other technologies that will drastically reduce the flow of toxins into the river. We’ll be working with dam operators to set up systems that will prevent and repair silt buildup. That’s where too much mud and dirt build up on the upstream part of a dam.” I pop a diagram to illustrate the concept and feel gratified by the nods I get from my brothers and sisters.
“If we’re successful, millions of lives will be saved, and tens of millions will have their health and lives improved. Together, we will—”
“Preserve Life!” flashes on the screen, and all the kids shout it out followed by the obligatory “End suffering! Elevate humanity!” which splash across the screen next.
The kids go wild cheering. I love how excited even little Nate and Emily are getting over this stuff. I release my invisible microphone and let out a sigh of relief. We’re doing this. They’re all on board. They’re supporting me and the rest of my class just like they did our Father.
We take a little break and let the smaller kids get to bed. They’d only get bored with the details in the next section. Evan is up next to tell us about the stops in Vietnam. Andrea is doing Cambodia afterwards. I’m looking forward to that. I wonder if it’ll be all pictures, or if one of her interpretive dances will be involved.