Chapter 7 - Chocolate Gummy Bear Soup

After catching up with her grandparents, mum and brother, Kat helped tidy up the tea-wares and moved her small amount of luggage to her old room. It hadn't been preserved but then again it hadn't really been used either except for storing the odd thing or two. She carried her bags in two trips through the narrow corridors of the traditional house, over towards her mum and dad's workshop and then up the steep staircase to the single room above it. She'd asked for this room when she was around 8 years old. It was slightly separated from most of the rest of the house, and she had liked the idea of living above a shop - it had seemed romantic and had an exotic Parisian quality to a very young half Scottish half Japanese girl growing up in the 2070s. It has the added bonus of being just far away enough that she couldn't hear anybody shouting for her from either the kitchen or the living room.

After about 30 minutes of of unpacking her things, most of which time was spent rediscovering old toys, treasures, books and manuals around her room, she heard the shutters of the workshop roll up. Dad must be back. So she dropped the old album cover she had found as she put away her clothes and headed downstairs to the shop.

"I'm home!" Kat sang out startling her father.

"Kat-chan!" he exclaimed as he turned from his workbench "You are here!" He got up and paused checking himself for oil and grease on his arms and apron before giving her a hug.

"When did you get back? I thought you were working the whole of summer break."

"Yes, yes I was but I wanted to come back home and see you."

"Oh, what a kind daughter. Kind enough to give me a hand bringing these spare parts from the truck?" he laughed.

"I'd love to", and she ducked under the half open shutter and started over to the truck.

In a world where a cheap subscription to the holorickshaw was affordable to just about anybody, even a high schooler with a part time gig, real cars, self-driven were rare. Mostly the preserve of the wealthy hobbyist, or the eccentric. Kat guessed that made her family eccentrics. They had always had real cars, real bikes, etc. mostly old unwanted things, fixed up and made to live again. It had never been a business for her parents in the beginning, more of a pastime. Then the Space Port was completed in 2061, a year before Kat was born, and, unexpectedly, "real cars", "real yachts" "real" anything became the hot status adjusting activity of the social climbers, the wealthy, the high end technology workers who supported the space port, and whose work was enabled by it.

It was an old Suzuki truck, painted white, a small cab in front and a wide open storage on the back. It had originally belonged to an old rice farming family and they had given it away, not even taking the money it would have been worth as scrap. They even had a little ceremony to thank it for its long service and wish it well in its "retirement". Cute but also a as with all ceremony, it was more about having an excuse to meet and network and strengthen inter-family respect and mutual regard. Such traditions were still important in the quiet little seaside town of Oarai, Ibaraki, space port or no space port.

As Kat and her dad, Hideki, carried in the various pumps, valves, hoses and gauges and set them down on the worktops around the edges of the small workshop.

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"Looks like we could use these to fix the old evaporator" Kat suggested

"No, no, the evaporator just needs some of the pump mechanical seals replaced, these I will use down at the harbour... there is an old fishing boat that still has a good solid hull on it, and I was thinking of converting it into a little pleasure craft."

"Oh, I didn't think they were allowing old-fuel boats any more."

"Yes, but I can still build one. They can't stop me building one!"

"Haha, no I suppose not."

"Well if they send an inspector I can just blind some of the pipes or remove the supply lines and, hey presto! you now have a collectible old tech boat that has the 'authenticity' of being 'real'. Even if it has never been to sea, it could, if allowed. And, if you had a few tonnes of diesel oil!"

"Good luck finding that! Maybe your the next new client will be an ultra-wealthy patron of the arts, somebody who got in early on the space port company stock public release. Anything is possible!" Kat smiled.

They continued the work of moving and arranging the parts by type and size in a quiet but happy mood. After ten or so minutes, Kat casually mentioned that she was thinking of having a talk with Great Grandma, her father's grandmother.

"Oh, I don't know that she will be up and about this week, Kat. I'm sorry."

"Oh, I just. I really wanted to see her, to ask her advice."

"Well, we can talk things through as a family after dinner. The doctors were quite strict last time about Great Grandma's cryosleep cycle, she gets three days a month, the first and last with a supervising physio therapist and sleep-tech, and the middle day we have her with us as family. She isn't due out until tomorrow. Can it wait?"

"I suppose... I just... I had this idea and I was so excited. And I want you to be excited too, but without Great Grandma's blessing... "

"Kat-chan, you have been working too hard and picking up the Scottish culture of taking the whole world on your shoulders. We are a family. We will listen to your idea and we will support it, perhaps after a little modification here and there."

"Thanks dad, I just... I want to do this right. I want to follow our customs."

"That's good. Speaking of customs... why don't you go and help you brother prepare dinner. It is 'kids night' - you know the rules."

Kat had forgotten which day it was. Hopefully her brother hadn't chosen the meal yet and she'd still have some input into the choice. Another eccentric family tradtion going back generations now - once a week the children decide on the meal but also they have to cook and serve it. Kat and Samu's first 'kids meal' had been memorable indeed. 6 year old Kat and 4 year old Samu hadn't been able to decide and so had compromised by doing both Samu's idea of chocolate sauce covered gummybears and Kat's more sensible chicken noodle soup. Of course, Samu had insisted that the chocogummies were added as a garnish to all of the soup bowls on their way to the dinner table, unbeknownst to Kat. The adults had been... polite, and thoroughly amused.

As Kat started towards the door into the house-proper from the workshop, she paused and thought a moment. Then asked;

"Dad, what do you think about The Object in orbit? The one that's caused all the panic in the news?"

"What object? What news?" her dad said, clearly not joking. "It has been a busy couple of days, what with the new orders and your grandparent's needing their cyberdyne harnesses updated."

Kat had seen The Object with her own eyes! The whole world had! It was three times the size of the moon and visible night or day. But then again, she was forgetting, almost nothing outside of work, family and a few select hobbies really made it into the culture or the common discussions amongst friends and neighbours in the quiet of rural Japan. Some things really do never change.

"Dad, okay, you and mum should really watch something other than the sumo tournament sometimes, the whole world is freaking out."

"Oh okay" her dad chuckled mildly, wiping some oil onto some of the stuck joints of a valve control actuator.

"Why don't you tell us all about it over dinner."

Amused and surprised, Kat went through to the kitchen, two rooms away.

Hideki shouted after her, but was unheard "No chocolate gummy bear chicken soup this time!"