Searching for Sun
Sample Chapters!
Rub the inside of a banana peel over a wart every night and it will go away in a week or two.
—Maxi (Lisk) Four
Cloey’s JPV
TEN
Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy wuzzy was kind of bare,
Fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,
Was he?
—Erika (Sanse) Five
Cloey’s JPV
Mandy said that the stuff in your eye after you sleep has color meanings. Yellow you dreamed of love, brown death, green wealth, colorless fame, and black death. Why do I always dream about death? I don’t even remember doing it. I should have logs of my dreams!
I’m pretty sure that’s just your mascara . . .
—Cloey & Asami (Hadano) Five
Cloey’s JPV
Seven
Why do you have a face? None of the other androids look like you.
You like it?
Well, yeah, I guess.
I’ll try not to stop your heart too often.
—Alec Ten & Cloey
Cloey’s JPV
People are gonna tell you terrible things all the time, because you’re different, because you threaten their ideas and values. The trick is knowing when to bother listening.
—Sam (Rundle) Four
Cloey’s JPV
Four
Fact: one tablespoon of soil contains over seven billion organisms.
Ok . . . eww.
I could literally eat seven billion organisms in one swallow.
Why do you think of these things, sweetie?
Is this for that dumb joke volume again?
No . . .
—Asami (Hadano) Five & Cloey
Cloey’s JPV
“What happened to him?” Asami asked, relaxing slightly.
Four
Fact: one tablespoon of soil contains over seven billion organisms.
Ok . . . eww.
I could literally eat seven billion organisms in one swallow.
Why do you think of these things, sweetie?
Is this for that dumb joke volume again?
No . . .
—Asami (Hadano) Five & Cloey
Cloey’s JPV
“What happened to him?” Asami asked, relaxing slightly.
THREE
Memory is just an illusion to your kind Cloey. It is whatever you retain, or whatever we give you to remember.
—Heidi Mist
Cloey’s JPV
Eight years later, Resolute time
Space, Resolute, Date: 2348
“Status?” Heidi asked the nurses. It would be another four years and eight rounds of de-freeze before the children being grown onboard the ship were old enough to begin running it themselves. Until then, the original batches of Growth children cycled in and out of freeze.
TWO
Rule numero one: eye contact. Keep it connected, smooth, suggestive, but not too suggestive. You’re inviting, you know? Nothing creepy. You see? . . . we will work on that.
—Sam (Rundle) Four
Cloey’s JPV
Sixteen years later
Earth, Resolute, Date: 2332
The familiar scrape of a rock three times on glass in the dark of night. It might have frightened her if it hadn’t been their signal since forever. Cloey’s power cell glowed and faded like a slow heartbeat illuminating and dowsing her room into darkness. She had blinked, poking bits of sleep from her eyes, and turned drowsily towards the noise at her window.
ONE
Willy the Whale will whistle and this whale’s will, shall will it all away. Now stop asking me for rhymes.
—Asami (Hadano) Five
Recorded by Cloey in the Joke Phrase Volume
Moon, Date: 2316
The Space Whale Museum looked like a white, ribbed mountain with a craterous hole in it. Sapers had been triggered and disintegrated the wall. The Growth Project children were gathered around the front entrance of the museum to view the charring remnants of a neighboring chip factory, minders herding them so that no one wandered off into the rubble.
The Tea Post 16 Favorite Books of 2022
MY TOP FIVE READS OF 2022!
I read over 100 books in 2022, and looking back on them, I had some stand-out that have stuck in my mind and maybe have stuck in yours too!
I will try not to get into spoilers because if you haven’t read these and you enjoy Fantasy and Science Fiction, you should get a copy and start reading.
The Tea Post 8
Morning—
Quiet, quiet.
Everyone else in the house slumbers softly. Your feet brush across the gently creaking floor.
TWELVE
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines of sportive wood run wild
—William Wordsworth
Cloey’s JPV
Gliese, Date: 2373
The sun was so hot and bright, Asami didn’t expect the fog. It was a thick, foamy sky expanding flatly from the line of hot horizon where the red dwarf crouched, glowing upon the edges of the world, fading only at its zenith, and gradating into shadows at the opposite horizon.