Sunrise

Ontaria Chang here at you again with the latest letters from our Earthbound. If you’re sitting in your comfort taking offense at what Tuck said in her last letter, ready yourself for more. Them two are back up Earthside, still. Really think they won’t talk about the End? Kind of the point. Two words for you: Wake Up.

Tourists.
You want more? Here’s your basic: Tourist Rule Numero One — Never engage directly. Period. Even after they wiped us out, they still wouldn’t come for the survivors unless they had some godawful ratio of their robot police to humans. Sort of like gathering a hundred of your closest friends to round up a cat. Yeah. That’s probably how they think of us. Goddamn cats. Might scratch you. Better be safe.
I know it ain’t polite to talk about the lost life. Truth, I ain’t planning on being polite. We’re here. The Lost is all around us. Hotels. Libraries. Schools. Homes. Goddamn homes. I don’t aim to get maudlin every night but I do aim to talk and I aim to remember.
Important thing is not that. Not right now. And important thing is not the tourists. Tuck’s all worried but me, I’ve got a plan. So, no worries.
No. The important thing right now is just this: Coffee. Honest-to-God steaming hot can’t even touch the lips coffee. Beauty.

And Tuck.

We slept in the penthouse of a hotel in this old downtown. High up. Well, Earth high. Nothing like The EarthView, but enough at least that it allowed the vantage to see them.
Tourists.
Ring the city. How many ships do those slap-slippers need? And it’s not like they’re honest in them, right? You don’t believe The Tourists would actually come themselves? Why would they? Rule number one, like Barley says.
Ships’ll close in, creating secondary and tertiary circles filling the airspace too. Takes “better safe than sorry” to a whole crazy.
I figure we’ve got the best of today before they’ve closed in and sent out their teams to take us. One way trip back down moonside. A too long full of this-planet-dangerous-must-stay-off-you. Not the terrible. . . back home ride, full of lectures . . . not so bad as slap wrists go. But Barley, Barley he claims he has a way out, says this is just Stop: The First in our road trip. Spends a lot of time staring here or there and taking these close up pictures of this thing or that. Artsy old fug.
He’s off to brew up coffee. Not easy, but not high in the overwhelmingly hard scale. First, have to find a True Sealed or at least a Mostly. One that has coffee in it. Magic Mandi the electricity. Add water. Wala! Hot coffee from before the Post. Get us started on our day.
I’m water. Got a bucket and a path to the lake. The Glints are dancing. Best not to look at them directly. But they don’t seem to have any interest beyond just being. Couple decades away, they probably don’t even know what we are anymore.

And it’s hard not to look at them. 

But we’ve all heard the stories.
Disconcerting seeing them. Dancing. Strange shudder catching . . . what? Ideas? Beliefs? Best not to look. Their sunshine smiles catching small blindness.
Best not to look.
Move on. Start the goddamned adventure.

From here, you can go on to the next, or right on back to look at all Barley’s pretty pictures in the grid.