To Evan: We need to figure out how he managed to get a new implant. Even with all the research equipment he stole, he’d need help to do the installation. No way he could have done it on himself. There’s a pretty short list of people that could have pulled that off. I bet Louise could name them all off the top of her head.
From Evan: We’ll have time for that later. Just get your grandparents settled for tonight. They need your attention more than Jeff does right now.
“Nice place you got here, Noah,” Gramps declares as he steps through the gate and onto the grass of the commons.
“Thanks. It took me a while to feel that way, but now I think so too.”
“Well, we’ll just be here for a few days,” Grammy says. “We don’t want to be a bother.”
“Please, you’re not a bother,” I reassure her. “Besides, until we get Jeff handled, I need to know that you’re safe. There’s nowhere else but here that I can make sure of that right now.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Grammy says. From her vitals I can tell that she’s very uncomfortable. I hope I can make her feel at home enough that she’ll agree to stay, at least until we can hunt down Jeff and stop the illuminati and anyone else who might try to use them to get to me.
So I guess forever.
I show them around the Residence, and offer them one of the empty rooms on the same hallway where I live. They seem happy enough with it. Over in the cafeteria, Gramps takes special interest in the kitchen. My index entry for him reminds me that he ran a restaurant for most of his life. I suspect that I wouldn’t be able to keep him from getting involved in our food service even if I wanted to.
“If we’re going to be here for a while, you think I could get a barbecue pit installed?” he asks. “I’ve been using one of those little smoker boxes since you moved us, but I’d like to get back to doing things the right way.”
“I’ll do you one better and build you one myself,” I answer, happy to do anything to make their transition easier. “Just show me a design.”
“Want to put in a bowling alley while you’re at it?” Grammy asks jokingly.
That’s actually not a bad idea, I think the sibs would like it too.
“You got it, Grammy,” I tell her.
She laughs. She has no idea that I’m serious.
“No, really,” I tell her. “Come on. We don’t have room inside the walls, but I can put it out front. I can’t do wooden lanes with my bot cloud though. Are synthetic all right?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Grammy laughs harder as she realizes that I’m not kidding.
“Really, it’s no trouble,” I tell her, leading her to the front gate. “I’ll have to look up specifications for the lanes and machinery, no one on the development team thought to code up a bowling alley. But I can get the building up for you at least, and then you can figure out how you want it designed inside.”
I pull in a big chunk of my cloud, careful to leave plenty of bots ranging out in the desert to keep watch and supplement our security system. I trace out a large area of the desert ground just outside the campus wall near the gate, making my best guess at how big it would need to be for several lanes and then adding a bunch of extra room because I’d rather it be too big than too small. I trigger the construction routines for a foundation, then walls and a high ceiling. I run some wires, connecting the wiring that the construction library provides in its walls to the campus’s closed power grid. I put some solar panels on the roof to offset the power usage of the new building and install some lights inside. Forming a big set of double doors in the front, I lead my flabbergasted grandmother to the threshold and show her the inside.
“That’s a neat trick, Noah,” Gramps declares, trying with some success to sound nonchalant.
“Thanks, you should see when we build really big stuff.”
Gramps nods, taking it in stride. Grammy is still too stunned to speak. I forget how weird this must be for people that aren’t used to seeing it.
Several of the younger kids that were playing in the commons have noticed the new building peeking over the wall. Three of the little boys come to the campus gate to investigate. Facial recognition kicks in, letting me fake like I can remember their names.
“Grammy and Gramps, meet Billy, Peter, and Sam. Boys, these are my grandparents. They’re going to stay here with us for a while.”
“You have grandparents?” Billy asks, his eyes going wide. “I thought those were just in stories!”
“Oh, we’re real alright,” Gramps chuckles.
“Wow!” Peter exclaims. “Can I have grandparents?”
“Me too!” Billy and Sam declare.
“Of course,” Grammy answers, finally getting over her shock. “We always wanted more grandchildren. Consider yourselves our honorary grandbabies.”
“We’re not babies,” Billy corrects them. “We’re almost big enough to go live in the dorms. We barely need nannies anymore.”
“I still need my nanny,” Sam says.
Grammy smiles a puzzled smile, not sure what to make of the responses, but she kneels down and pulls the three of them in for a big grandmotherly hug. They seem to love it. When she releases them, they all sprint back through the gates.
“Hey everybody!” they shout as they run into the gathering crowd of small siblings. “We have grandparents now!”
“I hope you know what you just signed us up for, Helen,” Gramps says, eyeing the approaching mob of Butler children.
“Of course I do, Frank,” Grammy says, her confidence returning. “It’ll be just like when I ran the nursery at church. Noah, maybe we could stay here for a little while, if you think we need to.”
I smile and nod.
“Now, come here all you darlings,” she says, turning back to the children. “We’re going to have a bowling alley here. Have you ever tried bowling? Let me show you where we’ll have the lanes.”
She leads them like the pied piper, spinning stories of the fun they’ll have together and giving out hugs. Nannies follow along behind, keeping an eye on their charges and making sure that Grammy doesn’t get overrun.
So it looks like they're everyone’s grandparents now. That’s alright, I guess. I can share.