So, we spent over two days in the bottom of Building 12, until the solar flare detection system said that the radiation levels had dropped, and we could go back upstairs.  There were stocks of food and water stored there in a locker, for this exact purpose, which it took us about half a day to figure out how to get into.  I think it was Ava who actually figured out that we could just break open the glass panel and reach inside to unlock it; there was probably a key to do the same thing but none of us knew what it was.  Breaking the glass on the panel sent an alarm to my dad's tablet, actually, which was kind of funny.  Lucas didn't even seem to notice or care about the sound of breaking glass, but he was excited about the tablet getting a message.

I guess the only reason the food was in the locker was so that people doing work in this building didn't just grab it for snacks, such that there wouldn't be any left when an actual solar flare evacuation happened.  The food was not that great, but then it wasn't meant to be tasty, just nutritious, and good enough to keep everyone in good health for a few days until the end of a solar flare alarm.  I had Mia make us a note to figure out how to replace those with food we could grow, but since there were only twenty of us it looked like there was enough in there to last for several more solar flares, so I guess it wasn't our highest priority.

I had been sitting there trying to figure out if what Lucas had told me, meant that we were all doomed.  If Earth, or at least Gerard on Earth, knew that all of the adults were dead, would they send someone to Mars to get us?  If that happened, would we die in Earth's gravity?  Or would they "put us to sleep", to avoid a more painful, slow death?

By the time we were in the rover headed back to Building 3, I decided that there really wasn't much we could do about it now, so I might as well concentrate on other things.  I decided it was time for me to look at what was in my dad's tablet, so I told Lucas to give it back.

"You should look at this part," he said, indicating the file he had open.

"What is it?"

"It's about the geothermal," he said, "check it out."

"What does it say?  If you've already read it, you should just tell me."

"It says that the solution to the problem with geothermal energy, is to make sure to send down at least as much water as you bring up, maybe a bit more.  The way it's set up now, it actually brings up more water than you send down, since after the water goes down far enough to get heated up, on the way back up it's melting a bunch of the ice and brings that with it.  But, if you are sending down more water than you bring up, the ground is still waterlogged."

"It wouldn't be ice any more, though," I said.

"No, but it's less of a shock than if you melt all the ice away and replace it with nothing.  That means the quakes should be way smaller."

"Hmmm...I suppose.  Why didn't they do that before?"

"We didn't have enough water," said Lucas.  "That's why they stopped the geothermal project, but kept the equipment ready to go.  They were going to start it up again once they had enough water.  Your dad's plan was to get enough power to melt the ice near the north pole, but in order to do that they would have needed to have a big tank that the rover could pull.  Plus, they would have needed enough energy to drive there and back, with the tank full of water."

I started reading, to check if Lucas had understood it correctly.  He had the basics right, but there were some issues that he hadn't gotten to yet.  Basically, dad was trying to find a way to break out of the downward spiral.  To get more energy, we needed the geothermal.  To do that safely, without causing quakes, we needed more water.  To get more water, without causing quakes by melting it from the rocks underneath us, we needed to melt a bunch of ice and transport it back to the Colony.  To do that...required a bunch of energy.  It was a vicious circle, and so far we hadn't been able to find a way to break out of it.

With the nuclear plant shut down (it was near end of life anyway), and the batteries wearing down, there was no way to get that much energy stored up.  After the Evacuation, the normal energy usage was low enough that in the summer the solar panels could generate a lot more electricity than we needed.  That wouldn't do any good, though, if we didn't have enough batteries to store it.  So, he tried to get a bunch of new batteries made, and in the process got himself and everyone else killed.  Well, except for Charlotte's parents.  They died about six weeks later.

Six weeks after that, we had learned enough to get back to the same problem he was trying to solve, but without really any better idea of how to solve it.  There had been a few points in between, especially in the last couple weeks, when I had started to think that we were making a lot of progress, and we could figure out how to survive.  Sitting in the rover, I realized that we had now gotten back to the point where the adults had been at before, which was great in one sense, but also meant that we now had to figure out things they had not been able to, instead of just trying to figure out things they hadn't told us.  So, most likely, our progress was about to come to a screeching halt.  Maybe we could just live with the quakes?  Then I remembered Building 10, sitting in a pile of rubble.

I guess, at some point after we were back at Building 3 and did singing recipe and Circle and ate, I must have kind of spaced out.  My mind had been racing for a while, weeks really, and now I had come to a block, and wasn't sure what to do next.  I sat near the end, watching the bees come in and out of the hive.  They had been kind of staying in there and not coming out for a while after the Electrocution, when there weren't any flowers and not much sugar water put out for them.  Liam had started putting out sugar water again, and more recently some of his forbidden plants were starting to make a lot of flowers, so they were coming out more.  They always looked so purposeful, zooming in and out of the hive, like they always knew exactly what they needed to do next.  But then, if a bee were confused, I don't know if I would be able to recognize that.  Still, it sometimes felt good to watch them at work, like at least someone knew what they were doing.

"Are you ok?" asked Mia.  I think I kind of jumped a little, because I hadn't even realized she was sitting next to me.

"Yeah," I said automatically, then stopped and thought about the question a little more.  "I think so.  Mostly.  I'm not sure what to do next."

Mia nodded.  "Should we ask Earth?"

I looked back at her, and said nothing for a bit.  Sometimes, I couldn't tell whether Mia was really smart, or not.  Probably, it says as much about me as her, that I can't tell the difference.  I suppose I was overthinking it, and she is more direct.  I didn't know what to do, and no one else on Mars was going to know any more than I did, and asking Earth was the most obvious next thing to try, because who else was there to ask?  Now that I knew Lucas had been talking to Earth for weeks already, there wasn't much point in trying to evade their questions.

Come to think of it, now I understood why Earth, excuse me, Gerard had stopped asking who was left.  Lucas had told him, so he didn't need to ask me any more.

"What if he doesn't know what we should do?" I asked, not actually looking at Mia as I asked it, just staring off into space again.

"Then he'll say he doesn't know?" asked Mia, phrasing it like a question.

Would he?  Or would he feel like he had to try to pretend that he did?  We definitely missed having the adults around to figure out what to do, but one thing I had realized in the last few months was that adults are not usually very good at admitting to kids when they don't know what to do.  At first, I thought the reason that I didn't know what to do (usually) was that I was a kid, trying to do things which adults are supposed to do.  The more I thought about what I had heard and seen when there were still adults on Mars, though, the more I realized they hadn't always known what to do, but always felt that they needed to pretend they did.  I suddenly felt very tired, and noticed just about everyone else was going to sleep a bit early.  Which was a little odd, because we had been forced to do nothing for two days, stuck in a basement eating nutribars and listening to server cooling units hum.  But I went back to my bedroll, which was suddenly exceedingly comfortable when compared to sleeping on a concrete floor, and decided to think about it all the next day.

In the end, of course, I did what Mia suggested, which is what usually happens.  She doesn't make many suggestions, but when she does, it's normally because I'm stuck.  The reason I'm stuck is because there's only one thing to do, but I don't like that idea and try not to think about it or come up with something else, but she says out loud the one thing that's left to try.  So, when we did the Earth communications, I decided to come clean and ask.

GERARD, TALKED TO LUCAS.  SO YOU KNOW ALL THE ADULTS ARE GONE.  BUILDING 10 HAS COLLAPSED, SO WE CANNOT MAKE MORE BATTERIES.  WE HAVE THE GEOTHERMAL WORKING, BUT IT IS STARTING TO CAUSE QUAKES.  I GUESS WE NEED TO GET MORE WATER SO GEOTHERMAL IS SAFER TO USE, BUT I'M NOT SURE HOW TO DO THAT.  DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE SHOULD DO?

I sat and looked at the screen, at what I'd typed.  Then I looked over at Mia, and had her read it out loud to me.  She was starting to get better at reading, because we practiced it every day.  Well, when buildings weren't collapsing on us we did.

"Is there anything else you would like to ask Earth?" she asked, looking up at me, little dreadlocked elf with dark skin and green eyes.  I think she was just parroting back at me the question that I asked everyone when we were doing the interviews, the first few weeks on our own.  I sat there, blinked, staring back at her.  Mia is chatty usually, but she can wait for an answer.  Ava, Noah, a lot of others, if you don't answer the question right away they will move on, saying something else, maybe answering the question for you or saying what they think your answer should be.  Mia, she just sits there and waits for the answer.  Is she simple, or clever?  I can't always tell, which probably means she's clever.  I turned back to the workstation, and put my hands on the keyboard.  For some reason, when I'm sending the messages to Earth, I usually type it out instead of using the dictation method.

I sat there for a bit, thinking it over.

ARE YOU COMING BACK TO MARS TO GET US?  ARE YOU GOING TO FORCE US TO LEAVE?

[send]

There, I thought.  It's done.  Now, like Mia, I just needed to wait until the answer came.