Annihilation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 1) Read Free Page A

it home for the weekend. That’s a bummer. It’s not like we spend a lot of time together or have special things planned, but it’s always nicer when Mom is home.
    Mom and Dad share some niceties while we do our chores. One of my earliest planned inventions was a robot that could do my chores. I wanted more free time. I was six—all I had was free time. But that one desire is what has driven me to this point. I realized that if I were to make a robot functional enough to learn and do chores, it would have to be small and have tons of processing power. This means lots of energy. Dad, who is forever thinking “in the box,” pushed me toward a design tethered to a wall socket. But that just wouldn’t do for something that was supposed to function somewhere between a puppy-dog and a servant. I started looking into fuel cells and innovative new power sources.
    Power: my passion for the last eight years.
     

Chapter 3
    Weekends are glorious. I think I finally went to bed around 4 a.m. on Friday night. Now it’s about noon on Saturday. Dad has the screen in the kitchen on; must be a college football Saturday.
    As I pour myself some orange juice, I realize that this is not the trivial sports contest I expected my dad to be watching. He has CNN on and is listening intently to the report. It seems I was right to be concerned about this virus. The newsreader is calling it an “epidemic” that they have been tracking for 48 hours, right after Mom left. I have been aware of the virus for a week. The last day, though, I have been so wrapped up in the solar sail theory that I forgot anything else was going on in the world. I wonder if the solar sail theory and the virus are somehow related.
    There is a reporter on the screen that claims he went to a small town in Germany and found all the residents dead. Not one survivor. Then they cut to a doctor in a French town. He’s standing on a country lane in what could be a Cézanne painting. But then he starts coughing. Between coughs, he says people from this area are dying fast. His hospital is full and he has taken to local airwaves to encourage citizens to stay home and die in the peace of their own beds.
    Dad gives a weird chortle.
    “I think the French get it. They don’t confuse movement with progress.” I’m not sure what he means. Does he mean don’t fight death? Or does he mean that if you’re ill you shouldn’t try and get better?
    “Dad, do you really think this is an epidemic that could wipe out the planet?” I ask, sounding more like an 8-year-old than I ever care to. “Should we just stay around the house today?” as if I had plans to go any further than my lab. “Is Mom going to be okay in California?”
    “Why do you think it’s going to wipe out the planet?” Dad asks, his face turning ashen. “Have you been looking into this and found something?”
    “I’m asking. I have no idea if this is going to wipe out the planet.” Why does he think that anything he doesn’t understand has something to do with me? Just because I can figure things out does not mean I am an evil scientist.
    “I’m sorry that came out like that. I’m scared,” Dad says quietly as he tries to bring the tone down. “It’s just that you figure things out faster than a lot of people. Sometimes you assume it’s obvious to everyone and it’s only clear to you. I thought that if you found something that could be helpful we should share it with someone.”
    So my dad thinks there is a viral epidemic that is going to wipe out the planet and his course of action is to sit in the kitchen and watch TV. Great, I feel safe.
    “Dad, I have been reading a new paper on solar sails, I barely even noticed that people were getting this sick,” I said, while realizing I need to start growing up a little. “Have you heard of anyone in Hollis dying?” I ask him.
    “No, but it seems like the traffic is way down.”
    We both slowly make our way to the front porch where the rocking chairs