By the next day, Noah and I had decided that we would not talk to everybody else about what we had realized, not yet anyway.  It seemed better just to talk about it to one person at a time, and in the meantime try to convince Earth that we were adults, so they would maybe keep sending supplies rather than sending a ship to take us away (or worse).  It was not 100% certain that we would die on Earth just because the rats did, and so they might decide that it was worth a try, or maybe they would decide to sedate us and give us a quick and painless death, like a pet that you 'put down'.  Either way, if they knew all the adults had died they would probably decide the Mars colony was not going to work and stop supporting it, if they hadn't already.

But, we did want them to send us some information on how to do certain things, so that morning in the War Room we all discussed what we most needed them to explain to us.  Every thing that we asked for would essentially tell them about another adult who had died, because that was the adult who knew about that thing.  For example, when we asked about the upkeep and maintenance of the server room in Building 12, it was essentially telling them that Lucas' parents were dead, because they had been the ones who knew the most about that.

Everybody else came up with this huge list of things we wanted to ask about, and I took it down, but decided we would just ask about one thing per day.  Noah and I also decided to tell one of the older kids each day about why we wanted to keep it secret from Earth that all of the adults were dead or gone, and we started with Liam.  He's pretty quiet normally anyway, and so it seemed like he would be able to keep from talking about it with everyone else.

"You really think they would do that?" he asked, in his deep voice, looking down at the pots of soil he was working on while he talked.  Alexander was sitting on the floor nearby, with a bag of soil and some little pots, pretending to help out by filling them, except he kept dumping the soil back into the bag and them filling them again.  Alexander's glasses always made him look kind of like an owl, to me.  Busy little baby owl.  At least it kept him occupied.

"They might," said Noah, "or they might just decide to take us to Earth and just see if we lived.  I bet they wouldn't leave us here, though."

"Hmmm...maybe not.  Hmmm..."

Noah and I stood there, waiting for Liam to say something more, but of course he didn't.  I don't know what we had expected.

"So anyway," I said, "I'm just going to avoid the topic, and keep it to short messages once a day, and see how much information we can get without giving up too much.  At least it will give us some time to think things over."

"Yeah, ok," said Liam, and then that was it.  "I'm going to go check on the bees."  He walked to the end of Building 3, where the new soil and the beehive was, and never said anything more about it.

So, that's what I did for a few weeks.  Give the shortest answer possible to whatever question we had gotten, and if they asked multiple questions, just answer the first one, or really just whichever one I disliked answering the least.

Earth: IT HAS BEEN OVER 100 SOLS SINCE LAST UPDATE, PLEASE ADVISE CURRENT SITUATION.

Me, the next day: NEED INFORMATION ON SERVER MAINTENANCE.

Earth: SERVER MAINTENANCE REQUIREMENTS AND SCHEDULE ARE ATTACHED.  PLEASE ADVISE CURRENT SITUATION.  WHO IS SENDING THESE MESSAGES?  IS THIS CAROL JACKSON?

Me, the next day: CAROL JACKSON DECEASED.  NEED INFORMATION ON BUILDING 21 LAYOUT, OPERATING PROCEDURES, AND MAINTENANCE.

Earth: WHO IS SENDING THESE MESSAGES?  BUILDING 21 INFORMATION ATTACHED.  PLEASE ADVISE CURRENT STATE OF BUILDING 21 EQUIPMENT, IS THERE A PROBLEM?

I didn't want to go silent entirely, because I wanted them to keep sending us information on how to fix things, but I didn't want them to find out too much too quickly and freak out that we had no adults left, so I sent a short message once a day, hoping that eventually I would think of a way to tell them the current situation that would not get us all killed.

Meanwhile, Charlotte had started singing.  That doesn't sound like a big deal, but it actually really was, for all of us.  It began with Isabella, who is 4 (8 in Earth years), singing on her own.  Isabella looks vaguely Phillipino, somewhere between Hispanic and Asian, and she is usually smiling.  I don't know if this means she's normally happy, or she smiles even when she's not happy, or maybe some of both.  But I guess she thought that singing would cheer up Charlotte, who was having a hard time.

The thing is, Isabella is a sweetheart, but she's really not all that good at singing.  When she was very little it was just kind of cute how off-tune and warbly her singing was, but she was starting to get just a little too old for one to overlook the fact that she sings like someone who has never actually heard music.  I think Charlotte may have started singing herself, at first, just to kind of drown out Isabella or convince her to stop or something.  So Isabella decided that it was working, and singing was putting Charlotte in a better mood, and she should keep doing it.  This was, at first blush, an unmitigated disaster, because it meant Isabella kept singing.

However, give her credit, Isabella may have been right after all, and being forced to sing (even if only in self-defense) did eventually help to bring Charlotte out of her depression.  She was still sad about her parents, of course, but she kind of gave herself permission to not be sad all the time.  It's hard enough to recover when someone you love dies, but it's even harder if you don't think you're supposed to recover, or that recovering would mean you didn't actually love them.  Charlotte, I think, did not really think it was ok to pick up and move on, but singing requires that your throat be calm enough to make the notes, and anyway it can lift your spirit even if it's a sad song.  Which, to be clear, was mostly what Charlotte picked at first.  But then, she would break down and not be able to sing any more because she was crying, and that meant Isabella could sing like the adults when they got drunk on New Year's Eve (hey come to think of it I wonder if that's where Isabella learned to sing that way), and eventually Charlotte just learned that she had to avoid the sad songs or she would end up with Isabella right there singing in her ear.  Crying over your dead parents is one thing but nobody can take Isabella singing to them like that.  So, Charlotte started picking happy songs, and pretty quickly that started to help her lift up a bit.

The funny part to me (and I'm going to say also Noah, and maybe a few others) was that everyone but Isabella could tell that Charlotte wasn't actually enjoying Isabella's singing, but Isabella apparently could not.  I guess I could understand why; Charlotte did seem eventually to get in a better mood, and Isabella's singing had obviously precipitated that, so it would make sense that she thought she was singing so well that it was making Charlotte feel better.  Or, who knows, maybe Isabella understood more than she let on, but regardless Charlotte was way too nice to just say, 'Isabella please stop singing', so she was forced into singing herself to stop her or at least drown her out, and as far as I could tell Isabella never understood why it worked.

And I guess, really, who cares; it worked.  But the reason all this is important, other than the fact that it helped Charlotte out, was that it eventually led to the singing recipes.

We had, by this point, started to figure out that we had some carrots, onions, and sweet potatoes ready to harvest, and Charlotte had found a recipe for soup that we could make.  We were not totally out of desserts and salty snacks yet, but it was clear we would have to eat some real food soon.  But it turns out that making enough for 20 people is a lot of work.  I had some time to spare, because I didn't want to go back to the place where you can read messages from Earth, and Mia therefore had some time to help out as well.  Most of the others were still really busy with their first tasks on the War Room to-do list, but the four of us were finding it a bit of a slog to do that much chopping and slicing.

Charlotte, meanwhile, was just singing anything to keep Isabella quiet, and eventually she started singing the recipe.  This caused me to start slicing carrots in a regular beat, so that the chop of the knife on the cutting board was like a drum beat, "chop-chop-chop-chop".  It took a little while for Isabella and Mia to get better with their knives, but they were able to clap or hum or stomp their feet.  Later they also got better at slicing vegetables to the beat, and if there were four of us chopping then every four beats one of us would make a long four-beat "swooooooooosh" sound as we slid the knife along our cutting board, pushing all the bits of sliced carrot or sweet potato or onion or whatever into the big bowl in the middle.  Then, eventually, Charlotte started making up extra words to go with the recipe.  I've since learned that back on Earth there were a lot of "work songs", made for singing while you were weaving, harvesting, or whatever it is that 'sea shanties' were made for (shanting?).  I guess we had sort of re-invented work songs, except for chopping food, but we didn't have a name for it at first, it was just something we did to keep us chopping, and quite honestly, to drown out Isabella, bless her heart.

After a few days, we started having more people show up to help prepare the food.  I thought at first that maybe they were getting hungry, but eventually realized that they wanted to be there for the singing.  Not, to be honest, for Isabella's singing, but Charlotte's.  After a while, there were enough of us singing along that we didn't really hear Isabella much, but we did see her shining eyes and big smile while she did it, and that was all good.  Even better, though, was seeing the change in Charlotte.  When she was about ready to sing, she would square her shoulders, stand up a bit straighter, and instead of a sad whisper her voice was pure and strong.  We were all really, really fortunate that it was Charlotte who had the good singing voice and Isabella who did not, instead of the other way around, because everyone wanted to see Charlotte look like that again, but you know, our acting ability is only so good, even those of us who are not Lucas.  If Charlotte had sounded like Isabella when she sang, I don't know if we could have managed to hide that.

You know that's a good question, why did Lucas never say anything about Isabella's singing?  Maybe he just doesn't notice, somehow?

But another thing that happened is that having all of us together in a group, singing and beating out a rhythm with the sound of the knives chopping the vegetables, is that we ALL started to pick up our spirits a bit.  No matter how stupid or unprepared or in over our heads we felt during the day, we knew that evening we were going to get to sing together and then while it cooked we would listen to whoever had just finished writing out their memories, and then afterwards we would have soup or whatever Charlotte had figured out to make from what we could grow and what was left in the foodstocks.  Something good would happen at the end of the day, at least.

Which was good, because a lot of not-so-good things were happening during the day, usually.