Nash, Tricia, and Shawn have never been allowed down in their father’s basement before. Not once in their lives. The man has never ever permitted it until now.
Ashton stores all of his inventions and experiments in the basement, and he always tells them it’s too dangerous for any children at all to be playing around in. The man never fails to lock it up tight every night before going to bed and having the key on him at all times.
Now, the three siblings follow Ashton down the stairs to the lowest level of the house—which used to be underground but now floats in outer space attached under the rest of the house—and see just how their father has shaped this one room into his own personal kingdom. So, this is sure to be a spectacle they won’t soon forget.
The walls, ceiling, and floor are a shiny white that are so sparkly clean it’s as bright as staring directly at the sun. Along the walls are rows of chestnut brown wooden bookshelves squeezed side by side together and reach from the floor up to seven to eight inches below the ceiling. These shelves are full to the brim with professional science textbooks and records of documents stored in manila envelopes stacked side by side and divided by multi-colored plastic shelf dividers.
Around the center of the room, there are five rectangular white tables with various test tubes and different sized beakers on top. Connecting these beakers on each table is a series of wires and cords and straws that flow the bubbling chemicals and foaming liquid compounds from one test tube to the next.
The siblings continue to follow their father through his laboratory, fighting the urge to poke around at some of the current experiments on each table.
They eventually reach the back left of the room where hanging on hooks screwed into the wall are four matching space suits fitted for each family member here. Having been crafted from the finest silicone, leather, and mesh materials, these suits look like something from the distant future of space travelling. They even have identical patches of a bold white A for Asterfield stitched over the left side of the chest.
Each of them have a pair of long white gloves and short rocket boots adorned with brightly colored lights and buttons, to which Ashton’s are tinted a dark crimson, Nash’s a neon sunset orange, Tricia’s a bright lilac, and Shawn’s an oceanic blue. Backpacks accompany each of their suits designed to carry the oxygen tanks and several few trinkets to be named later in the side pockets.
The only things that can tell them apart are the sizes and the colors. They are hanging from largest to smallest with Ashton’s suit being sky blue with white armor, Nash’s is bright green with golden armor, Tricia’s is neon pink with silver armor, and Shawn’s is yellow with copper armor. They even have utility belts built for equipping tools and weapons; the kids’ are white while their father’s is black.
Their round fishbowl-like helmets have also been customed to fit their respective owners, and they too hang from hooks on the wall to the right and slightly lower than the suits’ hooks. They are installed with both an open and a closed radio systems designed for interacting with other beings outside the home and for private family conversations.
Nash grabs his helmet and puts it on over his head. It slips on easily with a sort of popping noise with an exhale of air emitting from the helmet’s base where it will interlock with the rest of his spacesuit, but he doesn’t have that on yet. He looks around the room with his breaths sounding like KKSSSSSSHHHH-CCHHHHSSSSSSSHHHH, and since he doesn’t have his oxygen tank connected, his breaths fog up the glass in front of his face.
“This is all like something out of a video game,” Tricia says. “I have to admit: it’s actually kind of cool.”
Nash takes off his helmet and then says, “I don’t think Tricia’s big, poofy hair will be able to fit in her helmet, anyway. She probably won’t even be able to join us. Guess we’ll have to leave her behind. What a shame,” he sounds sarcastic on that last remark. Tricia punches him in the shoulder out of being offended. “Ow!” Nash whines, “I’m just saying that you’ll probably have to cut it.”
“You know darn well I will never let my hair be any shorter.” Tricia informs.
“Not to worry,” Ashton says. “I’ve already invented a little something that’ll solve that problem.” He digs into his several inside lab coat pockets, and four pockets later he pulls out a large girly hair clip in the shape of a pink ribbon tied into a thick bow. “Allow me to demonstrate. Tricia, my small, harsh, and only daughter. Turn around, please.”
Tricia heaves a loud sigh and does as her father says. He clips the large pink bow onto a clump of hair on the back of his daughter’s head, and immediately the very, very long length of her curly dark brown hair recedes upward, getting shorter on its own until it stops at an inch above shoulder-length.
The children gasp in shock while their father smiles even bigger with another achievement.
“Oh my gosh! How could you?!” Tricia screams at her father while tugging on her now short hair. She kicks him hard in the shin of his leg, making him clutch his leg with both hands while he hops around in one place.
Once the pain simmers down and he can put weight on that leg again, Ashton explains, “Ah, don’t worry, my dear. Your hair has just abated back into your scalp due to the fiber electrons in the bow. All you have to do is take it off in order to for it return to its original length.”
“Hmph! We’ll see about that,” Tricia says, unconvinced of her father’s theory, but she yanks the bow out of what is left of her hair anyway. And just like that, her hair grows rapidly back its initial state where the ends stretch down just passed her bottom. “…Oh.” She says, realizing she is wrong to doubt her father’s inventions.
“See? Well, now that that’s settled, let us get suited up!” Ashton exclaims. He then unbuttons his lab coat and takes it off along with his tall black boots, tossing them aside at Nash’s face as the boy dodges the flying boots but cannot avoid the lab coat as it lands on his head. This reveals the father’s skintight underclothes, which are fitted for slipping on his spacesuit over them. “Ah, I almost forgot,” he says, turning his way to a nearby table that has the kids’ specialized matching underclothes resting on top. He grabs them and holds them up to show his children. “You’ll need to get into these first,” he says.
Once the children take their new underclothes in hand, Shawn then asks, “Wait, do we have to, um…take off our pajamas to put these on?”
“Indeed.” Their father replies.
“Oh, okay. Well then, we should probably go into different rooms,” Nash says as he removes his father’s coat from off of his head and lets it drop on the floor daintily, “You know, for privacy.”
“No need.” Ashton lifts his hand with the high-tech wristwatch and presses some of the buttons that light up on it, and with that, metal wall dividers shoot up from compartments hidden in the floor in the left corner of the basement. These dividers look like those small changing rooms at retail department stores with the thin doors that have a tall gap at the bottom, small benches, hooks on the walls, and even mirrors to see how the clothes look on the customers. There is a changing space for each family member.
Nash, Tricia, and Shawn’s jaws drop again. They are rather surprised by this new addition to the lab, but then they realize they should have expected as much since their father always plans three steps ahead.
“Now we can change at the same time and not have to waste precious moments for our moon walk,” their father grabs his suit and helmet off their hooks on the wall and carries them into the changing space on the right. Before he closes the door, he looks at his kids and tells them, “No more dilly-dallying. We’ll be landing in just a few minutes. Better hurry up, my constantly bickering offspring.”
The siblings look at each other for a brief moment before Nash finally says, “Let’s just get this over with.”
“I don’t need your advice.” Tricia quips as she carries her spacesuit, helmet, and new bow into the changing space next to their father’s, “Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, this is going to be our WHOLE summer. And I for one am NOT looking forward to it.”
“That makes two of us,” Nash remarks back, and he enters the changing space on the far left.
“Make that three,” Shawn says as he enters the stall in between his brother and sister.
Nearly five minutes of several awkward questions from each kid about how to get dressed into their spacesuits later, each family member steps out of their changing spaces, suited up in their new brightly colorful spacesuits. They then put on their backpacks and connect their round fishbowl helmets to the oxygen tanks, assisted by Ashton’s careful instructions. Next, they slip on their gloves and boots, and thus they are ready to head out.
“Alrighty then. Follow me, my tiny yet somehow still capable offspring,” Ashton says.
Suited up in their new spacesuits, the kids follow their father back up the stairs to the ground level of the house. Once they are at the back door, they notice how the lock on said door has been changed from its usual silver latch to a keypad door code. Ashton types the six digit code rapidly into the keypad for it to unlock, and the family steps out onto the back deck making sure the back door is closed behind them. The back deck is also encased in a glass dome with another door made of steel at the top of the stairs leading downward and a doorknob like that of a steering wheel. This wheel also has markings like the round dial on a combination lock on old-fashioned school lockers but with no numbers.
“This will have to be a team effort to open this one,” Ashton says, “Children, grab ahold and turn it counterclockwise.”
They all grasp the wheel and begin to turn as instructed at the same time, but the wheel is hard to move as though it is rusted. After turning it the wheel all the way around four times, the door unlocks and they push it open.
“Well, this is it, my constantly quarreling offspring. Get ready for adventure!” Ashton proclaims.
The three children unenthusiastically cheer a simple “Yay” in unison clearly to express how utterly appalled they are about this whole situation.
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and then Add to home screen.