The Habitat

The cards...

Characters: The relentlessly inquisitive reporter and The household of three.

Setting: Up in the sky

Problem: Suddenly a fight broke out.

Resolution: They were finally rescued.

The story...

Gerald was a relentlessly inquisitive reporter. His entire life he had questioned everything. When he was a child he drove his parents nuts, constantly asking the who, what, why, were and when’s of everything they told him. As he grew older he drove his teachers nuts and then later was unable to keep a job because his bosses went crazy trying to deal with him. Dealing with Gerald was like dealing with a curious two year old. On crack. All the time. Most people nearly snatched themselves bald in frustration when they had to deal with Gerald.

Things were not looking to bright for him until the day he found a tabloid someone had carelessly dropped on the sidewalk. After picking it up and reading it for a while he felt he had found his calling, for there in the back of the paper was an ad for a job as a reporter.

Gerald immediately went over to the business offices and inquired about the job. After overwhelming the manager with questions and leaving him completely gobsmacked, Gerald was hired on the spot. Gerald quickly rose to the top of his field becoming lead investigative reporter for the Daily Inquisitor. Nobody put more effort or worked longer hours gathering stories than Gerald. Because of his work the Inquisitor was now the leading daily tabloid with almost twice the readership of the rest combined. And as long as he didn’t have to deal with him personally, Gerald’s editor let him do as he pleased. The readership numbers just kept going up.

So it was of no surprise when Gerald found the Davis family.

The Davis’ were your typical average household of three in the midst of suburbia. So typical and average that for all purposes they were invisible. Nothing about them stood out. They would have been great spies they appeared so mundane. Unfortunately they were that mundane.

And Mr. Davis hated it.

But he had a plan to change that.

After secretly buying a supply of military surplus weather balloons Mr. Davis proceeded to put his plan in action. He spent every evening locked up in the garage, working into the night. Hammering, sawing, grinding and all other kinds of noises piqued the curiosity of his family and neighbors. Mr. Davis absolutely refused to give any information and it was clear that even his family didn’t know what he was doing in the garage. All Mr. Davis would say when he was asked about it was "You’ll see."

It was the speculation of what Mr. Davis was up too that had caught Gerald’s attention, and the inability to find out what was going on had kept it.

Gerald didn’t like not knowing, so he began to stake out the Davis house when he wasn’t busy on other stories, eventually giving in to his curiosity and devoting all his time to the matter. He became so obsessed that even his editor began to worry. Gerald hadn’t submitted a story in several days and readership was suffering.

One night Gerald was startled to find Mr. Davis walking right up to him.

"It’s ready." "Be here at six a.m. and the story is yours" he said and turned and walked back to his house before Gerald could even form a response.

Gerald could hardly sleep from the excitement and was waiting long before the appointed time for Mr. Davis to appear.

At precisely six o’clock the Davis’ garage door opened and revealed what seemed to be a heavily modified recreational vehicle. Odd appendages stuck out at what seemed like random places and the wheels had been removed and pontoons put in their place. A rack like apparatus was mounted on the top with braces to a large ring. Connected to the ring were many cables that went into boxes mounted on the rack. Gerald was sure it made sense to someone, just not him.

With excitement born of curiosity and the long wait, Gerald rushed up to Mr. Davis to get the scoop.

"What is it?"

"A trans-global aeronautical habitat" replied Mr. Davis. "My family and I are going to live in it while we travel the world."

"How does it work?" Gerald asked.

"I have mounted weather balloons to the top of the habitat which will provide the lift to carry us on our journey." "There are air jets on the sides to allow for directional control and I can vary our altitude by inflating or deflating balloons." "The habitat is supplied for up to sixty days aloft so we can cross any body of land or water with ease and not have to land" Mr. Davis said excitedly. " Would you come with us to document our historic event?"

Of course Gerald couldn’t say no and left to quickly pack for the trip while Mr. Davis inflated the balloons for lift off. This would be his greatest story yet.

When Gerald returned to the Davis house he found the trans-global aeronautical habitat with its balloons inflated and ready for lift-off. Mr. Davis was giving a speech to the small crowd of neighbors that had gathered to see what was going on. The Davis household of three planned to circumnavigate the globe and set a world record for living aloft. Various television news trucks were starting to arrive and set up their equipment and Mr. Davis was in a hurry to get going before he had to waste time giving interviews.

As Gerald walked up Mr. Davis told the crowd that he had asked a reporter along to document the journey and that they should look for his stories for further information. He then introduced Gerald to them, said "Now our journey begins", took Gerald by the elbow and led him inside to prepare for departure.

Gerald took the opportunity to scrutinize the inside of the habitat as Mr. Davis began to launch the craft. He found an empty corner to stash his stuff and sat down on a seat near the Davis family.

"Hi, I’m Gerald" he said to the family "May I please get your names for the story?" As the introductions were made Gerald continued to ask questions and make notes on the back-story for the series of articles he would be writing. He just knew this was going to make history and he wanted to make sure he had all the details to document it.

Gerald learned that Mr. Davis was a mechanical engineer for a large manufacturing company. He spent his days working at one of dozens of drafting tables in an open room, only known outside his small circle of fellow workers as "Engineer #17". Mr. Davis felt overworked, unrecognized and underpaid. He was just another invisible employee in the corporate structure that desperately wanted to be noticed.

Mrs. Davis was a "lunch lady" at her sons’ school. She had started out by joining the PTA when her son started school so she could stay involved during his day. That led to volunteer work for the school and eventually to her current job. Mrs. Davis had offered to fill in for a woman who was taking a few days off to take care of her sick mother and as one thing led to another had just inherited the job. Five years on and the only things she had going for her were the fact that she still didn’t have "lunch lady" arms and she saw her son three times a day. Once in the morning on their ride to school, once as he came through the lunch line and then again on the ride home together.

The Davis boy was thirteen. Too old to be a kid and too young to be an adult. He suffered from all the usual teen angst and unjust oppression by his parents. To compound things he had few, if any, real friends. He didn’t play sports. Wasn’t in any clubs. Didn’t belong to any of the various clicks at school. Made neither good nor bad grades. He was polite enough not to offend anyone, yet sullen enough not keep people engaged with him. No matter where he was, he was pretty sure he wanted to be somewhere else. Especially when his parents were involved.

He was the kind of boy that ends up doing something awful and then everyone says later that they just couldn’t believe that it happened. Except that young Master Davis had no ambition or anger to motivate him. He was destined to end up as the odd, slightly out of sync, old bachelor that worked some invisible job in a dim room somewhere that nobody knew and everyone wondered about.

Unless Mr. Davis’ plan worked. Then the whole family would be cast in a new light and they could each become Somebody.

Gerald, knowingly or unknowingly, was going to ensure that.

With a passion fueled by a combination of his natural curiosity and the pent up frustration of not being able to investigate many new stories while he was staking out the Davis’, Gerald threw himself into documenting the journey.

Gerald was first up in the morning so he could record the day. Which family member awoke first. When they got dressed. What they wore. What order they put on their clothes. What they had for breakfast. What toothpaste they used. Whether they wetted the toothbrush before or after they put on the toothpaste. What they said to each other.

No detail was too small. And it went on like that all day. Every day.

Whenever Gerald wasn’t writing down what the family was doing, he was asking questions. How did they feel? What were they thinking about? What were they going to do when they landed? What were they going to eat for lunch? What was their favorite color? Did they have a pet when they were a child? What was it? What was its name?

The questioning was particularly bad for Mr. Davis. Gerald wanted to know EVERYTHING about the trans-global aeronautical habitat. How it was built. How it worked. How it was flown. How Mr. Davis navigated.

Every time Mr. Davis started to do something Gerald was in the middle of it. Like a cat under foot when you’re carrying in the groceries and fumbling for the door key while the rain is running off the roof and down the back of your neck. And it’s forty degrees outside. And you can hear the phone ringing inside.

One day Mr. Davis was working out the details of a particularly difficult bit of navigation to get the habitat over and around a mountain range when Gerald began his usual line of questioning. Mr. Davis asked Gerald to give him a minute to focus since the danger was getting closer and time was of the essence. Gerald tried as best as he could, but just couldn’t resist the odd query now and then when Mr. Davis did something he hadn’t seen before.

Mr. Davis was getting more agitated by each question.

"Shut up! Just shut the heck up!" he shouted at Gerald.

"I can’t take this any more!" "If you ask me one more question I’m going to throw you off this habitat!"

"But... But..." stammered Gerald.

"No buts! Just be quiet!" snarled Mr. Davis.

"But I’m just trying to make sure I get all the facts right for the story" pleaded Gerald " I have to ask questions so I get everything right."

And then Mr. Davis snapped.

Lunging over the chart table he grabbed Gerald by the throat and threw him up against the wall.

"You will shut up... You will shut up..." Mr. Davis repeated slowly in time as he banged the back of Gerald’s head up against the wall.

"Oh my goodness!" Mrs. Davis shrieked as she ran over and started to try and pull her husband off of poor Gerald.

"Honey let go! You’re hurting him."

The Davis boy also ran over and tried along with his mother to restrain his bezerk father.

The next few moments were a blur as everyone tried to push, pull, pry, tug, trip and grab each other. Before long it was an all out melee as everyone let go of their pent up frustrations and basically went feral.

As the habitat slowly turned into a combat arena there was a sudden crash that was even louder than the ruckus Gerald and the Davis’ were making and then the whole room lurched and suddenly everyone was tumbling like clothes in a dryer.

When silence finally reigned and only the dust motes were lazily wafting through the air, the dazed group began to assess their situation. Everyone had minor cuts and scrapes but seemed to have escaped any significant damage. The habitat, however, appeared to not have faired as well as its occupants.

Anything that wasn’t bolted down, including the people, was strewn all about the cabin in a pile on the wall that was now acting as the floor. Daylight seeped in through cracks that had sprouted in various places giving sharp contrast to the overall dimness in the cabin since the power had been interrupted. Only an occasional sound as the odd piece of wreckage shifted and settled broke the silence until Gerald, true to his nature, began to ask questions.

"What happened?" seemed a good start.

"I suspect we managed to hit the mountain I was trying to avoid" Mr. Davis responded blandly.

"Where are we?" "What are we going to do?" "Who is going to help us?" "How are we going to get home?" Continued Gerald.

Seeing the gleam in her husband’s eye and knowing that Gerald’s incessant queries were not helping the situation, Mrs. Davis crawled over to him and lightly grabbed his sleeve.

"Gerald, why don’t you help me check out the damage in the other room?" And began gently tugging him towards the door.

Mr. Davis crawled the other way and began trying to clear a way outside so he could see where the habitat had ended up.

Over the next few hours as Mrs. Davis kept Gerald occupied, Mr. Davis was able to determine what kind of shape they were in.

When the trans-global aeronautical habitat had collided with the mountain the mountings for the weather balloons had been torn off as it tumbled along the mountainside and all the balloons were lost. The habitat had finally come to rest wedged in a crag. It was awkwardly oriented, but fortunately it was secure, stable and relatively sheltered from the elements.

Some of the electronics and navigation equipment was damaged during the crash and anything that had been loose and was fragile had been destroyed. Mr. Davis had provisioned well for the journey and felt that food and water would not be a problem for them. He also had a good assortment of tools and spare parts along and felt that he could repair or cannibalize anything they might need for survival.

The next several days found Mr. Davis and his son bonding as they worked together on improving their situation. The pair sorted through the wreckage for useful stuff. Repaired and sealed holes and cracks in the habitat to keep the weather out. They found the remains of one of the weather balloons and used the material and other scrap to make an additional shelter out of a nearby cave for Gerald.

Gerald, bless his heart, realized that he needed to keep a low profile for a while and spent most of his time in his shelter writing. Later, when Mr. Davis and his son had repaired the radio, Gerald became the party’s communications man and spent hours surfing the dial trying to raise help.

Mrs. Davis set about organizing the food and provisions. She made a fire pit under a sheltered outcropping were she could cook. The group would gather there in the evenings for supper and to discuss the events of the day around the fire.

It wasn’t the best of times, but everybody found a place and settled into a relatively comfortable routine.

Gerald’s tenacity finally paid off after several weeks on the mountain. One afternoon while running up and down the dial on the radio he managed to make contact with a scouting party for an expedition. Due to the weak radio signal and not knowing the groups exact location it took a few days before they were finally found.

The rescue party was impressed with the group’s ingenuity in converting the wrecked habitat and improving their situation. Most of them agreed that they probably would not have made it otherwise.

In the following months the Davis family and Gerald were often in the news. Gerald, with the family’s permission, sold the story to a publisher for a very substantial amount and it made number one on the best seller list for weeks.

They all had interviews on the major morning, afternoon and evening talk shows. A major network put together a reality series based on their saga called "Castaways" and Gerald had written a screenplay for a major studio that was currently filming the movie. Gerald had also penned the family’s autobiographies.

Gerald and the Davis’ had managed to become quite good friends through it all and were careful to support each other and work as a team through all their new found fame. They spent many evenings together reflecting on the events that had changed them into stronger, more well rounded, successful people and vowed that they would not let it get to their heads.

Known to the public as some of the most "real" people amongst all the celebrities they remained happy for the rest of their lives.