Flash Fiction Friday (on Wednesday)
The Cost of Coffee , part 10
(No prompt at the time of writing)
This micro-serial has taken on a life of its own. If you’ve missed the first nine parts:
Part 10
"Enough for us? As in our family and not the whole community? But that …"
"Doesn't make sense," finished Pinta's father. "It didn't to me either until I started thinking. Why fires in production places only? Such specific locations and times required some kind of coordination. Your mother has been gone for more meetings in the last two months than in the two years before. What changed?"
Pinta frowned. She hadn't really thought much about her mother's extended absences from the home suite, but looking back she did have a lot of meals with just her father lately. Naimeh would be working, but Mother used to be home for meals most of the time.
"Pinta, what had you read about religion back on Earth?" Father's question surprised her; she hadn't read much, nor even thought about religion. The Bio was founded on humanist principles of collaboration, cooperation, and community, not archaic belief systems. Citizens contributed their skills and in turn, received credits for what they needed, and a few luxury items as well if they contributed more than required. Participatory economics allowed people to do what they wanted; no entity could compel anyone to do anything unless it harmed the community as a whole. Religion, as far as Pinta understood it, created a hierarchy of powerful and weak.
She struggled to come up with an answer. "I know religion was a big thing on Earth, but wasn't it responsible for all the wars and abuses of the planet? Isn't that why we have councils here? To make sure everyone's voice is heard and resources are distributed equitably?"
"I used to think so, Pinta, but I'm beginning to rethink some things. Follow me."
He led Pinta through the destroyed coffee plants to a door she had never noticed before. "This is where magic happens," he said as he entered a code on a panel tucked in a corner of the wall. When the door slid open, Pinta saw a mess of paperwork, coffee plants in various stages of growth, a dozen stained coffee cups, and an old fashioned white board with graphs that Pinta couldn't make sense of.
Her father grinned as he looked at her shocked face. "Messy, right?" Pinta only nodded. "Arturo hates mess, and he is the only other person with access to the paperwork here. He won't come in, so he asks me to bring things to him in his office."
"But why?" Pinta didn't like clutter, herself, and her father was incredibly tidy at home.
"Every hear of hiding something in plain sight?" Father lifted a box from a chair nearest the door. "Have a seat. It's untidy, but clean, I promise."
Pinta sat, looking around as her father rearranged the piles of papers and various bins around the room. The floor was the same beige tile from the hallways and rooms, although the shadows in this room seemed off. Pinta tried to figure out why as her father continued to putter. At least it seemed like he was puttering. She looked again at the graphs on the white board and then recognized the pattern. It was the same as the shadows on the floor. Curious, she followed the lines with her eyes.
From the door, the lines formed a series of alternating right angles eventually leading to a desk perpendicular to the right wall. On the desk were stacks of paper, seemingly randomly scattered, but on closer look continued the pattern of angles represented on the white board. From the piles of papers, Pinta followed the line to a row of boxes her father had just moved into place, according to the pattern. Holding his finger to his lips, her father turned off the overhead light.
A dim glow emanated from the "shadows" along the floor, across the desk, and around the boxes. Opening the last of the boxes, her father lifted a small keypad, which he placed on the floor where the shadows ended. He entered a code, and the wall behind him split and swung inward, revealing a space like nothing Pinta had seen before.
The story began in March after a prompt form
and continues to surprise me.