Red Meadow.

[Maero]

At first Jewl was very wary of the place, the noise, the strange machines, the glowing lights. Then the hologram appeared and her heart skipped a beat. A translucent person?! She had no grasp of what a hologram was or what it could be, and John had never been cruel enough to delude her with stories of ghosts, so she couldnt even make a mistaken guess as to what the thing was and quickly hid behind John.

She listened, she watched, she tried to understand. Recordings, she had heard the words before, when she was smaller her father had suggested she keep a sort of journal, an inventory of her thoughts, a recording of her musings, and had given her small pen and robust note book. Jewl had never found a use for it, never really needed a journal, and had lost it. Some guilt shot through her at the thought, since it wasnt long after that that her father had disappeared.

Still, because of it she understood the concept of records, and she obviously knew what memories were. So she listened in stunned silence as the eerie image of...someone who was almost her, began to spout out facts and short answers, most of which she couldnt understand. Life signs? Absolute circumstances? Impaired brain functions? They all sounded important, if only she understood their meanings.

Then the recording began to play and she almost jumped out of her skin as an image of her Father, just as he had been before he disappeared, was displayed. At first she was terrified of the holographic doppelganger, but as it spoke, she recognized its mannerism and speech patterns intuitively, and realized that whatever it was, it was undoubtedly her father.

She listened as he told her that it was no longer safe to stay in their home, how she had to leave and become part of society, about how she had to avoid materialism, and how he would always love her. Tears rimmed her eyes and she reached forward to touch his face as the recording ended, her fingers moving through the image as though it wasn't there. That seemed to shock her back to reality and she withdrew her hand quickly, almost as though she had been stung.

She still didn't understand a lot, she didn't know why all this was happening, why it wasn't safe, why her father here knew less than her ghostly father's recording, what all this machinery was, why June looked so much like her, why anything was the way it was. But she knew at least one thing, her father had loved her, perhaps he still did, and his wish, maybe even last wish, was for her to leave and integrate with the other parts of human society.

And so, confused as she was, she stepped back next to John, saying nothing, unable to say anything. She looked down at the ground, her mind filled to bursting with questions, and waited to see if John would produce anymore answers from the ghostly woman.