Penny walks over to the computer desk and sits down in her favorite rolling chair, a wheel chair. A present from her new therapist, to face this problem in her life and laugh at it. She likes Dr. Sheldon, she seems to have compassion for Penny and she has helped her immensely in the last two months. The night before Penny was in that same chair on the phone with Dr. Sheldon.

"Doc, I don't think I can do this."

"Calm down Penny, relax and calm down," Dr. Sheldon offers her patient.

"That's easy for you to say." Penny starts to cry. "I want to go, I really do. I love my brother and it's not fair that he's gone. He was so God damn young doctor Sheldon."

"I know Penny."

"His life was full of possibilities. He was shooting for the moon and going to end up among the stars."

"You could say he is there now Penny."

"Oh Fuck that Doc. He's dead and the effect the body produces to fool itself into thinking it encapsulates a soul is over. The neurons shut down and the soul vanishes like a hologram."

"I know you don't believe that Penny."

"Well I should believe it. It makes so much more sense. How much sense is there to have a soul that is an extension of a God that would cut short a life that is so grand when his sister would be a much better choice."

"Listen Penny. You�re a smart girl, and yes I said "girl" because it pisses you off. You want to get mad at God, go ahead, you want to get mad at me, go ahead. But you and I know that life is full of things that go bad for no reason at all and the only thing we can do as humans is try to cope with them."

"How can I cope with this? This is just too much."

"Are you really grieving for your brother or are you mad that now you're going to have to start being the normal one in the family?"

"What the-? How dare you doctor."

"Oh how dare me. Really Penny, don't you think that you were using your brother as a crutch? He could be normal for you so you didn't have to be."

"How the fuck can you say that?"

"How the fuck can I say that? How the fuck can I not say that? You pay me to help you get better and the way to help you get better is to put everything on the table, and I mean everything. Every secret, every deep pain, every ugly thought you've had about why you are like this. I'm your voice of the places you are afraid to go Penny. And I help you to vanquish those silly thoughts so that one day your fears with be but a distant past."

"Do you really think a part of me is glad he is dead?"

"No I don't although I don't doubt that the thought hasn't danced across you head. Now you still have the pills I prescribed for you, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Good, then when you are about to leave your apartment, take them and imagine that they just aren�t chemicals that control the neurotransmitters in your brain, but pills to change your character. Imagine yourself becoming a different person, a person who can go outside, a person who does not fear being flung out into space."

"But I've got to be me at the funeral."

"Then be yourself at the funeral, all the power is in your head, I don't know, imagine that you are you inside buildings and a different person out. All that matters is that you do this, you have to say good-bye to your brother and because you have to go outside for this, this is an opportunity for you to take a step closer to being a normal person."

"I know, I know. Thanks Dr. Sheldon although you didn't have to be so mean to me."

Penny wheels herself through her kitchen and down her hallway to her living and stops in front of the coffee table. She picks up some of the blue jigsaw pieces and ties to fit them along the border. She wonders if she will ever solve it as she puts three pieces together and sets it aside since it doesn't fit into any of the border pieces. She gets up and goes back to her study and works on a project for work.

After locking the bike to a part of the iron fence he walks up to the front door and rings the button for Frost. A muffled and altered intercom voice comes through, which sounds like Penny's.

"Yeah?"

"I told you I'd return," declares Xavier.

"You're early."

"So sue me." The buzz of the door being unlocked is heard and Xavier lets himself in. Just then the door to the first floor apartment opens and a man in wrinkled clothes comes out while rubbing his temples. With eyes squinted he looks at Xavier and recognizes him.

"Weren't you at the party?" asked the hung over man.

"No," Xavier lies as he goes up the stairs before the man can protest further. He reaches the second floor and Penny's door is open, he walks inside. "Hello."

"Hey you," answers back Penny from the loft. "I'm about ready, make yourself at home." She lied, she is ready to go. She's dressed in black and her hair is fine, the whole physical appearance is completely fine. What isn't fine is inside her mind. Going out on the balcony was fine, but leaving her apartment ground altogether was another story. In her left hand were two pills. They held a little package of normalcy and she just stared at them. She had been starring at them for the last half-hour. They are a constant reminder that she is not normal. She really hates that this fear has taken her over and what is more aggravating is that she understands that the fear is irrational but she cannot do anything to stop it from taking over.

"Do you think she is going to take us?" one of the little pills asks the other.

"I don't know. I kind of like sitting on the palm of her hand," says the other in a British accent.

"Me too, it's much better than the bottle."

"Oh, don't speak of the bottle. I hate the bottle."

"I didn't realize you hated the bottle so-"

"Don't mention the bottle!" The little pill now feels completely embarrassed. He shouted at his friend and is now afraid that their friendship will suffer. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't stand the darkness."

"The darkness? Little buddy, didn't the others tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"Well, if she takes us we will go to another place where it is dark."

"What?"

"It's true."

"No. No, it can't be true. Why would they make us and not let us see the light of day?"

"We don't have eyes, we can't see."

"I know, it was just an expression. Besides, we don't have mouths either and yet we can talk to each other."

"I know, I've wondered about that too."

Their conversation was cut short by Penny, who put the pills in her mouth, cupped her hands together to hold water and drank the water to wash the pills down. Her anchor to this Earth appeared to her at the bathroom doorway.

"Ready now?" Xavier asks.

"Yeah," answers Penny.

It was particularly hot and humid that summer. In fact, it was so bad that it helped to cause three major power outages. There was also a major power shortage in the New Chicago area that summer and that is why the heat caused much strain on the system. This summer was also the summer Penny was underway on a renovation of her apartment. Before this, her floor plan matched the downstairs apartment. She had Stuart, her then boyfriend architect, draw up the plans to change the floor plan into something more viable and space saving. The fact that the old floor plan wasn't the best use of space drove Stuart nuts. "In this era of conversation of everything - time, money, energy, and resources - you would think that apartments would no longer be built that didn't efficiently use the space it had," he wrote in a book that was eventually published. In fact, it was that book, The Efficient Architect for the Modern Era, which got him a very respectable and high level job as one of the architects of the new space cities. How he loved the job; he often fantasized about going up in space as a kid. He was � and I guess still is � ten years her senior and they met when Penny was 22. She was so proud to find a man who was so nice and caring and successful, the youngest architect on the staff when he started the job, five years before he met Penny. Three years into their relationship, Stuart finally convinces Penny to join him on a business trip into space.

Now Penny was quite the opposite of Stuart when it came to space. She didn't like the idea of space and having to live out there. She was only six when the news came out that World Congress ratified the law that exodus of the Earth would indeed have to begin. She spent many a sleepless nights worrying herself about zero gravity and the empty vacuum of space. What a lonely place she thought. Stuart had been trying to get her to go up with him for over a year before she relented. "You're going to have to go up eventually. And this way, you're years ahead of the rest of the public when people will eventually be required to visit space a few times to get themselves used to the idea and feeling of living in space," he said to her which made a good point. Time to get over her childhood fear she thought.

Fast forward to that summer I was talking about. The apartment in disarray, skeletons of walls up, sawdust everywhere, the power out during the second outage, and the air thick with enough water that it felt hard to breathe combined with an unrelenting heat even in the evening. Penny is in the bathtub with bags of ice around her to cool her off. However, the shower curtain has been pulled down and wrapped around her. She is going through the biggest panic attack of her life and Stuart is kneeling outside the tub trying to console her. He assures her that she is not going to fly off the face of the Earth, that gravity is still in effect in the apartment, and that she is safe. He eventually has to lie on top of her in the bathtub to appease her request that he make sure she doesn't fly off by pinning her to the ground.

Three months before, in the spring, she was strapped into a chair next to Stuart aboard the Morning Glory, one of five space planes in the world. It takes off like a normal airplane and then at about 10,000 feet they start the vertical climb into space. Penny did not like zero gravity to say the least. To say more, she vomited many times during her stay up there. She was scheduled to be there for two days along with Stuart but she got out on the next shipment shuttle. She was only up in space for a total of 15 hours but it felt like a week to her. Most of those 15 hours were spent strapped to a wall bed so she could feel tied to something and doped up on Perkidan, most of her personality stripped away while medicated. Captain Rodriguez told Stuart not to be embarrassed because one out of twenty people that come up there are the same way.

The first week back on Earth Penny had a panic attack everyday. Soon it died off to only an attack once a week and only for a couple of minutes long. The afternoon before the big attack I mentioned, she was to fly out of New Chicago to New Sydney and right at the gate before she was about to board it, the sensation of her feet leaving the ground came to her and her head led her screaming, diving head first into panic land. We all have fears in our lives that we have to overcome. Some deal with them better than others. Imagine only having one thought in your head, one ever present thought that drowns out all others, forcing you to listen to it. Then multiply what you imagine it to be by a thousand and you still don't even come close to understanding what it's like.

Stuart and Penny stayed together for another year and a half before he broke up with her. By then she stopped going up elevators, riding trains and buses in addition to the planes, and was working out of her home for her job.

The service is being carried on at the St. Matthew's Church, which is two miles to the west of Penny's apartment. The church was one of the first buildings put up when the plans for New Chicago went through. It was thought at the time that many of the people that moved to the newly constructed town would be under lots of stress and a need for God would be high. What actually happened was that those who did move at first were already well prepared for the move and the church hardly had any patrons. Nothing has really changed in the last hundred years except times of great national concern, then many people show up. Most people nowadays turn to the bars for their woes. Herbert Utterbach, a great economist whose heyday was back in the '30s, commented that going to the bars and not the churches was a better decision, because "people spend money at the bars, which helps the economy. Going to church helps no one but yourself, and is thus, a more selfish choice." His public career quickly ended after that quote.

Xavier slows the bike along the side street next to the church, checking out the sidewalk for something metal and in the ground he can lock his bike to. For some reason there are no bike racks near the church. "What, church going people don't own bikes?" thinks Xavier. He stops the bike and lets Penny off. She walks over to a black metal gate and holds on to it while peering through the bars at the church. Xavier U-Locks his bike to a street sign and takes off the bike seat and puts it in his backpack. He walks to the metal gate and mirrors Penny by grabbing a bar and looking through the bars. A couple dressed in black walk up the front steps and slip inside the church. A perfect moment goes by.

"Was he older or younger?" He says which pierces the perfect moment.

"Older. By seven minutes," she answers.

Tom's longtime friend and ex-girlfriend Ming-Sa sings Ave Maria after the priest's speech. Ming-Sa's soprano voice fills the church with beauty and life. Every heart is filled with momentary weight and minds race with plans of adding meaning to their lives. Tears run down Mrs. Frost's face, picking up miniscule amounts of mascara, rouge, and foundation with it. The last notes of song escape Ming-Sa's mouth and silence fills the church. The priest introduces Penny and she walks to the podium to give the eulogy.

"Tom used to say that he couldn't wait to be an old man so that he could have an excuse to be a crotchety old man, yelling at the youngsters. I said that I'd be in the room next to his in the nursing home and we'd be the terrible duo, making life hard for the nurses and making fun of people. We both giggled like children at the idea of us being mean to people in our old age. I'm pretty sure I could have succeeded at this but Tom would have failed. I'm sure he would have liked to think that he could have done it, but I know his heart would have failed him. Granted, he did find some people annoying and couldn't stand others, but for the most part he liked everyone and even those who he wasn't a hundred percent in love with, he couldn't help but be the nicest person you ever met. Everywhere he went he made friends. I remember going to a party in college with him and hanging out with his friends. He was talking to a group of people and they were all laughing and I thought they were his best friends. I found out later that they were people he just met that day and the Laundromat. He was that kind of person.

"I always thought of Tom as indestructible, ever since the car crash he was in. Those that were unaware of this, Tom was in Australia, where they still use cars for certain things, and was involved in car crash that left him the only survivor. It was in the summer after he graduated from high school. He worked and scrimped and saved up enough money to pay his way over there, even though I'm sure Mom and Dad would have paid for the trip themselves. Tom was very badly hurt and had to learn how to walk again. Not once did his spirit dim throughout his ordeal. He never yelled or cursed or even blamed a soul for what happened. Tom didn't really seem to change at all as a person but it certainly changed my parents and I. It was hard to be at college while he was at home undergoing physical therapy, but he told me once not to feel bad because he was just undergoing a hurdle in life and he would come out stronger than he was before. And I believed him."

Penny then thinks of the connection of him being unbreakable and him dying because his spine broke. The irony makes her smile as she imagines him sitting at the breakfast table eating cereal and then his image fades. The concept of forever on Earth being with out him and how the memories that should have come in the future with him are lost comes to her and she wells up with pain. Her heart tenses up, chest expands, and throat constricts: the physical reactions to grief. All this happens in a mere blink of the eye, a blink of her eye as tears fall down her face.

"Forgive me," she asks as she wipes away the tears and shifts in her stance nervously. "I promised myself�" She looks down at her hands as she looks within for the strength of spirit to continue. She remembers to breathe and takes a couple of deep breaths as she looks up at her mom. Her mom looks at her with wet eyes and pursed lips, as if the sealed lips were holding in her voice that wanted to cry out to the world the twin emotions of sorrow for the death of her son and pride of her daughter for making it out of her home. "Tom would be proud of me being here, wouldn't he Mom?" Penny asks as Mrs. Finch nods as she puts a handkerchief up to her eyes. Mrs. Finch has had to deal with a lot of pain in her lifetime, more than her fair share; she deserves all the joy in life she can find. Her eyes are tired and have bags under them hidden as best as she could by make-up; she didn't sleep well last night.

A smile comes back to Penny's face and then a giggle as she looks at her mom. Penny has so much love for her parents at this moment. "He would also have been very happy to see all of you that have come here on this morning." She looks at Xavier as she says, "Even those he didn't meet, because, like I said, I'm sure if he had he would have regarded you as a friend for life." She looks at Xavier for a beat and then returns her gaze to the assembly as a whole. "A life which was horribly cut short by a freak accident. It just goes to show you that you never can be sure when your number is going to be up, so you have to live your life as fully as you can. Was Tom's life a short one? Yes. Was it a good one? Hell yeah." A snort laugh could be heard and the priest shifted in his seat at the last statement. "Sorry Father," Penny offers to the priest and a few laugh to break the tension of the event. "But I can't think of how Tom could have crammed more of a life in his 28 years the way he did. Heck knows I haven't. Funerals serve two purposes: to celebrate the life of someone who has just passed and to add meaning to the lives of the living for without death how are we to know how great a gift life is? To the second purpose I add that I hope you come away this morning with a sense to live by Tom's example and add quality to your life for you cannot be sure of its quantity. To the first purpose, I respond with the clich� 'he lives on in your hearts.' But it's true. It could be said that all a soul really is are memories stored in the head-" Penny says while briefly looking at the priest as a way to get back at him for using Tom's funeral as an opportunity to speak of politics. "-and if that were true it will be much longer still before the memories of my brother are lost. The memories you have of him keep him alive even if his body lies here in this box. Tom Frost: man, son, brother, co-worker, lover, friend, whatever he was to you, all these labels don't do justice to define who he was nor can this eulogy do him justice, try as I do. He was the rock in which I looked to for support, and I will miss him dearly as I keep the memory of him alive where ever I go. Thank you and God bless."

"You know Chacatonga, I wonder how they chose where they are going to dig. It seems like there is no pattern to where they choose," shares Hatternachel.

Chacatonga was paying attention to a squirrel in its branches. It then focuses its attention to Hatternachel. "Yodelloxen heard that the visitors pick out the placement due to esthetics."

"How did you hear it from Yodelloxen?" Yodelloxen is an Elm tree one hundred feet away from Chacatonga and Hatternachel.

"Yodelloxen told it to Uberdopple who told it to Inteleshglee who told it to Oppitapotten who told it to Mishitivi-toovi who told it to me," answered Chacatonga.

"Huh."

Many mobile metallic objects roll down the main path, the lead one being long and black. They come to a halt, one behind the other, and then many humans emerge from them. They all seem to be heading to another hole in the ground, this one thirty feet from Chacatonga and Hatternachel.

"Do you ever wish you were mobile, Chacatonga?" asks Hatternachel.

"Not really. You?"

"Sometimes."

"I used to feel that way."

"Yeah?"

"It's a young thing. Wait till you get a few more rings in your trunk, then you'll feel differently."

"I doubt it," Hatternachel says more to itself.

"Everything has its place Hatternachel. There are stationary things and there are mobile things. We just happen to be fulfilling the stationary role. You cannot pick the role you want, you have to take what is given to you. Don't you think that maybe some of the mobile creatures wish they could be stationary?"

"I know. I guess it's a case of the grass is greener on the other side."

"Besides, I've come to the conclusion in my later rings that mobile creatures worry more than we do."

"How do you figure?" asks Hatternachel.

"Well, they have to move to find food while we don't have to go anywhere. The Morning Glory gives us our energy; the air, ground, and rain our food." Morning Glory is their name for the Sun. "Also, they have to search out partners to reproduce and they are separated into two groups. So even if you have a collective of many mobile creatures of the same group, you still won't get any offspring. While we have only one group and we all can create new life with each other." Chacatonga is a wise sycamore. What it didn't know was that a seed grows now in the ground over by Mishitivi-toovi, which is the offspring of Chacatonga and Hatternachel. However, it probably won't have the opportunity to grow into a tree since the plot of land it sits in is currently scheduled to be dug up to make a hole.

Six mobiles are carrying a large wooden box to the hole. Many others follow behind.

"How about the fact that we do not stand in a gathering?" offers Hatternachel. Hatternachel is in an inquisitive mood this day. A gathering is their term for a forest.

"That is a little bothersome," answered Chacatonga after some deliberation. "After all, this is not our natural ground." Chacatonga refers to the fact that all the big trees around the grounds were grown on tree farms, dug up, and transported to various locations. "I would like to be around more of our kind but still, we get to observe these humans, which is entertaining."

One of the mobiles is speaking all the others are listening to him.

"If you could ask any question to a mobile, what would you ask it?" asks Hatternachel.

"What are you today, a sapling?"

"Come on Chacatonga, I feel young and energetic this morning. It's such a lovely day. Morning Glory is high and making me warm and the breeze cools me down. It's going to be another wonderful green period, lots of girth added to the trunk I bet." The green period is the summer.

"Yes, another wonderful green period. Still, I hope it rains more often. One of the greatest joys I have in this world is the feeling of being rained on. I've always loved it so."

"Craffenootersty says that if you try hard enough, you could converse with a mobile."

"Craffenootersty is a Spruce that talks to itself. Crazy old Spruce it is. Swears it's moved an inch since being planted. Nonsense I tell you. Granted we converse in a frequency that is different than the mobile's but there is no way to change the frequency to align it within the audible range of a mobile," Chacatonga says while focusing on old mad Craffenootersty.

"But what about the time Inteleshglee was being carved into in his trunk and was moaning in pain. A mobile told the one doing it to stop because and I quote "I can hear the tree scream?" Hatternachel counters with.

"Pure coincidence my friend, pure coincidence. Besides, Inteleshglee was not screaming, only moaning as you just said. Even Inteleshglee said that the carving was only slightly irritating and was actually carrying on more than it actually hurt. It's not like we haven't been scratched before by the furry mobiles. Honest to goodness Hatty."

"I know Chaca, but it would be just really cool to be able to communicate with one of them." Hatternachel expels some oxygen in frustration.

The mobile speaking has just gotten done with talking about ashes and dust.

"They seem to leak sap a lot when gathering at the holes. The usually shorter group I mean," comments Chacatonga.

"Yeah, and leaning on the usually taller ones," adds Hatternachel. "I would ask them what's it like, what does it feel like, to move about."

"Huh?"

"The one question I would ask them if I could. I would ask them what's it like to be mobile, I mean what kind of sensation is it like." Hatternachel is a kind and imaginative Sycamore and Chacatonga cannot help but adore Hatternachel.

"Oh." The gathering of the mobiles has broken up and some are returning to the mobile metallic objects. Some are walking about the field of stones and trees. Two named Penny and Xavier head over to Hatternachel. "I would ask them how do they choose their reproduction partners and if they ever feel that being in two groups is a nuisance."

"That's two questions," Hatternachel says playfully.

"Then just the nuisance question. I'm sure it's a nuisance, I can't help but think it would be frustrating�and limiting."

"I guess that's the balance of things then," Hatternachel thinks out loud. "The trade off, you know? 'You get to be mobile, but those that you may reproduce with are limited to this group.'"

"Wise words young one, wise words."

Penny puts her hand to the bark of Hatternachel.

"Got a visitor there Hatternachel," Chacatonga says.

Xavier reaches up and pulls a leaf off one of Hatternachel's branches.

"Got a picker here," Hatternachel comments to Chacatonga.

Penny puts her forehead to the bark and feels its rough nature on her skin. "I wish I were this tree."

"Why?" asks Xavier.

"Because it's in the ground, rooted, tied down." She turns from the tree and leans back, resting her back against the tree. She looks at Xavier and then over to the gravesite. "Tom would have liked to have been buried under the shade of a tree. But Mom and Dad picked out the plot." Another breeze comes through and wrestles her slacks and tousles Xavier's hair about. He is crouched down and picking at the grass beneath; yep, definitely a picker, Xavier is.

"Your parents seem nice," he says.

"Normal parents they are. Only wish they had was to not outlive their children. And now all they've got left is me, the fragile egg that I am," Penny says while looking at the people getting back into their cars.

"Don't say that."

"It's true."

Xavier walks over to the edge of the shade that Chacatonga casts and picks a dandelion. He walks back to Penny and stands before her. She grabs a hold of his shirt, around the buttons at the bottom of it, just above the belt.

"In case I haven't told you yet, thank you. For coming with me to this; it means a lot to me. Probably not the way you wanted to spend a Saturday morning," Penny says, fishing for something, anything.

Xavier twirls the stem of the dandelion in his fingers. "I came for the company," he says while putting the dandelion up behind Penny's ear, the flower end facing out. "You're welcome."

The two hold hands and walk to the line of mobile metallic objects.

"Wow, that was something," Hatternachel manages to let out. "She said she wished she could be me," Hatternachel says in awe and in joy. A breeze went by but it went unnoticed by Hatternachel and Chacatonga for they are momentarily under a spell. A spell cast by the words and tenderness spoken by the mobiles a few moments ago.

Chacatonga snaps out of it. "Well, I told you that some mobiles wish they could be us and right there you had it in proof," he says.

"I wish I could relive the moment again and again," says Hatternachel in rapture.

"Just be glad you got that moment young one."

"'I wish I were this tree. I wish I were this tree. I wish I were this tree,'" Hatternachel repeats, each time saying it in a slightly different way.

By the time Morning Glory casts long shadows the opposite way, word has spread all the way back to Yodelloxen of the events that morning. You would have heard it too, if you tried hard enough to change your frequency.