No sooner than she thought she'd fallen asleep Josette's nudged awake. "Lunch." Stretching and yawning she walks to the dining hall. She's waved to the front table.

"Josette, thank you for the texts. Do you have copies?"

"Yeah, I don't know if the others took care of them or not."

"Yes, while you slept. And put all your other stuff in your downstairs room." David says dryly in the back room. Josette makes a 'ooh la la' gesture that has Professor Druid sniggering. "I also have pictures of the moonbase . . .from the inside and the colony dimension, I'll upload them later." Nods of thanks from various teachers.

"Did you bring everything out?" David asks when she comes into the back room.

"Hellllll No, a lot of stuff is still on Hidalgo. I had a half-dozen other selves running around while I was on the trip visiting various suppliers beyond Ellis. Visiting various recycling drop-off sites, picking up paper ends."

"Are you going to be there when we bring out the students and the show?"

"No, I'll have just left."

Over the next couple of weeks Josette brings everything out, moving it to where it goes while bringing in the mail from the other dimension and the yearly crops. The second harvest starts coming in and everybody's busy for a couple weeks. When those are in and the third crops are planted.

They head to the other dimension, students and employees trailing off while Josette delivers the returning students and employees belongings to the office.

"How many classes did you get in this summer?" Anna asks one morning at breakfast.

"Fourteen, one semester in the jungle adventures--books degree, four for the degree on the Green Hornet I started this year on the school computer, and four from Princeton. I'm not quite a year into that degree."

The twins are upstairs in the aquaponics section when Principal Madison's voice comes over the intercom.

"Anybody home?"

"Up in the growing area." Anna says, hitting the button on her PADD to relay her words to the intercom.

"You've got visitors."

Abby toggles a switch upstairs to see the first floor. Downstairs the others can see them. "Hi guys."

"Girls?" Principal Madison asks.

"Harvesting the mussels, oysters, clams, and goeducks."

"Your fish?"

"Next year. At the earliest." Josette says coming in with a couple watering cans she fills with the fish water then puts in her room. Going to another vat she starts sizing clams and putting them in a pail.

Principal Madison nods. "We've still got plenty dried or in stasis. The seaweed?"

"Harvested. Part of it's dried with the rest in stasis."

"Are they upstairs?" Richard asks.

"Yes. The boys?"

"David and Alan are on the ranch with the kids, Michael and Alexander are in the woodworking building working on special orders. Leave your bags, we'll get you settled in after lunch." Anna lets out a telepathic whistle and calls 'lunch'.

/We've got the rooms set up, right?/

/Yep, did that a few days after we got back./

The boys come down from their woodworking building and a group of young men and women come from another building with David and Alan. They're introduced as their youngest boys and girls, seniors in high school.

"The kids ranch on the other continent." Principal Madison says at their look. "They linked it to the dorm when the school shut down the first time to make it easier to go back and forth. Somebody is out there at least once a day to check on the livestock, more often during the growing seasons."

"Growing seasons?"

"Our year is so long, we have separate spring, summer, and fall harvests. We just planted the fall crops." Josette says as she comes downstairs. "The eighth planet has four growing seasons while the tenth has five, but their year is over two of ours."

"Closer to three." A familiar voice says from an open door. "Josette . . ."

"Not it. I find the evil little mastermind that keeps yanking me from one dimension to another we're going to have a serious talk."

"How long is your year?"

"630 36 hour days. Our weeks are nine days, there's five weeks in a month and fourteen months in a year."

"How many students?" Professor Xavier asks, seeing them walking between buildings.

"A little over two hundred twenty five thousand in grades five through twelve. A good half of the older students signed up for dual enrollment, taking high school and university classes. Most attending Cambridge or Oxford on the fourth planet, the others taking their classes on the computer since all our degrees are accepted at the schools. At our fullest, we can handle over 315,000 students. We're graduating over ten thousand students this fall." Principal Madison says.

"How many teachers?"

"A little over seven hundred, not counting the teachers who came up from Earth with the school in the beginning and those teachers that came out with the orphans from the other dimension."

"Other personnel?"

"Just over a thousand, school employees from Dad's dimension work five year shifts, we have two years when employees come out, they room with the employees going home that year to learn their jobs before they head home. We have employees who will be heading home after our fall semester of classes along with the graduating students." Everybody nods as they walk into the back room. Principal Madison detours to the front room where a red-headed woman is shaking her head as she laughs.

"Professor Druid, Principal Madison's wife and second in command at the school."

"Along with Josette."

"She handles everything to do with the students and classes, including the growing buildings and gardens. I handle everything else."

"Professor Druid's mutation involves plants." David says at the others looks.

"Ahhhh."

After lunch they return to the dorm, grabbing their bags and heading upstairs to the third floor, finding hallways of rooms.

"The others should be arriving in a couple of days, our Harvest Festival is this weekend."

"Others?"

"Two dimensions have semi-permanent settlements on Haven and the 9th planet," Josette cocks her head to one side. "The ones on the 9th planet were out earlier bringing out supplies and putting up buildings before they bring out their homes but they'll be here for the festival. The Legion always has at least one group of people rotating in and out. . ." Josette pretends not to see Doc and James stiffen. "Momma and Charles are out here through the end of the year, they want the kids to be older before they head back."

"Kids?"

"Twin boy and girl, they're not quite three?" The others nod. "Mom from the second dimension. . .you saw the building when you came past the first planet?" Nods from everybody. "That's from their dimension. They're big in the government out there otherwise they'd probably settle out here semi-permanently too. Doc and the Doctor from another dimension though they tend to stay in their TARDISES. Ma from the dimension that's settling on the 9th planet since they're old friends. Granda and the others from his dimension."

The others shake their heads.

"We had another group but they've moved semi-permanently to the 10th planet. They'll be out, either staying in the dorm or the temporary housing dorms in Town."

"How . . . How many . . ."

"Let's see, there's four of Clarinda. . .and they'll probably bring out Charles and Dr. Cross to talk once they find . . ."

"Josette did it again. There's another you and me Clarinda." A familiar voice says. "I take it they're the spaceship?" Charles asks from the stairwell.

"Yep." He laughs and sends out a message to the Legion compound.

"Ahhh, this time we won't have to drag Charles out of the lab." Momma Clarinda chuckles as she comes up behind him. They begin teasing Josette.

"As Josette was going to say," David says as the 'what's going on' looks. "In their dimensions, Charles on the 9th planet and Dr. Cross from Granda's dimension gave birth to Josette." Every woman looks at her mate and laughs. "Yeah." Josette says. "And there will be seven? Docs either living on the planets or visiting?"

"Eight. Dad and James came out this morning to talk to the Eurekas about what they're working on." Charles says absently.

"Eight?"

"Doc, Doc from my first dimension, Clark from my second dimension who lives out here permanently, Time Lord Doc, Doc from the 9th planet, Doc from the 10th planet, Doc from Granda's dimension, and now you."

"James?" the newcomer Charles asks his counterpart, looking at David's Dad.

"My brother James Carstairs Savage. You might know him better as Sheriff Carter." Moans from everybody from Eureka. "The family had been looking for him for over six years when Dad got a call from Eureka about an experiment with one of his discoveries that had gone haywire and the town sheriff that had shut it down. He immediately went out to talk to him but the sheriff had been ducking him. Finally they met and it turned out to be James, who had supposed to been in the witness protection program but he'd been suspicious and done some digging."

"Probably not the first Sheriff Carter that's hidden his intelligence for one reason or another." Doc says.

Nods from various people. Josette laughs. "We met two on the road trip that were doing just that, one was a nearly five thousand year old Highlander style Immortal while the other was nearly three thousand years old. They said both of their Dr. Starks were a little irked when they found out what Carter had been hiding for years."

David chuckles. "Didn't Jonathon say that he was one of the scientists that Stark had been trying to hire for a couple years?"

"Ahhh, he was able to raise hell with the DoD over their employment packages and screwing around with Carter's tuition reimbursement, then he was able to raise hell at the school and GD since employees got their children spots that could have gone to more deserving students and the teachers steered the townspeople children away from others."

After dinner that night the others head into Headquarters.

"Are you part of the dorm?"

"No, we linked Headquarters to the dorm much like the kids linked their ranch to the dorm, but while theirs is open ours can be reached only by that door. We're actually on the other continent also."

"How big is your building?"

"With the assorted tesseracts, adding the headquarters on Earth when we lost it, and adding to it over the years we're about the size of New York and Massachusetts?"

"New York, Massachusetts, and if we're still going that geographic area, Maryland and Rhode Island." Bethany says absently as she walks through. "I just finished checking the mechanicals."

"Thank you Bethany but it didn't have to be done right now."

"This way it's done for another year. . .maybe even longer. And now I can treat myself to a hot bath with bath salts and a hot fudge sundae afterwards." Pat chuckles. "Have you seen Josette?"

"She saw what I was doing and said they might as well do theirs."

They walk back into the dorm, down the stairs to the basement.

"What is your power source?"

"Most buildings are on the planet are handled by solar panels, but a handful have alternate energy beyond that. In the dorm and every other building at the school, it's set to come on when the batteries fall below a certain percentage, when the solar panels aren't producing power, or when whatever is running is going to drain the batteries below that level. That way we have uninterrupted power. We also have boxes that pick up electricity from a turbine we run during winter storms or harvests when we need uninterrupted power. Most of the homes on the other continent have them and those buildings in town that need the power." Doc says.

"Do all your buildings have solar panels?"

"Just over half. The batteries handle everything but lights after dark in the other buildings. Even those homes that have solar panels usually light candles after dark, especially during storms when the panels might not be delivering power for a few days. Every building or apartment has an exercise bike they can use to charge the batteries during storms. We usually get a little advance notice so they can take extra batteries in to the power buildings to be recharged or like we do put them in the rack to charge." Josette says.

"Septic?"

"Units like the ones that replaced failed tanks or in places that have a high water table. We have two here in the dorm, the original one we added back on Earth and a big mack-daddy unit we added several years ago because we couldn't upgrade the other unit. Each major building has one, houses and other buildings share one. Once everything's broken down it goes on the gardens."

"Heat?"

"Those buildings that came up from Earth or were built on Haven have furnaces, but they have to be careful they don't run down the batteries or solar panels. Otherwise it's small ceramic heaters or the fake wood GD created." Moans and sighs from the others. "A good sized stick in a chimney pot like you'd see on patios will keep a four or five room house or apartment in the sixties if you keep the doors open if you don't have vents. During storms they generally add a smaller stick or ride the bike a couple hours to run the ceramic heater, before we introduced the wood it was ride the bike a few hours to run the heater enough to keep the house warm for a while, crawl in bed, and try to stay warm."

"Can they be cooked over?"

"Yes, the Amish on the fourth planet use it in their cook stoves. You can't bake with it though, you'd need too many sticks of wood to bring the heat up and while you can take them out of the stove and quench them in water. . ."

"It's not something you want to do multiple times a day, too easy an accident."

"This is an older generator." Doc says, looking at what Josette had been inspecting.

"Yeah, the school didn't have backup generators in every building when we were attending, just the buildings that had been recently renovated--the health center and dining hall. The new dorms had generators as part of the plans, we added this one our first semester of university and Principal Madison talked to Dr. Blake about adding generators to the other buildings. At first they were the gas powered ones but as each building was renovated over the years bigger ones were added. It was converted from propane to the alternate power source when the school went off propane in preparations for moving to Haven."

"They got plenty of use." Susan snorts coming through with a laundry cart full of recycling.

"Oh god yes, the school would have had to have closed down our first major power outage if we didn't have them. Let alone the second or third." Josette mutters.

"First major power outage?"

"We used to get some horrible storms, being so close to the coast. One time some idiot at the power company said they weren't going to fix the lines. . .or rather they couldn't fix the lines, people using generators kept them from working on them."

Snorts of disbelief and disgust.

"Yeah, the other companies said they had no problems with their customers using generators. It was their own stupidity that kept them from fixing the lines. Well, they didn't like that and sued for slander and libel, only for the courts to tell them the truth was always a defense." Sniggering from the others. "The governor was fining the company for every day they didn't fix the lines, the electric company went bleating to the courts whining that he couldn't fine them, only to be told oh yes he could. Around and around and around they went, meanwhile every school around us ran out of snow days and had to start going over. Finally the governor called in the National Guard and had him arrested for creating a hazard to health and property by refusing to fix the lines. Crews from other companies worked around the clock to get the lines fixed but still some places were out of power over a month."

Susan nods. "We were on the list to get our power back first since we're a boarding school but some schools were closed six weeks. After that the government put the smackdown on power companies, they had to pay to fix their own lines if they had a hardship they could come to the government for extra money but they had to make an effort first instead of holding their hand out to uncle sam every time a storm took out their lines." She snorts. "Of course they couldn't put their lines underground. . ."

"B. . .bu . . .but what if there's a problem with the line?" Josette mock-bleats. "It's easier to see a line down if they're above ground. They already had the instruments they needed to see if there was a problem with a line but they didn't want to use them."

"Second major power outage?"

"It was several years later, after the rockets kicked up all the debris in the atmosphere. We'd been having power outages all winter because of the weather, we'd just got our power back after one that had lasted a week and it went out again less than a day later. This time though it was from a power surge that took out machinery at our power plant. They said it would be about six weeks to have the machinery and install it."

"Emphasis on said?" Clarinda snorts.

"Yeah, the power went out in early January, about five weeks later we were looking at getting the power back on when we found out that the guy in charge hadn't even ordered the parts, they didn't have the money and were hoping to fix it in-house. We were looking to get our power back by June or July now." Moans and facepalms from the others. "Yeah, so the schools around us that were closed from the power outage had to start the year over again because they'd still be making up days when the new year started." Nods from everybody.

"We were lucky."

"Yeah, several states lost their power later that year and it was going on two years without power for them when the third power outage happened."

Moans from the others.

"Everything around us was closed but we were able to go to New York and get in supplies. Which we couldn't do the third power outage."

"What happened?"

"Some flaming 'religious' group decided electricity was the root of all evil, life was soooo much better back in the Little House days, and in a coordinated attack took out power plants all over the country. They banked on the idea that the overload of so many plants going out would take out all the others."

"Didn't happen?"

"No, thank god but cities all over the country were without power. Including everything around us ... again."

"Shouldn't there have been security at the plants to keep that from happening?" Kent asks dryly.

"I don't know about the other plants but this was the same nimrods who kept swearing up, down, and sideways our local substation had been shielded after the first time it got hit by lightning."

"And it wasn't?" James drawls.

"Second time--oh yes, we shielded it. Third time--oh yes, it's shielded. Fourth time, fifth time. No you 'din't', if you had shielded it the damn thing wouldn't keep getting hit by lightning."

"How long were you without power?"

"Second time was about seven months? Because when they finally got the machinery they found more damage. They 'claim' they had no way of knowing about it but everybody says they could have hooked a generator up to the machinery and make sure everything was running while they were waiting for the parts." Nods from the others. "Of course when we got power back, it kept going out."

"I think the generator went through a dozen cases of oil by the time the power went back on for good."

"And the third time?"

"A year, even with factories working 24/7 since so many power plants needed to replace equipment. By then though everybody who could eek a little power out of solar panels or with batteries *were*. That was the year we were moving to Haven though so we weren't as badly affected as everybody else."

"Of course by then we were the only school open in the state." Alan says, coming through. "Principal Madison snagged me, he wants somebody to take care of the dumpsters tomorrow."

"Yeah, I'd already planned on it." David says. "Josette, recycling?"

"Planned on moving it tomorrow too."

"Only school in the state?"

David sighs. "The schools closing out west because they didn't have power was the start of it. Some absolute idiot in the Department of Education had to show something for his work, so he passed a mandate everybody had to have an education degree. Josette was due for a new five year contract at the school. . .but Principal Madison couldn't give her a new one because while she had a masters in Library science. . ."

"She didn't have an education degree." Doc sighs.

"Yep, schools kept getting letters from the moron demanding they fire people they had listed. . .so they did. But not one person fired was a teacher. . ."

"Lemme guess, janitors, secretaries, cooks, librarians." Pat sighs.

"Oh yes, schools were stunned when they realized they fired their entire support staff and had to close. Meanwhile schools that hadn't jumped the gun still got the letters telling them to fire their employees while employees were getting letters saying they were tainting the students by not having education degrees."

"And they couldn't rehire them because they didn't have education degrees." Richard sighs.

"Yep, I was under a year extension on my contract because we thought all that nonsense would be dealt with by then."

"And it wasn't."

"The judge the case went before told the Department of Education they couldn't make school employees have education degrees, they already passed that for the church schools. The Department of Education couldn't explain why employees other than teachers were being fired. He was told to stop sending the letters, asked if he'd just got a list of employees and sent out letters to everybody who didn't have an education degree despite their job, even then they couldn't get a degree in two frigging weeks. The mandate was overturned but asswipe went whining to the Supreme Court and some idiot who was in a hurry didn't read the case and decision and overruled the lower court because 'they were being mean to me'." Sighs from everybody. "Then they started getting picketed and they actually had to read the decision and realized, 'oh shit, we done fucked up'. One of the justice's granddaughter's school closed and his daughter or daughter in law was fired because she didn't have an education degree. They couldn't just overturn the decision and instead chose to hear the case. . .in two more years."

"Christ." More than one moan.

"Yeah, we figure they were passing the buck and hoping this would just go away. More schools closed and those that were left open were at or over capacity. Josette went on unpaid leave since the school couldn't give her a new contract and we were in danger of losing our health center since their contracts were coming due in a couple years. The only halfway good thing is dumbass lost his cushy job at a private school because surprise, surprise *he didn't have an education degree."

"Lemme guess, I never meant for it to affect me." Clarinda says in a mock whining voice.

"Yep. He thought he was such hot shit and tried changing the mandate so now everybody had to have an education masters. He didn't realize people would see it had been changed and go after him. It was quickly changed back and his bosses told him to knock it the fuck off, they were already the laughing stock of the government thanks to his stupidity."

"Did the court hear it in two years?"

"Nope, everybody was looking at the online docket of the Supreme Court but at the end the first year it wasn't on the records. No, we're not hearing it. We're busy. Welll noooo, we can't explain why there's large chunks of open space on the docket where we could hear it. Don't you know we're busy. We can hear it. . .in another five years."

"Definitely sticking their heads in the sand and hoping this all goes away."

"Those schools that were still open closed at Christmas break or at the end of the school year. The Supreme Court was bleating that they didn't know this would cause so many problems . . ." Snorts of disbelief. "Yeah. The school started putting their classes on the server, Josette had the job of scanning books, worksheets, and other information for programmers to integrate into classes. Meanwhile the school was being 'sold" to GD for one dollar so as part of GD they didn't fall under the Department of Education anymore. Josette got a new contract again, students all over the country took the online tests to start taking their classes on the computer."

"Did the Supreme Court ever hear the case?"

"Oh yes, after we left Earth. They had to, they couldn't stand the bad publicity anymore. The mandate was overruled but schools didn't reopen. The Department of Education was begging them to reopen by that time but states had to find new sources of funding for the schools, cities and towns had to pass millages. . .hire new employees, get in books and other supplies, in many cases put up new buildings because like the school in Killingmesoftly they'd been torn down since they were going to fall down anyway."

"Many students were working at power production or growing buildings and couldn't change their hours to attend a normal school." David sniggers. "That one guy who kept calling demanding to know if the school had a librarian."

"He was trying to do what he thought best for his girls, he was just going about it all wrong." Josette sighs. The others look at them. "This was during the Department of Education kerfuffle, a Department of Education employee called the school. He had two daughters, one was a genius who had skipped a couple grades so she was in the same grade as her older sister, they'd both applied but only the younger one had been accepted. There had to be a mistake. Nope. He tried wheedling a spot for the older girl, he'd wanted them to room together. Nope. The younger girl had already been in e-mail contact with her new roomie, she was also younger than the average student and I was going to be mentoring them." The others nod. "Daddy dumbass tried telling his daughter she couldn't go to our school if her sister wasn't and got his ass handed to him by his wife, the younger girl would be going to our school."

"Well, I'm not going to pay." Kent says in a huffy tone.

"Yep, that's when his wife reminded him he wasn't paying, the girl had a trust fund from her side of the family. He bleated it wasn't fair to the older girl. His wife told him the older girl had been repeatedly told to concentrate on her schoolwork but she was lazy. He whined he wanted them to room together and the younger girl said hell no, her sister was a slob and she needed to clean her room, something stunk in there. Their mother told the older girl she knew the house rules and she slunk off to clean her room, she reminded her if she had schoolwork, she'd better get on it. She had talked with her guidance counselor. Meanwhile he kept calling the school demanding to know if we had a real librarian or just a teacher covering the desk. He kept calling demanding we hire a librarian until Principal Madison said if they were going to hire a librarian it would be the one they had but they couldn't because they couldn't give her a contract because Josette didn't have an education degree. Since he couldn't get what he wanted on the phone he magnanimously chose to come to the school."

"Because they'd have to do what he wanted if he lowered himself to come to the school?" Pat snorts.

"Yeah, he expected to have Josette beg for her job back but Josette, Frances, Elaine, Pat, and Bethany had already left to attend a major expo in Washington DC. Well he had a fit and fell in it. Demanded that nobody leave school before it closed even if they had their grades in and it was only three days before the end of the semester and those people who had lost their jobs to the Department of Education's bullshit go back to work immediately without pay."

"And he got his ass handed to him by the media?"

"Yeah, the department already was getting bad publicity thanks to dumbfuck, they didn't need him telling everybody they were should work without pay, slavery had been abolished. He got sent to the office in Alaska, his wife flatly told him hell no they weren't moving to Alaska, he could be out there for a year. That's when the whole story about why he was trying to get both girls in school came out. The older girl went to a normal high school, she only did enough work to keep her grades up for cheerleading and our school didn't have sports. Then she wasn't chosen for the squad and was heartbroken her mother would tell her too fucking bad, so sad, get your ass in gear and concentrate on your schoolwork. She ended up flunking out of school, then went whining to her sister because her mother was making her work and get a GED. Her sister told her it was her own damn fault, Mom had told her to keep her grades up."

"Always going to be somebody who thinks they're special and is forced to grow up when life doesn't go their way. If they have any sense they look back on their lives and wonder what the hell they were thinking." Nods from the others.

"Do you filter the water?"

"Yes. There's filtration units on every well, the hand pumps have filters on them, and we have filters on the cisterns that we either fill with pumps like the handcarts in railroad movies or gutters divert rainwater into."

"How often do you clean and empty the septic units?"

"At least once a year for units on places like the dorms and apartment buildings. Other places we check them every year but we might not empty it for two years."

"Anybody home?" A familiar voice calls.

"Down here Dad." David calls up the stairs.

James sighs as he looks at the familiar figures in front of him. "Josette did it again." He yells over his shoulder. "There's another you here Clarinda. Another me and Mary. And a Charles. And two Professor Xaviers." The others laugh as Josette looks up at the ceiling and sighs.

"Josette?" President Bartlett's voice calls from upstairs. "I believe you have more visitors."

Josette shakes a finger at the ceiling and swears this time before she comes upstairs. The others are laughing behind her.

"Becka?" She grins and hugs the other woman. "And family and friends. Awww, Tony is from your dimension."

"Yep, we realized it a few years ago. How long has it been since you sent out the information?"

"A little over a year and a half, I take it it's been longer for you?"

"Yes, we're coming up on two years Earth time since we moved to Mars." Josette can feel the others adding onto the third floor. "It's . . .been bad on Earth, the coup Tony saw morphed into some asshole's pet scientists inventing something to cause a massive EMP that took out an entire continent, frying machinery, power lines, basically anything that was in contact with electricity at that time. Power plants fried, power lines fried, the wires in buildings fried, appliances, planes, trains, automobiles, ships . . . "

"Ohhh. . .Christ." Josette moans. "Why?"

"He wanted to be the only company able to rebuild Europe. He'd be even richer. He tried doing it worldwide, but it wasn't powerful enough to fry everything, it just shut off power worldwide. Even things with batteries and generators. Not even the flashlights that you wound or shook worked."

"Christ. . ." Doc says quietly, coming up behind them.

"Yeah, the emergency triggers brought everybody to Mars or the other dimension. The power was out about 90 minutes that time. Millions of people died that day. More died in Europe over the first winter. We suspected this wasn't just a coincidence and shielded our homes and buildings, he pulled it again in Australia. And shut off power to the entire world to try to blackmail the world's governments into doing what he wanted, he ended up being arrested and tossed in a federal prison."

"Lemme guess, the machinery was dangerous so of course they had to examine it?" James rolls his eyes, the others aren't even pretending they're not listening.

"Because of course the government wanted to use it on somebody else." Doc sighs.

"That's what we think, he escaped and was on the run nearly three weeks before we found out. And that was only a few minutes before the power went out again. It was only off for a few minutes that time. . .it was off nearly three days the second time. The government was blubbering about how they'd tried him in absentia after he escaped. . .wasn't that enough?" Becka bats her eyelashes and snorts.

"Noooo, making sure the little asshole didn't escape in the first place is what you probably wanted." Mary sighs.

"Yeah, so it's the fourth of July on Earth and Warner and Paddy's are shut down for the day. These are my grandparents Albert and Marilyn Charles, Nancy and Silas Wright, my women Danita Milford and Idina Forrester, our children Daniel Wright, Eliza Forrester, Arthur Milford, and Rebecca Wright, my uncles Alexander and George Charles, Dr. Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser, Tony Stark, Buckaroo Banzai, Warrick Warner, Andrew Hellstrom, Dante Wilson, and Padraig O'Donohue. The Banzai Institute, Stark International . ..or at least the building and Tony's friends, Paddy, Warrick, Andrew, and Dante all moved to another dimension and like us on Mars 'commute' to work."

"Padraig? As in the designer you work for?"

"Yep. I figured he'd enjoy talking to your grandmother, visiting the stores and manufacturers, and visiting the universities."

"You're in luck, our Harvest Festival is the end of this week. Ohhh Alex Wayne moved to Haven, he'll be glad to see you two again." Josette remembers seeing the three of them settled around a table talking more than once.

"What happened?" Tony sighs.

"Religious pundits set off chemical bombs to sterilize everybody else on Earth, if they were the only ones breeding they could take over and spread their hate further. Everybody on Earth was sterilized, they're down to around three billion people. . .not a bad world population until you realize there's nobody under the age of 40 on the planet. They came out to Haven fourteen years ago. And that was after visiting for a few years."

"Christ." Silas moans. "The only good thing is there was about a hundred people offworld on the Watchtower, they are having babies but it's going to be a long, long, long time before they have more than one small settlement on Earth unless they bring out people various ages from the other dimensions."

They head upstairs, the others blinking a moment at a new hallway but the others are used to it.

"Awwww, is that the door to your legendary library?" Becka points at a door at the end of the hall.

"Yep, everything but the schoolbooks." Becka crooks a finger at her grandparents and walks that way, the others following them as Josette and her mates grin.

"Oh my god. . ."

"Currently up to 28 floors, there's between fifteen and twenty-five rooms down each spoke, and they're all just as big. And yes, each floor has it's own set of spokes and more rooms."

"And Josette will run out of room in a few years."

Josette makes a shorthand gesture that has the others sniggering.

Doc looks at his mother who just smiles.

Josette facepalms and heads down the stairs.

"Wanna know?" David asks her back.

"Please tell me I ordered more plastic for patterns from Ellis's? I can't remember if I'm running low or not."

"Twenty pallets." Alexander says. Josette turns on the stairs and looks at him. "I added it to your list since I figured you'd be running low and we always are running out of something before we think about ordering more. It's with the machines upstairs."

"Plastic?" Becka asks. "You mean the sheets that you see in stores you can use for patterns?"

Paddy, Pat, and Pat nod. "We go through tons of it for commonly used pattern pieces, it holds up much better than regular paper or posterboard. And you have the original pattern still if you need to make a different size. I don't know about Mr. O'Donohue, but we had files of pattern sizes for our regular customers. . ." Paddy nods. "That way they just had to say what they wanted and we started work."

Pat nods. "They come in much bigger sheets than you see in the stores, Josette has file cabinets full of quilt patterns."

Becka sighs. "I'm going to have to think about doing that with my patterns."

"I'll give you the address where I order when we get home."

"Do you have large suppliers that allow you to wander the buildings?"

"I don't. . .think so. . ." Paddy says. Pat blinks but shakes her head also.

"Then you are in for a treat. After the Harvest Festival?"

"Yeah, we can make a trip out. And we'll visit the ones out here."

"We. . ."

Josette waves a hand. "Relax, we have a fund for other dimensional travelers."

A familiar sound has the others heading downstairs.

"Good Lord Josette. . .again?" Time Lord Doc sighs as the Doctor's lips twitch.

"This is Becka from the road trip and her family and friends. And you three need to talk to them, from what Becka wrote in her letter they have ships similar to TARDISES." Silas and Ray are staring at the rooms behind them as they shut the door.

A meeting room is taken over by the Doctors, Time Lord Doc, Ray, and Becka's grandfathers later that night after the others have gone to bed or settled in another room to talk.

After breakfast the next morning they go on a tour of Town. The soap, candles, and toiletries buildings get a good number of sales.

"Everybody recycles?" Richard asks, seeing people bringing in containers to a building.

"Yep, between that and composting we have very little waste. I pick up the recycling from the other planets twice a year so it doesn't pile up and we reuse it. The school's recycling goes back to Granda's earth, they have recycling dropoff centers similar to yours." Josette says. "We generally disintegrate the non-recyclable school waste three or four times a year."

"Do you use cans?"

"Only in limited runs on the manufacturing satellite because we don't grow big enough crops to need them, they're single use, and we'd need to clean the machinery every time we made something new. We use canning jars for everything. You've found the setting that cleans the lids?"

"Yes, but we don't use them back to back."

"Neither we do, generally maybe every fourth or fifth harvest. Because even then they wear out eventually."

"But the replicators can turn them into their raw materials and make more."

"And we have tons in storage yet. The cycle also makes the rings new again."

"You can never find them in the stores except with the jars or in big packages with lids."

"Glass?"

"Goes to the blowers or the glass factories on the sorting planet. Paper goes to the mill to be recycled, metal and plastic generally go in crystals until they're needed again."

"Glass factories?"

"One makes bottles and canning jars, the other makes flat planes of glass. . .both for windows and the specialty stuff used by the stained glass workers and others."

"Sorting planet?"

"The seventh planet, when we first came out we had a number of ships harvesting the asteroids, ore was taken there from the ships, sorted, and underwent the first step in being used before it was sold to Earth or used in the manufacturing satellite. Our recyclables were sold to Earth too." Josette cackles.

"There's a story there." Mara says dryly.

"Yeah, some moron in the auto industry didn't want to buy from us because they couldn't make as big a profit. Those places that grew food for Earth sold to the government so they were already paid."

"They were hoping for hick farmers who had to sell to have money to buy more supplies." Becka says, rolling her eyes. "We had somebody come to try to take advantage of the farm on my property until they realized how many farms they were, how big they were, and how much money they made." Warrick sighs and nods.

"And Josette loved driving a hard bargain." Anna says with a smirk. "The representatives sued to get somebody else to bargain with. The judge said that they could easily be replaced and others bargain to buy the food, recyclables, and ore." Everybody sniggers. "Hoist on their own petard."

"Yep so we were just like 'we don't need to sell to you so meh'. After a few months they'd come begging for us to sell to them again. This happened a couple times and the third time we held firm. They started whining, they started begging, they tried suing, the courts said we didn't have to sell to them. 'But what do they do with all that ore? They don't harvest asteroids until they need the raw materials.'"

"How can they do that to us?" Mary says in a warbling tone, then snorts.

"Exactly. They sued to force us to sell to them. They sued to force us to harvest ore for them. No luck on either case so they sued again." Rolling eyes. "I was bringing back empty containers, they jumped on them then whined when they found them empty since I was delivering the stone, furniture, wine, olive oil, and cacao somewhere else. 'But they've got to be selling to somebody, why not us?'"

"Because the other industries we sold the metal to didn't run through it, they'd been told they needed to make this last then when they didn't went whining like a kid in a candy store?" President Bartlett snorts as he comes through. "They even used recycled metals. .. some from cars." The others cackle.

"So they decided they wanted a colony of their own, they'd learned from the Mars fiasco and they'd have to have a world that had atmosphere so their employees didn't die. When Congress asked how they planned to mine and refine the ore they were 'Mine it? Refine it? Can't we just pick it up off the ground?'"

"I'd laugh but I know there are people that dumb out there." James snorts as Doc sighs. "These are the same morons who didn't think we worked on Haven, we just froliced in the fields and when we hungered we lifted a hand to pick a fruit."

"Mars?" Doc asks quietly.

"Becka's Mars is only the second one that we've found that could sustain life. A group of industrialists decided they wanted to colonize Mars, we had to be hiding something when we said Mars didn't have anything worth colonizing. So I was hired by Earth to bring up supplies and move the first set of colonists. They were putting up a dome when a meteorite the size of a dime pierced a hole in their capsule." Sighs and prayers from the others. "Earth had lost contact with Mars a couple days ago so I was asked to check on them, I found the colony lost and told Earth. They asked me to bring the bodies home and clear up the site on Mars. The industrialists were charged with manslaughter because they knew there was over a 90 percent chance they'd be lost since there was evidence of meteorite strikes there."

"But they just had to have it there?" Alice sighs.

"Yes, and they'd changed the beneficiaries of the men from their families to them the second they left Earth."

"Christ."

"Yes, they whined that they deserved that money, not the families. They'd stolen it fair and square."

"What was big business going to do on Mars?" Doc asks. Richard and James nod. "I can see a scientific base more easily."

"Yeah, we were joking that the colony would last two years, and that was with putting up the dome. Because sooner or later they'd demand they start making them money."

"On Mars?" Mary snorts.

"Yeah, other industrialists had been arrested for trying to take over Haven when it was found out we were expecting the first children on Haven. If they could get the girls off Haven before they delivered. . ."

"They could claim it for Earth."

"Yes, they were quickly arrested and tried." Josette finds a file on her PADD, passing it to Doc. "We think they just transferred their plans for Haven to Mars."

"Yes, with this type of equipment I'd say so. You said you brought everything back with you?" He passes the PADD around for the others to read. It finally makes it's way back to Josette and goes back on her belt.

"Yes, a lot of the equipment was on its last legs so I tore it apart on Atlantis and returned it to Earth as scrap or just sold it back to Earth. The containers themselves were on their last legs, we all know how salt rusts stuff."

"Out of sight, out of mind. It would cost us money to get rid of these." Albert says.

"Yep, send it to Mars, they'll have to fix them to keep working. Dumbasses couldn't get their heads around there was nothing on Mars to make them money."

"People do not want to hear they are wrong, everything must change to suit them." Silas says.

"Oh gods yes, I can't tell you how many lawsuits we had when we announced Haven was open for colonists. We had set rules on what type of skills they'd need but we had thousands of people applying, then suing when we turned them down. They'd lose the case and apply again. On and on and on until the judges told them to knock it off, either come up with a skill that we could use or be fined the next time they sued again."

"Not that it stopped them." David snorts. "We also had industry suing to overturn Haven's charter from agriculture so they had another planet to destroy. Repeatedly. We had celebritwits suing to bring up what they wanted before they lowered themselves to join us on Haven and being stunned when they were told no. What? We don't have malls, nightclubs, paparazzi? You don't have hair salons? Who's supposed to do my makeup? You eat real food? Where's the lobster, the caviar? No blowdryers? How do you dry your hair?"

"People have been using them for years before blowdryers. It's called a towel." Alice says dryly. Marilyn sniggers, nodding.

"You open a window when you want cool air?" David mock-shrieks in a falsetto.

"Cars." Professor Druid says as she walks by. "Josette, the glass?"

"I was going to break it up for the glassblowers tomorrow. I figured it had to be piling up."

"Cars?"

"They kept shoving information on us, they were sure we'd give them a big sale then sued when we said we weren't buying cars. One of the people in Eureka is a videographer and made a movie to show people what Haven was like, mostly for the settlers coming up and people saw we really didn't have cars. Cell phone providers kept shoving information on us, they were positive we'd want cell phones on Haven. Then they said they wouldn't sell to us and we'd come begging to them to buy phones." Sighs and nods. "Then sued when you said you weren't going to have cell phones?"

"Yep. We didn't want a post office on Haven even before they said they'd need this, this, this, that, that, that. . ."

"Subway."

"Oh god yes, some morons wanted the prestige of putting in the first subway on Haven. They walked away pouting when they were told no because it took five minutes to walk from one side of town to the other back then. It only takes ten to twenty minutes now. . .and that's in winter."

"I doubt that was the only lawsuits." Buckaroo says.

"No, we had people sue to keep people from working sunup to sundown in the fields or gardens when the crops were coming in. Even their own gardens. We had somebody sue for no taxation without representation. She pouted because we didn't have taxes and brought out a whole list of stuff to protest about. The pigs were in it with the man! The promise of no taxes was being used to lure people to haven where we'd have them. She was tossed out on her ear. We had somebody protest because we didn't have black people on Haven." Josette smirks at Rosabelle and Josh. Who roll their eyes.

"When we calmly pointed out Principal Madison was black it turned into 'they're going to force blacks to toil in the fields all day or otherwise service their massahs'. Professor Druid just looked at her husband and snorted 'yeah, right'." Everybody laughs.

"Clothes."

"Oh god yes, we had somebody sue to outlaw clothes on Haven. Clothes forces you to conform to a false identity created by designers." Snorts of disgust. "Clothes are meant for protection."

"And even if they weren't killed in accidents or froze over the winter they'd kill each other because it wouldn't be supermodels walking around naked." Becka says, rolling her eyes.

"Exactly."

"Does everybody quilt on Haven?" Paddy asks as they walk into Sue's store, seeing the tables and machines all occupied.

"Yes, after the first winter they stop poo-pooing the old ways. There's the whole 'I did this' mentality. Everybody has a number of quilts ready to put on their beds come the first snow and make more over the summer when we know it's going to be a bad winter." Josette heads upstairs and comes down with a couple bags of fabric that she buys at the register. The others look at her. "Worn out clothes for patchwork quilts, a group of us will work on the clothes, removing buttons and zippers and sorting them by color to go into barrels upstairs. You can buy a bag for five dollars, that's usually enough for a patchwork quilt along with fabric you have left over from the quilts you've already been working on."

"Is this all your fabric?"

"No, we only keep a few bolts of each fabric in the back, most of our fabric is kept in warehouses and we bring out more as needed."

They walk past a building that looks to be a gym.

"Power production building, it's a copy of a gym we put up by the road on Earth. They're charging batteries as they work out. on Earth the power either went to the grid or like here, charged batteries for homes and buildings." Josette says at Doc's look. She sniggers. "It did good business, those people who wouldn't lower themselves to work paid through the nose."

"And were doing the same thing they could have been paid for." Pat snorts. "Oh yes, the gym at my spa did good business with wives of the movers and shakers in the community huffing and puffing to sweat off that last box of bonbons. The women who were movers and shakers in the community had . . ."

"A little something something called common sense as well as two brain cells to rub together?" Becka snorts. Pat laughs and nods.

Josette ducks into another building, coming back out with a bag. "This is the building we use for dyeing and weaving. I needed to get a couple different dyes I don't normally use."

"You said Albatross is here?" Alice asks.

Josette leads them towards the Albatross Nest, greatly expanded but the core of the store is the same as the one they remember. Paddy and Pat start looking around in satisfaction.

"Not again Josette." Suzie sighs from the register where she's ringing somebody up.

"Yep. Agatha in Albatross?"

"Yes, they're going over the list of kits we're going to be putting out next year."

"Whoa." More than one person says when they walk from one store to another just walking through a door. Josette waves at Agatha, Marilyn, and Sue. Paddy and Pat immediately start looking at the fabric and gravitate towards the poster on the wall announcing the kits.

"The two stores are linked just like the dorm and Headquarters on the other continent are linked, that way people can easily travel between the two towns. If somebody's going to be late, they'll just tell whoever's in the store and somebody will be here to let them out."

"Not that I haven't found a certain somebody in the store before it opens getting together supplies for her quilts." Sue says. laughing.

"Well yah, I buy everything for anywhere from twenty to fifty quilts at a time. That way you can work with somebody else and by the time the others start arriving everything's been put back to normal. Oh, we hafta bring out supplies this winter? Everybody, this is Sue Dixon, she owns the other fabric store." Josette grabs a handful of grab bags as kits are made up for Paddy, Pat, and Becka. Josette puts everything in subspace after they're rung up.

"Probably it's been a few years. We'll do inventory after the Harvest Festival."

"Are these the only fabric stores on the planets?"

"No, Sue's store has been expanded over the years since we came up from Earth. Her niece took over running the shop on Earth and when she came up we moved the original shop to Eureka on Archimedes. In addition, we have a yarn store in town and suppliers we brought up from Earth on the fourth planet, here, and Archimedes."

"Archimedes?"

"The eighth planet where Eureka settled when they came up. We commuted from Earth to Eureka for our tests for a semester and Josette teased Dr. Stark that they'd have to come up with a name for the planet. By the time we came back up a month later. . .they'd named it." Alexander says.

"You have television?" Richard asks, seeing it on the wall.

"And radio. The fourth planet, ours, Eureka on the eighth planet, and Eureka on the 9th planet all have stations. None of them run all day but there's usually one station broadcasting. Most of the buildings people congregate in have them, but only the power station keeps it on. . .while you can listen to the radio and work you can't watch tv and work unless it's something like walking on a treadmill or riding an exercise bike in the power building." Nods from the others.

Andrew and Alice walk outside, recognizing buildings from their old hometown. "What's the new buildings?"

"That one is the growing building for Albatross, built when the old factory had to be torn down. It came up with the town from Earth. A copy of the movie theater brought out by the others on the 9th planet, ours is tape while that one made the conversion to digital. They have one on the 9th planet too. A pizza parlor that offers grinders. The new library and a new historical society building with room for exhibits."

"They've needed a new library for a while."

"And they were finally able to get everything out of people's attics."

"I wonder if they ever wrote the books . .."

"Five of them at last count." Josette says absently. "Two of the on the history of Albatross, one on the moving from Earth to Haven, and two on how they're settling and expanding the town. Next they're talking about family histories." Andrew and Alice nod. "We have a printing operation in Town so they were finally able to print them at a decent price."

"Is the farm here?"

"Yes and no, when we moved to Haven the farm was copied and came up to the other continent. . .it's been added onto over the years. When Albatross came up the original farm came up, Aaron lives there while Adam has an apartment on the 8th planet."

"Ohhhh," Alice says a few hours later in a flyer as they descend over a familiar house. She can see her dreams in the additions and the door opens, she sees herself lean out and shake her head then laugh. Josette lands the flyer as she comes out.

"Yep, I went dimension hopping again."

"Did you do all this work on Haven?" Alice asks after a tour of all the new areas.

"No, some we did on Earth. James inspected the roof because it was leaking and found that it needed to be replaced and the kids all chipped in to pay for the work. Then there was the work that was needed to take the house off the grid before we moved to Haven, adding the solar panels, putting the waste unit in the basement, taking the house off propane. . ."

Josette perks up and pulls Mrs. Bartlett and the other jewelry making teacher into the back room at dinner.

"Becka makes jewelry too." They smile and fill trays before sitting down to talk.

"Did you two teach Josette jewelry making? We did a bit together on her ship during the road trip."

"We did, Josette took several textiles and fine arts classes at the school. Any time any of us come up with a new class, we automatically add Josette to the class list as an auditing student." Mrs. Bartlett chuckles. Frances and Elaine are pulled in the back room next and they start talking with Pat and Paddy. The soapmaking and candlemaking teachers are brought out next to talk to the twins as Josette's head tips to one side and she looks at the screen for the front room. "The others just arrived."

"9th planet?"

"Both came out this morning." Josette's fingers fly over her PADD. "There, this way they can figure out when to get together to compare notes.

A few minutes later a couple groups of people descend on the back room after greeting Principal Madison and Professor Druid. It's obvious that the heads of the groups are related to both of them, from the resemblance Mara would say parents though it's obvious while the man is James's father, his wife just as obviously didn't give birth to him. They also see that all four of them consider Josette their grandchild.

"Again Josette?" A dark haired man introduced as Pieter Cross asks, looking down at Josette with suspiciously twitching lips.

"Of course, the evil . . .whatever it is that keeps dragging me out of my dimension isn't done yet it seems." She sighs. Behind them a chair falls over.

"Dad?" Josh's voice says, choked.

"Joshua? Rosabel?" Calvin and Simone blink then scream as they welcome back another lost child to the fold.

"Damn it, I knew you reminded me of somebody." Josette complains.

"Both came out to the 9th planet?" Doc asks as Simone and Calvin settle with Josh and Rosabel at their table.

"The others from their dimension, their Earth was lost to nuclear war thanks to a villain who brought the US presidency as the first step in taking over the world and from another dimension that is similar to theirs with a lot of their family and friends. They're the ones who are bringing out homes and buildings to the 9th planet as the first step in moving out there semi-permanently. Like a lot of us, they're not aging all that fast and are making plans for the future."

"Are you going out to see how if the radiation is going down?"

"Yes, though it will be decades before they can live on Earth again aside from a city-ship."

"The remaining governments are planning on building one on our planet." Becka says. "It's going up on the moon once it's finished as their first step in colonizing planets."

"We're planning one on our planet also." Silas and Albert head over and soon are talking with Calvin.

"City-ship?" Josette sends the information to the others and they shake their heads as they look at everything. "That's going to be a lot of work."

"They figure twenty years working two shifts to have it completed and supplied." Becka says. "Whether those people stay in Europe with the other who'd been building the power complex to start rebuilding Europe. . ." The story about what happened to Europe and Australia is told and people shake their heads.

"They've got one on Mars and one on the Moon in the 9th planet's original dimension, seeing that is what convinced the others on Granda's world to build theirs. Theirs is going up on either the moon or Mars. . . Oh Granda, their Mars is either terraformed or never had a natural disaster and they've moved there." Calvin blinks and the conversation turns to another topic. "And they're talking about one for a colony ship. They're also planning ships to stay in orbit but the other ships could settle on the planet, there's more room for supplies without the need for shuttles, and they have a place to stay while they're settling on the planet."

"We were lucky that with the technology to copy and move everything we went to bed on Earth and woke up on Mars."

"Do you have other dimensions you're colonizing?"

"One scientific, we brought out Stark International, Paddy and Dante's home, Warrick and Andrew's home, and the Banzai Institute and the government has started one for agriculture."

"Remind me to send you copies of the information on a colony dimension we started where they're building their own homes and setting up a small town. They're going to have limited electricity in the form of solar panels. How are you handling schooling?"

"Becka's family is the only one with kids young enough for school, they go down to Earth daily when their parents go to work. We also have a good selection of homeschooling information and the school has online classes as well as on campus."

"Which doesn't work when that fucking machine comes on, hence the homeschooling books and supplies." Becka sighs. Calvin looks at her and they tell the newcomers about the machine, the others shaking their heads.

Back at the dorm Josette grins as Alex walks in from Wayne Manor, waving at where Tony and Becka are sitting in the living room.

"Alex." Tony smiles as the younger man walks over to them. A couple hours later Bruce comes looking for his brother and is drawn into the conversation, a couple hours after that Thomas arrives and is drawn into the conversation. Silas has joined them by then along with Alexander and George.

A cough has Thomas looking over and finding Alfred with his arms crossed over his chest and his foot tapping.

"Uht oh, somebody's in trouble." Becka sing-songs, then yawns. "I dunno about you guys, but I need some sleep before we start this up again." The others nod and grab notebooks, pens, pencils, and assorted loose paper before they make arrangements to come to the compound in the morning after breakfast. "There's always a higher authority to keep people in line."

"Yep, for us it's Alfred and for you guys it's them." Alex says, pointing to where Nancy and Marilyn are standing and giving the group looks. Albert is behind them, his mouth covered so they can't see him grinning.

Meanwhile four women and two men had settled in a room to talk about Josette. In another room eight Doc's are also talking.

"Are we the only extraterrestrials?" Doc asks Time Lord Doc.

"Of the eight of us, though Doc's dimension is a thousand years ahead of the others."

"And the three of us didn't have Josette for a granddaughter in our dimensions." Clark says, pointing at Time Lord Doc and 10th planet Doc. The story of how he'd been lost for forty years is told and Doc shakes his head, that explains why they treat him as a much loved younger brother.

The next morning after breakfast Josette heads off to the basement with Alan to do their laundry. Clarinda and Pat immediately start looking over Josette's room, finding the room the boys had told Pat about.

Clarinda shakes her head as she looks around Josette's room. "Why hasn't she . . ."

Josette's Pat chuckles behind her and points at the wall. "That door goes up to Josette's bedroom on the second floor. She stopped sleeping down here years ago."

"Ahhh, I'd . ..ohhh yes." Pat and Clarinda say when they walk up the stairs. A large queen sized bed is next to a door with nightstands on either side. Across from the bed is a wall of windows. Across from them is three doors and a couple dressers. One leads to a bathroom, one to a walk in closet, and the third is a linen closet. They look at a circular staircase in the corner of the room.

"It goes up to Josette's library." Josette's Pat says at their questioning looks. "Dates back from when it was a single room with a powder room on one side."

"Josette, when's the last time you replaced your sheets and towels?" Josette's Pat asks when she comes up behind them. She can see the shelves are full.

"Last year, it had been a while." She walks out the door by the bed into the second floor and walks down the hall to another room.

"Ohhh my . . ."

"I'd thought you had to have outgrown even a closet for your quilts." Pat says dryly as she walks into a large room filled with shelves and wardrobes that are filled with quilts.

"And we're going to have to enlarge this again, I got hit with five notebooks of quilt ideas earlier this year." Hannah laughs behind her. "I noticed the shelves of your workroom were full again."

"Have to write more books." Josette's Pat smirks. Josette rolls her eyes.

"More books?"

Josette leads them down the hall to where she keeps her books, pointing at a shelf of books. "All but the last two quilting books I've written. Those are currently being printed. Each room of boxes is a single book. Once they're done with the last two books we might start a second printing of the oldest book."

"You tour with these?" Pat asks.

"No, I tour with those. . ." Josette points at shelves across the room. "These I sell at mine and the boys shows. I'm signing for hours. Those are printed in Granda's dimension, if we don't start printing the oldest quilting book we'll start on these out here."

"What are these?" A case of books and DVDS is apart from the others.

"Books we wrote for our hundredth anniversary of moving to Haven."

"Shelves?"

Josette leads them up the hall to her workroom, Pat looking around then at her.

"It used to be a normal ten by eight dorm room with a bathroom leading to another room, I used the other room for storing fabric and large stuff. When I started quilting the frame went in another room down the hall. I soon was wanting to buy larger equipment and inherited a studio from a crafter in Eureka, then we started enlarging this room, over the years we added the other areas."

"You said you keep your schoolbooks elsewhere, does this include diplomas?" Pat asks. The others start gathering and David leads them down the hall to a room.

"Everybody has their own section."

"Josette doesn't have any diplomas in here?" Pat asks, not finding any for her.

David sniggers and leads them to a door hidden on the back wall. They walk into a gallery. . .a gallery of diplomas.

"This floor is from our dimension, the second floor is from Clark's dimension, the third floor is from Granda's dimension. It's only one room so far. . ." Josette comes through and blows him a raspberry.

"Josette, what's the most classes you've taken in a semester?" Becka asks, looking at her grandparents.

"Fifty."

"Three different times before we left Earth and our semesters were fourteen weeks." Alan says dryly as Marilyn moans. "I take it your grandparents were talking to you about taking too many classes?" They learned she and her uncles were taking classes the other night.

"Nineteen in one semester, it didn't seem like that many as I was taking them but every time I turned around . . ."

"I was finishing another class? Been there, done that. My mutation makes it easier for me though. And . . ." Josette looks at Becka. "You ever stop to think that your. . ."

"Dreaming stuff until I invent it is a mutation? I have actually. Especially after we figured out Tony and I were from the same dimension."

"We got four Professor Xavier's on Haven, we can easily do the bloodwork."

Pat wanders the hallways, looking at all the diplomas.

"Each hallway is a school, each room is an area."

"Are these the same degree?" She sees some diplomas have the same degree name on them.

"Some degrees are part of multiple degree curricula, while others cover the same material but focus on different areas or come at it from different angles. Those are usually from different schools though."

"Textbooks?"

They go down the hall to another room.

"This is a library?"

"Yes, we added the original school's library to the dorm when the new one was built. We use it for our textbooks and the boys art books. Josette's got an area just as big attached to her workroom for her quilting and knitting books and magazines."

"I take it Josette has her own building here also?" Richard asks. David chuckles and leads them to another doorway down the hall.

Doc sighs when confronted by the hallways of books. "Again, first floor our dimension, second Clark's, and third Granda's. Each hallway is a different school. Each room is a group of degrees, the red bookcases are Master level books, usually the classes for that degree since the two years of basic classes are the same for every degree. If they have doctorates, they're the gold cases. Some of the degrees are part of multiple degree sets. The cooking books have their own area. We're working on a separate area for those degrees that had box sets of DVDS."

"Masters are four years?"

"Two years of classes for the degree like the masters in every other dimension we've visited and two years of basic classes geared to actually writing the damn papers. Because I know some people have a helluva time writing them. The classes for writing papers and reports at GD are always packed, and they ain't voluntary." Sniggers and nods from the others.

"Studio?" Pat looks at Josette. She sighs and heads down the hall, the others staring around the large room.

"I inherited this from Jessica Anderson in Eureka, Dr. Stark thought it was five floors tall when he found it. Since nobody else was a crafter of her scale in Eureka. . .it came to me because we had the room for it and I was running out of room in my workroom." Grabbing her PADD, she finds pictures of the original two rooms and puts them on the screen. Pat nods. "A good room but. . ."

"Yeah, that was before we started working on them, we enlarged the room by tesseract and added new flooring. Anyway, once I was finished with my classes for the semester I started exploring and realized it was actually fifteen floors. A while later I got tapped by Dr. Blake to make the winter socks for Eureka because the old provider had went out of business." Mary nods. "At that time I was asking if there was a way to enlarge this by tesseract to add an elevator, the others couldn't understand why there wasn't already one. . .some of the machines had to have come up by elevator. Dr. Blake went looking for the controls and found out the track covering them was stuck and when it was lubed found out that I'd only found a small section of the studio. It's actually 75 floors, each floor larger than I thought . . .and I'm still not sure I found everything." Bronwen chuckles. "Yes, especially after you were done."

"Socks?"

They follow Josette down the hall. "The machines on my right are the ones for the school, the ones on the left are Eureka's. It started with one sock machine and maybe five boxes of yarn when the school asked me to make socks for the emergency supplies."

"The big skeins?"

"Yep, two pounds each, five in a package and thirty skeins in a box. I could get four pair of tube socks for the school's emergency supply from one skein with some left over. Splicing four partial skeins into hanks got two more pair. Then the school asked for socks to sell at the flea market in town. I brought other colors of yarn and every time I turned around I was buying more sock machines, doubling the yarn order, or both." Pat and Paddy snigger, knowing all too well that feeling.

"One semester we couldn't take classes thanks to the dumbasses of education screwing our schedule over by making us start the semester two weeks later than the other students. They swore that nobody would be inconvenienced by this but they lied because by the time we'd taken our finals. . .it was too late for the schools to accept our grades."

Sighs from everybody.

"Yeah, the dumbasses were throwing their hands up in the air blaming everybody else for what happened because they couldn't possibly be at fault while GD scrambled to keep students from being expelled for 'failing' all our classes. David had just started his MBA, Alan med school, and Susan law school so they really didn't need that. Finally they hammered out a solution nobody liked. . .the schools would accept our grades. . .but not for that fall semester, the winter one. Which meant only Alan and Susan could take classes since they were working at GD in legal and the infirmary. Which we were happy for, no use all of us taking a hit in our schooling. While this delayed me finishing my history degree from Montague and two degrees from Assyrian, I was already working at the library, the twins had their education degrees but hadn't signed up for graduation yet since they were going for business degrees at the same time so they could start their student teacher class hours." Nods from the others. "Michael and Alexander still had their art and David's still sitting on his ass." A rude sound from David who's busy cutting off the plastic from a new pallet of yarn. Mary chortles despite herself.

"And the teachers were giving Josette projects to keep her occupied since she wasn't taking classes and Joyce said they might be interested in different socks. After Josette stopped banging her head on the wall she called Agatha for an advanced sock machine and enough skeins of yarn to make samples of two color socks. Principal Madison was interested in all nine and we brought five more advanced sock machines with the idea of buying more when they went for sale at the flea market and the website for my art went live. By that time we were buying five hundred boxes of yarn at a time, that went to 750 boxes on a four month schedule, then three hundred boxes of white and natural yarn when I started tie-dyeing them. That went to five hundred boxes every four months, then five hundred boxes of another yarn woolease was putting out two months after the other yarn. The main order went to 750 boxes every two months, then a thousand boxes every two months thanks to the demand for new socks."

"And this isn't a drop in the bucket compared to the other socks." David says as Alan brings out more pallets of yarn.

"Other socks?" Doc asks.

"The government contacted the school with the idea of us making socks for foster care. . .both the kids and adults, old age homes, prison canteens. . . We ended up buying 750 sock machines and 2200 pallets of yarn delivered every six months."

The others moan. "We turned it into a work-study position, twelve students working five hour shifts twenty hours a week from 8 am to 5 pm six days a week either emptying the machines, filling boxes, or putting them on pallets." Nods of satisfaction from the others. "We put the machines on the fifth floor temporarily until we could build a permanent place for them. . ."

"Those two buildings on the grounds?"

"Yes, one of them was for the socks, the other was for the university representatives. . .by that time we were getting over 300 coming out the entire month of November to talk to the students."

"University representatives?"

"It's something the DoD does for Tesla, once a year they come out to Eureka and talk to the sophomores about their universities."

David nods. "Grammy Allie brought out nine people to talk to us about schools after UM-B had their problems. They brought enough supplies to talk to us and the students and it continued every year, going from one week at the school and talking to the students in the auditorium to their booths filling the gym with the overflow going on the fourth floor of the library until they could put up the building and talking to students from the towns around us." Nods of satisfaction. "A year later we got a call asking if the school could double their orders. . .we ended up order another two thousand pallets of yarn, doubling the number of students working, and doubling the number of sock machines." The others shake their heads. "A couple years after we moved to Haven the government asked for more socks because of the problems Earth was having, that brought it up to 2250 machines and since the demand was still good for the school's socks we doubled the number of sock machines I had."

"Was that the last of the government orders?"

"Oh hell no, we had 3000 sock machines in the building here on the school grounds and put up a second building in town with more sock machines, this time opening the jobs to settlers as they started arriving. The government wanted more and more socks until calmer heads prevailed, otherwise I could see every factory making yarn just for Haven."

Sighs but nods from the others. "We figured we'd be able to use the machines for other socks in the future and now we've got the orders from the 10th planet and Granda's Earth."

"And these socks?"

"Are for the schools, I drop off containers at both schools. They're counted and held for the students. New students get a couple pair in their supplies and buy more over the years. We live in ours over the winter."

"Eureka's?"

"A couple years later I was on paid leave from the school because an agency in the government had pushed their weight around and ordered the school to get me away from the library, supposedly they had junior agents that had been tortured by Japanese spies and were being reintegrated into society after recovering, my Japanese last name might cause a relapse since they were fragile."

"If they were fragile they didn't need to be at a high school." Mary snorts.

"Exactly, the story got spread around and people started realizing this was bullshit because SHIELD claimed they didn't have junior agents. Anyway, the company that had been making the winter socks for Eureka went out and Grandma Allie contacted Josette about taking it over. The machines were brought out and a link set up between my studio and a building in Eureka where they'd deliver the yarn and other supplies, I'd put the socks, empty pallets, and recycling out there. When Eureka left Earth the supplies for that and the 3D models I was making came here and I delivered everything to Archimedes."

"Do you only make socks for Eureka?"

"No, every few years we will use the machines in the buildings to make a good sockpile for the other planets." Josette looks at David who grabs his PADD. "We're still good, but we'll need to start making for the planets again in a couple years."

"Do the planets put in orders?"

Josette nods. "When we see we're getting low on supplies, we'll put up a poll either after the Harvest or Lights Festival and leave it running for a few months so people can get in their requests. That's for stuff like toothpaste where everybody has their own favorite brand." Nods from the others. "Stuff like clothes we'll announce it and the planets will buy the most common sizes, while shoes and boots people might get in special orders if they have an off-size. Otherwise they can replicate them."

"And the toothpaste?"

"Once we've decided on a brand the planets will get in orders. If the toothpaste you like isn't selected there's usually some in stasis from the planets we've visited or you can replicate it. Earth was. . .and still is a consumer planet." Nods from the others. "And while our Earth was ramping down on production since they knew the end was coming, some of the planets I've harvested were going at full speed."

Meanwhile Becka and Tony are looking down different hallways at the compound. Alex chuckles as Thomas leads them to the library and they continue the conversation that had been interrupted the night before, notebooks, pencils, pens, and loose paper covering the tables.

Ray, Benton, Becka, Danita, and Idina are looking at the textbooks for the school. Professor Druid chuckles. "You have children?"

"Danielle is starting her senior year, the triplets are starting eighth grade, our youngest is just over a year old."

"Our oldest is starting the seventh grade, our second oldest is starting the fifth grade, while the babies are starting second grade. And get the hell away from me with those looks, go knock each other up." Becka mock-scowls at her women who just smirk. Professor Druid chuckles. "Yes, we're all familiar with that look from either our mates or the kids." They talk classes and schools for a couple of hours.

"Ohhhh," Marilyn sighs as she walks the streets for the Harvest Festival. "You say this lasts for three days?"

"Yes, and there will be something new each day. We have a two days Light Festival at the end of our year that grew out of Christmas. . . "

"Because of the year difference you can have two in one year. Yes, that will probably happen to us sooner or later. Right now our second Christmas on Mars will take place early next Mars year."

Silas sighs and nods when he comes across the room of shipping containers. Susan looks up from the clipboard she's got in her hands. "We're putting together some of them to make room for more supplies we'll be getting in in a couple years. This way when we head back to Calvin's Earth to take in returning student's belongings Josette can drop off the empty shipping containers."

"Does it all stay in the containers?"

"No we have several rooms set up for some of this, the others have been looking in them to see if we can empty some of these containers before we start putting them together."

"Do you recycle the empty containers?"

"Some. Those are the ones from the lost worlds or are so bad we tear them apart and drop off the raw materials to be used again. It's easier for the ships to take them apart then it would with saws or torches on Earth." Silas nods. "I know some people have talked about turning them into housing but there's the problem of adding plumbing."

"I've seen a hostel type camp that has rooms made from shipping containers, but like you said there's no plumbing in them. Showers and toilets are in another building."

"Which would be a miserable walk in the middle of the night." Alexander says as he comes in. Checking his PADD he walks to a shipping container and starts piling boxes on a flatbed cart.

"What are you moving?"

"Towels, the room is nearly empty. We'll be able to empty this container easily between the dorm and the ranch."

"Which container is that?"

"7E."

Susan nods as she makes a note on her PADD. "That's five shipping containers empty before we start putting them together." Michael comes in and grabs another cart. "Add the sheets to that."

"Which container?"

"Looks like at least 17B, I think I can get 18D empty as well." He says looking at that container. Susan marks both down, putting a question mark behind the second one.

"We're going to have to order sheets, towels, and blankets." David says, coming up behind Silas.

"The school is ordering next summer, I figured on getting in our order then too. This way the kids have linens when they move to their own homes after they finish university and by then we'll have to look over everything in the brownstones. And probably the first planet too." Josette says, walking past. Mary looks in the room and moans. "We'll have half of these out of here in a couple weeks."

"More than half." Susan says absently.

"I'd wondered if you were working on these." Hannah says. Mary follows her into the room, not at all surprised to find it stretched out in all directions.

"It's been a few years since we made room." Alexander says as he tosses one last box on the top of a stack over his head. "There. . .7E is empty." Josette rolls her eyes at the ceiling and waves a hand, the boxes disappearing from the cart. "Tell me where they go before you try taking that through the halls and kill yourself when you trip on one of the cats."

Mary sniggers, she'd seen the cats almost seem to be placing bets on who they could trip. Interestingly enough they never seem to try tripping Josette. Alexander looks at her, they're obviously communicating mentally, and Josette waves her hand again. "There, boxes are moved."

"We can empty them later."

"Yeah, we won't be taking in the recycling before we take in the containers."

"How often do you take in your recycling?"

"At least once a semester, it adds it."

Silas nods. "Becka fills her van four or five times when she brings down our recycling."

"You get the whiners too. . .'why do we have to recycle. It's hard, we have to clean everything, remove labels, flatten cans'. . .not that many can be flattened thanks to the damn round bottoms." Silas nods. "All you have to do is fill a pail with water and soak the labels off if you don't cut them off cans. Same with the bottles and jugs."

Mary sighs and nods. "And some communities even pick up recycling with the garbage, all you have to do is take it to the curb. . .but for some people that's too much work. Then they get caught not recycling and have to work at the recycling center as part of their community service with everybody pointing and laughing."

Silas nods. "I've heard other communities do that. Becka worked at a drop-off center as her volunteer hours for her scholarship. Padraig's, Warner, the law office Danita runs, and a couple other businesses in town have weekends where they'll clean out the recycling center in Intothewind when it's piling up."

Calvin had come up and he nods. "Ours pile up too, the kids generally go out at least once while they're on Earth and clean them out. It's good money even if some of the so-called important people don't like people working there."

"Human nature." Susan snorts. "There's always going to be some people who don't want to do something, no matter how many people it helps."

"Josette, shipping containers for your socks?"

"I usually end up emptying them one by one. I'll take them in when we take in the graduating students. Those I don't fill again anyway."

"Is this all your supplies?"

"Except for what's been moved to various rooms, yes. It's easier to keep everything in one place and come here when the rooms are empty."

Silas looks around him as he walks out of the building on the 9th planet.

"Are those shipping containers?"

"Yes, they reused several of them for a workroom for the quilters and a summer kitchen they use when the crops come in." She looks at him. "You've had at least one harvest on Mars?"

"Yes, we're seeing how long we have to offset a second crop before we can harvest before winter. We have Becka's large kitchen but I can see the need for a larger area to work in. Water?"

"They draw buckets from an outside tap since it's only in use for several days at a time."

"Did you add insulation?" He looks around the workshop, seeing a stove in the corner.

"Yes, otherwise the metal would just radiate cold." Silas nods. "Power?"

"Solar panels and the boxes that allow them to tap into the alternate energy in the other buildings."

"What's that building?" He can see one set apart from the others.

"My home on the 9th planet." They walk over and she opens the door, the lights coming up.

"This is magnificent."

A couple weeks later the last of the now empty containers is moved to one of the ships. Josette looks around the big room and shakes her head.

"I know, we emptied over twenty containers before we started putting them together and it doesn't look like touched them. I didn't realize just how much stuff we had in here."

"Visits to suppliers and picking up stuff. We've been adding containers to the room." David says. The others nod.

"How is the dorm on raw materials?"

"I brought some out a couple days ago, the crystals on the replicator are all full and I have extra in the next room." David nods in satisfaction.

"Supplies?"

"I brought out from Granda's dimension when I brought out the new students and dropped off containers for the returning students and employees. I'm off in Mom's dimension right now. And putting in more orders to be ready by the time we go back after Thanksgiving." Nods of satisfaction from the others.

"That just leaves us the school supplies you get every other month and whatever we bring out after Thanksgiving."

"Sock yarn?"

"I brought more out with the students and the last of it for next year will come out after Thanksgiving."

"For our socks?"

"Yep, both buildings will be full by the end of the year and I'll bring out pallets to the buildings as needed and move the socks to the ship."

"Are you going to tell the others?" David asks that night when he finds Josette tending the plants in the downstairs room.

"Yes, I've got an appointment tomorrow on the 9th planet to talk to the others."

The next morning Josette comes out of the switching station at Headquarters, Doc and Thomas behind her and brings out a container she puts on the floor. Pulling her PADD off her belt, she sends a file to the large screen across from them.

The others stare at Josette as she finishes telling them about the plants, then look at Doc and Thomas.

"Yes, we're growing the plants. Josette is the only one that has any at stages where they are producing."

"Josette, the planets . . .did they have metals, glass, or plastics?" 9th planet Dr. Cross asks.

"Not as we know it, the plants produced something similar to glass for windows as they grew while they had something similar to metal for stuff like machines and decorations as well as assorted dishes. Brigadoon is looking into how they handled recycling. Since it's all vegetable based they could be composted, whether they had a specific plant that handled that . . ."

"Did they have winters?"

"Yes, the buildings had furnaces that used pellets that lasted nearly a week. As the buildings got bigger, a second or even third furnace was grown for heat." The others shake their heads.

"Power."

"Brigadoon and the other ships are looking into that, they'd have to have had a way to produce energy for the machines, the lights, water. . . Let alone the plants that became vehicles."

"Vehicles?"

"There's rumors in the records of plants that became spaceships, possibly submarines and other ships. The ships are going through everything but there's tons of records." The others shake their heads.

"Are you planting a building?"

"We're looking at locations right now. One on the first planet, one on Haven near the ranch since it will need to be domed until it's large enough to handle a winter on it's own. Once they're growing, we'll see about planting on the other planets."

"How long. . .?"

"About three years before it's big enough to be lived or worked in and can heat itself over the winter."

"If they're continuously growing. . ."

"You'd need them close enough to a building for people to get there easily but far enough away that they don't encroach."

Back on Haven Josette pots a couple more seedlings and looks out the window.

"We're going to have snow before night." She says as David comes into the room.

"Thankfully it's too early to stick. What's the weather forecast?"

"Cold and snow, going to be another bad winter."

David sighs but nods. "We've got to expect it. Everybody stocked up on wood this fall?" Josette nods. "And they have extra food and blankets."

By Thanksgiving it's snowed twice and the graduating students and returning employees and cooking school teachers walk off the ship to either greet family waiting for them or heading into a building. Josette starts delivering the last of the orders and picking up supplies, joining the others at the mansion a few hours later.

Over the next few weeks she visits various malls and moves containers to the ship, the returning students walking through the tesseract and heading to the auditorium to have their bags checked before they go to their dorms.

Josette joins with her other selves that had been to the other dimensions. Doc had gone out with her and they'd seen the work going on in his dimension including plans for a base on the moon and Mars.

The totes of lights and other decorations start coming out over the next few days as they start decorating.

"Are the others decorating?"

"Yeah, they've decided on a few days to celebrate . .. whatever and decorate then." The others nod.

"How is Thomas's world?"

"Leveling out, we were there for a few more years before we're in the same time. Mars and the moonbase are doing well."

"Location on the first planet for a building?" Doc asks a few days later as he attaches another string of lights for Josette to put up.

"I was thinking near my fortress so that if I need to I can move it as the building grows." Doc nods. "The robots can keep an eye on it if I don't stay out there until it's well established. I need to spend some time at the fortress anyway."

"And here?"

"Either near the ranch or Headquarters, maybe partway between them so either of us can check on it." She's flying upside down as she attaches the light strand and looks over at Doc. He slowly nods. "We'll look at locations, maybe a little closer to Headquarters?"

Josette nods as she nearly stands on her head to attach the strand to the clips then starts flying back up, this time sideways. "You're out there all the time and the rest of us can easily fly out when we find a spot."

"Thinking of planting year after next?"

"Yeah, that will give us a year to find a spot and I can plant on the first planet next year when I'm out to plant."

The others come out for the Lights Festival, looking at the decorations on the buildings. The lights start coming on and video is taken.

"I can't believe the difference. . .and it's not like Earth where. . ."

"You'd have Christmas specials and buy this commercials." Pat sighs as she takes a cup of mulled wine that is being heated on one of the fires. A cone of roasted chestnuts is shared by everybody as a large pan is put on the fire. Supplies are brought out and start going in the pan.

"Is that paella?"

"Yep, they make it every year." David says as he walks past. "Josette, Sue and Agatha are looking for you." She nods and heads to the stores.

"Supplies?" He asks when she comes back over to them.

"And bring out old clothes for patchwork quilts. I'll do it after the festival."

"Supplies?"

"We keep the major supplies in a tesseracted warehouse and bring them out as needed, usually once a year Sue and Agatha will do inventory and grab a flyer to bring out supplies or they'll ask Josette to get everything. Are you making fat quarters?"

"Yeah, after we remove the zippers and buttons from the old clothing and put it upstairs."

Doc looks at her. "A bag of clothing is five dollars and with scraps from leftover quilts can be used for patchwork quilts. They don't have to be pretty as long as they keep you warm."

"Do you only use it for that?"

"Nope, we make braided rugs and if it's too bad for either use it goes in the replicator as raw materials for new fabric. I try to sort out clothing that bad before then though."

"Did you send the last of the books off to Becka and Paddy?"

"Yep. Got a nice thank you from them."

Doc shakes his head as he sees the long string of lights being taken down, each one wrapped around plastic when they're taken off and put back in their boxes in containers that Josette or Alan put in subspace once they're full. The others have said they have a basement storage room for the decorations and he sees a door open in the basement, the girls coming out of the elevator with a cart of containers that go in the room. Their placement would seem odd until he sees other containers going into the open spots. He looks at the containers, yes. . .each one has a number and letter on it.

"Have you always decorated the dorm?" He asks, grabbing Josette as she scrambles down the wall.

"Yep, the school had a Christmas tree in the front of the dorm they'd decorate early in December, putting presents under it for the students who'd be staying at the school over Christmas Christmas Eve. When the girls moved to the first of the new dorms we looked over the decorations and Christmas tree left behind, buying a new tree since the old one was on it's last legs. We started buying new decorations and put up a second tree in front of the sliding glass door several years later when the rest of the school started decorating. A lot of our decorations came from the glassblowers." Doc chuckles, the others had made a number of purchases at the store.

"What's going on at the office?" He can see students going in with empty bags and coming out with them full.

"The students in dual enrollment are getting their first books and any special supplies needed for their new classes, David will get ours the day before the semester starts. Unlike the students, we get our books for an entire semester at once, they can only sign up for one class at a time and get the books when they sign up."

"How?"

"Replicator in a room that's hooked up to a server. The server is updated the same time our computers are. Before the replicator, the students had to make do with e-books for their university classes."

"Can they replicate books for reference?"

"Yeah."

Josette looks over as Principal Madison comes over. "Josette, I don't have my PADD handy, what's the supply on hats, gloves, and scarves?"

"I was looking at it the other day. We've got enough for next winter but we'll need to open the factory up either this year or next. I was going to say something at the meeting." He nods and continues walking with Calvin as they make plans for the next school year.

"Factory?"

"A cottage industry type building that we use for sweaters, scarves, hats, mittens. We open it up every several years or so, making a good batch for each planet then shut it back down, it was one of the first factories we brought out back when we were selling to Earth."

"Blends?"

"Yes, so we can just toss them in the washing machine. Everybody who knits usually has a hat, gloves, scarf, or sweater going on their needles that's wool for those people who have the room to wash them by hand and lay them out flat to dry."

"Does the school buy them?"

"No, Calvin sends out supplies for the students. . .which gets a hit during the third semester when the weather starts turning cooler. Everything is on the third floor of the south bookstore." They walk that way and Doc looks at a building that's getting a few students walking in.

"An alterations shop for the uniforms, they buy them large to wear for a couple of years and need to have hems taken down as they grow. They used to take them back to Earth to do it but there's no lack of people who can do it here. We also have a factory to make the uniforms for the school and other places since the factory that had made them stopped because they wanted to move into the big leagues. They weren't satisfied being a big fish in a small pond."

"And realized breaking into the big leagues wasn't as easy as they'd thought?" Pat snorts.

"Nope, of course they had taken over the business from their parents and had plans, not realizing their parents business had been successful because of hard work." Both of them nod. "There's two boxes in the office for outgrown or worn out uniforms. If they're good, they can be used as emergency uniforms by other students until they can get back to buy new ones, if they're worn out they're either used in quilts or turned into raw materials." Pat nods in satisfaction.

"Good selection of books." Pat says, looking at the shelves.

"Granda and I went to a textbook expo last year, there was quite a few new texts thanks to the colony dimension and plans for the satellite and ship. At least in their world I didn't have to order the books, in our dimension the dumbasses of education passed rules that made me sort the books by company and teacher instead of making one large order from each company." The older Professor Xavier sighs and nods. "Punishing private schools because they could use whatever book they wanted and public schools were limited to the books the government wanted them to use."

"Exactly, while I was off Principal Madison said that one of the employees went whining to his boss about how we were doing that and he complained until he found out it was their own rules that made us do it that way."

"Lemme guess, I didn't mean for it to affect me." Clarinda snorts. She remembers all the headaches setting up a lesson plan for Josette in her chamber.

"Yep, not the first time their stupidity came back to bite them in the ass." They go up to the third floor to find Rahne opening boxes of winter clothes to put on shelves. She'd let her hair grow over the years until it now reached her still trim waist . ..or what would be a trim waist if she wasn't starting to show her latest pregnancy. She'd given birth to eight children over the years, not quite as many as Danielle but she also didn't have the 'urges' that the other woman had during the times when Brightwind was servicing the Valkryie's mares along with the other stallions.

"The school suggests students get in a supply of winter clothes before they come to Haven but you don't know how cold you're going to be until the weather starts turning. Now those of us that came up from Earth were used to cold winters thanks to all that shit in the air but even we needed warmer clothes since we were used to going from a building to a vehicle and another building. When you're walking everywhere in town there's a difference." Nods from everybody.

"This isn't just the students." Doc looks at the coats on racks. A good portion of them are adult sized.

"Nope, the school employees hit this floor too the first time it turns colder. And that includes the cooking school employees and the people who were out for two years getting raw footage of Haven for 'reality' shows. We got double and even triple orders of winter gear for a few years so we had it on hand."

"And sometimes we need to replace winter clothes. Either they've worn out or been outgrown."

Josette heads to the sweater factory, Doc and Pat looking over her shoulder and nodding in satisfaction. Pulling out her PADD she looks over the supplies of everything else. They'll have to open the clothing factory too.

"They're dead Jim." Josette says, looking over David's shoulder as she walks into the dorm.

He's looking at his workboots. "Yep. I'd hoped to get another year out of them."

"Didn't you say that last year?" Alan asks as he comes through. He's got his own boots in his hands and examines them before grabbing the jar.

Doc looks at them. "We have waterproofing wax we put on our boots a few times a year, usually the beginning of the season and the end. It makes them last longer but eventually the uppers wear out and fall apart. After they've been resoled at least twice."

David puts them in the replicator, bringing out new boots that he starts coating with the waterproofing.

Doc shakes his head as he follows Josette into the warehouse, seeing shelving units stretching out as far as the eye can see. Checking the lists Josette begins popping stuff in subspace.

"Are all your warehouses like this?"

"No." Josette smirks and after she's done grabbing everything she leads him to the museums warehouse, Doc blinking as he sees doors in the outside wall. They hadn't been there when they walked up to the warehouse and she opens one.

"Museums, malls, libraries, opera houses, everything that we saved for the future. We first started this kind of warehouse for the factories that we needed. This way we can add them as needed but not become as cluttered as Earth was." He nods as he takes pictures, the others won't believe this.

"Sue, I'll bring the old clothes out third day." Josette says as she delivers the supplies.

"I'll let the others know." Marilyn starts calling off items as she puts them away in the back, Sue checking them off on her list. The rest of the supplies go to the Albatross Nests and the yarn store before they walk back to the dorm. Doc hands James the camera and he whistles softly.

David looks at Josette.

"The museum warehouse."

"Are all the doors links to buildings?"

"Yep, each warehouse is for a different thing. We have museums, malls, resale stores, libraries, university libraries, university bookstores, opera houses. . .though we haven't gotten into those yet, and factories. The factories was the first building we put up for stuff we needed in that type of building." James looks at her and she rattles the names of the factories off.

"Get the stores stocked up?" Abby asks as she walks through, her laundry floating behind her and going down the laundry chute.

"Yeah, I'm taking the old clothes out third day."

Pat follows Josette into the store a few days later, finding a group of people there who start grabbing the clothes Josette brings out of subspace, grabbing from the pile of seam rippers on the tables, and start dropping zippers and buttons in containers on the table.

"What do you do with them?"

"If they're good, they're put up to be used again, if not. . .they go in the replicator to be used as raw material."

"Do you cut them apart?" She can't see scissors on the table.

"Not until they're sold, we sort them by fabric and color and they go upstairs in the boxes. Since most people don't have dedicated workrooms they'll run upstairs and buy a bag once they've selected a quilt to work on and cut everything apart then. Now Ma, Alex, Josette, and somebody like Becka back in her world have containers of their own of old clothes." Nods from the three people there. "Becka says the house elves routinely empty the old clothes drop-off sites."

"You'll never run out of old clothes on Earth." Pat sighs.

"Nope."

Pat looks at Josette. "Didn't you go upstairs when we came out earlier?"

"Yes, I needed a couple colors I didn't have in my stock at the dorm and didn't feel like bringing out more from the ships when I can just buy a couple bags here."

The others head back to Earth after Pat returns from the store and Josette slumps onto the couch.

"Get everything stocked up for the next couple of years?"

"Yep, the boxes are full of old clothes, the stockrooms are full in the stores so are the shelves, everything is full here, and . . ." Josette looks at the clock. 'Lunch' she calls mentally.

"When do the classes on the clocks start?"

"They started this week. The first degree is on the forms clocks have taken over the years, the next degree will be hands-on. Right now we've got a full classroom with people from all the planets." The others nod.

"Anything else new?""

"Not really, I'm partway through the third semester for Princeton from Granda's dimension, otherwise it's picking up semesters here and there, I finished another degree from Edinborough on musical instruments but that was the only one anywhere near being close to finished. Did either of you start new degrees?" She looks at David and Susan.

"Yeeessssss." David pouts. The others do the world's smallest violin and he laughs. "And I expect somebody will be sliding on the floor and thanking all the gods this fall when they finish their art history degrees from Oxford." Michael and Alexander frantically nod their heads.

"And we're two years into our new bachelors." Abby says. Anna and Alan nod.

"CJ? It's about time Thomas and Clark started dropping hints about a degree."

"He started one to Cambridge." Josette smirks. "A lit degree since they can't all be serious. Or even Sirius since it's Harry Potter." The groans make her grin. CJ had made the same joke when he told his parents about the new degree and got 'the' look until he admitted he was going for two degrees.

"How many classes are you taking?"

"I'm looking at 25, I might pick up another semester depending on how fast I get these done. I'm taking two classes on the school computer. starting the last degree for the shipwrecks from the naval academy and I'm a year into another degree on the Green Hornet. That's another multiple degree curriculum I'll be finishing."

After lunch Josette sighs and looks at the shelves of her workroom, David sniggering in the doorway as she goes eeny meeny miney mo to select a quilt to work on.

"Own damn fault for buying so many at once."

"Bite me."

"Started the books for these yet?"

She slaps her ass lightly and he chuckles as he walks off. Tormenting Josette is always fun. She always gives as good as she gets. In her room she looks over her notes and starts writing up a pattern before cutting out pattern pieces.

"Is there any factories opening this year?" Susan asks at dinner.

"No, we'll be opening the sweater factory next year and maybe the clothing factory the year after that. . .it all depends on how the supply lasts."

"Books?"

"Printers are shut down for the year. There's not enough of a need to reprint the old books, there's no new cookbooks, and there's no new books from the others yet."

"And you don't have any new quilting books. . .yet." David smirks.

Josette mentally flips him off.

"Start a new quilt?"

"Yeah, I walked in on her going eeny meeny miney mo to pick one." He chuckles.

"Okay, appliances. The school's kitchens are inspected yearly and we've brought new stuff out but. . ."

"The others have had to get new stuff over the years. I gotta inventory the supplies this summer and we might need to bring more from the ships." Principal Madison nods in the front room, Professor Druid repeating what they're saying for President Bartlett since he nods a few seconds later.

"Do we see a need for a second gristmill? I know the others were looking over ours while they were here." Alan says.

"Not for a while." David says slowly while on the screen Professor Druid is repeating the conversation. "I know the others were happy to see we had the flour factory on the sorting planet for major crops." Both older men nod on the screen.

"If we did I'd rather we found a good sized river that didn't freeze solid in the winter for a water wheel and was central enough for everybody to use it. Yes, the flyers take care of that argument. . ." More nods in the front room.

"It could be used as an extra source of powering batteries." President Bartlett says. This time Josette nods on the screen.

"Saying it could be used to power batteries?" Susan asks. Josette nods again. "Something to think about for the future.

"Speaking of the future. Paper? Towels, toilet, and writing?" President Bartlett asks.

"I'm checking the supply next week, I thought we'd be running low on everything pretty soon. If there's enough I'll grow cotton this year for towels and next year for toilet paper and harvest scrub trees both years. If we're running low we can bring more off the ships." Both men nod in the front room.

"We're putting in the order for the school's linens in a few months."

"We'll have ours ready then. By the time they arrive more stuff should be wearing out."

"Books?" Professor Druid asks.

"First two of the new eighteen."

"Shows?"

"Me Mom's dimension, the boys Granda. I go first again this year. I'll be taking out two ships since I've got a book tour this year a few days later to talk about a new book that will be debuting just before Christmas."

"Movies?"

"Out on DVD in Granda's dimension. Getting a good screenplay delayed it in Mom's dimension but they're talking about a new one. I'm not holding my breath."

Doc, Clark, Dr. Stark, and Josette go out to the first planet a few weeks later, finally deciding on a place for the new building and planting the seedling Josette had started on the ship.

"Will it still be three years. . .?"

"Even with the perpetual growing season on the first planet? That's something the robots are going to be keeping an eye on." Josette says.

"Is this some of the information?" Doc sees obviously handwritten pages on a screen.

"Yes, all the ships have copies of the records. It's not difficult to translate everything, just time consuming. Each ship is working on a different section. While most of the seed containers were labeled, not all of them were."

"Probably knew what they were since they were so common or were protecting them from others." Dr. Stark says. The others nod. "Did they find out what all the seeds were from the underground grotto?"

"Yes and no, they've grown samples of everything but some of them . . ."

"Might have only been grown there or were lost on the outer world."

Josette nods, yawns, and interlaces her fingers to bend at the waist before stretching in all directions.

Josette slides into her seat in the dining hall an hour later to Haven but six months on the first planet, the others joining her in the back room.

"Is it planted?"

"Yep, and domed until it's well established. We were out there six months, not counting the time on the satellite and my fortress." Nods from the others.

"How are the classes for the clocks?"

"Good, you don't realize how much information was available about the history of clocks. Well, you've seen the books for these four classes." Everybody nods. "They're talking about adding a second degree on the history of clocks to go with the hands-on degrees."

"Do you see one for the first planet?"

"Part of the enjoyment of the first planet is being able to ignore clocks." Alan snorts. The others laugh and nod.

"How are they going to handle the 27 hours on the vampire planet?"

"A thirteen and a half time face with the extra hour between the time changes, so you'd have thirteen pm, midtime, then 1 AM. They'll work on a similar 11 and a half hour time face for the third planet."

A couple weeks later Josette slides into her usual seat at the testing center.

"Been a while since you had a shipwrecks degree." Dr. Stark says after she finishes her quizzes.

"Last degree in the multiple degree curricula."

The three men at the pushed together tables nod. "You letting Sheriff Carter off the hook for a year?" He'd recently finished a Masters and should have been starting a doctorate.

"He didn't fight fair." Dr. Stark mock-pouts, Drs. Cross and McNider hiding grins behind their coffee mugs. "I'll make him start it next year."

Josette looks over her shoulder a couple days later, finding Clark standing behind her as she tends the coffee plants on Brigadoon.

"Do you have any of the special plants producing on Brigadoon?"

"Yes, I transplanted at least one mature specimen of each that I could save in their native soil. The plants go dormant if they're not harvested for a while, they're producing again. Some were already in pots in the buildings so I just moved them to the ships." They walk to the rooms she set aside for them and he looks everything over.

She leads him to another room. "These are the plants from the underground grotto." Clark nods as he recognizes some Josette hadn't known, that information being sent along to Doc on the other dimension if he hadn't known them either. A few he hadn't recognized she was able to tell him about and he nods.

"Do you have any stockpiles of . . ."

"Stuff the plants produced? Yes, especially stuff like fabric and yarn, they had buildings where they could put the stuff they didn't like and get something one of the others hadn't liked. I'd thought about offering some of the seedlings to the others at the stores, not everybody but people like Agatha, Sue, Marilyn, people from Assyrian and Edinborough. . ." Clark nods. "But the problem is that not everybody has the room for rolls of fabric and big skeins of yarn so I was thinking of putting up a couple buildings, one for the plants and one for the fabric and yarn."

"Either way it would be far in the future."

Josette nods. "It takes about three years for the plants to start providing, even with multiple plants producing a separate building wouldn't be needed for a while."

"Not all the plants produce at the same rate."

"No, the plants that produce food grow faster and produce more, so do the plants that that grow the soap, toilet paper, and pellets for the furnace."

"Did they have different types of buildings?"

Josette nods. "They did, open buildings with shelving like the textiles were in, workbuildings, and buildings that people lived in." Josette brings up the translated information and Clark looks everything over, nodding. "They could also combine the buildings, something like Parliament on Earth would be anywhere from five to eight buildings. That was their center of history on the planet."

"Did you copy any of them?"

"Oh yes. What I couldn't harvest I copied. I'm thinking of finding a planet or other dimension to bring some out in the future." Clark nods in satisfaction.

"Are there any plans for the other continents?"

"Not for the future, we're not spreading out as quickly as the colony had planned for in the beginning. Now, I can't say I haven't scanned them from the ships. . ."

"Or been there yourself." He chuckles.

"Yeah, I spent a few weeks here and there over the years."

"I found it." Brigadoon says.

"Information on the spaceship?"

"And other vehicles, sending the information to your PADDs." Josette starts looking at everything and sends it to the others, beeping on various computers getting the attention of the others.

"Brigadoon found the information on the ships." Clark says as he returns to Headquarters. Thomas looks at him and then to the computer, he'd been in the middle of working on something and had tuned it out. They settle down to read.

"Good sized vehicles."

"After twenty years growth, I'd say so. But everybody did wonder about the power source. With that long a growth, the plants are started much later than they normally would."

"Some of these plants. . ."

"Yes, plants that produce oxygen beyond photosynthesis, produce water, clean water, clean air, clean and replenish the soil . . .all of which would be needed on a long space voyage."

Josette returns to the dorm after days looking all the information Brigadoon had found and checking on the plants as the others come back from the island where they'd been checking on the crops.

"We'll be picking the cacao and coffee in a couple weeks." David says.

"We'll be glad to be outside for a few hours by then." The others nod as they take the tunnels to the dining hall.

"Fish?"

"We'll check the supply this summer."

"Cheese?"

"We'll need to make more this summer and start it aging. I've got some of the soy cheese aging on the ship."

"Oh my goddddd. . .you eat real food." Anna says in a whiny voice.

"And it tastes real good." David says with a purr. Then laughs. "The so-called experts on Earth changed their minds every damn five seconds. Fats are bad for you, no some fats are good for you. Cholesterol is bad for you, no you need some cholesterol so eggs are good for you again. They wouldn't have been happy until you had a pill you took once a day."

"Don't get me started on the so-called 'experts' and the fucking food nazis." Josete rolls her eyes. "Each one shoving their opinion down your throat about how you should be living." On the screen to the front room and in the kitchen everybody is nodding.

"And the damn diets. Eat less and move more people, it's not that damn hard. Before the wars when families lived on farms, they needed a lot of calories to handle all the hard work they did."

"And parents were parents and not trying to be their kids best friends or ignoring them because they were a fucking trophy." Susan rolls her eyes as she fills her tray again, one of the kitchen workers laughing and putting more food on it for her. Susan pats one of the girls on the shoulder as she walks past. "Get the information for your paper?"

"Yep, thanks Mom."

"Bachelors, Masters, or doctorate?" David asks dryly. All the kids have either seen or heard about Josette working ahead on papers for classes. Sometimes before she's even started the degree.

"Bachelors, it's part of the classes I'm taking this fall but with all the offworld harvests coming in late I wanted it started early." All the adults in the back room and the teachers in the front room nod in satisfaction.

"How are you on your homes?"

"Good, we've all been saving money and we've got apartments purchased and working on furnishing them. We're also saving money for a land and a house outside town to grow crops. We can't be out there all the time but with working different shifts one of us will be out there at least once a week." Nods from the others again. "We'll start out slow and add more crops and more land over the years."

"Are Wayne, Dayton, and DI putting in a communal garden?"

"Yeah, they're going to be starting it in a couple of years, they're starting a hydroponics and growing section at the same time. People start working there in three years, that gives them a year to get settled before we start doing our internships."

/Josette, Thomas's world?/ David asks.

/By the time the kids leave home we'll be within a year of being in the same time. We're. . .this last visit will probably be at the end. But when we do go out we'll be rebuilding Earth. We're stockpiling supplies on Earth, the moon, and Mars for that./

David nods mentally.

Thomas arrives at the dorm a few days later, Josette splitting off a duplicate to go to the 9th planet to talk with the others about the information Brigadoon had found. They end up making plans for the future, waiting to see how the buildings on the first planet and Haven turn out before doing anything else.

"Do you know these plants?"

"Brigadoon is looking through the seeds, hopefully with this new information she can identify the remaining seeds. If not we'll have to start them under lab conditions." Nods from the others.

"Are we the only ones who's going to be . . ."

"I'm bringing Buckaroo in in a while, once everybody's got plants going. And Lee and Harry when the sub is at a stage of growth they can crawl all over it." Nods of satisfaction from everybody. "And I'm bringing in some of the others. . .Agatha, Sue, Marilyn, and people from Assyrian and Edinborough for the textiles plants. I was talking to Clark about this when Brigadoon found the information on the ships. Either putting up a building where everybody can drop off yarn or fabric that's not to their liking and getting some the others didn't like or putting up two buildings, one for the plants and one for the excess since not everybody can handle a roll of fabric." Nods from the others.

Josette returns to Haven, finding Alan and Susan coming from the island. With the wave of an arm bags of food appear on the table in Josette's downstairs room.

"We've got the cacao and coffee drying on the tables, somebody can go out over the next few days to turn everything."

"Then I'll polish and bag them." Josette says with a nod as they start sorting out the food and putting it in various rooms. The dirt that had been in the bags is gathered up to take back to the islands and Josette looks at the clock and mentally whistles.

"Midterms."

"Yep, I'm heading off with the boys tomorrow. We should be back before dinner." Alexander and Michael nod.

"How are you coming on your Princeton classes?"

"Finished the third semester and I'm partway into the fourth. I've got ten classes in on teacher, and I'm going to be done with the online classes in a couple weeks."

"Getting the major classes in this spring and summer?"

"Yeah, fall's going to be asshole to elbow with the harvests coming in weekly."

Dr. Stark nods the next day when Josette repeats her reasoning for getting in so many classes so early in the year.

"Have you been on the island?"

"Alan and Susan went yesterday and brought back early stuff from the gardens along with picking the cacao and coffee. We're drying it right now."

"Coffee?" Vincent asks.

"I have a new variety started on Brigadoon and we enlarged the offworld growing area a few years ago. When I pick the crop up this year it will be double what we had been growing."

"And your crops?"

"I planted more crops on the first planet last year. It will be at least next year before we see the enlarged harvest."

"We've been looking at a growing area for coffee, the sticking point is. . ."

"Having it close enough to check on often, that's why the commercial growing area have their own apartments." Dr. Cross nods. "Are you harvesting fish this year?"

"We were going to look at it later this summer. And make cheese."

"Is the one in Town harvesting?"

"They're planning on next year. And enlarging the facility." Vincent nods in satisfaction as the buzzer sounds. He starts bringing out plates as the boys come back from using the bathroom.

"Are you two done?"

"Yeah, just before the buzzer sounded." Alexander stretches and yawns.

"Only two more classes this fall and you're done."

"Until everybody starts nagging for another degree." Michael says sourly.

Dr. McNider chuckles. "Shows?"

"Me Mom, the boys Granda's. I'm going first. I'm taking two ships out since I've got a book tour a few days later."

"And bringing more stuff back to fill the big room again." Alexander snorts.

"Cleaning?"

"Yeah, we emptied over twenty containers and put together about fifty more and it doesn't look like we did anything. And we're getting in more supplies, beyond the sheets, towels, and blankets we're ordering this year."

"When is the school putting in the order?"

"Before the Harvest Festival. The order should be arriving the end of the year when I take the graduating students home if the last order is any indication."

"With the job of opening the boxes and making up the sets opening after the first of the year?"

"Yeah, it's only a temporary job but will last at least the first semester, once everything's in the floor stockrooms or the basement storerooms students will be told to start putting wore out sheets and towels in bags."

"Will they be turning everything into sets?"

"No, we'll leave some of them still in the boxes until they're needed. Probably just under half will be made up into sets if we go by last time."

The next morning Josette heads off on Hidalgo to the other dimension, picking up the school's supplies and walking into the office. Jane and Maria are on the phone so she drops off the list of what Joyce needs on the desk then brings out containers of socks before heading to the library.

"Josette?" the school librarian asks as she walks in.

"Jane and Maria are on the phones and Joyce had a list of stuff she needs a mile long and half a mile wide." A man in the room snickers softly. "Rather than sit on my ass in the office I'd see what's new."

"Here's the trade journals, here's the list of what we're ordering for both schools, All the stores in the mall are spoken for and we have a waiting list. They're talking about putting up a movie theater by the mall for the winter, and we've got no less than three warehouse stores wanting to talk to us about building stores for them. The school is already buying more land."

Josette whistles. "And I'm sure people in town are pouting."

"Oh yes, rather than try to bring in business themselves they whine about others getting what they wanted. There's tons of land outside the towns that's up for sale that can be used for commercial purposes."

Josette settles in an upholstered chair with the magazines and some papers. A notebook is brought out of subspace as she starts making a list of what she wants to purchase for herself.

"Is that a student?"

"Librarian of the other school. She comes over twice a week picking up and dropping off the school's mail and every other month for the large batches of supplies. Josette, did you drop off socks?"

"Five containers, I figured you'd be running low."

"Thank you."

A couple of hours later Josette looks up at Calvin when he pats her on the shoulder. "I thought I'd find you in here."

"Monica told me about the new land and stores."

"Yes, if it's not dealing with the school it's dealing with that." They walk to the cafeteria for lunch and Josette gathers up everything that Maria had brought out, grabbing the mail and heading back to the ship.

Dropping everything off in the outer office she leans into Principal Madison's office, finding President Bartlett in there. "They're buying more land around the school, the mall's stores are all spoke for, they've got three warehouse stores talking about putting up buildings, and they're talking about a theater."

President Bartlett chuckles. "It must be nuts there." Principal Madison sighs. "I dropped off the socks, dropped off the list of everything on Maria's desk since they were both on the phone, and went to the library a few hours. Joyce's.. ." She turns her head to see the woman in question coming in and nodding in satisfaction at the piles of supplies. "Order is out here along with the mail."

"Thank you Josette, we were running low on everything." Joyce says, rolling her eyes. "But this should hold us until the new students start arriving with their supplies."

"Granda is already planning on doubling the supplies when they come out. He looked at everything we needed, sighed, and told Jane to do it. Seems she'd been talking about the need." President Bartlett chuckles as he stands up. He'd been tasked with writing his memoirs and had been talking over an outline with Principal Madison, who was also getting a look and tapping foot from his father about a book of his own.

Josette brings out the mail at the dorm and Headquarters, the recycling bin on the coffee table getting mail tossed in it. . .sometimes unopened.

"How long were you there?"

"Most of the day, Jane and Maria were on the phones when I arrived and Joyce had a huge list of what she needed. I headed to the library for a few hours, then had lunch with Granda." She tells them about the school's plans. David whistles. "Recycling drop-off center."

"Yep." The others call off items and Josette makes a list of what can go up around the school. They all know it will probably happen over the next several years.

"Do we have any supplies?"

"Yeah, there was about five shipping containers marked for us. I've. . ." Josette pulls up a file and sends it to the others. "More for the library, I'll look everything over and start getting it ready to go in the system over the next couple of weeks."

Professor Fletcher looks over the lists of material over the next couple of days, Josette bringing out pallets of boxes and putting them in a room to work on.

"Do we have supplies?"

"Yeah. I filled the closet and put more in the basement. If we run out there's more in the shipping containers."