Chapter 21: Dreams of the Old

Celia eagerly nodded in response to her offer.

“Hmm…” An’s grandmother gently hummed, looking at the miniature rocket displays as if trying recall her memories, “where should I start with this… ah yes! Do you see those small pointy needle shaped statues on the counter over there? Those are called ‘rockets’. We used to send them into space a lot back before the Tropodome was formed over the Earth.”

Celia continued listening closely despite the old lady describing things she already knew.

“It’s a shame really… that Tropodome… it did a lot of good things for the world but… the rocket launches back then were so beautiful,” An’s grandmother continued, “not that I’ve ever seen them myself though. I’m just recalling what my grandmother used to tell me — she was one the last astronauts and used to tell me stories about space all the time. By the time I was old enough to remember things, the space program was already cancelled. My grandmother, like almost every other astronaut at the time, was devastated when she heard about it. She didn’t give up though, and started protesting a lot with all the other astronauts and people that cared about space.”

“That’s what my grandfather told me as well,” Celia said, recalling hearing the same thing before as she begins to work on the prosthetic leg again, “my great great grandfather was also one of the last astronauts, but I don't know too much about him since my grandfather doesn't talk much about it.”

“Oho? Is that so?” An's grandmother asked, “Do you know his name by any chance?”

“Yeah, his name was Alaric Reiss,” Celia replied.

“Mm I remember that name,” the old lady said, “he’s the one that started one of the only successful movements at the time — well I wouldn’t really call it a major success — but it worked to some extent. Because of him a few schools around the world still teach Aerospace Engineering.”

Celia nodded her head, proud to hear someone else praise her great great grandfather for once.

“My grandmother used to tell me all about him. He was a bright old man filled with passion, but when the space program closed down, his inner spark seemed to die,” An’s grandmother continued, “a lot of the other astronauts at the time tried to get him to join their movements since based on what they knew of him, he would be eager to join the protests. I can only imagine their surprise when they went to see his wife, who they also wanted to recruit, and she told them that he had run off somewhere without informing her.”

An’s grandmother paused to think for a moment before saying, “10 years a I think… he didn’t reappear until after a whole decade, and when he did, he came back ready to fight for what he believed in with the same fire he had in him before he disappeared. His passion was so strong that even though the movements were dying out by the time he returned, he was still able to change something.”

She then looks towards Celia and asks her, “say, since you’re related to him, you don’t happen to know what happened to him during those years do you?”

Celia stopped poking at the gears inside of the old lady’s leg and stopped to recall what she learned from Alto’s memory drives.

“According to my grandfather he holed himself away in an apartment in Sector Salzburg in Amsterlin,” she explained, bending the story a little bit to avoid mentioning that she still had an ALTO, “it's one of the few things he told me. He also said that Alaric had an ALTO with him, and that apparently it was the thing that eventually convinced him to come back.”

“An ALTO huh…” An’s grandmother recalled, “I remember those things; my grandmother used to have one — she named it Tala I think… She mainly used it to help babysit me and my siblings when our parents were busy but also to help her plan her protests. Tala eventually broke down over the years though, just like all the other ALTOs. Repair shops were told not to make any repairs for ALTOs so they eventually degraded over time… If you don’t mind me asking, do you happen to know the name of the ALTO your grandfather had?”

Celia thinks for a moment before saying, “Alto… I think.”

Wait. My grandfather named him Alto too?  She realized as she recalled what she heard in the memory drives, is being bad at naming things genetic?

“Ha! Alto? Was it really?” An’s grandmother chuckled, “my grandmother told me that someone had named their ALTO that, but I didn’t know it was the great Mr. Reiss himself.”

Celia solemnly nodded in slight embarrassment as she gets back to work, continuing to poke through the gears as she pried open another part of the leg to check another set.

After calming down from laughing, An’s grandmother suddenly scrunched her face in deep thought, “now that I think about it, if Alaric received an ALTO from NASA, that means someone there knew where he was hiding but didn’t tell all the other astronauts.”

Celia thought for a moment before realizing she was right.

Dr. Omari and my great great grandfather did seem like great friends though… she considered, maybe he knew that Alaric didn’t want to be bothered and respected his wishes?

Nevertheless, Celia didn’t say anything back to her and continued working on the repair as An’s grandmother looked to the figures on the shelves.

“Those souvenirs are over a century old, you know?” she said, “my grandmother used to collect them back when she was a little girl and it’s been tradition to pass them down to our grandchildren. Not that I would ever pass it to An though… that freelancer of a girl doesn’t care much about space, and I know she wouldn’t treasure them much as I do. I’ve considered giving it to one of her cousins but none of them seem to care either. They would probably just sell them at a pawn shop for some money if anything.”

Celia’s eyes sparkled with opportunity.

“Then what about me?” she asked with a hint of embarrassment at her bold request, “I would take care of them and try to pass them on to my grandchildren if I could!”

“Haha, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea actually,” An’s grandmother laughed, “I haven’t had any of the younger generations listen to me for this long about space before. It’s actually the first time I got to talk about it for a while. Say, you know what? If you can help me repair my leg, I’ll pass down my collection to you as a reward.”

Suddenly a soft but audible click could be heard before her leg suddenly starts spasming. Celia immediately backs away in shock, as the grandmother looked on in surprise.

“Speak of the devil,” she laughed, “luckily these things don’t come with pain sensors. I couldn’t even imagine how much it’d hurt otherwise.”

As the spasming comes to a stop, Celia went to grab new tools to adjust the broken gear back into place.

“I should have this fixed in no time,” she said as she continued working, “and also, right now wouldn’t really be a good time to take them home. If you can’t tell, I’m not from the Silk Axis so I have to take a train back home to Euracia and I didn’t bring enough luggage space to take it all back. I can make a return trip back here some time later though if that’s okay?

“Whatever works best with you,” she said, “but in that case, instead I shall reward you with something else; a little secret that my grandmother had.”

Celia listened closely as she continued working, her interest piqued.

“My grandmother didn’t really succeed in a lot of the movements she started,” she continued, “but according to her, she did manage to do one thing; along with her other fellow astronauts and coworkers, they managed to keep the space center they worked at open. Apparently, they managed to fake its demolition with some connections on the inside of the crew that was tasked with demolishing it, and then they slowly but successfully made it irrelevant enough that the world forgot about it so the government never double checked.”

A working space center?  Celia wondered, that’s exactly what Hikaru and I have been searching for.

“Where was this space center that she worked at?” she asked.

“Hmm…” the grandmother mumbled, “I can’t exactly remember actually, but I did know it was somewhere in what’s now the country of Gran Andes.”

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Gran Andes?  Celia recalled the grandmother’s words as she took the train back home, but that continent is on the other side of the world! We don’t nearly have enough money to make it there unless…

The internship.

Celia knew that if she had successfully completed it, the payout would be big enough to buy everyone a ticket over there.

She opens up her phone to look at travel prices, only to be met with a flood of messages that HIkaru sent a few hours ago. Most of it was just pictures of the group on some sort of grassy hill next to the ocean, but there were a few texts.

“Hey, so unfortunately the space center isn’t here either”

Heh, well boy do I have news for you, Celia joked to herself as she continued reading.

“Just let me know a good time we can meet up so we can discuss more plans”

Celia slouched down on her seat of the train.

A plan huh? I have one but it requires me completing the internship, she thinks to herself, unfortunately it doesn’t seem possible for me without some help… without some help…

Suddenly, an idea strikes Celia’s mind.