“Ma'am, are you all right?”
Hannah looked around in panic. “I've got....find...switch! Where...is...WHERE IS THE THING?”
She rose to one knee and slowly stood, being careful not to fall, as she was very light-headed.
She looked around for a moment. “Wh...who are you?”
The two children, a brother and sister of very similar age, explained that they were new, and just showed up a couple weeks ago, having moved in with their aunt. They also called her 'Missus' several times.
“My name is Hannah, and I'm not married. Stop calling me 'Missus,' it makes me feel old.”
“And Ma'am too. I'm just Hannah.” She pressed the button for the pinnacle's elevator, and the door opened, just as she expected. She was really the only person who used it anyway, so it was always where she left it, except the time when the maintenance team decided to work on it while she was topside, and she was left on the surface for two days with nothing but birds and the quietly stunning view for company. She made a point to return on a regular basis, but not to sleep up there.
The children looked very apologetic. “Sorry, Miss Hannah.” They looked so comically sorrowful that she would have struggled to keep a straight face, had she not been in a rather foul mood. “It's all right. Just try to remember that.”
They brightened instantly. “Ok! We have something to show you!” said the girl in the tone of a child with something Important (with a capital I) to say. Hannah reluctantly followed, shaking off the vestige of her dream. Get your attention, be more receptive. She shivered again.
They were named Tabitha and Thomas, (“But call us Tab and Tom, we like it better”) and they were twins. Hannah thought their parents must possess a pretty simple sense of humor, or perhaps they were just...simple.
The three of them entered the colony's foyer, Tabitha playing the overenthusiastic tour guide as Thomas pointed to whatever it was that his sister was talking about. The prefabricated structure's builders did their best to mimic a peaceful environment back on Earth, which ended up making colony #4's insides look like a giant garden estate, or a country club. Shrubs, benches, and shaded pagodas dotted the landscape, with each plaza dominated by a fountain or statue of some forgotten or just irrelevant hero. Mercury lamps embedded in the cavernous mirrored ceiling gave an impression of sunlight, while periodic oscillations in their intensity allowed a resident to imagine clouds sailing high above.
“Hey Hannah, are those your kids?” A plain-looking girl waved at her from behind a shrub she was pruning.
“I'm nineteen years old! No, they are not!”
“Oh. Ok.” She went back to pruning the shrub, which was engineered to be a perfect precise sphere, and definitely did not need any clipping, although this didn't stop the plain girl.
Tab gestured for Hannah to bend down, and whispered into her ear. “Do you know her?”
“Never met her. I don't care to either.” Hannah suspiciously eyed the plain girl, who was now singing a song to herself as she worked. “I don't like stupid people.”
Tab and Tom pulled at Hannah, and they continued their exhibition.
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