"I'll grab a flashlight. It'll be dark on the way back," Dad headed for the closet.
"No need, I've got a light down there we can use," I told him. He shot me a glance.
So, we headed out the back door, across the yard and into the woods. We didn't say anything as we walked. We quickly reached the spot where the Super-Secret Planetary Leadership Headquarters Treehouse Fortress had been built. My unused pallet boards lay piled off to one side, The semicircle of stones marking the invisible elevator was the only other bit of visible evidence that anyone had ever been here.
Mom looked around, then up at the big tree. "So, either both of you have gone completely crazy, or there's an invisible treehouse here. This is the right spot?" She walked over to the stone ring and stepped inside, "Does this mark the invisible ladder?"
"Um," I stepped in beside her and Dad joined us, "It's actually an invisible elevator."
"If it's invisible, how do you find the buttons to choose your floor?" Mom asked reasonably.
I willed the elevator into action, "It responds to my thoughts." She didn't seem startled or surprised at all as she and her family were lifted into the air by unseen forces. As we arrived in the Welcome Hall, she looked around calmly. This must be some manifestation of dissociative emotional numbness, I thought. Big words for an eight-year-old, but I had been getting vocabulary and human psychology memory implants as part of my training to prepare for Guatemala. I'd have to look into that. Hey, Joe, I thought, is memory implant tech used for treating mental illness?
Of course, it is widely used for that purpose. There is still the issue of informed consent, but if someone has an appointed legal guardian, or willingly enters treatment while in a condition to make sound decisions, using direct implantation along with retraining 'pathways' in the brain is highly effective, limited only by physical damage to the brain or ongoing severe chemical irregularities. Even these can be ameliorated over time by enhancing and diminishing the strength of 'cognitive habituations' and even creating new ones when necessary. Joe's reply in my head, of course, was completely undetectable by the others. Why?Are you feeling overwhelmed, King Tim?
What? No not me, you goofus! I'm worried about Mom. DO NOT go into her head! We'll talk later.
"A throne, Timothy? Don't you think that's a bit much? Although I suppose, if you're going to be King of the world, you have to keep up appearances." She walked over to the dais and inspected my seat. She took out her phone and motioned for me to sit, "Let me get a picture of you on your throne."
I took a couple of steps, reflexively, then stopped. "There's the issue of confidentiality… We're not ready to go public and we're involved in some things where complete secrecy is required, Mom."
"Oh, of course, dear," she put her phone away quickly. "I should have known better. Are those doors on the back wall?"
"Yes," I replied walking over to the one on the right, "This one goes to the living quarters." I willed the door open. We walked into the dining room area, newly outfitted with the adapting chairs like those in the Status Room and Operations Center. There were six such chairs arranged around the table, now. "This is the dining room and kitchen area. That's a food synthesizer. It can make literally anything, once I put a sample inside for analysis. If it's from Earth, it's completely free, but we have to pay royalties for stuff from other planets. The good part about registered off-world stuff is we don't need a sample, we can just download the existing data files."
Mom, looked appreciatively at the food synthesizer. "So, if I make one batch of cookies, it can make 100 identical batches for the school bake sale?"
I blinked, "Um, yeah."
"Or if I made one bowl of chili, it could make a hundred for the homeless shelter in Springfield… and then another hundred the next day?" She asked, looking at me with a more serious expression.
"Yes."
"Why aren't you two doing that already?" She looked at us with her hands planted on her hips. "Secrecy? I don't think they'll ask where it came from. If you have all this technology, Little Mr. King, maybe you should be using it to help people?"
I smiled inside but didn't let it show on my face. Maybe this would go better than I thought.
"Well, we are actually. I did some research about all the places where people were in need of help, Springfield wasn't at the top of the list. We are helping, but just somewhere else right now," I offered.
"Oh, where?"
"We'll get to that in a few minutes, Mom, I promise. Let's finish the tour first. Would you like a cup of tea as we go?"
"Tea? Yes, that would be nice." No sooner had she finished than a small serving tray floated over to her with a cup of hot tea, with a teaspoon of honey, all mixed in and mostly dissolved with just a little remaining on the bottom of the cup. A little spoon sat on the tea saucer beside the cup. "Well," she said, lifting the saucer from the tray and inspecting the tea. She took the spoon and swirled it, pulling it out to see a tiny residue of the honey clinging to the spoon. She put the spoon back down on the saucer and lifted the cup of tea to her lips.
I watched anxiously to see if she liked it. I mean I knew in my head it was 100 percent identical to the tea Mom drank and exactly the way she liked it. Dad had made a cup and snuck it down to the treehouse to be copied by the synthesizer yesterday after we agreed Mom had to be fully informed about what we were doing. Still, even though it was molecularly identical and exactly the right temperature, I watched to see if it passed the Mom test.
As she pulled the cup away from her mouth, her face relaxed a little, "Just the way I like it. You boys must have been planning this. Where are we going next?"
I motioned to the outline of a doorway on the side of the kitchen. This one was new. It led to the additional living space I had added for Mom and Dad, in case our identities were compromised, and we had to retreat to a place of safety to hide. I thought the door open and let Mom step in first. She stopped as soon as she entered, raising her free hand to her mouth. "Oh…"
"I took some pictures of your and Dad's room, and had this one made exactly the same." I said proudly. The room's size, the furniture, the blankets, the dresser, even the alarm clock on the bedside table, everything was exactly the same. It was as if this doorway in my treehouse was a portal back to their room in the main house. As seconds ticked past with no further reaction, I got a little panicky, "You can change it however you want it. It doesn't have to stay like this… We could even make the room bigger or add more windows, whatever you want."
Unlike the rest of the treehouse, this room had walls wallpapered just like those in the house, with the same curtained windows. The only difference was they could not be lifted open, instead the glass could slide into the wall to be replaced by a field that allowed only fresh clean air to pass into the room, pulled in by a slightly negative air pressure, which could be adjusted to change the strength of the 'breeze' blowing in. The field let the Headquarters remain Super-Secret by maintaining its invisibility while also preventing anything other than cool clean air from coming inside. Windows were nice, but we had to maintain a secure facility after all.
"What do you think?" Dad finally spoke up after keeping his silence since we left the house. I think he wanted this to pass the Mom test, as much as I had wanted her to like the tea.
Mom just turned and hugged him. Pressing the side of her fac into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and returned the embrace. I noticed that one of my shoelaces was a little loose. So, I bent down to fumble with the lace. It took me a minute to get it right. When I finally stood up, the hug had thankfully ended, but then Mom rushed over to me and leaned down to hug me, carefully holding her saucer with the tea at arm's length to keep from spilling it. She needn't have worried. The saucer would hold the cup in place and a light stasis field within the cup would damp any sloshing motion and another field barrier would prevent any liquid from passing beyond the cup's rim unless someone was actively drinking. Space aliens had some pretty cool stuff. Anyway, the hug felt very nice.