My name is Elijah, and I'm 6 years (11 Earth years) old. My first memory is being under my father's work table, playing with some spare parts. I think they were maybe parts from one of the clotheswashing machines, but I'm not totally certain. My father was the one who did most of the maintenance in Building 6, which includes the laundromat and the other hygiene equipment, as well as the first aid stuff and the medscanners. My mother mostly ran the machines in the laundromat, and my father did the maintenance. He was pretty good at letting me play with stuff like that; Mom didn't like it because she thought I would get hurt. She was always trying to convince me to play with toys, but I only wanted to mess with the stuff that I saw my dad working with. Dude, look out, you'll hurt yourself. Yeah, maybe I was kind of like Benjamin here, although I think I was more careful. That's how I remember it, anyway. I remember Mom and Dad having an argument about whether or not they should juice the clotheswashers. That's what they called it, "juicing", when they let them use more power and water than they were supposed to, so that they clothes came out smelling nicer. Dad thought it was going to get us in trouble, and anyway it would use up too much of the Colony's power and water, but Mom said he wasn't the one who had to face people when they got their clothes back and they still smelled dirty, and they complained to her about it. Dad said she wasn't the one who had to deal with the inspectors snooping around trying to figure out where the extra power and water was going, and they were getting more uptight about it all the time and pretty soon they were going to find somebody to blame and she just wanted it to be him. It was pretty bad, sometimes, they would get really angry at each other, and there was a lot of shouting. I would hide out in the back room of our apartment when that happened, and pretend I was repairing the machines so they made all the clothes smell really good, without needing much power or water, so that Mom and Dad would not fight any more. Benjamin...Benjamin! Put that down. Dude, that's dangerous. So, when was the first time I met one of the other kids? I remember meeting Charlotte when I was just a few years old, I'm not sure exactly how old but pretty young. I think her parents had brought her over to my parents apartment, to let Charlotte and I meet each other. Charlotte's parents were a lot different than mine. They were much happier people, I think, always laughing and smiling. I remember they were giving Charlotte hugs all the time, and Charlotte's dad actually sat on the floor with us and played with blocks with the kids. We made a big, well it seemed big at the time anyway, tower out of these blocks that my Dad had made out of old packing material from the shipments from Earth. I would play with those, because I had seen my dad messing with them, but I didn't know at the time that the reason he was messing with them was to make toys for me. My mom wanted me to know that things were toys made for me, I guess so I would know they cared about me and had made toys for me, but dad just made stuff and then left them out and knew I would find them and start playing. I think sometimes my mom got annoyed that I would play with the things dad left out for me, but not the toys that she had gotten for me, shipped special from Earth. Now I appreciate that she was probably pulling a lot of strings to get me those toys, but at the time I didn't much care about them. Charlotte's dad helped us turn the blocks into this sort of crazy cathedral, with arches and bridges and blocks at all kinds of wacky angles. Then he took out a pen and started drawing windows on some of the blocks. I think I got upset about him drawing on my blocks, at first, and he apologized, but then I saw that he had drawn windows on them with people inside looking out, little goblins and fairies and animals, and I decided it was ok. When they left, Charlotte's mom gave me a hug, which kind of surprised me but I liked her, they were both so friendly. My parents were good to me, but they were usually worried about something and they only gave you a hug if something was really wrong, like you had fallen and skinned your knee or something, but Charlotte's parents were really huggy people. No, Benjamin, I don't need a hug. Oh, ok. There, ok, now go over there while I finish this, ok? It's this thing Oliver wants us to do. I don't know if Oliver needs a hug...hey, you know what? I bet he does. Yeah, he's in the War Room probably. Yeah, go do that. Maybe stay in there a while and make sure Oliver is feeling ok, that's a good idea. Ok. Benjamin is fine, but he's just higher energy than me, sometimes. I don't think I was that high energy when I was his age, even. So the whole obsessing about water usage makes more sense to me, now, since we're getting short on water here. For a while after the Evacuation we could stop worrying about that, because there weren't as many people left, but somewhere there's a leak and Olivia hasn't been able to find it yet and so Benjamin and I have been going to the nearby buildings and seeing if their reserve tanks have any left. Mostly they don't have much, so far. I think maybe most of the buildings didn't have as much in their reserve tanks as they were supposed to. Everybody thinks that it's ok for them to take a little more than they're supposed to, but since everyone does that, it becomes a problem. Dad was worried about that a lot, he told me it was going to be a problem. He was trying to come up with some way to get water and power from deep down in the Martian soil, but they never got that working before the Evacuation, and afterwards I don't think he worked on it much. Honestly I think probably my dad was right, and the main issue with water is that we just need to not use more than we say we are. We can figure out how much to use for crops, how much for cooking, and then we'll know how much is left for stuff like making the clothes smell nice and clean. If we just all are honest about what we're doing and not doing, I think we can make it work out. Well, and Olivia needs to figure out where the leaks are, but I think she's going to figure that out. Everybody was just trying to look good to everybody else, and no one was willing to just admit what they were doing, and make do with what we could actually spare. If we just are all honest with each other, I think we can make it work. That goes for the air, the water, the power, and everything else really. I guess that's what I remember from my parents that is important, is that stupid argument they were having. We can do this, if we're just all honest with each other and don't take more of anything than we're supposed to. Ok, Oliver, that's all I've got. I hope you like hugs, because Benjamin has been in there for a while now.