NaNoWriMo 2010

[marcicatverse]

It took me a while to get this one posted, but I'm trying to get everything written in 2010 posted before the year is officially over. Anyway, here's NaNo '10 (story 7, follows Just Another Day, What I Did On My Summer Vacation, The One With the Road Trip, Now I Can See the Moon, Dragon in the Room, and NIMBY).

Title: Advent
(Subtitle: Slowly Approaching a Non-Denominational, Culturally Appropriated Celebration of Joy and Giving)
Author: marcicat
Word Count: 51,425

Summary: Harold and Al do Christmas.

“You’d think we would know if there was a guest book in our own house,” Harold said.





Advent: Slowly Approaching a Non-Denominational, Culturally Appropriated Celebration of Joy and Giving

By Marci

Chapter 1 (day 1): In which everyone is very quiet, and Harold keeps two eyes on the baby.

Midnight. Harold watched the clock tick over to the new day. Happy December, he thought. Unable to resist, he added Rabbit rabbit. It was a silly superstition, but easy, and — at least as far as he could tell — harmless. If it brought a little extra luck for the month ahead, who’s to say?

He did not, however, bow to superstition enough to say anything out loud. If the baby was sleeping, silence was sacred. (No one wanted to be the one who woke him up. Teething was a nightmare no one had warned them about.)

Technically, Harold was supposed to be in the nursery, on baby duty till two. But there was only just so long you could watch a baby — even the most adorable baby — sleep peacefully before you got really, really bored. The kitchen had food, and internet access. And if Harry did wake up, there were teethers in the freezer, tucked in with the ice cream and the cold packs. Harold didn't think he’d ever been as caught up with his emails as he’d gotten in the past two weeks.

There were footsteps on the basement stairs, and he heard muffled giggles followed by a (much louder) “Shhhh!” Harold rolled his eyes. It was interesting that ‘shushing’ was pretty much a universal constant. People’s ideas of what volume level constituted ‘quiet enough,’ not so much. He automatically checked the baby, but Harry didn't seem inclined to wake up. It had been a long evening of showing off his new found ability to roll over (in both directions, finally — possibly the only baby milestone Harry was hitting the curve on).

The basement door sounded loud in the night stillness, and he heard someone whisper, “Left. Which one is left, again?”

They must be new to the house, then. “In here,” Harold called softly. Probably better to reveal his presence early, so they wouldn't be surprised in the kitchen.

Two people crept into the kitchen. “This isn't the bathroom,” one of them said.

That must be why they wanted to go left, then. “Other left,” he said. “Towards the front door. Harry’s the only one sleeping on this floor, so don’t worry about lights.”

They both backed out of the room, and he realized they were holding their shoes to keep their footsteps quieter. Well, that was nice. One came back almost immediately. “I don’t need a washroom,” she explained. “I just like seeing new things.”

“First time on Earth?” Harold asked.

“Just the States,” she said. “We’re on our way back from vacation and scheduled a stopover. This is sort of a destination, you know?”

On a bad day, Harold could work up a full rant about the ridiculousness of people planning trips just to come to the house and wander around like tourists, asking silly questions, eating all the good snacks, and running up their heating bills by leaving the outside doors open. (It was the spacers who were the worst about it — if there was air on both sides of a door, they all seemed to think open was preferable to closed.) But it hadn’t been a bad day, and late night always had a different set of rules. So he just said, “I’ve heard that.” She beamed at him.

The second girl (Harold wasn’t going to refer to her as the bathroom girl, even in his own head, he really wasn’t) came in from the utility room. “Whoa,” she said, like she hadn’t expected to end up back in the kitchen. “Cool bathroom,” she added. “Have you checked in?”

The first girl gestured between herself and Harold like ‘what do you think I’m doing here?’

“I’m Harold,” Harold said, trying to get the ball rolling. He usually tried not to introduce himself first — some people just weren’t big on name sharing, and of course there was always the possibility that a) they already knew him (or knew of him) and thought an introduction was silly, or b) he already knew them (and had forgotten) and they were going to be insulted that he didn’t remember.

“Ooh, really?” Both girls looked intrigued, but neither volunteered a name, or any additional information.

Harold tried again. “You know, you don’t actually have to check in unless you need help with something. The check in is mostly for kids, if their parents are dropping them off.”

The second girl frowned. “No, we’re checking in for the advent celebration. It’s December first, right? I was sure we had the right time zone this time.”

Advent celebration? Harold was relatively confident that it was, in fact, December first. No one had told him about any celebrations, though, advent or otherwise. “Yes,” he said, starting with the easy stuff. “It’s December first.”

“Great! We brought these.” They started pulling strips of brightly colored paper out of their pockets.

“Do you have any tape?” one of the girls asked. “We couldn’t figure out how to carry them around pre-made.”

“Staples would work too,” the other girl said, like maybe Harold’s confused expression was due to a lack of tape in the household, and not because their behavior was in any way unusual. “I guess glue too, in a pinch.”

They were laying the strips out in a pattern, he was sure. “No, we have tape. In the craft room. Back down the hall, on the right.” He gestured with his right hand, just in case there were any lingering left/right issues. “It should be on one of the shelves.”

Luckily, they didn’t seem to need any more direction than that, although they did seem to be determined to bring the craft room to the kitchen table, as opposed to just taking the project (whatever it was) to the craft room. Harold watched bemusedly as they carefully pieced together — a paper chain? He wondered if it would make sense if it was daytime, and he was more awake.

Just before two, Cate yawned her way into the kitchen. “Hi Cate!” one of the girls said cheerily, and then shot a guilty glance at the baby.

“Happy advent,” Cate said. “Still sleeping?” she asked Harold.

He nodded. “For hours now. He’ll probably wake up soon.” He didn’t add ‘sorry,’ but he was sort of thinking it. Cate just smiled, and patted Harry’s blankets.

“We’ll be fine,” she said. “Sleep well.”

“Thanks. Um, nice to meet you. And… happy advent?” He wasn’t really sure about the whole thing, but the paper chain looked nice, and apparently Cate knew about it. In other words, on the scale of things to worry about (ranging from “it’s fine, your mom suggested it” to “who would have expected that to catch on fire?”) it wasn’t worth losing sleep over.


Chapter 2 (day 1): In which advent is not explained, even a little.

Being up for the late shift with Harry meant sleeping in the next day. He had absolutely no idea how his parents had handled this. Harry had a whole raft of parental-type figures, and he and Al took merciless advantage of their willingness to babysit at all hours of the day. It helped that they already had a 24-hour household, he supposed. Adding a baby into the routine wasn’t (exactly) the strangest thing they’d ever done.

No, that would probably be the dragon, he thought, stepping over the rapidly-growing critter snoozing in the bathroom. Nimby had passed “cat-sized” after a couple of months, and was already closer to “really big dog” than was completely comfortable to share a small space with.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Nimby projected sleepily and shifted out of the way.

“Thanks,” Harold said. He flipped on the heat lamp and Nimby stretched out. “Where’s Harry?”

He just got confusion in return, which could mean a lot of things. Sometimes he forgot that Nimby was still a baby too — language skills didn’t always translate to actual understanding. It was also possible that he was just ignoring the question in favor of sleeping. Or — “Are they both here again?”

Mmmm.

Well, that was worth skipping ahead in the routine. “I’m turning the light out,” he warned, and got an irritated grumble for his trouble. He’d learned his lesson about making that Nimby’s responsibility — those bulbs weren’t meant to be on for the whole day.

Harold did a quick check around the second floor, but the nursery and Toby’s room looked unoccupied. Of course, Cate’s room appeared to have a tent set up in the middle of the floor, so — sometimes it was hard to tell what he was supposed to be looking for.

Tuesday mornings were usually when all the house regulars had a chance to meet up. They did bus pick-ups early, then shared breakfast (sometimes second breakfast) whenever the last person was awake. Which is why he was surprised to see one of the neighbors kids eating cereal at the kitchen table, and an otherwise empty house.

“Isaac,” he said. Isaac didn’t look sick, or injured, and he didn’t have any food allergies that Harold knew of, plus there was a cat lounging by the back door, so it probably wasn’t an emergency.

“Hey Harold!” Isaac said. Harold waited, to see if any kind of explanation was going to be tacked on to that. Isaac looked like he was thinking. “Oh,” he added. “Happy advent!”

“Happy advent,” Harold replied automatically. That wasn’t… exactly what he’d been hoping for.

He decided that food was probably a good choice, whatever the situation. Plus, there was probably a note around somewhere, and the kitchen was the most likely location. It might be in the basement instead, but the basement didn’t have breakfast options.

There was a distinct lack of notes on the refrigerator, toaster, and sink — the first places he looked — but the rainbow colored paper chain the girls had been creating the night before was decorating the doorway to the utility room.

It looked nice. Harold eyed it carefully; you couldn’t always assume that a paper chain was just a paper chain when aliens were involved. But it was either a harmless decoration or too cleverly disguised for him to tell the difference. “So,” he said, turning back to the more immediate issue. “Where is everyone? Shouldn’t you be in school right now?”

Isaac shook his head. “Helen’s sick and I missed the bus, and there’s no one home at my house.”

Harold decided not to mention that it looked like no one was home at his house either, except for him, and he’d been asleep until a few minutes ago. The Laytons couldn’t have known that when they’d sent him over. “Did you see anyone else?” he asked.

“Yeah. They left a note. Do I have to go to school today?”

Harold considered it. “I’m not sure yet. Where’s the note?” Isaac was sitting on it (so he wouldn’t forget it, of course), and Harold tried not to laugh as he read it.

Harold-

Toby says to tell you he was kidding when he suggested Isaac sit on the note. Harry’s back (!) Cate and Matthew are helping Zahar with a project, Harry and baby Harry and have that doctor’s appointment at the school. Did you know they were planning to celebrate advent?

-Al

PS: Isaac’s not sick, and Helen’s not contagious. He really did miss the bus.

At least Al hadn’t known about this advent thing either. “Yes,” Harold said. “You’re going to school today. Don’t you want a chance to wish everyone a happy advent?”

It was a calculated risk. But Harold was ninety-five percent (well, maybe ninety percent) certain that advent was an Earth thing. There were advent calendars, right? With pictures, and candy and stuff. Hopefully not too religious, but Isaac was young enough so he could probably get away with it either way.

He was also familiar enough with the house rules that he took care of his own dishes. “You need lunch?” Harold asked. He wasn’t willing to let Isaac play hooky, but he wasn’t going to send him off without food, either. Luckily, Isaac’s backpack was fully stocked with snacks and lunch, so Harold just scrawled NIMBY on the first water bottle he found in the pantry and stuck it in the side pocket.

He thought he’d been doing well to have found a writing utensil so easily, but paper turned out to be harder. He wanted to write a note back to everyone so they’d know where he was. (Of course, the most logical thing would be to write on the massive white board that was supposed to be keeping track of house residents. There were two problems with that plan: first, he’d already found a regular marker, he didn’t want to push his luck searching for a white board marker; and second, the board was currently covered with foliage. Yes, foliage. He had no idea why.)

Eventually he just flipped the first note over — even crumpled paper was better than a napkin, he supposed.

Taking Isaac to school, brb.

-Harold

He added the “brb” just to make Al smile. Text-speak always made him laugh, even though he wouldn’t explain why. As long as he wasn’t accidentally offering mortal insult to anyone he really cared about, he was fine with it.

Isaac was already belted in to the Armada when Harold got to the garage. The reason behind this sudden burst of good behavior was clear as soon as he looked inside the car. Nimby was sitting in Isaac’s lap, all innocent eyes and twitching tail. “Really?” Harold said.

Bored? He wasn’t sure if Nimby was offering justification for his presence or making a joke.

“Thank goodness for tinted windows,” Harold muttered. Then he looked at Isaac in the rear view mirror. “Please don’t repeat that.” He actually thought that would make a good bumper sticker — ‘Thank Goodness For Tinted Windows.’ It would probably be like waving a red flag to police officers, though. And he didn’t think the old ‘that’s not a dragon; it’s an animatronic robot’ story would stand up to close inspection.

Whether it was due to their lack of antagonistic bumper stickers or the fact that Harold’s sister was in law enforcement (or because he hadn’t broken any driving laws), they made it to Isaac’s school without any difficulty, police-related or otherwise. It wasn’t like the old days, though, when you could just drop a kid off near the front door and let them fend for themselves. The doors were locked, for one thing. You had to be buzzed in, and do everything but a blood test in the front office to prove your identity.

He’d done it all before, of course, but it was like a walk of shame — bringing a kid to school late always seemed to involve some element of public embarrassment for the adult. (And you definitely didn’t want to lead with, ‘But he’s not even my child!’ Harold had learned a lot of kid-related lessons the hard way.)

As usual, the administrative staff acted like they’d never seen him before, and Isaac got to run off to art class while Harold waited with three other parents to fill out the required paperwork. The rumor of uncomfortable waiting room chairs? A myth — Isaac’s school didn’t even have chairs. They discouraged loitering, apparently. They had also turned the heat on (or up) since his last visit, and Harold was beginning to regret his ‘parka over pajamas’ fashion choice for the morning. Now he was going to end up looking like either the weird dad who wouldn’t take his jacket off in seventy-five degree heat, or the lazy dad who couldn’t be bothered to put on actual clothes before leaving the house.

“I’d ask if they could hurry it up a little, but I only have one form of ID with me today,” one of the other parents whispered. “I don’t want them to call security on me.”

Harold didn’t really know what you were supposed to say to something like that, so he just whispered back, “I probably shouldn’t have come in wearing my pajamas.”

She covered her laugh with a cough, and the rest of the wait didn’t seem so bad.


Chapter 3 (day 1): In which everyone makes it back for the household meet-up.

It got even better when Harold made it back home, and Al had hot chocolate waiting. “Please tell me we didn’t send you to that school,” he said to Harry, dropping into a chair. Al handed him a mug of hot chocolate that smelled amazingly good, and like it was at least fifty percent coffee. Al was the best.

“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that,” Harry said. “But no, you didn’t.”

“You know, not everyone gets to ask their kids from the future about what schools they went to,” Cate said.

It was true. “They would, though, if they had the chance.” Harry and baby Harry were — sort of — the same person, just from different points in time. (That was the working theory, anyway; Harold got lost any time they started talking about time travel, and the practical always seemed more important than the theoretical. Harry was there, the baby was there, they both had an inexplicable fondness for giraffes, and they provided the best evidence available that he and Al weren’t going to completely mess up this parenting thing.

“I would. Happy advent, by the way,” Matthew added. “Zahar’s coming by later to talk with your sister about set design.”

“And we got a thumbs up from the doctor,” Al said.

Harry wiggled his fingers to get the baby’s attention. “Baby Harry is doing just fine. He’s working on sounds now, see?”

Baby Harry stayed stubbornly silent, but he did make a grabbing motion with his hands. “Oh!” Cate said. “I’ve been trying to teach him baby sign; that means he wants more!”

“More what?” Al asked, which Harold thought was a perfectly reasonable question. He wished he could tell himself it would get easier to figure out what their kid needed when he got old enough to talk.

Also — “I thought that was the sign for food,” he said.

Matthew shrugged. “I thought it meant he wanted to be picked up.”

They all looked at each other. Finally Harry said, “So, baby sign went well while I was gone, huh?” He pulled a stuffed giraffe out of one of his pockets, and the baby’s grabby hands were satisfied.

The second round of ‘everyone look at each other awkwardly’ was definitely more uncomfortable than the first. Probably because everyone ended up looking at him. “Right,” he said. “Well, it didn’t go very well, no.”

“It wasn’t their fault,” Matthew interrupted. “You said so yourself.”

Harold took a deep breath. “We lost him — lost track of him, for a little while. You went to do… whatever it was you were doing, and baby Harry just disappeared.”

“Six hours,” Cate said, just as Harry was opening his mouth. He frowned at her, and she smiled. “That’s what you asked last time, too.”

“We had no idea what had happened, and it’s not like we could call you. His tracking thing wasn’t working, so we knew he wasn’t anywhere in our time. And then there was Thanksgiving.” Harold sighed.

“Worst. Thanksgiving. Ever,” Al agreed. “‘Oh, I heard you had an adorable baby boy! Where is he?’ ‘Well, we’re not really sure — we seem to have misplaced him slightly in the time stream.’ It’s not exactly a classic family moment.”

Harold wanted to point out that it had actually been a little funny, but it didn’t seem like the right time. “But then you showed up, and it was an even more future you —“

“And don’t think we didn’t notice the tattoo!” Al said. “There had better be a good explanation for that.” Al had strong feelings about tattoos — apparently they were a good way to get you banned from certain planets.

Harry winced. “They’re fake, I swear. It was… possibly a bet. And I haven’t even done it yet. I can’t believe a future version of me is getting me in trouble.”

“He said that whatever you’d done to find Harry in the first place had turned you into a sort of magnet, and when you left, you pulled him away too. He did… something.” Harold looked at Al for help.

Al shook his head. “I have no idea what he did.”

“Whatever it was, it fried every electronic device in the house,” Cate said, and then added, “Wait. Except the microwave. That was fine; I don’t know why.”

Harold picked up the explanation again. “But it brought baby Harry back. Future you said he’d been with him the whole time; he just had to do — whatever that was — to make sure the disappearing thing didn’t happen again. So you should be demagnetized now.”

“I don’t think that made any sense,” Harry said.

“Yeah,” Al said. “Tell me about it.”

Harold raised a hand. “Speaking of which — advent? What’s that all about?”


Chapter 4 (day 1): In which advent is explained, finally.

“Is this a religious thing?” Al asked. “I never understand those.”

“Yes,” Matthew said.

Harold had already had this discussion with himself, but that wasn’t the conclusion he’d come to. “What? No, it’s not, is it? Advent is like a countdown to Christmas, with candy, and a calendar with little doors to open. Right?”

Cate was nodding, but Matthew shook his head. “Advent calendars have been adopted as a mainstream thing, and lots of them are non-religious, but advent itself is a religious thing. It’s supposed to be a period of waiting and preparation for the coming of Christ. First coming, second coming, both — it depends which church you’re part of.”

“Huh. That’s not what I thought we were celebrating,” Cate said.

“What are we trying to celebrate?” Harold asked. He thought it was a perfectly reasonable question.

“We’re celebrating… peace, and love, and joy and family, and all the good things that have gotten all wrapped up with the celebration of Christmas. I just figured not everyone would want to celebrate Christmas, and they wouldn’t all be able to be here then anyway, so it seemed like a good idea to do it for a whole month.”

“Advent doesn’t last a month,” Matthew said.

“Well, ours does,” Cate told him stubbornly.

“We are not making up a brand new holiday just so we can celebrate in an inclusive way,” Harold said. “Can’t we just appropriate advent and subvert it to a new purpose? Isn’t that what people usually do?”

There was silence as everyone considered the option. Harold noticed everyone sneaking looks at Harry, on the off chance he would offer some piece of future wisdom about what they ultimately decided. He pretended to be distracted by the baby, and ignored them all.

“I like it,” Al said finally.

“I don’t think people usually use the word subvert,” Matthew said. “But advent does mean ‘coming’ as far as I know. It could be a celebration of the coming year? Coming winter?”

“Can we say it’s a celebration of coming together?” Cate asked.

Harold thought that would probably be stretching it. “I think that would be a stretch,” he said. “But I’m game if everyone else is.”

Everyone else was game. But there were still way to many questions that Harold never thought he’d be dealing with. Were they going to let the kids wish each other a merry Christmas? A joyous Kwanzaa? What about gifts? What about a tree? “What if some of the kids are Jewish?” Harold asked.

At the same time, Matthew asked, “Are we going to allow prayer at the dinner table?”

“What?”

“We were talking about religious holidays — it made me think of prayer. That’s when my family always prayed at the table, at the holidays. I was just curious.” Matthew looked like he wished maybe he hadn’t said anything, and Harold felt bad.

“No, it’s fine,” he said.

“I think the key to remember is that we don’t actually allow or disallow anything,” Al said. “We live here. This is our house, not a business or a public space. The closest thing we have to a public space is the basement, because we have so many travelers coming through, but there are actually neutral area guidelines that we already follow. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, here.”

Harold vaguely remembered something about neutral area guidelines, from when they’d first bought the house. He was pretty sure his brain had filed it under ‘makes sense, don’t worry about it,’ and he hadn’t thought about it since then.

And it was definitely true that their one rule had served them fairly well so far. “Own your choices” was the official NIMBY motto, if they were organized enough to have an official motto. Harold thought the unofficial motto was more like “fake it till you make it.” Still, both of them were probably valuable life lessons.

“Besides,” he said optimistically. “It’s not like this summer when we had a lot of extra people here all the time. How many people even know about this advent thing?” He hadn’t recognized the girls from the night before, but they’d known Cate. Maybe this was just a “friends and family” kind of event.

Cate cleared her throat. “Um. A lot, actually. I posted it on the website."


Chapter 5 (day 2): In which there actually are some rules, after all.

They eventually realized that simply relying on the "own your choices" rule might not be enough to cover the potential questions raised by advent. (Harold called it potential weirdness, but he'd been shot down on the grounds that his wording might be considered offensive. Al had been in the basement right then welcoming a group through the doorway, so he hadn't been any help.) So they set up the advent ground rules.

Rule Number One: Advent will be celebrated at the Jones-Zabela household from December 1st through December 31st.

Rule Number Two: Advent is meant to be an enjoyable, non-denominational celebration of joy and giving. Please celebrate responsibly and in the spirit of the event.

Rule Number Three: If you have questions, ask Cate. ("It was your idea, after all" Harold told her.)

That was all the rules they could come up with, and even in the time it took to decide on them, two more people came through with gifts (a plush stuffed turkey and a bag of frozen shrimp). Unfortunately, a lot of the off-world visitors didn't actually know anything about Earth winter holidays, and it was always hard to tell whether they were basing their gifts on some sort of nebulous research, following their own gifting traditions, or just taking a wild stab in the dark. Cate insisted she'd encouraged gifts of decorations, like the paper chain, which wasn't quite as reassuring as it could have been, because what if the shrimp were supposed to be decorative? Were they going to get in trouble for eating them?

And of course, everyone wanted to sign the guest book.

"What guest book?" Al said -- to Harold, and only after they'd sent the last person on their way with a smile and a wave.

"You'd think we would know if there was a guest book in our own house," Harold said.

"This is what happens when we accidentally lose the baby and then have to spend two weeks in close physical proximity to him to make sure he doesn't disappear again," Al said. "Cate and Matthew take over the planning and we end up with no idea of what's going on."

Harold thought that if they were really going to be fair about it, he usually didn't have much idea what was going on. "At least all the grocery shopping got done," he offered. "And advent does sound fun. Did you hear that we’ve been assigned each other for the weekly gift exchange?"

Al hadn't heard, but Matthew did wander through right then and let them know that the guestbook was actually online, and it wasn't so much a "signing" of the guestbook as it was a chance to offer some sort of well-wishing for the year ahead. "We did the gifting sign-ups online too. We were going to try to start it on the first," Matthew told them. "But it was too much work to get organized. It was easier to time it to the end of the month instead, so we're doing Thursdays -- one gift per week, and people sign up for it in pairs. We signed you two up already, don't worry."

Harold and Al exchanged a look. They hadn't been worried.

In fact, they were so unworried that they had to excuse themselves to go "check on the baby" in the nursery upstairs, fighting back laughter the entire way. "He just looked so serious!" Harold said.

"We're still doing Christmas too, right?" Al asked. "I like Christmas."

"Of course we are; Christmas is awesome. Tree, presents, snow, movies, carols -- that's how we get through the first month of real winter." Harold thought it would probably make more sense to move Christmas closer to the middle of winter, actually -- then they could have more of a pick-me-up at a time of year that was even more cold and dreary. And it would be further from Thanksgiving. On the other hand, it was nice to translate some of the Christmas celebration to an end of the year reflection. And stores would probably start pushing Christmas as soon as Thanksgiving was over even if Christmas wasn't until March, so there was that consideration too.

"We should probably make a list, or something," Harold said. "To make sure we know all the holiday things we want to do." He didn't say that then they could figure out which ones could conceivably be part of an advent celebration, which would mean the planning could probably be passed off to Cate and Matthew, but Al probably knew he was thinking it anyway.

The house was bustling again after the unusual quietness of the morning before. Harold and Al's room was generally considered off-limits to everyone (except Nimby, who had free reign of everywhere simply because they hadn't figured out any sort of logical argument against it yet), but he could hear people moving around in the other upstairs rooms. Matthew was using Toby's room while Toby was back at school, and Cate still had a tent in the middle of her floor. Harry doubled up with whoever had space, or slept in the nursery.

It seemed rude not to give him his own room, but no one was really sure how long he was staying. (And they didn’t actually have another spare room — the old guest room was now Cate’s room, after Cate’s room got taken over by the nursery.) He'd showed up when baby Harry first arrived, and an accidentally overheard conversation had made Harold think six months was the limit to his time in the past, but who knew? Even Al didn't really understand the science behind the time travel thing, and Harry -- for all his gregariousness and willingness to talk (and talk) on a wide ranging slew of topics -- was silent on the issue of his schedule.


Chapter 6 (day 2): In which Harold and Al continue hiding in the nursery to talk.

"Oh, and I’m almost done with the phones," Al said suddenly. "The twins and Sabri are coming over this evening to help get everything back online.”

Harold couldn’t hold back a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he said. Phones were one of the things even-more-future Harry's baby summoning trick had essentially destroyed. Al, who could fix almost anything, had declared them a total loss. The emergency buttons were still functional, but glitchy and unreliable. It would be a relief to have everything working again. "That's good news -- we must have finally gotten the last delivery?”

Al rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I can't believe they all had to go through the FBI. You know I would have just had the kids bring us some, if that didn't have its own issues."

"Probably a good thing for us to have Earth phones," Harold agreed. "Since we're already explaining away the dragon, and the multiple Harrys, and all the mysterious visitors."

"Hey, I'm just glad this part of the planet has serious feelings about privacy. There are places we could be living where everyone would know everything about our lives."

Harold reflected that even he didn't know everything about Al's life. On the other hand, he didn't particularly want Al to know that he and Sarah had once (disastrously) tried dating, in an evening that ended with both of them in jail for the night. Some things were better left unexplained, really. Al had the advantage of moving far away from home, like another planet far away, whereas Harold was still living in the same town he'd been born in. A lot further out on the edges of it, sure, but essentially still the same town. There was a reason he tended to avoid the local grocery store in favor of the chain two towns over, and it wasn't just because of a bigger selection of cereal.

Al puttered around the nursery, folding baby clothes and tidying up all the things that never seemed important to put back in the right place when you were dealing with the combined forces of baby, diaper, and interested observers (Nimby, most often, who'd do commentary as well, or Bob, who seemed pretty taken with baby Harry, and offered his own sort of silent support). "Is the team coming by for the holidays?" Harold asked. Al shook his head.

"Pete's taking a leave of absence, to help his dad with something. I'm not sure what it is, but we have had a lot more mail coming through from those guys recently." Pete's dad was a space pirate, so you’d think he’d have access to all sorts of efficient means of communication, but all the pirates objected to using digital communication for some reason (the stories about why ranged from 'it's tradition' to 'the parrots keep taking over the networks to forward jokes and videos to each other'). So they sent a lot of mail, and the Earth mail drop happened to be at Harold and Al's house. Which is why they had a sign in their basement that stated, "PLEASE DO NOT SHAKE THE MAIL" in a variety of languages. There were even stick figure illustrations. Sure, the mail might not blow up if you shook it, but why take the chance?

"They don't have a holiday this time of year, right?" Calendars were almost impossible to coordinate when you were working with not just multiple time zones, but multiple time-keeping systems as a whole. Harold didn't need another lecture on how 'not everyone uses a 365 unit solar-rotational-based calendar system' -- he just wanted to know if people were kidding when they told him how old they were.

“Not that I know of,” Al said. “But it means Rob’s team is a person short for a while. Rob says the agency farmed out Dave and Matt for training programs, and Rob’s got three new trainees. That’s why the phone thing took so long; we couldn’t just get Rob and Dave to sign off on everything.”

Back when Harold had first met Al, he never would have guessed that a few years down the road, he’d need permission from the United States government to buy a new cell phone. Then again, he never would have guessed a lot of things that had happened in that time. To be fair, they probably could have gotten away with one phone, or even two (after all, there were a lot of family plans where it just made financial sense to replace multiple phones at the same time). But when Cate said all their electronics had been fried, she meant all of them (except the microwave, of course) — anyone who’d been in the house, or in the general vicinity of the house, was short a phone after that. Al and Harold had volunteered to replace them all before considering the hoops they’d have to go through to purchase that many phones simultaneously.

Still, it wasn't Rob's fault they were on the government's watch list. "Maybe he'll bring the new kids by the house. We haven't seen them since the summer."

"I think they may be staying away on purpose so they won't have to lie on their reports," Al said.

"Hey, we never said they had to lie about what's going on here. They're the ones who didn't think the thing with the ducks would sound realistic."

They took a minute to contemplate that their lives were, occasionally, a perfect example of the saying 'truth is stranger than fiction.' Then Al said, "So what should we do on our last day of phone freedom? No one's expecting us to be in touch, neither of us is on call for the house or with baby Harry until tonight -- it's like a mini vacation."

It sounded perfect. They could use a vacation. Somehow family holidays were never as restful as it seemed like the should be, and sometimes it felt like they were the go-to resource for every question that walked through their doors (or appeared in their basement). "Charlotte and Eliza are still in Alabama," Harold offered. "Their house is empty. We could go catch up with Mama Tibbles, eat pizza, bake some cookies. Just like the old days."

Al smiled. "I love it." There was a pause, and he added, "But I'm going to need to bring my own baking sheets."


Chapter 7 (day 2): In which Al fixes the phones, and life gets back to what passes for normal.

"Al!"

"Harold!"

"Al!"

Harold wasn't completely sure why the kids all felt it was necessary to greet them individually, but he wasn't complaining. For a while it had seemed like Sabri and the rest of her class were near-constant residents of the house -- they'd run the summer drop-in program (not a camp, he reminded himself for the thousandth time) and spent a lot of the early fall in and out with various projects. But they were back in the full swing of classes back home now, and the visits were much more sporadic.

It was just Sabri and the twins this time through, with hugs and smiles all around. "Al missed you," Harold told them all, and Al gave him a knowing look.

"We missed you too!" Lishendri said. "We just finished a huge assignment about intergalactic filmography and its impact on governmental styles. I never want to see another movie again!"

Harold looked at Al, and mouthed "intergalactic filmography?" Al just shrugged. "No movies here," he assured them.

"Where are Rose and Gary?" Al asked. "I thought they were coming with you tonight."

"We're on our own right now," Nadeka said. He sounded totally calm about it, like this wasn't the absolute first time Harold had ever seen them at the house without at least one bodyguard around them (and usually more like two, or four, or -- on one particularly memorable occasion -- six).

Al looked startled too. "Right," he said. "Anything we should be concerned about? Trouble at home?"

"Mom and Dad said we're old enough to start going places by ourselves," Lishendri said.

"Safe places," Nadeka added.

"Like here!" Harold looked carefully at Sabri when she said it, but if she was hiding some deep secret, he couldn't tell. And it wasn't like the whole class hadn't gone haring across the universe to find him and Al when they'd gone missing, anyway. If anyone could take care of themselves on their own out in the world (probably any world, if he had to bet), it was those kids.

"Sounds good to me. Have you eaten? Dinner, dessert, something to drink?" He was capable of being a good host when he worked at it. Also, he reminded himself that he should probably try to stop referring to them as kids all the time. It was an unintended side effect of being in charge of the house (nominally, at least). They were all kids to him -- some of them were just more sensitive about the name than others.

"Cookies?" Al asked, and Harold perked up right along with the kids.

"Cookies it is. Should I bring them down, or are you all going to be working down here?"

"We'll come up," Al said. “No one’s using the living room tonight, and that way we won't get any interference from the doorway. I've got some ideas about upgrading the software that could make them easier to use one-handed."

It was funny how the priorities shifted when you had a baby. Suddenly, anything you could do one-handed was automatically better, since it left the second hand free to hold the baby, or hold something for the baby, or touch the baby to make sure he was still there. They still weren't quite over losing track of him, even for a few days.

"Are you going to help?" Nadeka asked.

Harold shook his head. He was not in any way technologically inclined. Al was a genius at it, with Sabri quickly following in his footsteps. The twins were probably going to rule the planet one day, so they were supposed to be good at everything. (Al usually stuck to the conventional side of things in their lessons, and saved the questionably legal things for Sabri.) Harold, on the other hand, was usually the one who only figured out how to program his phone to stop it from embarrassing him in public. He had other plans for the evening.

"No," he said. "I have other plans." There were some walls that needed decorating, and he knew just the thing. Paper snowflakes might not be on par with tampering with delicate electronic devices, but he was feeling pretty good about getting his advent contribution knocked off so early.

Three hours later, Harold had a grand total of seven snowflakes. They were big, though — he’d started with the largest paper he could find — and detailed enough to pass muster, especially after he’d liberally applied the glitter pens to each and every one of them. Lishendri and Nadeka were asleep on the sofa, and Sabri was frowning down at the emergency beacon she was “fixing” like it had personally offended her.

She gave it a final poke and there was a muted beep, followed by a fritzing sound that Harold always associated with ‘not a good sign.’ “I think this one’s really broken,” she said. “Sorry.”

Al didn’t even look up from his phone — his face was only a couple inches away from the inner workings, and from his expression, it was entirely possible that looking away would cause something to catch on fire. “Don’t worry about it; we have plenty. Can you pass me that screwdriver?”

Harold hesitated, then asked, “What are you doing, exactly? Or in general, if the exactly would go over my head?”

Al stayed focused on the device in front of him, but he sounded relaxed instead of distracted when he answered. “I’m trying to disable the GPS tracking element in the phone, without actually disabling it. It’s tied in to the phone’s reception pick-up programming — if I just rip it out, the phone won’t work at all. I want to keep the phones operational, but make it so no one can track where we are using them. Nice snowflakes, by the way.”

“I like the pink one,” Sabri said.

“What if we want to track each other?” Harold asked. “Wouldn’t the GPS come in handy if we were ever, say, lost in the forest and wandering around through giant mud puddles during a snowstorm on Christmas Eve?” Not that that had ever happened to them, or anything.

Sabri held up the (now broken) emergency beacon. “That’s what these are going to do,” she said. “We’re adding a locator function to them. Not GPS, but hooked into one of Trudy’s programs.” Then she frowned at the beacon again. “Hopefully.”

Huh. It made sense, in a maybe-a-little-paranoid kind of way. “Oh, hey,” he said. “My mom keeps asking — are we worried about all the electronics around the baby? Electromagnetic radiation, and stuff?”

“Well, I wasn’t before now,” Al said. “Sabri?”

“I’ll research it tonight,” she agreed.

Harold checked his watch. “Why don’t you research it tomorrow? It’s late; are you supposed to be going back home tonight?”

They were, and by the time Lishendri and Nadeka were awake, and everyone had said their goodbyes and gathered up all their stuff (he had no idea how they managed to get belongings in every room of the downstairs, it had to be a gift), Al had snapped the last phone back together. They trooped down to the basement and Al activated the doorway. Harold surveyed the living room when they came back up the stairs. Seven glittery snowflakes and an array of not-quite-shiny new phones. Not bad for an evening’s work.


Chapter 8 (day 3): In which there are early morning wake up calls.

His phone was ringing. Well, a phone was ringing, at least. Apparently one of the "upgrades" Al had made to their phones was a new set of ringtones. Alternately, there was a stranger's phone in their bedroom. The first option seemed more likely, though, even with the haze of sleep surrounding him.

"Is that your phone?" Harold asked, hoping the answer was yes.

There was a muffled "no" from Al, who pulled a pillow over his head and curled under the blankets. It would take more than a mere phone call to get him out of bed when it wasn't his morning. The beacons would do it -- which is why they were an absolute last resort. No use desensitizing themselves to the sound of an emergency in the morning.

Harold fumbled for the phone and answered without checking the display. "Hello?" he said sleepily.

"Harold!" It was his mom.

"Mom?" he asked.

"Were you sleeping with the phone next to your bed? That could be causing brain damage, you know. I'm sending you the articles right now, so get up and check your email."

She tended to get excited about things. "Mom, don't worry. I wasn't sleeping with my phone next to the bed. I do listen to you." (In fact, the phone had been under the bed -- probably knocked off the table by a cat, or possibly a rogue pillow, in the middle of the night. His statement was still technically true.)

"I'm still sending you the articles. What about the baby? Do you still have that device on his wrist?"

Harold answered before he really thought about it. "No, of course not. He was chewing on it all the time. Al wasn't sure it could stand up to that.”

His brain reviewed the conversation during the ensuing silence, possibly while his mom was deciding whether she needed to come over right away or whether it could wait a few hours. "Good morning," he said, trying to restart the whole call. "How are you and Dad?"

"Oh, we're good. There are still flowers blooming down here! He says to wish you a happy advent -- sorry about the phone thing, I just worry about you. And Al. And Harry. Both of them."

"I know. I love you too."

"Do you need suggestions for Al's advent presents? We've been brainstorming this morning."

"Wow," Harold said, because really, what did you say to something like that? "Thanks. I'm going shopping today, though, I think I'll be all set." It was true -- he was on the schedule to do the grocery shopping that day. It wasn't like he hadn't done Christmases in the past with only grocery store gifts -- grocery stores had awesome presents.

"No flashlights," his mom said. "Or batteries, or scissors. Those things aren't real gifts; that's just stuff you needed anyway."

The flashlights and scissors had been great gifts. Useful gifts were way better than non-useful gifts. He wasn't sure when his mom had adopted such strict present-giving guidelines, anyway — there had definitely been Jones family Christmases with office supplies in the stockings. But no time was a good time to argue with your mom. "We'll do real presents, I promise." He could hear Al laughing from under the pillow.

"Good, good. Oh, I have to go -- we're heading out today to visit your sisters for a surprise party. You're not going back to sleep, are you?"

"No, I'm getting up," Harold said. They exchanged all the standard "I love you"s and "Talk to you soon"s, and after he hung up Harold just sat there for a minute. "Apparently I'm getting up now," he said. Al pretended to be asleep.

Harold thought about Al’s presents all through the shower, shave, and tooth brushing portions of the day. Then he collected baby Harry from Matthew -- he'd finally figured out the baby sling, just in time to have to learn all new configurations now that Harry was all about being awake and interacting with the world for longer periods of time. That was when his focus abruptly shifted -- they were going to need to get presents for Harry, too.

Part of his brain said it didn't really matter that much. It wasn't like Harry was going to remember his first Christmas, and he didn't actually want anything at his age that wasn't a basic need they were — hopefully — already fulfilling. Every day was like Christmas for him. But -- it wasn't like babies weren't fun to shop for. And even after six months, Harold still felt sometimes like they should try to make a good impression on Harry's future self. It must be really weird to find out what your family was like when you were a baby, and he couldn’t completely suppress that nagging feeling that they weren't quite measuring up to expectations.

Breakfast at 6:30 in the morning was a far cry from breakfast at 10:30 in the morning. Harold walked into a kitchen full of activity. "Good morning, "Harold!" Tifa called from her perch on the counter. She was sitting next to the sink, as Harry dabbed at her shirt with a wet paper towel.

"Good morning, Tifa," he said, ignoring the stain as much as possible. What had she been eating? It looked like ketchup, maybe -- actually, it looked like barbecue sauce, but he couldn't imagine what she would have been combining it with as a breakfast food. "Happy advent, everyone," he added, since it seemed to be the thing to do.

There was a chorus of "happy advent"s and "good morning"s from around the kitchen. Harry waved from the sink, and Cate was actually cooking something at the stove. It didn't smell like oatmeal, which was all he asked. Harold grabbed an apple and reflected that it was a good thing fruit was a one-handed food, or else he’d be stuck eating breakfast bars and juice boxes all the time, instead of just most of the time.

"We're not celebrating advent," Tifa told him sincerely. "Since it's not the end of our year. But I'm still allowed to say it and make decorations and eat cookies and everything."

"Okay," Harold said. "That sounds great." He did a surreptitious check to see if anyone in the kitchen was one of their Earth neighbors -- anyone who might question the "not the end of our year" statement. Harry and Cate were there, of course, and both the Zhos. They waited for the bus at the end of the driveway with the rest of the school-age kids in the neighborhood, except when they decided to come over for breakfast first. A few teenagers in the running club were stretching in the living room, and he could hear the washer and dryer running.

"Is that our laundry?" he asked. "We're getting low on towels again, I think."

"Gabe!"

"It's our laundry, actually." Both of his sisters came around the corner from the utility room. "Sorry about that," said Eliza.

He wanted to ask what they were doing there, but he didn't want to be rude. As far as he knew, they were supposed to be in Alabama for at least another week. Also, didn't they have their own house with a laundry room? "Don't you have your own laundry room?" he asked. A thought occurred to him. "Also, Mom and Dad are coming to visit you in Alabama today; it's a surprise."

"We're just passing through," Charlotte said.

Eliza nodded. "We came back to pick up some holiday stuff, and we figured we'd do some laundry at the same time. You know, so the house doesn't miss us too much. But we don't have any laundry soap right now. Just dryer sheets, but those aren't going to do much for grass stains."

Apparently that made sense to them. Harold didn't think it actually made sense, though, to the average person who wasn't one of his sisters. "What?" he said.

"Eliza wanted to take your soap," Charlotte said. "But that seemed wrong. So we decided to just do the laundry here instead."

“Oh. Okay. Good to see you,” he said.

“We won’t tell Mom you ruined the surprise visit,” Eliza said.

Harold opened his mouth to say something, but Charlotte beat him to it. “Don’t worry, we’ll return the favor if they decide to visit you next, “ she promised.

Xikade — Zeke, Harold reminded himself; he was going by Zeke on Earth — was the only one actually sitting at the table. He was up on his knees, leaning across his plate to squint at the computer screen. “It’s not supposed to snow today,” he announced to the room at large.

Instead of a traditional centerpiece for the table (maybe a nice arrangement of flowers, or a vase, or something), they had a computer. Harold thought it was probably the most useful thing you could put on your kitchen table, really. They could check the weather, check email, look up how to get various stains out of various fabrics… “That’s good,” Harold said. Tifa and Zeke both gave him disbelieving looks. “What?” he asked. “I’m a boring grown up now, snow days aren’t as cool as they once were. I promise I’ll still get excited when it actually snows, okay?”

The computer pinged, then started playing the 1812 Overture. They couldn’t see the road from the house, so Al had set them up with an early warning system for the school bus. “Sixty second warning,” Cate said. “Coats, shoes, mittens — go, go, go!” Harry lifted Tifa down from the counter and the kids hustled to get their things. They sprinted down the driveway and Harold held his breath. He could hear the bus shift gears as it pulled away, and Harry came back alone, so they must have made it (just in time, again).

“So,” Harold said into the silence. “Grocery shopping. Who’s coming, and am I taking the baby?”


Chapter 9 (day 3): In which Harold and baby Harry go to the grocery store.

The answers he was hoping for weren't "no one" and "yes," but that's what he got. It was certainly do-able to tackle the grocery shopping on his own, especially since he wasn't doing a whole week's worth. The Thursday shopping trip was just one of a multitude of food runs scattered throughout the week. Thursday was for weekend food, and anything they'd forgotten on the last trip. Usually it was also a way to have baby-free time, but sometimes it didn't work out that way.

So Harold loaded himself and baby Harry into the Armada and headed out. (They kept losing his tiny mittens and hat, but Harold had a set stashed away in the front bathroom for just such an emergency. He added "more hats and mittens" to the non-grocery items shopping list.)

Harry, of course, refused to be a normal baby and be soothed by the motion of the car, but he quieted down once they were parked. Hopefully he'd be willing to sleep through a significant portion of the actual shopping. Harold thought parents with kids under five should automatically qualify for a handicapped sticker for their car. Or maybe they could just invent a new designation; the spots next to the handicapped spaces could be kids and babies spaces. He wondered who you wrote to about something like that — the town council? Congress? The president? He had kids; he’d totally understand.

Thursday mornings were never the busiest of times in their favorite grocery store, but everything was relative, and it was the week after Thanksgiving. The key to shopping in December -- prime holiday impulse buy season, no matter what day of the week it was -- was to stay focused and not spend a lot of time rubbernecking. And not to take off your hat until you were clear of the coldest part of the store.

It worked perfectly, for about five minutes. That was when Harold rounded a corner and got distracted by a display of fruitcakes. Not that he was planning on buying a fruitcake, but they were right in the middle of the aisle, and some enterprising grocery store employee had arranged them with an bunch of those long utility lighters that always looked so useful. Harold weighed whether a utility lighter would be too much like a flashlight to match his mom’s gift stipulations.

“Hi there!” The voice came from his right, and someone leaned into his line of sight to waggle their fingers at baby Harry. The speaker looked vaguely familiar, like maybe he knew them, or had just seem them before. Recognizing people had been hard enough when it was just people he could be fairly confident he was supposed to know who greeted him in the grocery store. Having a baby made complete strangers feel like they could step right up and ask personal questions.

As if to illustrate the point — “I’ve heard those baby wraps are really dangerous,” the person said. “Aren’t you worried he’ll fall out?”

Harold raised his eyebrows. Most interruptions he was fine with — the questions about how old Harry was, and whether he was a boy or a girl, and whose nose he had. Even the cooing and the touching he’d gotten used to. The unsolicited advice and speculation (intended or not) that he might not have the best interests of an infant in mind? Not so much. “That fruitcake you’re holding looks pretty heavy,” he replied. “Aren’t you worried you might get hurt if you dropped it on your foot?”

“What? Of course not.” The man looked affronted.

Harold resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah, me neither,” he said.

He turned the cart around while the man was still trying to decide how to respond, and moved on to the next aisle. (It meant he had to go back to the first aisle at the end of the trip, because he still needed to get pasta sauce, and he couldn’t resist buying one of the utility lighters — but it was still worth it.)

In addition to the lighter, he had a package of red and black permanent markers, two boxes of Al’s favorite snack bars, a pair of fleece gloves, a travel toothbrush, and a package of refrigerator magnets with parrots on them. A pretty good set of advent gifts, if he did say so himself. Al’s actual Christmas gifts were another story — he was still working on those. But advent? Done.


Chapter 10 (day 4): In which Harold does a lot of chores, and talks on the phone.

Fridays were awesome. It didn't matter what your schedule was -- if you worked seven days a week, or night shifts, or if Friday was your Monday -- they were still the best day of the week. There was so much potential on Fridays, with Saturday and Sunday still stretching ahead of you. Friday was also the day Harold found out someone had finally cleared the foliage off their kitchen whiteboard. It was only a little scratched, and really, it was hard to tell if those had been there before or not. It was certainly possible.

"With you, anything is possible," Harold said to Nimby, currently his only companion in the kitchen. Nimby muttered something in the back of his mind that could have been "not my fault" or maybe "oops." He was staring out the kitchen door at the squirrels in the backyard. Out out out out out out Harold heard.

"All right," he said. "Be safe out there; stay warm; back in time for lunch, yeah?" Nimby didn't need any help opening the door (and unlike the cats, didn't ask for help just to prove he could get it), but he was good about checking in before he went off adventures.

Harold watched him chase leaves around the yard for a minute before turning his attention back to the whiteboard. It needed some serious cleaning. Redecorating could wait -- returning it to its primary function of announcing where all the residents of the house were was the most important thing. With music playing and snacks handy by (there was more than one good reason for the board to be in the kitchen, after all), the project went fairly quickly.

Al had done a lot of testing on the emergency beacons after he and Sabri 'fixed' them, but Harold still felt a little wary tapping on his. It should let him do a walkie-talkie kind of thing with the other "leader beacons." Pre-fix, Matthew had accidentally called the fire department with his, though, and Cate kept setting hers off in full emergency mode. He crossed his fingers for good measure before activating it.

"Hey," Al's voice came a second later. "This is Al."

"Cate here."

"This Matthew. Harry's with me; he's got his hands full of baby right now."

"I'm redoing the kitchen board," Harold said. "I'm just checking in to see who's here." You wouldn't think you could lose track of anyone in a relatively small house, but they'd had it happen before.

"Basement," Al said. He was watching the morning doorway travel, probably. "Someone moved the foliage to the porch; it looks good."

"I'm in the car," Cate said. "Have you guys heard the weather report today?"

Harold hadn't, unless you counted Xikade texting him at seven in the morning to let him know it still wasn't a snow day. That was everyone else’s answer too — Xikade had been busy — and Harold thought that elementary school these days must be a lot different than his own K through 5 experience (which definitely had not included any sort of portable phone or texting device). On the other hand, he did remember quite a few snow days.

“We’re upstairs,” Matthew finished. “Hey, are we supposed to say happy advent every day? Because that — um.”

“Seems like a lot of work?” Al asked.

“Cate?” Harold said. After all, it was her idea.

“It’s a made-up holiday,” Cate told them firmly. “Which they sort of all are, if you think about it. So you can celebrate however you choose. If you want to say happy advent every day, go for it. If you want to give, say, snack bars as gifts, go for it.”

“Hey!” Harold said.

“I like the snack bars,” Al announced.

"Thank you," Harold said. He thought maybe Cate was just jealous, because her first advent gift had been a sweater, and not a sweater you would probably wear by choice. It was certainly colorful. Very bright. Very novel.

He filled in everyone’s information on the board, and added three items to various shopping lists that Matthew and Harry had forgotten about, but remembered suddenly when Cate mentioned she was pulling into the gas station parking lot. "If you're buying your advent gifts at the gas station, Harold and I totally win," Al said. "Grocery stores trump gas stations."

"What if there's a Subway inside?" Matthew asked. "A Subway gift card would be a pretty cool gift."

Al ‘hmm’ed thoughtfully. “The Subway exception -- we'll take that into consideration. Cate? Is there a Subway? Which gas station are you at?"

Harold couldn't help laughing at Cate's reaction. "Guys! No, there's no Subway here. It's the one in town; it has a mini Cinnabon, I think."

"I don't think that should count,” Harold said.

"I'm not buying my advent gifts here!" Cate exclaimed. Then she added, "Great, now everyone's looking at me like I'm crazy. I'm hanging up now; call me if there's an emergency."

Harold could have told her that using the word "emergency" in your conversational sign-off wasn't generally a way to decrease the curious stares, even if it was totally innocuous. It was usually him who ended up taking calls (emergency or otherwise) in crowded public places; it was sort of refreshing to have it be someone else for a change. He considered calling her again just for fun.

Instead, his own phone rang. 'Wireless caller,' the display said, unhelpfully. "NIMBY, this is Harold," he answered.

"Harold, it's Nick! How are you?"

Nick and Steve were back? "Nick!" he said. "Are you back?" They'd been on an extended trip back to Al's planet -- a sort of combination goodwill, publicity, policy reform tour. They'd even taken the dog -- Harold had heard most of the details from his mom, which was not as unusual as he sometimes wished. She had a lot of time to keep up with people online. Sometimes it seemed like she was corresponding with at least ninety percent of the people Harold and his sisters had ever met, along with their extended families. It couldn't possibly be that many, but it certainly felt like it at times.

"Back on the ground, safe and sound," Nick said cheerily. Harold could hear barking in the background. "For the most part, anyway. Actually, that's why I called. It turns out we may have forgotten to take care of a few things before we left the last time. Is there any chance we could crash at your place for a couple days?"

If he had to guess, the sound that followed up Nick’s question was either a small explosion or a mid-size appliance falling over, followed by more barking. Harold wondered what could possibly be going on. Exploding mail? Frozen pipes? Sentient mustard? "Yeah, of course. Come over any time -- you're always welcome. All three of you."

"Thanks. We'll be over... maybe a little later? After we get things tided up."

Harold thought Nick was probably being optimistic about the tidying. "Whenever," he said. "You'll let us know if we can help with anything?"

The barking suddenly cut off, and Nick said, "What the -- I've got to run -- we'll see you later!"

Harold hung up. Hopefully Nick meant "run" in a metaphoric sense, like he had to end the conversation quickly, so as to put out a (hopefully also metaphorical) fire, as opposed to a more literal “I'm running away from something very large and toothy, and will call back when I am not about to be eaten."

They could probably let Nick and Steve have the loft. They'd finished the conversion to a fully heated space in the fall, and even though it didn't have it's own bathroom, it was still a decent-sized space outside of the main living areas of the house. Most of the year it had been the meeting spot for a weekly bingo game, but everyone had agreed to take December off. Too many conflicting events to try to schedule anything on a Saturday afternoon.

Harold moved living room furniture while he tried to think of a nice way to ask if Steve would be willing to cook for them. Nick and Steve actually liked cooking -- quite a difference from the rest of the people currently in residence. Matthew thought any food he could identify was acceptable for consumption. Cate had a thing about breakfast foods being hot and lunch foods being cold. Harold and Al just ordered a lot of pizza.

None of them were big on cleaning either, Harold decided, uncovering six pens, a bottle cap, and a catnip dinosaur underneath the sofa. Bob came in to watch, and gave him a reproachful look. Of course -- he probably put the dinosaur there on purpose. "I know you didn't lose it under there," Harold told him. "But I don't think cats should be exempt from the 'everyone helps clean' rule."

Bob just stared at him, and Harold tried again. "It doesn't have to get put away, but it can't stay where it is?" That went over a little better, and Bob watched in silence as Harold moved the dinosaur to the sofa arm. By the time he found the vacuum (the downside to having 'everyone help clean' -- you never knew where anything was), both Bob and the dinosaur had disappeared.

The living room was the only space to get such a thorough shakedown. (It was also the only room with carpeting, and the one baby Harry was spending the most time in lying on the floor.) The rest of the first floor got the basic "pick up the light stuff, vacuum around the heavy stuff" treatment. The way Harold saw it, if a piece of furniture was covering the floor, how could that patch of floor get any dirt on it? Therefore, it must be clean.

“Baby gates are back up,” he called up the stairs after he was done. “You’re safe to come down now.”

Personally, Harold thought the baby gates were a questionable investment in a child’s safety. Harry wasn’t even walking yet, but he thought baby gates were the best climbing toys in town. (Except that when they fell down, he cried. And if he fell down, he cried.) And if he did manage to get over one of them, it just slowed down the pursuit of whatever adult was closest.

But future Harry stepped over them with the ease of long familiarity, which probably meant Harold should resign himself to their presence. "Thank you," Matthew said, scrambling over the gate with considerably less grace. "I'm starving."

“Oh, and Nick and Steve are going to stay here for a few days. There's something going on with their house -- Nick didn't share over the phone, he just said they'd forgotten to do some things before they left. I thought the loft, unless you know of people who have plans for it."

Cat and dragon wandered through the kitchen, checking on their people. (And in Nimby's case, checking for snacks. He was getting a little big for climbing up in Matthew's lap, but that wasn't actually stopping him.) Lunch theater -- and combination exercise class / workshop in advanced intuition -- was provided by baby Harry. Sure, most of the time he was happy hanging out on the floor, but Harold wasn't sorry they had three people to watch him.

"That works for me," Matthew said, carefully leaning against a cupboard door before the baby could reach it. "Did it sound like they needed help?"

Yes, Harold thought. A lot of help, of multiple varieties. But he said, "I offered, but Nick seemed to think they had it under control. If they don't show up by dinner, we should probably go check it out."

By the time Al joined them, Matthew had a sandwich made. "I heard Nick and Steve were coming to stay. Do we need to buy dog food?"

"Bruno's definitely coming with them," Harold offered. He had no idea what kind of dog food Bruno might eat. Knowing Nick and Steve, it could be anything, up to and including hot dogs or homemade gourmet meals.

"I'm going to the holiday fair in town tomorrow," Harry said. "I can swap with Al and go to a pet store instead if they need anything."

Baby Harry, perhaps sensing the attention was no longer focused entirely on him, banged on a pot. “You’re staying here with me tomorrow," Harold told him. "No holiday fairs for you till at least next year."


Chapter 11 (day 5): In which nothing really goes as planned.

The best laid plans, Harold thought, were obviously not ones made by parents of young children. When Harry had told them he was planning to go to the town's holiday fair, what he hadn’t mentioned was that somehow this outing had been posted on the website, and overnight had turned into a massive undertaking. Harry was going, sure, but both of Harold's sisters had come up too, along with his parents. All the kids in Sabri's class were there. Ilia and Janar were there. He thought it would be rude to say, "But don't you have a planet to run?" But really, didn't they?

And of course, there was the security. Four guards this time -- one each for Ilia and Janar, and two for the kids as a group, as far as Harold could tell. He didn't recognize any of them, and someone said something about the usual crew being at some sort of continuing education retreat. Kim showed up at five in the morning, with both her parents, who were under the impression that Harry was leading some sort of advent-themed field trip for children.

Nick and Steve were already there, of course. They actually hadn’t known about the trip until they arrived, but decided to tag along as it began growing into a more and more epic event. (Nick and Steve had a keen sense of adventure, and the potential for years of stories coming out of this. Harold could imagine it already — ‘the year we all went to the holiday fair.’)

Ultimately, Ilia hit on the idea of ferrying people through Toby and Sam's campus apartment, because there was no way there were going to be enough vehicles available for everyone who wanted to participate. She, of course, drove the Armada; it was technically hers, after all.

Harold did the meet and greet thing, then hid in the utility room. He'd been planning to hide in the craft room, but there were popsicle sticks everywhere, and he didn't want to interrupt a masterpiece in progress.

Al found him there after just a few minutes. “Hey,” Al said. “You okay?”

Harold nodded, swinging his feet a little where he was sitting on top of the dryer. “Yeah. Just a little… you know.” He waved a hand at the hubbub in the kitchen.

Al climbed up next to him on the washer. “Do you ever get that feeling like, you look around and — how did we even get here? It’s incredible, and I wouldn’t trade it, any of it, but — wow.”

“Yeah,” Harold said. “That’s it exactly.” They sat together for another minute. Then he nudged Al’s shoulder. “Hey, are you going with Sabri to the fair?”

“I’ve been officially non-invited, actually,” Al said. “I guess Sabri told Meshkalla it was supposed to be a secret?”

What part of advent was a secret? Clearly the process of inventing your own celebratory holiday had a few hidden dangers. Harold thought about the game ‘telephone,’ and then thought about the fact that they were only five days into the month, and he came to a decision. “Sometimes I think it’s better not to ask,” Harold said.

“I think that is very wise advice,” Al said. “Also, do you think you could go to the pet store for Bob’s food and treats? Harry asked if I could put it back on my list for the day, but I promised I’d be here all day for the Cals.”

And of course, he said yes, and that was how he ended up an hour later wandering around the closest pet superstore he could find. (It had taken him a while to remember where it was, and he realized he hadn’t been on any of the ‘get supplies for a new animal in the family’ trips in recent years — not for Mama Tibbles’ kittens, or during the hurricane, or when Nimby arrived.) He’d managed to forget in that amount of time just why he disliked pet stores.

Everything was fine when he was in the aisles with the food, and toys, and things — it was the animals that threw him off. As long as he could avoid any of the sections with fish, or lizards, or mice; he always felt like they were watching him. (And then he felt torn between being creeped out and wanting to sneak back in after hours and open all the cages.)

He thought he was doing well staying out of the way of anything that would look back at him. Unfortunately, he was also (not on purpose) avoiding the treats Steve had told him to look for.

“Can I help you with anything?” A person Harold sincerely hoped was a store employee walked over wearing an elf hat and a t-shirt that read “Meow! Bark! Moo! Pets love holidays too!”

“Um, sure. I’m trying to find these treats, for a friend’s dog.” The employee’s face got that expression like she thought Harold might be one of ‘those’ customers — the ones who wanted something specific but had no idea what, exactly, it was. “I have the bag,” Harold added quickly. “Sort of.”

He did have the bag. Part of the bag, at least. It had been through some unspecified ordeal at Nick and Steve’s house, but hopefully all the most pertinent information was still there. The employee took the bag out of his hand gingerly. “I’ll have to go check in the back to see if we have any more of these,” she said. “They’re very popular.”

“Not the chicken, please,” he called after her rapidly retreating figure. “Any of the other flavors would be fine.”

When he told the story later, he liked to say he heard a meow, but really he just got bored and wandered off. At first he thought the enclosure was empty. There was a sign on it for one of the local animal rescue leagues. Inside was a bed (unoccupied), blankets, food, water — the standard array. Harold thought the shelter must be doing some sort of awareness campaign, until the employee came back and said, “Oh, did you meet Nina?”

She pointed to the far back wall of the enclosure, the only side that backed up to a wood paneled display instead of being open to the aisle. Sure enough, tucked between the bed and the wall was a cat. “That’s Nina?” Harold asked.

“She’s not a very social cat, not like some of them are. But she’d be perfect for a one or two person household, where she could get a lot of attention.” Nina stayed determinedly asleep, despite Harold’s gaze.

“That’s — she’s very pretty,” Harold said, and he assumed it was true. He could really only see part of the cat.

“Here are the treats,” the employee said, thrusting the bags into his line of sight. “Venison, turkey, and cheese; we had all three. Did you want your bag back?”

“Sure,” he said distractedly. “I’ll take them all.”

She hurried off to help someone else, or maybe take her lunch break, and Harold was left with three full bags of treats, a slightly mangled empty bag, and the sinking sensation that he really, really hadn’t come to the store that day to find a new cat.


Chapter 12 (day 5): In which Nina gets a new home.

“A cat? Really? Should I send Bob?”

Harold was glad Al sounded more intrigued than anything else. “No, it’s fine,” he said. Then he thought about it. “Wait, how would that work?” If Al couldn’t leave the house, at least Bob could provide a second opinion. On the other hand, if Al couldn’t leave the house, how was he going to get Bob to the pet store?

"I can ask Tassin if he'll take Bob," Al said.

"Tassin's there?" Tassin was Al's brother, but he definitely hadn't been at the house when Harold left.

"He's baking," Al confirmed.

Huh, Harold thought. It must run in the family. "Sure, that would be great. Um, is he going to drive over, or --?"

He trailed off when he saw Tassin walking out from the back of the store, a slightly alarmed looking Bob perched in his arms. Bob was wearing his harness, and Tassin had a leash in his hand, but Harold couldn't tell if they were actually connected. "Never mind; he's here now," Harold said.

"Let me know how it goes, and tell Tassin I'll take the cake out of the oven for him if he's not back in time. He'll worry, otherwise."

Personally, Harold was a lot more concerned about whether or not anyone had seen Tassin appearing out of thin air wherever he'd chosen for his arrival spot than whether or not the cake got a little crispy around the edges. On the other hand, cake was delicious, and who was likely to believe a pet store employee who claimed they'd seen something impossible in the back room?

"Over here," Harold called, and Tassin waved. Bob was happy enough to be swapped over to Harold when they got close enough -- and his leash was attached, Harold realized. No wonder he was so content to be carried; he didn't like the indignity of walking on a leash. "Al says he'll take care of the cake," Harold said before he forgot it. "And thank you, for coming so quickly. Did -- well, did anyone see you?"

Tassin laughed. "No. It's like a maze back there. We came here back when Bob was born and scoped it out, don't worry."

Harold was a little worried, actually. Tassin remembered the layout of a pet store from years earlier? Who did things like that? Harold could barely remember how to get back to the register, and he'd just walked in half an hour ago. Then again, it had soundly been proven that neither he or Al had a strong sense of direction -- maybe their siblings had gotten all of it in the genetics jackpot.

"Okay," he said. "Great." The employee who'd gotten him the treats wandered past again and did a double take when she saw Bob and Tassin.

"Is that --?" She looked back and forth between Bob and the cat enclosure.

"This is Bob," Harold told her. "I'd really like to see if he and Nina might get along. Would it be all right for me to introduce them?"

Apparently that wasn't as strange a request as he'd thought, since she led them to a small room in the back of the store. The enclosure was on wheels, so she just wheeled it along with them. Nina alternated between hissing and growling the whole time. "She doesn't really like the wheels," the woman told them.

Tassin raised his eyebrows. "No kidding."

Luckily, as soon as they were settled in the room, Nina calmed down, and even deigned to come out of her hiding spot to touch noses with Bob. It turned out she was mostly black, with white patches here and there. She was smaller than Bob (which wasn't saying much, Harold thought, since Bob had long ago outgrown most of his siblings).

"Well, that's good enough for me," Tassin said. "Harold?"

Since Harold had wanted to bring her home when he couldn't even say for sure she was a cat, and not some other sort of furry creature with pointed ears, he nodded. "Where do we sign?"

There was paperwork. Lots of paperwork. And then the store manager came by, to evaluate them as potential cat adopters, or something, and there was more paperwork. Harold almost got worried again that Tassin knew all the information they were asking for -- he clearly stayed informed about what was happening in his brother's life -- but decided the help was more than worth it. Especially when the first employee came back with a cardboard cat carrier, and Tassin just raised his eyebrows again.

"That won't be necessary," he said, producing a second harness and leash from his jacket pocket.

When all was said and done, Harold thought it would probably be a good idea if they didn’t go back to that store for a while.

Nina wasn't crazy about the harness, and she was even less thrilled about the car ride home, but Tassin insisted it was poor protocol to just instantaneously transport her and Bob back to the house. It had something to do with Harold not being able to accompany them. Harold secretly thought it was sort of nice, but he didn't want to say anything out loud because both cats were so obviously not enjoying themselves.

Bob was usually fine in the car -- he'd gone on the whole road trip excursion with Harold and Al to Alabama, but that had been in the summer. He kept trying to burrow into Tassin's jacket, and he just glared in irritation when Harold explained that he wanted to turn the heat up, he really did, but he had to keep running the windshield defroster to keep all the windows from fogging up, and that actually turned the air conditioner on, and it really wasn't entirely his fault, because he was pretty sure the twins had been practicing their tech skills on his car the other day.

The trip home seemed considerably longer than the trip out, but the massive outing to the fair still hadn't returned by the time they got there. Al met them at the door. "Welcome back!" he said, and Tassin was left to carry all the bags inside as Harold and Al watched Bob and Nina explore the house together.

Al kept up a running commentary as they followed the cats through the house. Apparently, he'd had several calls from Sabri regarding Earth traditions for Christmas and "the other winter holidays," Al quoted. "I've been on and off the computer all day. I think I explained Santa Claus okay, but we're all baffled by the elves. Where did that even come from?" (Also, Al recommended that Nina avoid the loft, since Bruno was currently sleeping up there. Nina ignored this advice, and the tour ended decisively when both cats decided that Bruno's bed was the perfect spot for an afternoon nap. Bruno didn't seem to mind.)

"Well, Nick did say he liked cats," Harold said.

Al took a picture with his phone. "That's a perfect introductory photo for Nina online," he explained. "I'll email it to Cate so she can put it up this evening."

Harold knew that he should probably pay more attention to what was being posted online about him, but somehow it never seemed important at a time when he was close by a computer. Cate did most of their internet presence stuff, and that had worked well so far, and Harold had enough trouble keeping up with his parents' online adventures. It seemed like a lot of work to keep up with his own as well.

"Any word on when everyone else is planning to get back?" he asked, as he and Al headed back towards the kitchen.

"No, but the fair ends at four, so probably not more than a few hours at this point. Also, I made up a new advent tradition that the people who don't go to the holiday fair get to eat a special holiday dessert. Cake, in this case."

That explained what Tassin was doing there. Advent was awesome. "Of course," Harold said. "The traditional afternoon cake for those officially not invited on the traditional advent fair trip. It's a classic."

"It's also delicious," Tassin said, cutting a large slice for himself. "I love advent."


Chapter 13 (day 6): In which Harold and Harry get a tree, and Harold learns some unusual news.

Sunday, of course, was tree day. Harold and Al weren't even bothering to call it an advent tree -- it was a Christmas tree, and they were getting one. Because that was part of Christmas for them, and it was important. It was more the having of the tree that was important, though, as opposed to the getting of the tree, and the trip wasn’t gaining quite as much momentum as the holiday fair. It was one of those days where you looked outside and thought 'eh, maybe not.' Not frigidly cold, but cold enough to make you think twice about wandering around outside looking at trees.

"I'll go." Harry had volunteered at the breakfast table, surprising everyone except baby Harry, who had apparently been awake all night and was fast asleep. Harold never knew how much they should worry about having him on a "normal" schedule. None of the rest of them followed one, anyway.

It had been Harold's idea to do the tree on the first Sunday of the month, so he was automatically also volunteered. No one else seemed too excited about stomping around outside, especially after the drizzle started. So it was just him and Harold headed for the tree farm (they certainly weren't going to cut their own, but at least there you could get some help tying the tree to the top of your car -- no such luck at the hardware store).

"So," Harry said. Then he stopped, and stared out the window. Huh. That was almost never a good sign at the start of a conversation.

"Yes?" he said, trying to sound supportive and non-judgmental. Harold was pretty sure this was the first time he and Harry had been alone together since he'd arrived.

Silence. Awkward, uncomfortable silence. At this rate, they were going to have the tree and be back home again before Harry was ready to start talking. Harold said, "You should know that the longer you wait, the more awful my mental guesses become. Right now we're up to you telling me you wander off on your first birthday and and are raised by underground mine workers on another planet. We passed you warning me about a potentially terminal illness about thirty seconds ago."

Harry gave a startled laugh. "No," he said, "it's nothing bad like that. I'm just not sure where to start."

"Is it about your propensity for time travel?" Harold asked. Wild scenarios aside, that seemed like the most likely option.

Harry nodded. "We love you," Harold said simply. "Now, later, before. You're part of this family forever." Harry gave him a quick smile, but then he turned to stare out the window again. Harold felt sort of old, and wished he had listened more to Eliza when she was talking about her last communications seminar. "What can you tell us without irreparably damaging the timeline and causing us all to be sucked into a time vortex paradox?" he said finally.

"There were at least three things scientifically wrong with that question," Harry said.

"Hey, even Al says he doesn't entirely understand what you're doing with the whole time slipping thing," Harold told him. "So far so good, though, right? We never asked for traditionalism."

“What about the tree?”

Ah. Of course, the tree. He bit down on the automatic 'that's different' that was his first, gut reaction to the question. Because even though it was different, completely different, he could see how it was sort of the same too.

Harold took a few seconds to figure out where to start. "Christmas would still be Christmas even if we didn't have a tree," he said finally. "I like having a tree, but it's not what makes the day. Our family wouldn't still be our family if you weren't part of it. We could still be a family, but it wouldn't be the same. Does that make any sense?"

"Not really," Harry said. "But thanks. You should know that -- I never doubted that you and Al loved me, as a kid. Or now. And --" he broke off, and made a face that managed to look both apologetic and embarrassed all at once. "And I'm really sorry about the thing when I was five, and ran away. I know it made you crazy that you couldn't come after me, and I knew it would before I did it, and I feel really bad about it."

Harold tried to look accepting and collected while he worked through what Harry was saying. He hadn’t known that doubting parental love was even on the table as an option. “Are you sure I'm the me you should be apologizing to?" he asked. Also, Harry was going to run away when he was five? Were they allowed to try to stop him, now that they had advance notice?

"I'm just practicing on you," Harry told him. "You're less intimidating now."

"Sorry," Harold offered.

"No, don't be; it's been great. You and Al are --" He cut himself off again, and Harold was fairly certain the word he'd been about to say was 'adorable,' which was pretty embarrassing when it came from your kid, but he figured it was better than some of the alternatives. He also figured there was supposed to be more to the conversation than just a few reassurances.

"How about this," Harold said. "It doesn't end with this, does it? You don't pop off back to the future and grow up in a straight line like I did, not if we had Sabri babysitting you at four when she was at least twenty." At Harry's surprised expression, he added, "Al and I do talk about things, you know. It's not just grocery shopping and giving tours to visiting aliens. We're still not sure about the bodyguards or the spaceship, but they must have seemed like the right choice at some point."

Harry just nodded. "Yeah, that's sort of why I wanted to tell you now," he said.

"You need bodyguards now? You, or baby you?"

"Baby me is fine. You're right, though. That thing I did from the future, it didn't anchor me to now, it just anchored me to here."

"The house," Harold guessed, and Harry nodded again.

"I don't remember much, but I've been told I floated around a lot between now and five."

"When you ran away?" Harold asked, and Harry blushed.

"That's when I got my first bodyguard," he mumbled. “And, um, I’m pretty sure she’s coming for Christmas.”

Harold thought it was pretty funny that Harry differentiated between Advent and Christmas — Harold and Al did the same thing, but most everyone else was just lumping them all into one big “December celebration.” It was helpful, too, because if Harry had said she was coming for Advent, it’s not like that would narrow it down much. Christmas was a more discrete unit of time. Hopefully.

“Wait, like, from the future, or now? Does it matter?”

Harry looked surprised. “I — I don’t know. I mean, from the future, yes. You’ll work out all these ways to keep track of when I am, and which ‘me’s are which. So she’s coming from the same year I came from. But you did say you met her first when I was a baby, so maybe she’ll be here twice.”

Harold would be willing to bet Sabri’s temporary tattoos were part of the answer to the mystery of ‘keeping track of Harry.’ He didn’t say anything, though — it was probably good to keep some of his parental mystique, after all. “Would that be weird?” he asked.

Harry shrugged. “Compared to what?”

Good point. “Good point,” Harold said. “So, a tree?” They’d reached the lot minutes ago, and been sitting in the car ever since. “Unless there’s anything else you want to talk about.”

“I’ve been thinking, maybe we should have two trees, so we can put one in the basement. Or maybe Nick and Steve would like a separate tree in the loft, if they’re staying.”

Harold felt so relieved that he'd made it through the parent-child conversation portion of the day that he said, "Why not three trees?"

Picking the trees was easy. They walked around the array of pre-cut trees, and tagged the first three that looked promising. Not too big, not too small, not too scraggly, and not in too much need of pruning. Harold hated tree sap. But three trees was a lot of tree, even for a vehicle as big as the Armada. And they didn't want to scratch it, of course. That would be rude, with it officially belonging to someone else.

"What do you suggest?" Harold asked the tree farm volunteer. The guy deserved a medal for putting up with them, as far as he was concerned. He'd carried all three trees to the car, then waited patiently while they talked about the best way to get them back home.

"Have you got a bunch of sheets, or tarps? We can bag the trees and lay 'em down inside the car. All your back seats fold down, right?"

Harold looked at Harry. He had no idea if any of the seats folded down. It seemed like they should, though. And they were certainly well stocked on tarps. Ever since the unfortunate Christmas Eve car breakdown incident, all the vehicles were well-stocked for just about any eventuality. One person could probably live out of the Armada for at least a week, if they didn't mind the cramped conditions.

"Sure," Harry said. "I'll get the tarps."

Which left Harold with the seats. It turned out they weren't all that difficult to move around. It was moving the rest of the stuff scattered around them that was awkward (and eye-opening). Multiple books, and NIMBY water bottles, and of course the ubiquitous Cheerios. They didn't even have Cheerios at the house, but it was like a rule, or something, that every car had a few lone cereal pieces scattered around under the seats. Harold also found a battery, a watch band (no watch), and a collection of small sticks. He had no idea about that one, not even a guess. It wasn't like there was any shortage of sticks outside the car; he couldn't see any benefit to collecting them inside it too.

The best part of the day was that the drizzle cleared up. Of course, the trees were still wet, but that's what the tarps were for. The sky stayed gray, but it wasn't leaking on them anymore, and it warmed up enough that he could take hat off on the way home. It was his favorite hat, but it got itchy if he wore it for a long time.

Harry seemed more relaxed after he'd gotten all his explanations out. They talked about Christmas, and Advent, and whether or not they would be able to convince Al to make more cookies that afternoon. Harold confessed his uneasiness about doing holiday crafts, thanks to an always-overachieving and artistic family. Harry suggested focusing on the glitter-oriented crafts, because "they're all about the glitter, really, and as long as there's lots of it nothing else matters."

"And the best part is that almost any project can be adjusted to have a glitter focus," Harry said seriously. "You already did the snowflakes. Pinecones? Better with glitter. Pipe cleaner stars? How about some more glitter?"

They both cracked up with laughter, and Harold was pretty sure they could count the day as a success. He did have one more question, though. “Hey Harry? You don’t have to answer, but is it anything like in that book?" he asked, just because he was curious. "Being unstuck in time, I mean?"

Harry looked at him sideways. "No, not really."

“More glitter?” Harold guessed.

“Exactly. And cats.”


Chapter 14 (day 7): In which Harold isn’t worried (about the weather).

“I’m not worried,” Harold said.

“I am,” Cate volunteered. “So you probably don’t need to be.”

Harold peered around her at the computer screen again, but it still said "potential snow showers" all week long. The temperature dropped significantly from Thursday to Friday, but other than that, he couldn't tell what Cate was seeing -- it wasn't like weather forecasters usually got even the 48 hour forecast exactly right, let alone the five day.

"What are we looking at?" Matthew asked, coming in the back door with Nimby leaping behind him. "Also, it's not snowing. The kids are starting to get restless."

Matthew had been on bus duty that morning. Harold personally thought that if the kids were only starting to get restless, they were doing pretty well. There were still more than two weeks till winter break. It had to be one of the hardest times to be a teacher -- right up there with all the other pre-vacation times, and the post-vacation times, and the long doldrums between vacations. Basically, Harold thought teaching was hard.

"The forecast is predicting snow showers all week," Harold said.

"And I'm worried about the front coming through on Thursday night," Cate said. "I think it's going to be more serious than they're expecting."

"When have you ever known a weather person to downplay potential storms?" Harold asked.

Matthew said, "Does your meteorology degree even cover Earth systems?"

"We did a unit on Earth-like planets," Cate said.

"I didn't know you had a meteorology degree," Harold said, because it seemed more polite than saying, "I did a project on opening a roller skating rink once for school, but that doesn't mean I can make accurate predictions about supply and demand."

"It was mostly for fun," Cate said. "Meteorology's not where my heart is, but it comes in handy sometimes."

Al walked into the kitchen yawning, and barely missed walking into Nimby. "We don't need to go buy snow shovels, do we? I don't want to be one of those people who buys a new snow shovel every year just so they can get on the local news station."

"I can investigate the shovel situation," Matthew volunteered. "I don't think we'll need any, but if we stock up now, we can beat the rush. Plus, the more shovels we have, the more people we can get to help out, right?"

Harold was just wondering if it would sound mean to tell Matthew to check if they had any kid-sized shovels when Al beat him to it. "Make sure we have some the kids can use too," Al said. (Which sounded so much nicer than how Harold was going to ask -- he was impressed.) "Some of them will probably like outdoor chores better than indoor ones anyway."

"Speaking of chores," Harold started, to a chorus of moans. "I know, I know" he said. "Everyone's been doing little bits here and there, and that's been great. But there's some stuff we should probably take care of before everything gets snowy outside. And before my parents come to visit, if possible. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to be wondering where the measuring cups are after they've been buried in a foot of ice and snow."

"We have the other set!" Al said.

"Al, that's the set from the Play-doh kit," Cate told him. "It hardly counts."

They made a list. Harold made sure finding the measuring cups was on it. No matter how much Al was enjoying the Play-doh set ones -- it couldn't hurt to have two sets, right? He also included "clean kitchen sink drains" and "find out why the garage door is making that weird noise."

Al put down "boot corral," and promised he'd explain it when the time was right. Cate wanted to organize the coat closet; Matthew wanted to organize the walk-in pantry.

"Do we need to dust?" Al asked. Harold looked around. The counters looked good; the floor looked good. Matthew ran a finger over the top of the toaster oven and made an 'ick' face.

"Yeah," he said. "Probably we should dust."

"We're going to need cleaning supplies," Harold said. "Do we even have drain cleaner?"

"What about windows? Are we doing those?" Matthew frowned at the list they were compiling, like he could guess the answer from context.

Everyone looked at Harold. "It's winter," he said. "No windows. They're going to be all cold, and I'm not opening them or standing around outside to wash them."

"Is the garage door really making a weird noise?" Al asked suddenly.

Harold nodded, and Matthew added, "It's like a grinding click, sort of."

"Huh," Al said.

"Why do you ask?" Cate said.

"I thought maybe you just added that on there so I'd have something fun to do," Al said. Now Harold sort of wished he'd thought of that.

"Cleaning supplies should be relatively easy," Matthew said, still frowning at the list. "I think the harder thing is going to be motivation. We just told all the kids this is advent, and now we're going to get everyone on a big cleaning kick? Can we sell cleaning as part of advent?"

There had to be something that would make cleaning more fun. The reason the summer program kids had done so many chores was because it was somewhere other than home -- things that were different than the regular environment were more interesting. They had an air of mystery and intrigue. He had a sudden memory of getting up in the middle of the night to run around Nick and Steve's backyards with glow sticks during the summer with the hurricane. "Why don't we do it at night?" Harold said.

"Why?"

"Like a party. We can invite the older kids, and adults who don't need to be up early the next day. We'll send anyone who needs to sleep off to Charlotte and Eliza's house for the night, and turn on all the lights and crank up some music, and just do a big cleaning party for a few hours. End with pizza and ice cream, and take a nap the next day -- done."

Cate was nodding. "That could totally work. Of course, then everyone would want to have one, so we'd have to resign ourselves to more than just the one really late night, but it actually sounds kind of fun.”

"It reminds me of that book about the kid who paints the fence," Al said suddenly.

"You've read ‘Tom Sawyer’?” Harold asked.

"Of course," Al told him. "I found it in the old house, in the basement. It was before we met, I think. It was very educational.” Harold really hoped Al hadn’t based any of his ideas about Earth from the book ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.’ (Although it might explain some of his twitchiness about the south, which Harold had previously only been able to attribute to Al’s esoteric football team jersey color ranking system.)

Cate had spun the computer towards her and was typing industriously. She looked up to say, "Are we doing this tonight? It's short notice, but I figure it's either today, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Your parents are coming soon, and I don't want to have to cancel the cleaning thing because of the storm."

Harold blinked. Wow. He didn’t think his parents had set a firm arrival date, but the time between December first and Christmas was always felt shorter than it seemed like it should. "Tuesday, I guess," he said.

"I vote for Tuesday too," Al agreed.

Matthew just shrugged. "Any of them are fine with me. I traded with Harry to get night shift all week. My inner clock always gets weird this time of year anyway. I added cleaning stuff to the 'check before I go shopping' list, along with shovels."

Harold was sitting right next to Matthew at the table, and so it wasn't too hard to see the list. Matthew was writing it with a dry erase marker on a napkin (not a bad combo, in the kitchen vortex of useful writing materials). It said: Shovels (big and small). Wet wipes.

That was it. He waited for a few seconds, to see if maybe there were more items coming, but Matthew had capped the marker and was flipping it through his fingers. Harold wondered if Matthew was really the best person to be purchasing house cleaning supplies. After all, the first time they'd met him, he'd tried to steal their cat. And then he'd accidentally found out about the aliens, and spent a year doing some sort of study-abroad program in space with Sam.

He had run the under two program during the summer, but Harold couldn't actually remember any non-wet wipe cleaning occurring during that time. They were too short to reach the sink, after all. He cleared his throat. "Um, Matthew, you know we can't actually just use wet wipes to clean everything, right?"

"What?" Matthew looked surprised. "Oh, yeah, of course. That's just so I don't forget them. I figured I'd just ask someone at the store for help with the rest of it. What do I know about drain cleaning?"

"I'm finishing up the invitation now," Cate said.

Al said, "I think we should just send it out to everyone. We can always find stuff for people to do if they show up, even if they can't do a lot of cleaning. And that way we don't have to pick and choose who gets invited."

Everyone agreed that this was a fair (and easy) way to go. Harold checked the time. Still morning. Still plenty of time for a morning email check, in other words. Cate relinquished the computer, and he pulled up the latest reminders -- parents still on the road, Charlotte and Eliza back from Alabama on the weekend, an advent countdown that looked like it originated from Trudy, and an e-card from Pete. (And, of course, the invitation from Cate. If he hadn’t seen her do it with his own eyes, he never would have believed she’d whipped it off in less than ten minutes.)

After that, it was all store spam and balance transfer offers. Why did he always get more of those on Mondays than any other day? He dumped them all into his ‘to be deleted — eventually’ folder. Then he checked the weather again, just in case, but the pictures hadn’t changed. Sun with scattered snow showers, predicted straight through the weekend.


Chapter 15 (day 8): In which there is cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning.

There was a trick to doing a lot of cleaning all in one night, Harold learned. It involved doing a lot of work beforehand. Sort of like a cooking show, where the star says something like, "And now you whip four egg whites into frothy peaks," and then -- like magic -- there’s a bowl of pre-frothed egg peaks just off to the side. It actually took most of Monday and a fair portion of Tuesday to prepare for the big night. There were lists, of course, lots of lists. Cate enlisted Tina and Eliza to make them, which Harold thought was brilliant. Apparently it was easier to be objective about cleaning goals when it wasn't actually your house.

Every room had a list of things to do, and its own set of cleaning materials to do it with. There were some things they only had one of, like the vacuum cleaner, but Harold was pretty sure they'd be able to stagger its use throughout the rooms so it wasn't too much of a bottleneck. In a stroke of good luck, almost all the university students were going to be able to make it. Harold wasn't sure if it was the free pizza that was the draw, or if it was just a good excuse to take a break from studying for finals.

That list was in the kitchen -- the one with everyone's names on it, along with their "night of cleaning" status. Harold and Al, of course, were both planning to be there. Ditto for Cate and Matthew, Toby and Sam, and Tina. Charlotte had a major presentation for one of her teaching projects in Alabama, and Eliza was attending for moral support. (Harold was secretly glad he'd have some wiggle room on his own attendance if they decided to do their house cleaning the same way. It might not be a bigger house, but there was a lot more stuff in it.)

Nick and Steve had offered to help, but they ended up getting 'volunteered' for baby duty -- Harry wanted to clean, and someone had to watch baby Harry. They headed off to Charlotte and Eliza's after dinner, along with an escort of animals. It was actually pretty funny to watch. The safest way to use the personal transporters was generally 'one operator, one passenger.' Nick carried Harry (and all of Harry's things, because you couldn't take a baby anywhere without at least one bag, and two or even three was better if you had enough hands). Bruno, Nina, and Bob traveled with Steve and Al, and then Al had to go again because he'd come back the first time still holding Bob.

"Okay," Cate said, rubbing her hands together. "Let's get this party started!"

It wasn't quite that easy.

First, there was the music -- should it be Christmas songs? Local radio station? Internet radio station? Loud or soft? Fast or slow? Then the university contingent arrived, and there was another twenty minutes of hugging, and taking off coats and shoes, and getting a snack, and then it seemed like every few minutes someone was either getting a phone call or running off to the bathroom. Finally, though, they split up in pairs and started to work.

"How did we end up starting in the loft?" Al said.

Harold looked around. "It must have been on the list, I guess. I have no idea. Isn't this sort of the easiest room to clean?" There wasn't much in the loft. Nick and Steve were using it, but they were pretty tidy.

Al consulted his piece of paper. "On the other hand, we have the vacuum cleaner first, and we're supposed to get it to the next group in twenty minutes. And vacuuming is the last thing on the list."

They hustled. Harold's favorite part was the ceiling duster, because it was black, and very cool looking, and had a telescoping handle. Not only was it easy to use, it also meant he could stay far away from any cobweb inhabitants as he was shooing them away. Al washed down the doorway to clear off the grimy fingerprints of a year's worth of kids (and adults) grabbing it on their way in and out of the room, and Harold did the same for the windowsills. He was glad he'd vetoed doing the windows, even though he could see they had their fair share of fingerprints too.

Vacuuming was the most time consuming thing they did, actually, mostly because they shifted all the furniture to do it. But essentially it was a big rectangular room, with no bookshelves to be dusted or counter tops to be cleaned, and even when they added in cleaning the stairs that led up to the it, they made it to the vacuum hand-off with minutes to spare.

Round two of cleaning went like this: Al teamed up with Tina for his boot corral project, and Harold wound up in the living room with Matthew. Apparently they were not only supposed to be cleaning, but figuring out where to put the tree. Harold was just glad they weren't actually moving the tree inside yet -- he was sure he had some gloves for stuff like that stashed away somewhere, but they weren't in any of the places he'd looked so far (winter coat pockets, car glove compartment, sitting around in plain sight).

"I think it would be nice to have it by the windows," Matthew said. "That way we can see it from the porch, or when we're outside."

"Wouldn't that block all the light, though? I'm sure that's why we've put it in the other corner before."

Matthew looked around the room. "How big is it, exactly? We could buck tradition and put it in the middle of the room."

"Hmm. I like it -- it's innovative and new." Harold didn't want Matthew to feel like he was shooting down all of his ideas, so he was waiting for the obvious problem with the middle of the room plan to occur to him.

"We would have to decorate the whole tree, if we did that," Matthew said consideringly. Well, that wasn't the problem Harold had been thinking of, but it worked. "Do we know how Nina will react to a Christmas tree? If she's going to try to climb it, a corner would definitely be better."

Harold nodded in what he hoped was a supportive way. "She hasn't seen them yet, as far as I know. I'm going to put in my vote for the corner, though. Bob still has the occasional tree-climbing urge, and if the pirates come by at all, who knows how the parrot will act."

It meant some rearranging of the chairs, but they were going to have to do that anyway. The pattern was simple -- start at the top, work your way down. Take things off their shelves, wipe them off, dust the shelf, put the things back on. Move anything that was mildly to moderately easy to move and clear under it. Harold felt lucky, actually -- Matthew was all about the vacuuming, so he did that and Harold mostly just moved furniture for him to make sure he could work in the most efficient pattern.

They were about three quarters of the way through their allotted "round two" time when there was a commotion from the basement, and Sabri and Zahar came bounding up the stairs. "Hi!" Sabri said.

"What are you doing here?" Harold said.

"We're here to help," Zahar told them.

"We got special permission from Al and Toby to come tonight; we're going to do the floor!" Sabri sounded more excited about cleaning the floor than Harold had ever felt about cleaning anything.

"Wow," he said. "Thanks."

Matthew exchanged fist bumps with both kids. "That's great!" he said. "I kind of wanted that job, but Tina told me I was too tall for it."

Al and Tina followed the kids up the stairs and into the front hall, presumably to explain the fine art of cleaning a tiled floor. And then it was on to round three.

"They should have called this the round of despair," Harold said. Round three was the big one -- they were in two groups; one in the basement and one in the kitchen. The only thing keeping him from being really discouraged was that Sabri and Zahar had brought them two mini vacuums.

Harold thought they looked a lot like the old Dust Buster vacuums, and wondered what had happened to that fad. Did people just get tired of having cleaning be so easy? Did the vacuums not work well enough to justify having them sitting around the house charging all the time? Clearly, he'd reached the stage of cleaning where even things like 'doing internet research on cleaning equipment trends' seemed like a good alternative.

Al was in the basement for round three, so of course Harold ended up in the kitchen. Microwave, refrigerator, sink, toaster oven, regular oven -- actually, they weren't doing much with the regular oven. If they needed to see the food as it was cooking, they could just open the door.

"I like this round," Matthew said. They'd split up roughly along the lines of "people who know enough about doorway technology to not accidentally unplug something crucial get to help in the basement; everyone else is in the kitchen." (Everyone else being Harold, Matthew, Cate, and Sam.)

"Why?" Sam asked.

"Take these crackers," Matthew said. "There's only a few left; the box has already been recycled, and they're just sitting around in the cupboard in the bag. It looks kind of messy, right?" He opened the bag and pulled out some of the crackers before passing them to Harold. "If we eat them, we've reduced the clutter -- it looks better already!"

Harold took the crackers thoughtfully. "I see your point," he said. "Good call." Maybe the kitchen wasn’t such a bad assignment after all.


Chapter 16 (day 9): In which the plan about taking a day of rest doesn't work out quite like they imagined.

"What's that noise?"

Harold flipped the pillow over his head and ignored Al's question. It was still dark out; they'd just gone to bed a few hours ago. Any noise that wasn't the house burning down or the police breaking down their door was a noise that could wait till morning. Late morning, preferably. Although...

"Is that the fire alarm?" The sound of two emergency beacons activating — in stereo, they were even louder — almost drowned out his question.

Al was already out of bed. "I think so," he said. "Come on, we need to sweep the upstairs."

Harold shoved his feet into his slippers and pulled on the sweatshirt Al tossed him. Phone, emergency beacon, flashlight -- see, there was a good reason for keeping all that stuff right by the bed. It was good to know the signal bounce was working, at least. Al had programmed the beacons to be tied into the house’s fire alarm system, so that anyone who was within a certain radius of the house got alerted any time the fire alarm went off.

It was all part of their new standard fire drill procedure (they’d had a lot of time one day when they were being held hostage to come up with things like that); if you were in the house, your beacon was on. Once you were out and safe, you checked in and turned your beacon off.

"I'm not sure whether I should hope this isn't a drill, because if it is, I'm going to be seriously unhappy with whoever pulled it, or if I should hope it is a drill, because, you know, then nothing would be on fire."

"I think you're still mostly asleep," Al said, and yeah, that was probably true.

"Who are we supposed to be accounting for up here?" Harold asked. "No cats, right? Nimby's with them, and baby Harry."

They did a quick check of their bathroom just in case, but it was empty. There was no smoke in the hallway, which Harold thought was probably a good sign. On the other hand, probably the most likely place for a fire to start was in the basement, and it might take a while for the smoke to reach them.

"Nursery's clear," Al said, and Harold nodded. They'd done this as a drill multiple times over the summer. Actually, having both of them be present and in the same place was one of the easier scenarios. And even though pounding on doors and shouting wasn’t as good as sleeping, it was a decent alternative for getting out some frustration.

Matthew's room was empty, but Sam came stumbling out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his hand when Harold banged on the door. If Harold hadn't still been about forty percent concerned that something in the house was burning, Sam's commentary would have been hilarious. "I'm almost finished," he started, and then he did a double take, and said, "Hey, don't you have your own --" The alarms finally registered and his eyes widened. "Whoa, let me get my --"

Harold grabbed his arm. "Let's go,” he said. "Where's your beacon?" Down the hall, he could see Al helping Cate with what looked like a koala. It couldn't really be a koala, he guessed (hoped -- the last thing they needed was another visit from one of the animal rights and protection of wildlife agencies), but that's what it looked like.

"Um, Matthew has it?" Sam said. "He was going to get a snack."

They all made it down the stairs without running into any smoke and/or flames, which was another good sign. One of the drills (Harold was sure it had been planned by Al, but Al wouldn't admit it) had been all about 'what to do if you can't get out of the house using the front door or stairs.' Harold secretly thought it had been kind of fun to scramble out the window and down the emergency ladder, but putting the screen back in had been a chore and a half. Also, it probably wouldn't be as fun in the winter.

It was always a tough call, once you got to the front door, whether you should go straight out and head for the rendezvous spot, or continue searching the house to make sure everyone else got out. With a lack of visible danger (and at least on Harold's part, a lack of desire to spend any more time outside in the pre-dawn December cold), they compromised and sent Sam and Cate outside. It wasn't a koala after all -- apparently Cate had been wrapping presents and gotten entangled.

They split up at the base of the stairs, and Al headed right, so Harold took the left, and immediately ran into Matthew. "I just checked the basement," Matthew said. "The generators are on fire!”

Shoot. "Al!" Harold yelled.

Al yelled back, "I'm on it! Laundry room's clear!"

"Is anyone in the kitchen?" Harold asked, even though he knew he was going to check again anyway. Matthew shook his head. "Go outside, meet up with everyone at the end of the driveway," Harold told him. "Call 911, tell them where we are."

It was entirely possible they wouldn't need any emergency services. But it was always better to call them and then be embarrassed when they showed up, than to wait too long and then wish you'd called them. Matthew was already pulling out his phone as he headed for the front door, and Harold finished checking the rest of the first floor before grabbing the kitchen fire extinguisher and heading down to the basement.

The smoke was definitely noticeable. As was Al's verbal tirade against all Earth technology, particularly generators, and even more particularly converted solar power generators. On the plus side, the fire seemed to be out. "Al?" Harold called. "Are you okay?" All the lights were out, and his flashlight was just reflecting off the smoke still hanging in the air.

"Yeah, I'm good," Al called back. "The fire's out, at least."

"Where are you?" Harold was willing to fumble around in the dark, but he wanted to make sure he was headed in the right direction first.

"Right next to the doorway. Hang on, I have a flashlight." Harold saw a light flash on and off in the far corner, and headed in that direction.

"I guess I shouldn't have told Matthew to call 911, huh?" And they'd just finished cleaning the floors, too. Maybe Sabri and Zahar would come back and do it again?

"Better safe than sorry. I can't believe we didn't see this earlier, when we were dusting everything. The connections are totally shot." Al didn't repeat any of his "Earth technology is all a bunch of junk" comments, but Harold was pretty sure he was still thinking it. "They're going to mess up the floors, though. And probably want to know why we have all these generators down here at all, since they’re supposed to only be used outside.”

“We could move them outside,” he suggested. “Easier for everyone, right? Or would that totally not work?”

Al laughed. “No, that’s perfect. Maybe a little suspicious, but it’s not like the actual story is any more believable. It’s all relative.”

Which is how they ended up spending what was left of the night making it look like they were just crazy ‘off the gridders’ who tried to hook up too many generators to the same connection and started a fire. Actually, Al just arranged the generators, and then he and Harold dozed off in the living room while Matthew and Cate and Sam (who, Harold would like to note, had all in fact still been awake when the whole fiasco occurred) dealt with the fire brigade.


Chapter 17 (day 9): In which Harold and Al sleep the sleep of very sleepy people.

He'd heard that you reached a point in your life where your body just wouldn't let you sleep off-schedule. Like, say, sleeping all day after being up all night. Harold had never been more glad that he wasn't at that point.

He was pretty sure they deserved a break after the marathon cleaning party plus fire brigade at dawn adventures. Everyone else must have agreed, because no one knocked on the door, called on the phone, or even engaged in loud conversation in the hallway. Even Nimby decided not to help himself to their bathtub for once. (It wasn't totally silent, though -- that would have been creepy. There was just enough noise so Harold could tell the normal daily routine was ticking along, thankfully without any input from him or Al.)

It wasn't until mid-afternoon that he finally decided he was hungry enough to make it worth getting up. He'd thought he was hungry enough around noon, but then he'd fallen back asleep. "I think I'm going to get up," he told the ceiling.

Al said, "If you do, can I have my sweatshirt back?"

Harold glanced down and realized he was still wearing the sweatshirt he'd put on that morning. "I thought this was my sweatshirt," he said. "You handed it to me."

"It was dark; I couldn't see it that well."

Harold thought Al probably just wanted to have something pre-warmed to put on. It was oddly cold in the room -- maybe Cate's weather prediction of a cold snap was right. No, she'd predicted a snow storm, not a cold snap. Huh. "Sure," he said. "I think I finally feel awake."

Al put on the sweatshirt without actually getting out of bed. "I think I'm going to need to redo the entire doorway power system," he said.

"Using non-Earth technology this time?"

"Definitely. Planned obsolescence has to be one of the worst ideas anyone's ever had."

Harold frowned. "That can't possibly just be an Earth business model," he protested.

"No, you're right. It's still true, though." Al finally emerged from the cocoon of blankets. Not only was he wearing the sweatshirt, he also had on fleece sweatpants and slippers. Harold thought maybe it was time to turn up the heat in the house.

"I do have some good news," Harold said. "There's less than twelve hours left before today is officially tomorrow, which means we can totally get away with wearing pajamas for the rest of the day. Also, if we decide to give up on the day after eating something, we'll already be set to get back in bed."

It was unlikely that Al would do anything except dive into the doorway project after eating, but it was fun to consider the possibilities anyway. Harold figured he should probably find out what had happened with the old generators -- he had his fingers crossed that the fire department had taken them off their hands, because it was really awkward to dispose of multiple generators. He should know; he'd done it before.

Wearing pajamas at non-traditional times of day (in other words, any time not at night) wasn't an unusual occurrence in the house. Plus, it was winter, and who was to say whether a sweatshirt was one you had worn to bed or one you'd pulled fresh from the dryer?

"Hey, nice pajamas," Cate said when they entered the kitchen. "Wasn't Harold wearing that same sweatshirt earlier, Al?"

Of course, people who had seen you in your pajamas in the middle of the night would probably recognize them the next day, even if it was afternoon and not morning.

"We have two," Al said, and Harold tried not to laugh. It was technically true, after all. He thought the second one might have been sacrificed to Bob as a cat bed, though. There must be a reason he hadn’t seen it in a while.

"Is that cider?" he asked instead.

It was cider -- delicious, hot (well, warm) cider. "There's donuts too," Cate said, pointing to an open box on the counter.

"Really? Donuts?" It was like they were getting pastry and cider as recompense for the fire alarm. Harold poked through the box to see if there were any cinnamon powdered ones left. "What's the occasion?"

"I'm not sure," Cate said, already back on the computer. "Some sort of law enforcement in-joke, I guess?"

Law enforcement? Harold looked around guiltily, as if his sister might leap out of a cupboard and shout 'Surprise!' at any second. He'd certainly made more than his fair share of police and donut jokes after she joined the force. "Is Charlotte here?" he asked.

Instead of Charlotte, though, it was Rob who opened the back door and stepped in from the porch. "Hi," he said. "Nice pjs."

Suddenly, Harold felt more awkward about the decision not to change out of their pajamas. Something about being in the same room with an FBI agent, he figured. Rob was even wearing his FBI jacket and matching gloves. It was pretty impressive. Harold wasn't sure why an FBI agent would be bringing them donuts and hanging out on their back porch, even if he was sort of a friend of the family.

"Thanks for the donuts," Al said. He didn't look upset about the pajamas.

"No problem," Rob said. "I figured I should come by and give you all a heads up. I've got three new trainees for a few months while the rest of the team is working on some other projects. We'll be, well... I hope you don't mind.” He suddenly sounded less sure of himself, and Harold wondered whether he was actually nervous, or if that was an FBI trick for putting people around you at ease.

“We’re going to be training using you guys as our surveillance targets. Sorry. I let them pick, because I really didn't think they'd pick you, but then they did, and I couldn't say no without making it seem really suspicious."

"Well, they are FBI agents, after all," Al said.

"Exactly!"

"It's no problem for us," Harold told him. "It went fine last time. Um, you did check to make sure none of them are secretly pirates this time, right?"

"Or ninjas," Cate added. "What?" she asked, when Harold sent a confused look in her direction. "We've already had pirates. With our luck it would be ninjas this time. Al, do you know any ninja groups?"

Al had his mouth full of donut, but he nodded, and Harold couldn't tell if he was kidding or not.

Rob ignored the question of ninjas entirely. "I heard you're all celebrating advent," he said instead. "My family always used to do the advent thing; we had the wreath, and the candles and everything. Do you have an advent wreath?"

Harold exchanged looks with Al and Cate. "Not exactly," he said. "We're sort of doing a non-traditional advent. We are doing candles in the windows, though."

Cate nodded. "Yeah, and tonight we're making garlands for the trees. The classic would be popcorn strings, but that just seems messy."

"And like it would be a waste of popcorn," Harold added.

"Tina said she had some ideas, and she's coming over this evening anyway, to help Al with the wiring. Something about plastic beads, or maybe origami paper.” Cate said it so naturally, Harold almost missed the fact that Tina must actually be coming to help with the doorway. Electrical wiring, alien interplanetary travel device -- they were related. Distant relations, maybe, but still related.

"You're welcome to stay, if you'd like,” he told Rob. “We’re always flexible about dinner numbers, and if you want some of that home grown advent celebratory flavor, we'd love to have you." It was always a good idea to be polite to federal agents, and Rob had helped them out quite a bit in the past. Of course, he'd also indirectly been the reason why Harold and Al had, at one point, had a flock of wild ducks in their bath tub, but that was all water under the bridge (and hadn't really been Rob's fault to begin with).

"No, I've got to get back to the motel. Thanks, though -- it sounds like fun."

Harold expected Rob to leave the house via the front door, which would have necessitated walking across the kitchen and through the hall in his boots. Instead, he stayed right at the back door. "I'll just go out this way," he said. "I heard about your cleaning day. Everything looks great, by the way."

Harold waited, but he didn't hear any vehicle starting up sounds. "Did he walk here?"

"Of course not," Cate said. “The donuts would have gotten cold. He parked out by the street. Apparently it's less suspicious that way."

Harold couldn't think of any way that could possibly be considered less suspicious than just driving in and parking around the garage like everyone else did, but he supposed Rob was the expert. "Are we making guesses about the trainees?" he asked. (They all agreed that ‘betting’ could be considered a bad influence on the kids, but ‘guessing’ was perfectly acceptable.)

"Matthew's keeping the official notes, yeah. We know there are three of them, they're all in their first year in the field, and they're all staying at the cheapest motel in town. Surveillance officially begins today, but they're starting with background stuff -- talking to people in town, checking our library records, that kind of thing. Trudy's keeping track of them. Oh, and Harry's abstaining, which means there's probably no point in guessing that we'll never meet them."

"What did you guess?" Al asked.

"Today, actually," Cate said. She looked at the clock and grimaced. “Overly optimistic, I guess. Matthew’s going for within 48 hours.”

“I’ll take Sunday,” Harold said.

Al chimed in with, “Christmas Eve.”

“You really think it will take that long?”

“Well, it would be funny if it did. Cate thinks they’re going to be ninjas!”

“I didn’t say they were definitely going to be ninjas, just that it was a possibility I don’t think we can discount at this time.” Cate gestured with her mug, encompassing the whole house, or possibly the internet, which was still open on the computer in front of her.

“These things do happen,” she said with finality.

Harold had to agree — they did happen, and with surprising regularity around him. “Is that the furthest date out that anyone’s guessed?” he asked. It seemed like a safer question than joining the debate about ninjas.

“Eliza guessed New Year’s, but she said it a sisterly solidarity thing. Do local cops really not like federal agencies? I thought that was just on tv.”

Harold shook his head. “I guess there’s a lot of arguing back and forth about resources and stuff,” he said.

Al frowned, and said, “Wait, what did Charlotte guess?”

“She hasn’t yet. Eliza said she’s been in meetings all day.”

Harold knew his sisters were also supposed to be packing to come home for Christmas. They’d both been working with the school in Alabama on different exchange programs; Charlotte for police communication techniques, and Eliza for some kind of cultures of the universe seminar. It would be nice to have them close by again — along with their parents, who were heading north in their RV.

“Hmm.” Al perused the remaining donuts. “Where is everyone, anyway?”

“Shopping,” Cate said. “Remember? Tomorrow’s the second round of advent gifts.”


Chapter 18 (day 10): In which Harold and Al exchange advent gifts, sort of.

"Happy advent," Harold said, meeting Al on his way out of the bathroom. "This is for you."

"Thanks," Al said.

It was in a gift bag. Harold felt sort of bad about that, because he generally thought that using a gift bag to wrap things was sort of like cheating, but with everyone in the house trying to disguise gifts and wrap multiple presents (for multiple holidays, even), there simply weren't enough boxes to go around. The Post Office didn't look too kindly on people taking their mailing boxes for non-mailing purposes.

"Sorry about the gift bag," he said.

"Actually, it's perfect," Al told him, shaking the bag slightly. "We needed a bag to give the neighborhood committee Secret Santa present in; this will be just the right size."

"Re-gift-ability is a potentially important part of any present," Harold agreed. "I think you'll like the actual gift, though." He'd gone with the fleece gloves this week, just in case Al was having the same problems he was with finding last year's gloves. This pair was bright orange, to make it harder to lose, and it had those little grippy things on the fingers, so you could still wear them when you were driving and stuff.

"Can I wait to open it?" Al asked. His fingers were drifting towards the tissue paper covering the gloves, but he pulled them back. "I don't have your gift ready yet."

How intriguing -- really, his advent gift required some sort of construction, or preparation? "Sure," Harold said. "But I don't mind if you want to just open it now, and you can give me mine whenever."

Al didn't wait for any further invitation. He dove into the bag and ripped open the tissue paper. "Gloves!" he exclaimed. "Harold, thank you!"

"They're very orange," he said.

"Orange is a great color for safety," Al said. "Also, it's been psychologically studied and shown to make people happier."

"Really? Is that true?"

"I'm not sure, but it makes sense, doesn't it?" Al stuck his hand in one of the gloves and waved it around. Harold thought all colors in general probably made people happier. Unless they were neon, maybe; he didn't like neon colors very much.

"That reminds me," Al said suddenly, still wearing one of the gloves. "I think I must have borrowed someone else's gloves at the end of last winter, because I found a pair in my coat but I don't know who they belong to. Are you missing any?"

Well, there was another mystery solved. Al produced the gloves in question, and yes, they were Harold's. "I guess this means we can bring the trees in today," he said. "Wait, this isn't like a trick advent gift, right?"

Al blinked. "Now I sort of wish I'd thought of that," he said. "But no, your gift is something else. I'm almost ready. I want to make sure I give it to you in front of someone else, so I can prove I'm really participating."

Harold and Al had gotten a lot of teasing over their gifts to each other the week before. Al continued to insist that he liked the snack bars -- they were his favorite, after all -- and Harold continued to stay silent about his gift, just because he sometimes liked to pretend to himself that there was a tiny portion of his life that wasn't public knowledge.

A thought occurred to him, and he turned to Al. "Hey, which do you think will be harder; getting a tree up to the loft, or getting one down to the basement?" Getting three trees had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, of course, they had to figure out what to do with them all. Only one of them was what Harold would call “small.”

He hadn't anticipated his question leading to an entire morning of tree moving, but in hindsight, it made sense. Get enough people together in one place, and you can debate for probably an endless amount of time on the best way to do just about anything.

First, he and Al went outside to look at the trees, which were being stored in the garage. Harold thought it was too bad that there wasn't a direct entrance from the loft to the garage, but Al assured him that if they put in a second staircase, they'd either have to heat the garage or put up with the loft being a lot colder.

Nick and Steve came outside too, followed by Harry. There was hemming and hawing and general vague sentiments like 'I've heard you should do stairs trunk first, but I'm not so sure,' and 'I just think it makes sense to figure out which one would be the most appealing to visitors, and assigning that one to the basement.' (No one actually objected to that idea, they just couldn't figure out a way to judge the trees' relative appeal to potential arrivals.) Then they had to go inside to view the spaces, and do more hemming and hawing.

Harold suggested they simply use the personal transporters to move the trees into the house, but Al vetoed the idea. "It's the needles," he said. "Plants are hard. We could definitely get most of the tree to the right spot, but maybe not all of it."

"Like the needles," Harry repeated, just to make sure he understood what Al was saying.

"Right. We might lose some of them along the way. Or all of them. It's hard to say."

Probably not worth risking, in other words. Which meant sheets were going to be involved, and a lot of dragging and hefting. Harold was starting to realize that nothing seemed like a good plan right after you'd put a lot of work into cleaning your house. They'd considered the tree issue before they cleaned, and he was sure it had made perfect sense at the time why they'd decided on the ‘clean first, trees second’ order, but he was having a hard time remembering the arguments.

Luckily, laughter was the order of the day. The household seemed recovered from the cleaning party and fire alarm combo; long nights weren't the worst thing that could happen, but everything seemed easier when they were well rested. They started with the loft, which led to significant uninvited commentary from Bruno, in the form of barking. Lots of barking.

"Did you say the new FBI team is starting their surveillance today?" Nick asked, over the noise.

"Uh-huh." Harold looked at Bruno. You could hear barking from the road. And there was nothing in their town records about having a dog.

"Maybe we could pick an animal sound for each tree," Cate said. She'd woken up halfway through the morning, and was mostly wandering around taking pictures of everyone. "To throw them off a little more."

"Do you still seriously think they might be ninjas?" Harry asked.

"It'll happen one of these days," Cate told him. "You'll see. You probably already have seen!"

"No ducks," Al said, emerging from under the tree. He'd been adjusting the base, Harold thought, or possibly taking a brief nap. The whole process wasn't exactly speeding along. "Harold doesn't like them."

"I don't like ducks in the house,” he protested. "In our bathtub!" It was an important distinction. "I have nothing against ducks in a more general sense."

"I don't know if we can find any ducks on such short notice," Cate said, sounding worried. "Would geese be okay instead?"

Harold tried rewinding the conversation in his head to see if made any more sense that way. No, they were still talking about animal sounds. "Why don't we just focus on getting the trees set up?" he asked.

They did the living room tree second, since everyone could agree that a break from stairs would be nice. Al managed to claim the 'resting under the tree' job again. Harold and Steve retaliated by taking a refreshment break in the kitchen. It was already nearly lunchtime.

"We're not going to try to decorate these all today, are we?" Steve asked.

"No, my parents always said you had to let the trees 'rest' for a day once you brought them inside. They said it was so the branches could settle, but I'm thinking it was mostly to divide the work up."

Cate and Harry joined them in the kitchen. "Is Al still under the tree?" Harold asked.

"He said he had to take a quick break," Harry said. "Also, I know there's history behind it, but the the whole idea of chopping down a tree in winter and dragging it into your house? It's kind of weird, when you think about it."

Harold had been thinking how nice it was to have his gloves back. Sure, the Christmas tree tradition was a little unusual, but there were lots of much stranger things about Christmas. Even a lot of classic Christmas movies were pretty strange.

Nick said, "It's not that much different than a bouquet of flowers. It's just that in the winter, there's not as much blooming and growing. Evergreen trees are a logical choice."

Harold got a sudden mental image of Al pulling a tree out from behind his back like a bunch of daffodils and presenting it as his advent gift. In his mind's eye, all the needles fell off the tree, just like in the movie. "Plus they smell good," he said, which was probably a non sequitur, but nobody minded.

Their late morning break easily segued into lunch (leftovers) and baby time. Harry was imitating sounds; Harold was torn between being glad no one had a camera, and thinking that watching online videos of people talking with their six-month olds must be one of the funniest things ever. It wasn't too hard to work up the proper motivation for the third tree. (Even though Matthew was wrong, wrong, wrong when he predicted optimistically that going down stairs would be easier than going up stairs.)

With all the excitement of moving the trees around, it was nearly dinner time before Harold remembered he still hadn't gotten his advent gift from Al. Not that he needed a gift, but now that they'd started the whole celebration and gifting thing, he sort of felt like he was due.

Somewhat suspiciously, Al disappeared about that time. "Have you seen Al?" Harold started asking everyone, but no one had. The board in the kitchen said he was out doing errands, but none of the vehicles were missing, and nobody could remember if he'd told them where he was going before he left.

Harold actually had his phone in his hand and was ready to dial before he decided that maybe he was taking this advent thing a little too seriously. It was supposed to be fun, right? Did it really matter what time he got his gift, or whether or not he could figure out what Al was doing before the big reveal? No, of course not. Plus, Matthew was trying to cook lasagna for dinner, and that was plenty distracting.

"Have you ever done this before?" he asked.

"Not exactly," Matthew said. Harold wasn't sure what 'not exactly' meant in terms of lasagna -- had Matthew helped someone else cook it? Tried to cook it and failed? Had a dream about cooking it?

They had to reference the internet four times, but by the time they put the lasagna in the oven, it looked pretty much like Harold thought it should. "It's going to take a while to cook," Harold said, reading further down the forum. "Maybe we should have started it earlier."

"No, I think that was exactly the right time," Matthew said. "That's when Al told me to start."

"What?" Harold looked up just in time to see Al walk into the room with a grin on his face and a hand behind his back.

"Surprise!" Al said. "Happy advent, Harold!"

Matthew started clapping, and Cate joined in as she entered from the other end of the room. Al held out his hand to reveal a knife and fork.

"A fork," Harold said. "And a knife. Um..."

He was saved from having to act excited over utensils (and ones that he was pretty sure were from their own silverware set, no less) by Nick and Steve's arrival with a giant cake. "Happy advent!" Nick said.

"Al asked if we could help carry the cake," Steve added. They set it down on the table, revealing words scrawled across the top in blue frosting. 'Happy Advent Harold!' it said.

"I tried to think of something you'd like," Al explained. "Tina suggested that I bake something, but I thought cookies were too everyday. Cake seemed more celebratory, in the spirit of advent."

"I love it," Harold said. Advent was the best holiday they’d ever made up. “All in favor of eating cake before dinner?”

Everyone voted yes. (And the cake was delicious.)


Chapter 19 (day 11): In which the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Harold got up early on Friday for his turn at the bus stop, and it seemed like all of a sudden all the weather stations had decided to be on board with Cate’s prediction. The storm had swept through the midwest dumping feet of snow, and now there were rumblings that it might slow down over the northeast. It was all the kids could talk about while they were waiting.

It was hard to believe there was actually a storm coming, since the morning was not only sunny, but also warm. Warm-ish, at least, relative to what Harold would have expected at six in the morning on December 11th. Cate, however, was jubilant.

“I knew it!” she said, pumping both fists in the air in a complex victory pattern before she stuffed them back in her coat pockets. Then her expression turned serious. “We should get ready.”

Harold had been searching Tifa’s backpack for her permission slip (found, tucked into her lunch box — he should have looked there first, obviously). “Wait, should we be worried?”

It was always hard to tell with Cate. Sometimes when he had no idea what she was talking about, it was because she was just that far ahead of him. Like the storm — how did she even do that? On the other hand, sometimes it was because she was three steps ahead on the crazy trail, like the thing with the geese. Harold was pretty sure that was why the kids liked her so much.

“I’m not sure,” Cate said, squinting at the sky. “Maybe? We did already buy those shovels, which is good.”

“And Al’s got the generators going again; that’s got to be a good thing.” They didn’t really look like generators, but Harold had gotten used to Al’s free-form style of technology modification. Doorway from one planet, hooked into generators from another, hooked into solar panels from a third — what was that supposed to look like? It looked cool; that was the general household consensus.

“I can’t believe we’re having a storm on a Friday,” Helen said.

“Friday storms are a total waste of a good storm,” agreed the boy whose name Harold could never remember. “We’re going to miss all the snow day potential over the weekend.”

Harold tried to guess what grade the boy was in based on his vocabulary. Fourth, maybe; he remembered doing a lot of vocabulary charades in fourth grade. How would you act out a word like ‘potential’?

“Maybe it will snow so much the school is still closed on Monday!” Tifa’s field trip wasn’t until the next Friday, so she was clearly in favor of missing as many school days as possible between now and then.

Harold raised a hand. “Sorry, I’m going to be the hungry one in this discussion. I hope we don’t get that much snow. How would we go to the grocery store?”

“We would have to eat snow!” Tifa said. The other kids all nodded.

Cate looked like she was going to laugh, and the bus was coming into view down the street. “Gloves, everyone!” Harold called. “Hats, mittens, scarves — I’m not forging through the snow to bring them back to your houses, so don’t leave them behind!”

The younger kids always got on first, and as the kids were getting into a not very orderly line, Harold added, “There is a very small chance that school will let out early. Remember you can always call us if you need a ride home, okay?”

The combination of the approaching holidays and the much more imminent snow storm was making all the kids more crazy than usual. Harold thought the polite word was probably ‘energetic,’ but he thought ‘crazy’ might be more accurate. He caught the bus driver’s eye and gave a supportive thumbs-up.

Cate finally pulled herself together, just in time to wave. “Snow!” she said, still giggling. Harold didn’t really get why it was so funny; didn’t all kids want to eat snow at some point? He was sure he and his sisters had done it every winter for a while, with a variety of toppings.

“Let’s go check the news,” Harold told her. That was a classic pre-storm activity, right? Watching the weather? And hopefully the coffee pot would be full again, and he could drink his coffee and watch the news and feel glad that he wasn’t in school anymore.

His feeling of being awake and productive lasted until about eight, which is when the combination of weather coverage and endless speculation about snowfall totals tipped him into feeling edgy and unprepared instead. “Maybe someone should go to the grocery store,” he announced.

Al was the only other person in the room. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go if you promise to turn off the tv and avoid all weather coverage of any kind until I get back.” Harold looked at him. “I’m serious,” Al said. “You’re starting to look sort of glazed.”

Harold decided Al was right. “You’re right,” he said.

Al didn’t say ‘I know,’ which Harold thought was very restrained of him. And he took the list-making seriously enough to satisfy even Cate, who was called in to consult on what they should stock up on. “I’ve got this,” he said. “Really.”

After Al left, Harold figured he should remove himself from the temptation of instant news access. He collected baby Harry from Matthew in the basement play area and headed outside for a walk. (It was never quite that easy with a baby -- there were coats and hats and he debated the baby sling versus the stroller for a good five minutes. He decided to go with the sling; Harry was still small enough to fit under his parka, and that way they could keep each other warm.)

The street was quiet, and the sun was still shining. Nimby tagged along, zig-zagging along the side of the road next to them. They’d already had the conversation about what the neighbors would think about a dragon, but so far they were working on the theory that until someone complained, they were fine.

“This is nice,” he said to Harry. Harry didn’t say anything, which was pretty much what he expected. Harry’s vocal choices were sporadic at best. Except for the crying, of course, he was still all about that. He’d dropped off a little in the early fall, only to regain full intensity once he started teething.

“Look, there’s a duck.” Harold thought one of the most awesome things about having a baby was that it was the perfect excuse for talking to yourself. Even better than a phone, really, since lots of people thought talking on a phone was rude. Babies were like an adorable rudeness-free reason for saying random things at random times. You just said, ‘Oh, I was talking to the baby.’ (Harold had used it lots of times, often when he was actually talking on the phone, and trying not to look rude).

He took a minute to appreciate how far they’d come since Harry first arrived, and he and Al had only made it partway down the driveway with him before turning around. On this particular walk, Harold made a strategic decision to turn around right before the curve in the road that would bring the pond into sight. It was a small pond, but they hadn’t had a sustained cold snap that would ensure it was fully frozen, and Nimby still had a hit or miss relationship with swimming.

Of course, walking a short way down the street and back didn't actually take very long, even with a baby and a dragon involved in the trip. Harold took Harry back down to the play area and recruited Matthew to help keep them both distracted. (There was, originally, a good reason for having the baby play area in the basement, and it had to do with stairs, but now it was mostly just habit. Also, the basement had artificial turf carpet and a sky ceiling, and baby Harry liked it. Sabri and PJ were working on some kind of projection device for the ceiling, to add interest. Knowing them, it would show a lot more than just moving clouds.)

By ten, Harold was thoroughly distracted. And his back sort of hurt from bending over so much. Harry was reaching the point of being able to stand up if he was holding onto someone's hands, but he was particular about how it happened. There was a lot of bending and stooping involved.

By eleven, they were starting to get phone calls. 'Is school going to be cancelled?' (We don't know; the school will reverse 911 you all if it is.) 'Are we going to lose the power?' (We don't know; you should probably check your flashlight batteries just in case.) 'Is this snow going to stay on the ground until Christmas?' (We don't know; how would we possibly know that?) 'We need to buy new snow shovels, right?' (We recommend checking on your old snow shovels first, ma'am; you wouldn't want them to feel neglected.)

They started putting the calls on speaker so they could all participate. Harold felt quietly smug that they already bought new snow shovels. It was like the best of both worlds -- they got new shovels, and they didn't end up on television looking like they'd just moved into town and had never seen a snowstorm before.

By twelve, Al was back. "I'm back!" he called from the front porch. "Can I get a little help here?"

Al had a lot of groceries. "It was like a madhouse at the store," he said. "People were buying things like crazy. Are we sure the news stations aren't in league with grocery manufacturers?"

"I think we're pretty sure," Harold said. Then he looked at the sky. Still blue; sun still shining. "Well, maybe only a little sure," he amended. "What did you get; this bag weighs a ton."

They were ferrying bags in sections -- Harold and Al were outside, bringing things up to the porch, and Cate and Harry were inside carrying them from the door to the kitchen. "I may have gotten a little carried away," Al said.

Harold looked in the bag. "Is this all fruit?" he asked.

"There was this guy at the deli," Al started, and Harold sighed (in his head, of course, because doing it out loud would be rude -- Al had just done the grocery shopping, after all). Al and the deli; almost never a good combination. "And he was buying so many things! And then there were all these people buying bottled water! I wanted to buy a lot of something too, but I didn't want it to be something boring and predictable. So I got fruit. It was like a red herring."

A fruit-based red herring. Well, okay. "Did you get things other than fruit too?"

"Of course. Lots of bread, and peanut butter, crackers, cat food. Lots of cat food."

“Al? What are these for?” Cate held up a box.

Al hesitated. Harold was at the car, and Cate was on the porch, so he couldn’t really see the box in question. “What is it?” he asked.

“I can explain,” Al said. There was a long pause. Then he said, “They were on the same aisle as the bottled water?”

“Is this another red herring?” Harold asked.

“What are we going to do with five hundred face masks?” Cate wanted to know.

Face masks? Really? “Put them in the craft room,” he suggested. “We’ll think of something.” Once Cate had gone back inside, he walked over to Al. “So, did it work?”

Al grinned. “Yeah. I tried to look really alarmed and furtive, and then everyone else in the aisle grabbed a box too.”

“Awesome.”

“I know, right?” They high-fived outside, just in case that was one of those things that Harry would be embarrassed to see his parents laughing about.


Chapter 20 (day 11): In which the storm actually arrives.

“Hey, guys?” Matthew’s voice drifted down the basement stairs. “It’s snowing.”

It wasn’t the first snow of the winter, or anything, but it was the first time the snow was predicted to pile up in any kind of significant amounts. So far the “big storm” had been a lot of hype and not much action, but it was still enough to get everyone gathering around the kitchen windows to look outside.

Sure enough, it was snowing. “Actually, it’s snowing pretty hard,” Harold said.

“It’s still warm, though. I think that’s why the snowflakes look so big,” Cate said. “They’re all clumpy.”

He checked the clock — it was just after one, so hopefully the schools would stay open. A particularly large clump of flakes landed on the window and slid down. All their phones rang at once.

Harry was quickest on the draw, but he just frowned at his display. “Mine’s not ringing,” he said.

“It’s the school system,” Matthew announced.

“You’re not on the parent contact list?” Al asked Harry.

“You are?” Harry replied, his tone equally disbelieving.

Harold was listening along with the recording as Matthew narrated it for them. Apparently he’d been too quick to give up on an early dismissal; based on weather forecasts and predicted road conditions, the students were going to be released an hour early.

"Hey, where are Nick and Steve?" he asked suddenly. He could hear Bruno snoring under the kitchen table, but he hadn't seen Nick or Steve all day.

"They went back to their house to check on things," Harry said. "Steve said they wanted to make sure everything was set for the snow. He offered to go check Charlotte and Eliza's house too, but I said you'd do it."

Harold hadn't really thought about it, actually, but it was a good idea. He said, "Of course. I'll, um, go do that now, I think. Does anyone else need the Armada right now?"

No one did, and after a quick phone call to Charlotte to make sure they weren't home yet (they weren't; Charlotte thought it was hilarious that Harry had been the one to volunteer him for the job), there really weren't any more excuses for not leaving. The snow was sticking on the sides and middle of the road, but the driving lane was fairly clear.

He saw a bland-looking SUV pulled off on the shoulder about 50 yards past their driveway and figured the FBI must have started their in-person surveillance. Maybe he could get away with waving at them as he went by. He wasn't going to tempt his luck and pull over to "check if they needed help," but it was a small neighborhood. He could legitimately claim that he waved at just about everyone he saw on the street, just in case he was supposed to recognize them.

He waved. He also drove ten miles under the speed limit all the way to Charlotte and Eliza's house. Visibility was definitely an issue, although at least in the Armada the windshield didn't ice up.

Mama Tibbles greeted him at the door like she hadn't seen him in days. "I know that trick," he told her. "I also know that every family on this street has a bowl of food set out for you, and at least half of them let you inside to sleep on their sofas." The cat just looked at him. Harold sighed. "You're welcome to come home any time, you know. Baby Harry doesn't scream quite as much now. And Bruno's there; you like him. And Nina too."

Her expression said she'd consider it, at least. She'd been happily ensconced in the new house until the baby showed up, but she apparently had an aversion to babies, and had mostly moved to Charlotte and Eliza's. Harold still felt a little guilty about it.

There wasn't a lot to do in terms of storm-proofing. Heat was set, windows were all locked. He checked the porch and yard for things his sisters probably wouldn't want to lose under snow, and dragged out flashlights and lanterns. Of course, their snow shovels were perfectly accessible in the garage -- Harold comforted himself with the thought that maybe those shovels were actually from his house, and had migrated over with the cat at some point.

As a final chore, he spent a while searching for the hand-crank powered radio he was sure they must have in the house somewhere. It seemed like it should be fairly easy to find, and it would be nice to have available if they got home and the power was out. But after he found a box of pom-poms in the pantry, and a full set of checkers in the tool box under the stairs, he gave up Clearly, their organizational system, if it existed at all, was too mysterious to decipher in a single afternoon.

"I'm headed back; are you coming?" he called out. When he turned around, there was Mama Tibbles, ready to go like she was the one who'd been waiting for him. "I guess you are -- oh." Harold stopped with one hand on the doorknob.

There was a lot of snow out there. Inches more had fallen just since he'd arrived. The plows had to be out, but they hadn't touched the back roads yet, and it was just a blanket of white from lawn to driveway to road. "I'm not sure if we should be driving in that."

He weighed the inconvenience of having to call for a pickup versus the embarrassment and possible danger of getting into a car accident. That was the problem with driving a big vehicle -- you had to worry about the other cars a lot more. He dialed Al, who said he was perfectly happy to be inconvenienced. Of course, it was always safer to have two people doing the transporting than just one, especially since Mama Tibbles was coming along. (Al brought Tina, who said Harold owed her a coffee.)

"Welcome back," Al said, after they reappeared in the basement.

"Thanks," he replied, distracted. The basement was full of strangers. Which wasn't entirely unheard of, but not what he'd been expecting on a Friday afternoon without any advance notice. "What are all these people doing here?" he asked.

Tina laughed. "I told you he'd notice," she said.

"Right," Al said. "Well, it turns out there's some bad news about those generators. They're working, but they're sort of designed to have more lead time than 24 hours to build up a full charge."

"Meaning what?" Mama Tibbles was purring in his arms. It was nice.

"Meaning we can run the doorway, or we can run the house, but not both," Al said.

Tina added, "Meaning Al sent out a message through Trudy that if anyone wanted off-planet through this doorway, they'd better get here before the power goes out."

It was amazing how much a cat's purring could make you feel like they were laughing at you. "What?" Harold asked. Was Al allowed to do things like that? “Are you going to get in trouble for that?” he asked.

“No, probably not,” Al said. Harold looked at Tina for confirmation, and she shook her head. “Besides, it’s not all outgoing traffic,” he added, which didn’t make much sense to Harold, but maybe it was a political thing.

On the other hand, maybe not. Through a gap in the crowd, he saw PJ and Meshkalla studying a clipboard. Meshkalla looked up and waved, nudging PJ.

“Hi Harold!” PJ called. “We’re here to help!”

“Officially, they’re here to learn about emergency management,” Al said.

“Unofficially, they’re here to prove that the Cals believe Al will open the doorway if he needs to,” Tina said. “They can’t have it look like Al’s gone completely native, after all.”

Al looked a little disgruntled at Tina’s assessment, but he didn’t protest it, either. Harold decided it was one of those things he’d figure out when and if it became necessary, and most likely not a second before. “Okay,” he said.

“It’ll take me a little while to sort through everyone. Probably about an hour? Then we’ll shut it down. Nick and Steve are making pizza for dinner.” Al accompanied the last sentence with a minor eye roll; he and Harold had talked about Nick and Steve’s over-achievement in the kitchen before.

Harold figured that meant he was clear to head up to the kitchen and snack on ingredients, and that’s exactly what he did. Harry was already there, obviously an expert in the art of dinner prep snacking. Since it was Nick and Steve they were talking about, there were even plates involved, and napkins (no silverware, though — that’s where he drew the line). One hundred percent of the things you could top a pizza with were also delicious pre-pizza finger foods.

“Baby me’s upstairs napping,” Harry said. “His schedule’s a little off today. Welcome back, by the way; I didn’t hear you come in.”

And then Harold explained the whole story of the radio and the roads and leaving the Armada at Charlotte and Eliza’s, and bringing Mama Tibbles back with him, and it was entertaining enough that Nick gave up half a plate of green peppers in return. Outside, they could hear the wind picking up — the temperature was predicted to drop significantly overnight, without any real pause in the snowfall. Inside, though, it was warm and bright, and smelled like a pizzeria.

He almost didn’t hear the knock on the door, but you couldn’t miss the doorbell. “Is that the Imperial March?” he asked. “Who reprogrammed the doorbell this time?”

“Nadeka bet me Illia’s macaroon recipe that I wouldn’t do it,” Steve said.

“I like it,” Nick added. “It has a certain flair.”

Harold wasn’t even sure where to start with that, so he said nothing, and that meant no one was talking when they heard Cate open the door and say, “Hi! Can I help you?”

The voice that answered was too quiet for Harold to make out actual words, but across the table from him, Harry paled dramatically. “I have to go,” he said, and disappeared.

Harold blinked. He hadn’t known Harry could do that. He didn’t exactly know what it was Harry had done. “Did you know he could do that?” he asked. Nick and Steve looked as surprised as he felt.

Nick shook his head, and Cate led one familiar face and three new ones into the kitchen. The familiar one was Rob. Harold was willing to guess the other three were his trainees; they looked cold, sort of like they’d been sitting out in a car in the middle of a snowstorm.

“Hi,” he said.

Steve waved, and Cate started explaining something about the phones, and Nick wandered close enough to say quietly, “Is that your FBI agent? I heard about him. You guys get all the fun.” (Then he sat down in Harry’s chair, making it a lot less obvious that there had been one extra person in the room less than a minute ago.)

“Our car broke down,” Rob announced. (Harold had noticed that whenever Rob spoke, it generally sounded more like an announcement than an explanation; it was probably an FBI thing.)

Harold was hugely impressed that Cate’s second round of explanations of local phone service was even more detailed and meandering than her first. All of the trainees looked both baffled and suspicious. Rob pulled out his phone like he was checking something, but Harold got a text message a minute later. “They debated whether pretending the car was broken to gain access was a legal strategy - then we drained the battery for real by accident.”

He wondered if grammatically correct texting was a Bureau requirement. Really, would an emoticon or two have gone amiss? It wasn’t like there was no humor to be found in that story.

Harry was quickly realizing he should have asked for more clarification when Rob was telling them about his new trainees. For instance, they must have read whatever file the FBI had on Harold and Al, right? And that file must have it in writing that Rob had met them before -- multiple times, in fact. But what did it say exactly?

Harold was pretty sure it didn't say Rob had helped run security at his eleventh high school reunion, and that they'd run into a dragon from the future and a man experimenting with travel between alternate universes (unsuccessfully). He also felt confident in assuming that nowhere in the file did it explain that one of Rob's usual team members was actually the son of a space pirate who had once kidnapped Al (mostly accidentally).

Really, Harold just wanted to know if he was supposed to act like he normally would around Rob, or if it would be better to be more formal. He didn't actually know what Rob's last name was, unfortunately, which kind of took that option off the table. He could probably get away with not using his name at all, for a while at least. Was he even supposed to know Rob was with the FBI? He was pretty sure Rob had introduced himself that way, back when they'd first met after the road trip, but he wasn't saying anything about it now.

"You can use my phone," he offered, finally figuring out why Cate wouldn't let them use the landline. The only landline phone they had was in the basement, which they'd much prefer the FBI stayed away from. "My service is fine here."

The trainees looked even more suspicious at his offer, but one of them took his phone anyway. Harold smiled at her and said, "The local police department is already programmed in, under 'Charlotte - PD,'" he told her. "My sister's an officer."

He noticed she typed in the number from a business card anyway. Probably a smart idea -- after all, the pre-programmed number could have been part of a fakeout attempt. Like, it could have gone to some shady associate who would take the call and send a fake police car to pick the agents up, and then they'd be trapped!

Harold shook his head quickly and tried not to look guilty. Why did he always have criminal thoughts when officers of the law were in close proximity? Charlotte said it gave him a guilty expression.

"We finished! They're all gone!" PJ came bursting through the cellar door with the news, only to stop and stare at the new occupants of the kitchen. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

Meshkalla arrived with Al seconds later, just as one of the trainees asked, “Who’s all gone?”

PJ looked uncertainly at Harold, like she was actually concerned about strangers in the house. Once again, he was utterly impressed by her acting ability. He said, “It’s okay.” To the agent, he said, “The girls are writing a play.” It was a classic excuse, after all.

PJ picked up the story from there. “It’s a re-enactment of the Earth’s geological history. We just killed off all the dinosaurs!”

Harold had absolutely no idea whether the information she spouted off about the Mesozoic era was factual or imaginary, but she filled the time between phone call and police pickup with no trouble at all, and really, what was the likelihood that one of the FBI trainees would be an expert in dinosaurs?


Chapter 21 (day 12): In which it is still snowing.

"I feel like I shouldn't have said that, even in my own head," Harold said later that night. "Like thinking something like that was tempting fate, and now -- of course -- one of Rob's trainees is going to turn out to be a secret paleontologist, or a shape-shifting pteranodon, or something."

"Really?" Al said.

"Well, maybe not the pteranodon," Harold allowed.

Al laughed. "You're not just bringing this up now so we don't have to get out of bed and go check the house, right?"

"That might be part of it." According to his phone, it was about one in the morning -- officially Saturday, but just barely. He'd had to check his phone instead of the clock, because (as predicted) the power was out.

As the responsible adults of the house, they should get up and check on everything. Al could get the generators going, and they could make sure everyone was okay. Except that they could hear Harry singing in the nursery, and Cate and Matthew were probably still awake anyway. "I guess we should get up," Harold said. "If the power hasn't come on again yet, it'll probably be out for at least a few more hours."

As soon as they were out of the bed, their spots had been claimed by three cats and one dragon pretending to be a cat. "I see you," Al said sternly. "Hiding your head under the blankets doesn't mean we can't still see you." The blanket twitched, and Bob looked over at them with an irritated expression, like his sleep was the one being interrupted.

"Fine," Al said. "But only till we get back!"

Harold wisely said nothing. It wasn't like Al was the only one who spoiled the animals, after all. They checked the house. Harold had been right -- everyone else was still awake. It was also still snowing. So Harold followed Al to the basement, and watched sleepily as Al flipped switches and checked connections. "Can we power the whole house with those?" he asked.

"Sort of," Al said. "It really depends. Some things take a lot more electricity than others. Like the refrigerator, say. We could probably run all the appliances and stuff all at once, but only for a short period of time. We should be able to run on minimal power for a much longer period, especially since we can recharge every day."

Harold nodded like he understood anything about how generators worked, which hadn't even been true when they'd been using Earth made generators, instead of alien ones. He thought about mentioning it, but he didn't think he was awake enough to take in much information. "I guess none of us were right about when we'd meet the new FBI agents," he said instead.

"Technically, we weren't introduced," Al said. "I think we're still in the game. Rob didn't tell us their names, and they didn't use each other's names while they were here."

"I think that's a technicality," he said. "They were in the house."

"Jimmy Hoffa was arrested for tax evasion, right? Technicalities are important in the law. It totally counts." Al looked smug, and Harold couldn't fault him; that was a good argument.

“That’s a good argument,” he said.

Al flipped a final switch, and the lights came on all around them. “There,” he said, nodding.

“Any chance we can just tell people not to use anything but the lights and heat until morning, and figure everything else out then?” Harold asked.

Al nodded again. “Absolutely. This night thing is getting ridiculous. Why can’t we have an emergency in the day, for once?” Then he looked shocked. “Now I know how you feel. I can’t believe I just said that. Was that out loud?”


Chapter 22 (day 12): In which the power is out (still) and it is snowing (still).

Saturday morning dawned, but it was not bright and clear. No, it was still cloudy and snowing, but with the added inconvenience of not being able to use running water or turn on the radio.

“At least we still have heat,” Al said philosophically.

“Were we worried about that?” Harold asked. Al shrugged. Apparently they had been. “Huh. Well, yes, heat is good.”

They were the first to the kitchen, but the rest of the house’s current residents showed up soon after. Nick and Steve were first, coming in from outside with Bruno. (Harold was once again grateful that cats didn’t demand to be walked. Nimby enjoyed it, but was happy enough to walk himself, or just stay inside.)

Cate was next, along with PJ and Meshkalla, followed by Matthew, and finally Harry with the baby. Harold broke out the cereal, but thought twice about bowls. He still wasn’t totally used to having a well instead of being on town water — it was hardly noticeable, except when the electricity went out, and they suddenly couldn’t use the sink. Given that, paper bowls seemed like the smarter choice for breakfast.

Al laid out food for the cats, and Harold fiddled with the computer. It was fully battery-powered, so it wouldn’t put any extra strain on the generator. It didn’t take long to figure out that the phone lines weren’t working any more than the power; he couldn’t access the internet for news.

“Phones are out,” he said, abandoning the computer in favor of cereal.

“What? Oh, the internet. We must have a radio that runs on batteries somewhere, right?” Matthew looked around, like one might appear in the kitchen in front of him.

Al rolled his eyes. “Just turn on the television,” he said. “It’s fine. We probably shouldn’t run a bunch of things all at once, but it’s not a problem to catch thirty minutes of news. That’s why we have generators.”

The news didn’t tell them much that was actually new. The power was out, and phones were down. Not just for them, but for tens of thousands of people across the state. Road crews were working, utility crews were working, but the basic message was this: it could be a while before everything’s up and running again. Don’t expect much until the snow actually stops. Don’t do anything stupid, and go to your local emergency shelter if you need anything.

They turned it off after the third run-through of the same information. There were only so many times you could see the same set of photographs of snowy trees before you wondered why you were watching it on television. They could see the same thing out their windows, after all.

“So,” Cate said. “What should we do today?” There was a brief but spirited debate about the merits of clearing snow twice (once right away, once after the snow finally stopped, hopefully sometime that afternoon), or just once (later). The laters won, and they had another debate — discussion — about whether or not Al’s Jimmy Hoffa argument was valid in terms of the FBI agent guesses.

Ultimately, there was nothing that couldn’t wait a while, and they all drifted to the living room with various books, magazines, and, of course, baby toys. Harold could hear the generators humming in the basement, but the other house noises he’d gotten so used to were absent. No dishwasher, washing machine, or dryer; no music playing from anywhere.

He’d turned his phone off to conserve the battery power, but he checked it at noon and found a message from Charlotte. She and Eliza were waiting out the storm in Philadelphia, and wished him and Al the best. Charlotte also offered up the use of their water; they were on town water, so it was probably still working, and they could wash dishes and refill water bottles as needed.

The snow was finally tapering off, but the temperature was rising steadily — ice could become a factor, and wouldn’t that just be the cherry on top?

The potential for ice changed the snow clearing dynamic considerably, and they all hustled into parkas and boots. Al somehow wound up being the one to stay inside with the baby, while Harold wielded a shovel on the porches and steps. (Al did follow him out after there was some clear space, with baby Harry in his tiny snow suit and hat. They talked, and it made the work go more quickly.)

He hadn’t realized how dependent he’d become on his phone. He kept checking it, only to remember that it was turned off. Luckily, shoveling snow was a distracting job.

Nick came jogging up the driveway. He pulled off his hat when he got to the porch. “The road’s clear, sort of,” he said.

He wiggled his fingers at baby Harry, and Harold frowned. “Sort of?” he asked.

“Well, the plows have been through, but not all that recently. I wouldn’t want to drive on them right now, that’s for sure.”

Harold sighed. He’d been optimistically hoping the power would be back on by dinnertime, but it was looking less and less likely. Lunch, however, had finally moved to the top of the priority list, and it wasn’t like you needed to cook anything for lunch. Sure, your options were a little more limited once you took out the microwave and the toaster oven, but everyone liked sandwiches, right?


Chapter 23 (day 12): In which there is misuse of police tape and nobody sings songs.

By midafternoon, the power company's recorded phone message still sounded exactly the same as the one they'd heard in the morning. The time was changed, but outage numbers were still in the tens of thousands, and they were predicting multiple days without power for all rural areas. ("In other words, us," Matthew had said. "Sometimes I miss DC." Cate had reminded him that DC had its own weather problems, and in fact had already had a massive snowstorm that winter that had shut the city down.)

On the plus side, the precipitation had slowed to the point where you could sort of pretend it wasn't snowing or raining anymore, just sort of vaguely spitting cold and wet stuff every once in a while.

PJ and Meshkalla both seemed a little bored. They clearly thought any sort of emergency management practice should involve more emergency, less waiting around for things to happen. Harold set them up with a roll of police caution tape and told them to tape off anything they weren't supposed to be using, as a reminder. (He'd already tried to use the microwave twice, only to remember at the last second that they were conserving electricity.)

"I'm not sure if this is the real tape, or the stuff you can buy at the store," he told them. It looked real, but why would he have that? Charlotte was never careless with any of her police supplies, and as far as he knew the house had never been cordoned off for any reason.

"We can make it into advent decorations too, if you want," Meshkalla offered. Harold agreed, mostly because he had absolutely no idea how they were planning to do it. He was guessing glitter was going to be involved somehow.

"Just make sure you clean up afterwards, okay?" he said.

"We will!"

That was two people entertained, at least. Al was supposed to be on baby duty, but he'd traded with Cate to see if he could recreate the STS between their house and Charlotte and Eliza's. He'd done it before, during the summer with the hurricane -- they'd had instantaneous transport between three houses at that point, but Al wasn't sure if he could make the same thing work again. It had something to do with the weather, apparently. Harold was mostly just good for moral support in these situations.

"Want me to bring you a snack?" he asked.

Al considered it. "Sure. And maybe some water?"

It was a good thing they had so many water bottles. There was nothing like not being able to pour yourself a glass of water from the sink to make you suddenly feel thirsty all the time.

Steve caught up with him in the kitchen. “I found your emergency radio in the loft,” he said. “It looks like it has one of those universal cell phone chargers.”

Harold didn’t think Steve’s expression matched his good news. “And?” he said.

“I tried it with mine,” Steve said. “It works, it just… takes a really long time. Like, really long.”

He managed to restrain himself from saying 'well, it's not like we have anything better to do,' because he thought that probably sounded too defeatist. "Okay, how about this?" he said instead. "We'll keep the hand charger as a last resort. Why don't you call Betty; find out if she can help out with the phones somehow. They must have some kind of solar chargers, or supercharged batteries, or something, right? We can probably figure out some way to rig them to work with Earth phones."

Steve grinned. "And by 'we,' you mean Al?"

Harold nodded. "Absolutely. I just provide the snacks; Al provides the genius."

"You know, when she hears that Meshkalla's here, Kim's going to want to visit too. Are you guys still open for non-doorway travel and company?"

"Sure." Harold had learned not to say things like 'the more the merrier.' "Kim's always welcome; Betty and Matthew too if they'd like. The kids would love more company, I'm sure. I don't think it's been quite as exciting as they were expecting."

"Yet," Steve added, and Harold just laughed. It was probably true, after all. Things did have a way of changing unexpectedly.

Of course, the most logical place to put the stationary transport system would be one of the bathrooms. The downstairs bathroom was a little close to the front door, though, and the upstairs bathroom seemed too far away from everything else. "If we have to wash dishes, no one's going to want to carry them upstairs to do it," Harold said.

"Downstairs bathroom it is," Al said. "We can just have the kids put caution tape around it or something. I think I can get it up pretty quickly, now that I've compensated for the colder temperature outside. Cate said I could use her watch along with mine, and I've modified a bunch of the emergency beacons to route the auxiliary power through."

Harold said, "Okay, great," like he had any idea what Al was talking about, and settled in with the snacks to watch. Everyone could find him easily enough in the front hall, and it’s not like there was anything else to do, not really.

His phone rang a few minutes later.

"Hey, it's Toby." Toby's voice came through loud and clear, and Harold took a minute to be grateful for cell service. (It was an unusual feeling; he thought he'd better embrace it while he had the chance.) "We had three trees come down around our apartment building this morning; we have no power and the university is evacuating everyone to the student union building. Can we come stay with you guys instead? Sam's here too."

"Yeah, of course." He had never asked how Sam and Toby ended up sharing a campus apartment; as far as he knew, Sam didn't attend the local university. Al looked over with a curious expression, and Harold put a hand over the bottom half of the phone to tell him, "Toby and Sam want to stay here till the university gets power back to their apartment." To Toby, he said, "Can you get here driving, or do you want to transport in? Basement's clear, if you do."

"We'll drive," Toby said. "The roads are getting better, anyway, and I heard you have FBI on your house again. It's probably better not to have too many people show up without explanation."

Harold realized he'd done exactly that the day before. The FBI had clearly seen him leave in a vehicle, and he'd never driven the vehicle back, but was somehow back at the house. He wondered what they'd make of that.

Then again, that was sort of the point of the training exercise; they were supposed to be the demonstration that people could be doing mysterious and inexplicable things that were nevertheless perfectly legal (or at least, not illegal). 'No planetary rules against it' totally counted as a defensible argument.

"Ask if he'll stop at a grocery store on the way," Al said.

"Did you catch that?" Harold asked Toby.

"Yeah, we can do that. It's crazy over there, but we'll get anything that hasn't been picked over already. Any requests?"

"Nothing that needs to be microwaved or toasted," Harold said. "We've got the house on generators, but we're trying to keep it to heat and lights so they don't run down too quickly."

"What about the oven?" Toby asked.

"We can use the stove top -- it's a gas range, so we can self-light it. That's it, though."

"Ask if they can bring takeout," Al said. "Are any of the restaurants open?"

"Al's working on a project," Harold explained. "And we had sandwiches for lunch."

Toby laughed. "We'll see what we can do," he promised. "And we'll plan to see you before dinner."

“They’ll see what they can do,” Harold relayed to Al, and Al gave a distracted thumbs-up as he stared determinedly at the array of circuitry he had laid out on the floor. Harold pushed the box of crackers in his direction, and went to find out if anyone had let Nimby back inside yet.


Chapter 24 (day 12): In which there is misuse of crackers, and everyone sings songs.

Harold was really, really glad he hadn’t been the one to go looking for more groceries. Sam and Toby showed up in the late afternoon, just as the sun was starting to set. (It was still cloudy, so mostly that just meant it was getting darker; no brilliant winter sunset for them.)

“The store was a little weird,” Sam said, while Toby made expansive hand gestures behind him that seemed to indicate Sam was grossly underselling the situation.

“I can see that,” Nick said, pulling a box out of one of the shopping bags. It was a gingerbread train kit. It joined the gingerbread sleigh, gingerbread tree, and gingerbread elf village on the kitchen table. “What’s with the gingerbread?”

“They were all out of the regular house kits,” Toby said, like that explained everything.

“We thought it would be a good activity,” Sam added. “It doesn’t take any electricity, or cooking, or anything. Everything you need is in the kit.”

Toby said, “Plus, that was one of the only things left in the store. It was pretty shopped out.”

Apparently, other items emergency snowstorm power outage shoppers deemed unnecessary included marshmallows, peanuts (still in the shells), and cheese.

“Cheese, really? I would have thought that would go quickly, for sandwiches and stuff.”

Toby shook his head. “Bread was gone, man. There was no bread anywhere. We got a bunch of crackers, though. Sam can whip up a mean entree using a skillet and a box of Triscuits.”

Luckily, they didn't have to test Sam's skillet abilities. Matthew and Betty showed up, along with Kim, and brought enough dinner for everyone. Hot dinner, even, which was fantastically delicious after a day of cold foods.

Harold was pretty sure it was even Earth food, but he didn't want to seem rude by asking. After all, it tasted good, and it got the okay from Matthew (as far as Harold knew, Matthew was the one with the most extensive experience of what not to eat when sampling alien cuisine), so did it really matter what planet it originated on? (Hopefully not, Harold told himself.)

"Is it supposed to do that?" Toby asked.

Harold was glad to see he wasn't pointing at his food. On the other hand, he had been hoping it was his imagination that the lights all flickered when the refrigerator motor kicked on. "After dinner project," he said. "Somebody check and find out if you can keep a freezer from defrosting by packing it full of ice."

"Can I stay overnight?" Kim asked.

"We'd all like to stay, actually," Betty added. "It's part of our advent gift for the house."

This whole advent thing was turning out to be more complicated than he'd originally thought. But he'd meant it when he'd said they were all welcome, and he repeated the sentiment. He wasn't sure where they were going to sleep, but they were welcome to stay. Maybe they could sleep in the living room? It smelled nice in there with the tree.

Right, the tree. "Maybe we should decorate the trees tomorrow," Harold suggested. "Then we'll have plenty of time to do all three of them."

Everyone seemed to think Sunday was an acceptable day for tree decorating, which left the question of what they were going to do that evening. Normally, with such a big crowd in the house, they would put in a movie, or try to get them all outside, but neither of those were going to work. For one thing, they didn't have any advent movies. Harold was back on baby watching duty, so his evening was covered, but that left a lot of potentially bored house guests.

Thank goodness for the gingerbread kits.

“Can you eat these candies?”

“Does anyone have any more red ones? I can’t finish the sign for the elves’ sheriff station without one more red candy.”

“The marshmallows are real food, right? Can I eat those?”

“This side of the train looks a little crooked.”

“Why would anyone want gumdrops on their roof? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Does this icing look like snow to you?”

Harold wandered through the kitchen every few minutes with Harry just to check on everyone’s progress (and to eat marshmallows). It was pretty impressive; candy was an excellent decorating tool — who knew?

“And now we sing carols, right?” Kim asked. She’d abandoned her seat at the table in favor of patting Bruno, who looked like he would be perfectly content to sit with his head in her lap all night if she’d let him.

PJ and Meshkalla looked expectantly at Nick and Steve. Harold wondered if he’d missed something while he’d been changing Harry’s diaper, because he didn’t remember anything in the plans about singing. He’d ask Al, except that Al had disappeared off to the basement with Matthew and Betty, presumably working on some sort of technological wizardry that they would reveal when it was ready.

“We did promise a few carols,” Nick said. “As long as it’s okay with Harold and Al.”

Which is how they all ended up in the living room (most of them on the floor, since there was in no way enough furniture for them all to sit on), singing along with “Deck the Halls” and “Frosty the Snowman.”

It was also how Harold learned that he didn’t actually know the words to most of the classic Christmas songs — just the first few lines, and the choruses. (Kim knew them all, which he did his best to find adorable instead of worrying, and he dozed off in the rocking chair when Matthew took the baby off for a snack.)


Chapter 25 (day 13): In which Harold and Al have a lot of help decorating their Christmas trees.

If someone had asked Harold about it ahead of time, or if he'd spent much time thinking about it, he might have guessed that -- when the time came to decorate the trees -- the residents of the house would split into three roughly equal groups and do the job mostly separately. After all, the trees were on three different floors. There was a reason they'd ended up with three trees, and it was because there was enough distance between them to merit additional greenery.

That wasn’t exactly how it worked out.

"Harold, do you and Al have any more green icicles?" He heard the question before he actually saw PJ; the way she appeared in the doorway and caught herself on the edge of it suggested she'd gotten a running start from the loft stairs and skidded down the hallway in her socks. It was fun -- he'd done it several times himself. Each time, of course, he'd had to fight the nagging sensation that his mom was about to appear to scold him about slipping and hitting his head, or running into someone and hurting them. Being a grownup was harder than it had looked when he wasn't one.

"Green icicles?" he asked. Harold hadn't known they had any green icicles at all, let alone any more.

PJ held up what she was looking for. "Yeah, like this," she said. "Harry has a theme going."

Harold looked at it. Then he looked at Al. Al shrugged. "Are you sure that's one of our ornaments?" Al asked.

"There was a whole box of them, but we used a bunch yesterday." PJ seemed sure, and Harold held out a hand for the ornament in question. Maybe a closer look would jog his memory.

"Is this made out of pipe cleaners?" he asked.

"Oh, hey, there's a whole basket of pipe cleaner things over by the sofa," Al said. "There might be more in there."

PJ took the basket with her. "Really, a whole basket full of things made out of pipe cleaners?" Harold said. It staggered the imagination. It was a big basket.

"I'm going to run downstairs to see if they have have the reindeer with the candy canes in them," Al said. "I'm pretty sure those have pipe cleaners too, actually."

"Pipe cleaner manufacturers must love this time of year," Harold said.

They were combining 'decorate the trees' with 'get your exercise for the day' by encouraging everyone to travel back and forth between the three decorating sites as many times as possible.

He was pretty sure they were also stretching the concept of 'tree decorating' to its limits. Kim had gotten bored of the whole thing fairly quickly -- after she'd failed to return from an ornament-hunting trip, they'd found her painting Nimby's claws with nail polish. Last time he'd seen her, she was building a fort in the loft with Steve. (It was near the tree, at least.)

Cate showed up while Al was in the basement, bringing Tina and an armload of beaded garlands (thankfully, not a pipe cleaner in sight). It was the first time he'd seen Tina all day. He was fairly sure she wasn't actually living at the house, but it was hard to tell. The power was still out all over town, and it was blurring the lines of resident and guest even more than usual.

"Hey Tina," he said. "Thanks for putting the word out to everyone about the driveway."

(Thanks to the generators, and a little assist from Matthew and Betty -- Harold didn't know what the mats littering the house were, exactly, but they would charge just about anything -- their house was now as popular as the wifi cafe in the next town over for people looking to recharge batteries, phones, computers -- he'd even seen a cordless drill. They'd had to assign the sides of the driveway: right hand side if you were staying awhile, left if you were going to need to get your car out again quickly. If it kept them from having to push anyone else's vehicle out of a snowdrift, he'd be happy.)

Tina waved it off. "No problem," she said. "Happy advent."

"Nina's under the tree," he told them. "Just a heads up. I'm going to check on the loft, I hear Harry has a theme going."

"You'll like it; it's very colorful," Cate said.

He detoured through the kitchen for an apple (they were all eating a lot of fruit, thanks to Al -- breakfast conversation had centered around scurvy, of all things, and how they definitely weren't going to get it), said hello to the students studying in the craft room, and pulled up short before reaching the stairs. There in the driveway were Rob and his trainees, and one of them was taking pictures of car license plates.

Harold opened the door. He was pretty photography on private property required permission; even if it didn't, he wasn't thrilled with it. Just because they weren't doing anything wrong didn't mean they didn't have anything to hide. "Hi there!" he called. Sure enough, the camera was quickly tucked away.

"Come on in!" he said, and they all hustled towards the porch. "You will have to take your boots off," he told them. "House rules; there's a corral and everything. We've got kids staying over; it keeps them from slipping, and no one wants to step in a puddle of melted snow in their socks."

Shoe removal was not a problem, apparently, and Harold realized he had a prime opportunity to win the introductions bet staring him in the face. "Did you get your car troubles sorted out?" he said conversationally, holding the door open. "I'm Harold, by the way. I’m sure you already knew that. And I've met Rob, of course."

He waited.

"I'm Claudia," one of the trainees said finally, and held out her hand to shake.

"Sophia," the second one said with a brief smile and wave. She was the one who’d been taking pictures.

"Tavia," the third one said.

Perfect. Now he just had to get them to say their names to everyone else, and he was golden. It wouldn't keep him from introducing the smiling Sophia to Meshkalla's technology-destroying aura, but it did give him a sense of accomplishment about the day in general.

Rob said, “We’ve been recruited by the local PD to help check door to door to make sure anyone who needs to get to a shelter has help.” He looked around at the clearly-well-powered and crowded house. “I’m guessing you’re fine here,” he added dryly.

Harold’s emergency beacon squawked at him, and he heard Matthew’s voice in stereo, from the kitchen and the beacon. “I’ve got like four bunches of bananas, here. Two minutes to call in with your location if you want one. Scurvy prevention and potassium!”

The trainee who wasn’t Sophia or Claudia frowned. “What’s that?” she said, looking at his beacon.

Claudia said, “I don’t think bananas prevent scurvy.”

Harold said, “Yeah, we’re good here.”


Chapter 26 (day 14): In which it's Monday all day long.

"Maybe the power's back on." Harold suggested it optimistically, while he was still lying in bed. He thought it was easiest to be optimistic about Mondays before they really got rolling.

Al stuck his head out of the bathroom. "It's still off, unfortunately. Believe me, we'll know when it comes back on. I haven't quite figured out how to make it a smooth transition, unfortunately."

Harold wasn't sure he wanted to know what Al thought would be an obvious signal. Given their track record, it could be anything from a small beep to a house-destroying explosion. And it was a Monday -- the odds were good it wouldn't be the small beep. He decided not to ask. "What are we doing today?" he asked instead, still not leaving the bed.

There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Al called.

It was Harry (both of them). "Can I leave the baby with you?" he asked. "Matthew and Sam are going out in the woods to see if we have enough downed branches to do a bonfire tonight."

Harold sat up. "Sure, bring him in. How's he doing this morning?"

"Good -- he's already eaten and he's been awake for a while, so he should be ready for a nap soon. Oh, and I have this." Harry was divesting himself of all the baby gear that seemed to collect, no matter how hard you tried to travel light. A hat, socks, baby Harry's giraffe toy, the wash cloth that was his current favorite (no one knew why), and the ever-present teething ring.

The rings had come in a set -- green, blue, and orange. Baby Harry loved the orange one, but was iffy with the others. Harold had laughed (and mocked, he was willing to admit) when he'd read the packaging: 'can be worn as a bracelet!' it said.

"Who would ever do that?" he remembered asking. Well, the answer was: anyone who only had two hands. Even cargo pants had a limited number of pockets. And really, which was cleaner; your wrist, or your pocket? The baby already got plenty of germ introduction when he dropped the rings on the floor; Harold was drawing the line at pocket lint.

"Have fun out there," Al said. Nimby bounded out of the bathroom after him and headed straight for Harry.

Me me me me me me they could hear him broadcasting.

"Yes, you can come too," Harry said. "Tired of being inside already? It's still cold out, you know."

Nimby was undeterred. "If he runs into trouble, give us a call," Al said. "I can come and get him." Harold nodded, and was secretly impressed at Al's sideways reminder to take emergency beacons.

"Is anyone else going?" he said.

"No one else is awake yet," Harry said. "We're leaving early so we can make a couple trips and still be back in time to set everything up before dark. It's sunny now, but it's supposed to cloud over this afternoon."

After Harry left, there wasn't much reason to hang around in bed -- despite what he'd said, baby Harry seemed totally awake and raring to go. "Time for breakfast?" Harold said.

Eggs were out -- they'd only been able to buy a dozen on their last grocery run, and they'd gone quickly. "There must be something we can make that would be a hot breakfast," Al said.

"Not oatmeal," Harold said.

"Something that's not oatmeal," Al amended. He looked around the kitchen. "Cheese sandwiches? You're supposed to be able to make those in a pan, right?"

"I think we're out of bread."

Al frowned. "Huh. Well, there's always fruit, I guess. What about pancakes?" Harold was pretty sure there had been a box of pancake mix when he'd gone to bed the night before, but it was nowhere to be found. Maybe they'd missed a midnight pancake feast.

“Okay, we also have no coffee,” Harold said.

They sat down at the table to regroup. “How about this — hot chocolate and marshmallows for breakfast now, and we’ll send the next person who gets up into town to find us something else?”

Meshkalla was actually the next person to enter the kitchen, so they had to wait until Nick showed up to implement their plan, but it worked just as well with that small alteration.

Once they’d set a precedent of leaving the house, it just made sense to keep doing it. Nick and Steve took PJ and Meshkalla to the mall (because emergency management also included emergency shopping, he guessed, holiday and otherwise). They took a wish list, at any rate.

Tina had showed up again for breakfast, which Harold thought maybe meant she was living there, at least temporarily. She and Cate convinced Toby (and the other students they’d somehow collected) to take a break and drive around and see what there was to see. (“Car stereo!” Cate had said, and that had been enough. They’d promised to pick up the Armada on their way back.)

He stood on the front porch with Al as they drove off. Al was waving baby Harry’s hand at the departing vehicle. “Should we go anywhere?” he asked.

Harold shrugged. “I’m good here if you are. There’s no cars left, anyway.”

“We could find one,” Al said confidently. “But I’m good too. The cats are all here, and we have food now.”

Harold set up one of the portable music players (it was charging in their house, and it didn’t have a name on it, so he figured it was fair game) to play Christmas music, and they settled in the living room, which had the benefit of getting natural light and having the most comfortable furniture. Nina and Bob were book-ending the sofa. He and Al sat on the floor with Harry, until he got tired of trying to explore the tree and fell asleep.

Other than a trio of grandparents passing through who wanted to pluck an advent poinsettia (they’d been talked out of it eventually, mostly because the house didn’t actually have any flowers in it) the biggest excitement came when Mama Tibbles consented to Harry patting her, very briefly.


Chapter 27 (day 14): In which there is a bonfire, and Harold doesn’t attend.

“Someone should stay inside with the baby.” That had been his first attempt. Toby signed himself up for baby watching, though, and said he needed to have his bonding time with Harry. He’d been away at school all semester, after all. What if Harry forgot him?

“What if someone calls and needs help?” That was his second attempt. Cate had just given him a funny look, and said, “The phones are portable for a reason, you know.”

“I think I might be coming down with something.” Sadly, that excuse had been doomed from the start, since he clearly wasn’t sick. (He knocked on wood after thinking that, just in case.)

Finally, Al pulled him aside in the utility room. “You know, if you don’t want to go to the bonfire, you don’t have to,” he said.

Harold ran his hands through his hair. “I just have this thing.”

“About bonfires? Fire in general? Burning brush that may or may not have been gathered on our own property?”

“Wait, what?”

“Just kidding.”

Harold shook his head. “No, it’s not the fire. It’s just — I don’t know, I have a weird nesting thing, or something. Being outside after dark in the winter makes me twitchy.”

To his relief, Al acted like that was a perfectly normal statement. “No problem,” he said. Hey, how come I didn’t know that about you?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this is our first bonfire together.”

“I nominate you for hot cocoa duty,” Al said. “You can stay inside but still be part of everything. And you get first pick of the mugs that way.”

That excuse was way better than any of the ones he’d picked. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Al patted his shoulder. “I’m sure you would have. My brother’s the same way; he always picks some sort of food-related reason to stay where it’s warm and well-lit. It’s the rest of the family that goes out running around in the dark.”

Harold smiled, picturing Al wandering around at night with a flashlight. He didn’t have to imagine it, really; they’d been in that situation multiple times. “Thanks,” he said.

“Happy advent.”

It was becoming a catchphrase in the house. ‘Happy advent’ was now an acceptable replacement for everything from ‘you’re welcome’ to ‘good morning.’ Harold kind of liked it, although he wasn’t sure what they were going to do once it wasn’t December any more. ‘Happy January’ just didn’t seem to have the same ring to it.


Chapter 28 (Day 15): In which Harold tries very, very hard not to refer to anyone as a special snowflake.

“I still can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“We’re the only house on the street that has any heat,” Al reminded him. “And they have to have the party before Wednesday or they can’t guarantee the products will be here in time for Christmas.”

Harold pointed a soapy finger at him. They were washing dishes at Charlotte and Eliza’s, in preparation for the big event. “There were certain things that I told myself I’d never do. That list included tattooing anyone’s name anywhere on my body, dressing myself and my pets in matching clothes, and hosting a tupperware party.”

Al laughed. “Bob would revolt, I think. And it’s not really a tupperware party.”

It wasn’t, but Harold didn’t think a ‘Special Seasons’ party was any better. It was possible it was worse. “I think a Special Seasons party may be worse,” he said.

“I was going to go anyway,” Al said. “I’ve never been to one.”

Harold never wanted to be the bearer of bad news, but he didn’t think Al was missing much. Eliza had gotten into the whole party hosting thing at one point, the ones for kitchen tools. He thought they were still using the cocktail napkins she’d kept ending up with as free gifts.

Al was right, though. The Bakers had always been good neighbors, and it wasn’t like they could open the house up for everything except hosting a party that had been scheduled weeks ago, and desperately needed a new location (one with both lights and heat, preferably).

“Did you hear they invited the FBI?” he asked.

Al looked intrigued. “Really? Are they coming?”

“Cameron told me they RSVP’d right away when they heard you were going to be there.” Harold watched Al carefully dry around the rim of what he assumed must be a sugar bowl. They’d been using it for crayons and paper clips, but it matched the rest of the set.

“Maybe surveillance is really boring,” Al suggested.

“Maybe they think we’re running an illegal smuggling ring under the cover of suburban tupperware parties,” Harold said.

“Smuggling what? They know we have a small child to worry about, right? How would we have time for something like that?” Al waved the towel for emphasis.

“I don’t know; I haven’t even had time to think about holiday gifts for Cate and Matthew. And Toby. I guess illegal smuggling rings probably don’t give gifts to their minions.”

By that point, Harold was pretty sure they were washing dishes that didn’t even belong to them. He hadn’t recognized any of the last five mugs. “Are we washing the neighbors’ dishes, too?” he said.

Al looked at the bowl he was drying. “I have no idea. This bowl doesn’t really look familiar, though.”

They finished anyway, because what else were they going to do? Tell everyone ‘oh, we decided not to wash those ones’? What if they turned out to belong to them after all? That would be embarrassing, especially after the thing with the spoons a couple Thanksgivings ago.

"Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky, and the utility crews will be working in our area by the time we get back, and we'll all have electricity again by this evening."

It didn't happen quite like that, of course. Harold and Al (and their cart of clean dishes) stepped out of the bathroom door into chaos. It wasn't unusually chaotic chaos, or anything, but Bruno was barking, and it looked like there was a higher than usual concentration of young people roaming around the downstairs.

Harold looked at Al. Al looked confused. "I have no idea," he said. "Kitchen?"

It was a sound plan, since 1) they needed to go to the kitchen anyway, to drop off all the dishes, and 2) anywhere there was food tended to attract people, hopefully including someone who knew what was going on.

For instance, PJ was in the kitchen, making sandwiches for two kids dressed as bears. "Hi!" she said cheerily, waving to them with a slice of bread.

"Hi PJ," Al said. "What's all this?" Harold thought that was a nicer way of asking 'what's going on?' and made a mental note to use it himself whenever the opportunity presented itself.

One of the bears answered. "It's our annual tour of affiliates and satellite schools."

"We do it every year," the other bear said.

"That's what 'annual' means," whispered the first bear, loud enough to hear all the way across the room.

The second bear tilted its head. "Oh. Huh."

Just what they needed -- a couple of bears doing a comedy routine in the kitchen. PJ said, "They're a travelling acting troupe. Every December they put on an interpretation of the Christmas story, and go around to all their venues to put it on. They needed a rehearsal space because their usual one doesn't have any power."

Harold didn't remember any bears in the Christmas story, but he figured that's where the interpretation part must come in. It didn't seem like too much of a stretch, considering some of the things Eliza had acted in over the years. "Okay, great," he said.

Cate stuck her head into the kitchen. "Bears, we need you in the basement for rehearsal in five minutes, okay?" Both bears gave a thumbs up, because apparently their interpretation included opposable thumbs.

"Welcome back," Cate added. "We were thinking rehearsal in the basement, Special Seasons party in the loft, but the party includes some sort of fondue thing, so we're doing it in the living room instead, for easier access to the kitchen."

Harold frowned. "We're not responsible for the fondue, are we?" He'd never made fondue. He'd eaten it once, he was pretty sure. It involved a double boiler and a lot of supervision, and that was two steps more than the usual amount of preparation he wanted to put into his snacks.

Luckily, Cate was shaking her head. "No, the Bakers are coming over early to get everything set up. Actually, they'll probably be here any minute."

"What?" Al checked his watch, then seemed to realize that he wasn't wearing it. That was the downside to having a simple watch be part of a complicated personal transportation device; when you had to use the transport part of it to rig up some technological marvel, you were out a watch, too. It probably wasn't one of those really common problems, Harold figured.

"You guys are kind of slow at washing dishes," Cate said.

Sure enough, the next knock at the door was the Bakers, offering effusive thanks for the space and also fondue-preparing lessons for anyone who was interested. Cate followed him and Al into the utility room for an impromptu meeting. "Are we doing anything about the chatter? Can we do anything?" They'd tried (and failed) in the past to keep the 'non-locals' from spilling the beans to their neighbors and various law enforcement personnel. Still, it seemed in the spirit of the FBI's training exercise not to make it too obvious.

"We're using the emergency beacons as a guide," Cate said. "Matthew's watching the rehearsal; he explained it to them. Harry and Meshkalla are going to cover the party guests who need to know. If someone has an emergency beacon, they should find someone else with an emergency beacon to ask any questions. It's a good conversational cue, too. If you're talking to someone who doesn't have a beacon, try to avoid topics like ‘so, my boss is from another planet’ and ‘I travel on a spaceship when I’m not driving the queen’s Armada.’”

It seemed simple enough, although Harold felt like they were probably forgetting something. A lot of the extra people in the house disappeared once the rehearsal started, and aside from the occasional crash or bark (Bruno — an avid theater fan, apparently), it was easy to put them out of his mind and focus on the party.

“Welcome, welcome!” Even Mrs. Baker seemed a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who showed up. It looked like everyone on the street, plus their children. Harold found himself relegated to the craft room with the kids, along with Ayme Zho and Sophia.

“I’m no good at these things,” Sophia muttered.

Harold looked up from the containers of markers he was pulling out of the cabinets. “What, coloring pages?”

“It’s easy,” Tifa piped up. “I’ll help you.”

Harold left them to it and picked a page with a bag of presents on it, because that seemed like it would be easy. Actually, he agreed with Sophia completely, but he was planning on adding lots of glitter anyway to make up for any unimaginative color choices. He wondered how it was going in the living room (and also why the kids’ table didn’t seem to get any fondue).

“Harold! You have to see this!” Al was holding a catalog when he appeared in the doorway. “They’re dish towels with snowmen on them!”

Harold looked at the picture Al was pointing at. “Snowman heads,” he clarified. “Not even the whole snowman.”

“I know, aren’t they great!”

Harold flipped through the catalog. The disembodied snowman head towels looked pretty classy next to some of the other offerings. He thought he should take a stand anyway. “Please no heads,” he said. “I’d like there to be a line, somewhere, and I think that all kitsch that includes pictures of bodiless heads should be on the ‘no’ side of the line.”

Al looked disappointed. Then he brightened again. “What about for your sisters?”

He thought about it. They didn’t really have a tradition of giving each other tacky Christmas-themed items, but that was no reason not to start one. Plus, it would make Al happy. He could probably convince Charlotte to re-gift them back to him next year. “I think it’s a great idea,” he said.

“Could you pass the blue glitter?” Sophia asked.


Chapter 29 (day 15): In which they encounter a small problem, multiple times.

Al bought the dish towels. Harold finished his coloring page. The theater troupe performed a scene for them as a thank you (it involved the bears, along with Noah, a dinosaur, and the baby Jesus). And then everyone started to head home, and Harold breathed a sigh of relief just a few minutes too early.

He’d gone upstairs to check on the baby and Harry, who’d skipped out on all the available entertainment in favor of staying in the nursery. Harold was pretty sure it had something to do with the FBI. What he wasn’t sure of was whether he wanted to know more than that. But Al was about to send Claudia to the upstairs bathroom to fix her (supposed) problem with one of her contacts (since the downstairs one was off limits) and he thought maybe he should give Harry a heads up.

He wasn’t expecting to hear Claudia’s voice from inside the nursery. “I need to borrow your ring,” she said.

“I don’t take it off; you know that,” Harry said.

“Fine, then I need to borrow you,” came the reply.

“I’m babysitting.”

“In a house full of capable people; they can spare you for a day.”

“In a house full of my family.” There was a pause. “Okay, I see your point.”

Harold knocked on the door. “Excuse me,” he said. “I hate to interrupt, but it is relatively important. I think, at least.“

The door opened, and Harry stepped out. Just in time for Claudia to come up the stairs and stop. “Oh,” she said.

And then another Claudia walked out of the nursery with the baby. There was silence for a few seconds, as everyone looked at each other. It was a little awkward. Even baby Harry was quiet, as if he sensed the strangeness surrounding him. Or maybe he was just used to it by now, and it didn’t even register.

Time travel? Cloning? Alternate universes? The second Claudia didn’t look older, like she was from the future, but she didn’t look like an identical twin either. Maybe Cate was right, and there were ninjas involved. Harold stepped back and raised a hand to his emergency beacon. Calling for backup seemed like a legitimate plan.

Harry looked over at him when he moved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Harold said.

The two Claudias were sizing each other up. The one who’d come up the stairs (Harold was 80% sure she was the same trainee Claudia who’d arrived with Rob earlier) said, “I wish I could say ‘this explains so much.’ But it doesn’t, really.”

“They’re not criminals,” said the second Claudia.

“Yeah, I kind of figured that part out already,” the first one replied. “Rob’s the best agent I know. He’s been keeping a lot out of his reports —“ (Harold made a mental note to ask Al what had happened in the living room; her expression was hard to interpret, but he bet it would be a funny story.) “— but if there was something bad going on, he’d know it.”

“Is this a time travel thing?” Harold asked. “Because I think Al and the kids should be here if it’s about time travel.”

“It’s not about time travel,” the first Claudia said.

“Well, it is sort of about time travel,” said the second one.

Harry interrupted by saying, “It’s sort of about things we don’t really need to be talking about right now, don’t you think?”

Harold made an executive decision. This was like the shopping thing — if you didn’t want to deal with doing it all yourself, sometimes you had to just roll with what other people decided was the right kind of peanut butter to buy.

He said, “Harry, do you have everything under control up here?” Harry wiggled his hand in the apparently universal ‘eh, sort of’ gesture, but he nodded. Harold held out his own hand in the also-universal ‘please give me the baby now’ gesture, and Claudia passed baby Harry over without a word.

“I’m going downstairs now,” Harold said. “To eat chocolate fondue. Shout if you need anything. Do you want me to send anyone else up? Al? Rob?”

Harry said, hesitantly, “Can you ask PJ to come up, please?”

“Sure.” He experienced a moment of doubt about his plan of action, but decided to stick with it. “Be careful,” he added, which he figured was sort of the parental equivalent of ‘I love you,’ and always a good choice when leaving anyone with two potentially FBI, ninja, clone, or time traveling strangers.

He got to the kitchen, told PJ that Harry needed her upstairs, and sat down at the table with a sigh. “What’s going on?” Al asked.

Claudia walked through the kitchen. It wasn’t either of the previous two Claudias, unless she’d dyed her hair blue and changed into a striped yellow and orange shirt in the amount of time it had taken Harold to walk down the stairs.

Harold stared after her. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Al nodded. “The fondue is good,” he said. “I like it with the carrot sticks.” Privately, Harold thought that dipping carrot sticks into melted chocolate had to be one of the most disgusting combinations ever, but it was a good thing, really, because it meant that while Al was hogging all the vegetables, he could stockpile the little squares of cake.


Chapter 30 (day 16): In which Harold and Al take the day off.

“We’re taking today off,” Al announced at the breakfast table.

They’d discussed the plan over fondue the night before. The electricity was still out; they were going stir crazy being in the house all the time. Plus, they still needed to figure out Christmas gifts for, well, everyone. A trip to the mall to do some shopping would be a good break. Sometimes it was important to surround yourself with people even crazier than you, just for the reality check.

PJ and Meshkalla were at the sink, piling dishes onto the cart so they could be taken through to Charlotte and Eliza’s house for washing. Matthew was feeding baby Harry, with Bruno sitting hopefully nearby, ready to clean up any spills.

“Okay,” Matthew said, just when it seemed like no one was going to say anything. To be fair, it was entirely possible that the group at the far end of the kitchen hadn’t even heard Al’s statement — Nick and Steve were inventorying the pantry with great determination, aided by Cate with a notepad and pencil. “Have fun.”

“You could use some time off,” PJ said seriously. “It is advent, after all.”

Meshkalla added, “Kim is coming over today. Is it okay if we decorate some more? We had an idea for a project.”

Harold wasn’t sure what area of the house could possibly support any additional decoration, but it seemed like a safe enough activity. He was already planning a new “advent tradition” for the post-Christmas, pre-New Year’s days — the tradition of taking down all the decorations you’d spent the last few weeks putting up. “Sure,” he said, and Al nodded. (Al was in on the plan.)

“We’re going to the store,” Cate announced. “Possibly more than one store. They have power there, and food.”

“We have food here,” Matthew said.

Cate just looked at him. “Sharing the baby’s avocado puree isn’t the same as actually having food,” she said.

Matthew just shrugged. “Where’s future Harry?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“I have,” PJ said. “He’s out running with Sam.”

“Tell him ‘hi’ for us when he gets back,” Al said.

They stacked their dishes on the cart, and offered their best wishes to the sleepy-looking students studying in the living room. (The group was getting smaller as finals week went along, but it was still big enough to need its own pot of coffee every morning.) The sun was shining, and you could sort of pretend it was just a normal December day.

Except there were still lots of roads closed for utility work, and Harold was glad Al was driving, because they were trying to go a different route using the GPS. Halfway there it told them to turn left.

“There’s no road here!” Al told it.

“Turn left,” the GPS repeated.

“No road!” Al said again, gesturing at the street outside. “I can’t turn left!”

As nice as it was to see someone else struggling with directions, Harold was pretty sure he’d watched this scene on tv before, and it hadn’t ended well. He flipped the GPS off and turned on his phone instead. “I’m calling Rob,” he said. “They’re tailing us; they can figure out how to get to the mall from here.”

The FBI must have better-programmed GPS devices, because Rob directed them easily. The mall parking lot was packed, but it wasn’t like they were in a hurry. “Are gift cards a tacky and impersonal gift?” Harold asked. “Because I really don’t know what to get people.”

“I think there’s a spectrum — like, a cash card is the most impersonal, but a gift card to somewhere specific could be really thoughtful. And then there’s things like mall gift cards, which would be somewhere in between.”

Harold nodded, and Al added, “Who are we gifting, anyway?” It was his best ‘this isn’t even my holiday’ voice, which Harold thought was particularly hilarious since he was the one who’d just expounded on the gift card spectrum.

Or maybe he just knew that Harold had already thought about it. He ticked names off on his fingers. “Both Harrys, plus Cate, Matthew, and Toby,” he said. “They’re the most important, plus my sisters and parents.” Somehow, he’d run out of fingers. “I figure Nick and Steve and Matthew and Betty are optional gifts, along with Sam and Tina and all the kids.”

“Maybe we should make a list,” Al suggested.

“I don’t have any paper.”

“Let’s call Rob; I bet he has stuff to make a list with.” They did, and he did, although Harold got the feeling that ‘providing a pad of paper and pen’ didn’t fall under the usual surveillance techniques advised by the FBI.

“Baby Harry will probably be the easiest, and the most fun,” Harry said. “Let’s start with him.”

Babies were fun to shop for; it was hard to argue with that. Playing with the baby toys alone could take up hours. (Although Harold did think it was weird how many baby toys were bug-themed. What was up with that?) Still, they tried to stay focused, and narrowed it down to the skip hop owl or the music cube in record time.

“We could get both,” he suggested.

“I don’t know; then would it seem like we were playing favorites if we didn’t get future Harry two gifts too?” For someone who hadn’t grown up celebrating Christmas, Al certainly had a firm grasp of the potential pitfalls of gifting.

“Let’s call Rob,” Harold said.

Rob sent Tavia, who voted for the music cube, because it was more educational. After she left, Harold turned to look at Al.

“So, the owl?” he asked.

“Definitely,” Al said.

They decided to check out the kitchen store next, in case inspiration struck for anyone else. Also, it was right next to the baby store, and they were giving away free samples of crackers and jam. “I don’t know,” Harold said. “Rustic decor? Woodsy accents? It doesn’t seem to quite fit.”

Al was examining a lamp that looked like a rooster. “You’re right,” he said, putting the rooster carefully back on the shelf. “What if we just get some general household gifts? Even though Toby’s living on campus right now, he can always just pick one he likes and take it with him.”

They left the kitchen store with a new coffee grinder, two hand towels, and a package of pot holders — two things they were constantly running out of. In the craft store, Al found a jumbo pack of assorted novelty carabiners, and then it was off to the coffee store for a few pounds of their favorite blends (and a mid-morning snack break).

Harold checked their list while they sat on a bench. “What about Nick and Steve?” he said.

“Well, we know they like music, and have a dog, and run a hot dog stand, and have something weird going on in their house right now.” Al stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

“Those lightsaber umbrellas were pretty cool,” Harold said.

“And they have been doing a lot of cooking for us,” Al agreed.

After they got the umbrellas, another break seemed to be in order. “These bags are getting pretty heavy,” Al said. They looked at each other.

He could tell they were both thinking it. It was just a matter of who was going to say it first. Al beat him to the punch. “Let’s call Rob.”

Claudia answered the phone instead. “Rob’s dealing with one of the department store Santas, could be a robbery. You know, it’s not actually our job to carry your stuff for you.”

Al leaned closer to talk into the phone. “We have cookies,” he said. It was true. They’d stopped for their second break outside a bakery.

Claudia sighed. “Give me a couple minutes. I’ll see what I can do.”

When she showed up for her cookie, Claudia was accompanied by a bored-looking mall cop, who agreed to take all their bags to the information desk, and hold them until Harold and Al showed up for them. “Or the end of the day,” he said. “Whichever comes first.”

“We’ll be there,” Harold said.

Al added, “Thanks,” and they offered to get him a cookie as well, but the mall apparently had a strict ‘no cookies on duty’ policy, which Harold thought was completely unfair.

“Now we’re going to have to put the FBI on the gift list,” Al said after Claudia left. “That negates almost all of our progress so far.”

Harold didn’t want to think about the mathematics of it all, so he said, “Let’s try a bookstore next; they always have good gift-y things.”

Unfortunately, the mall had four bookstores, none of which were close to their current bakery-adjacent bench. Harold picked one at random and wound up with a set of brain-shaped stress balls that he figured would be good for Sam and any straggling university students or neighbor kids who happened to show up at a time when it would be awkward not to supply a gift. Al chose a book of subway system maps for Betty and Matthew, for no discernible reason. “I think they’ll like it,” was all he would say.

Tina was harder than the others, but Al picked out a ski hat for her that had pink flames on it, and of which Harold thoroughly approved. While they were there, he got new state of the art winter gloves and ice scrapers for both his sisters (like shovels, ice scrapers were something you could legitimately buy new year after year).

They dropped everything off at the info desk, waved to the mall cop (Harold had decided his name might be Joe, and kept trying to read his name tag, which was obscured by a somewhat garish sprig of fake holly), and found another bench. It was near the play area for kids, so there was plenty to watch as they gathered steam for the last push.

“Why don’t we give your parents one of those cordless chargers we got from Matthew and Betty?” asked Al. “It would be great in their RV.”

“Can we do that?” Harold said. Al got on the phone to find out, and Harold eavesdropped on any and all conversations within earshot. It was important to keep up on the latest parenting gossip, after all.

He was watching a man try to repack the bags on and around his stroller (presumably so he might also be able to fit a child into it) when Al said, “That will be perfect, thank you,” and hung up. “We’re all set,” he said. “They offered to gift wrap it, but I said we could take care of that part.”

That was two more people they could cross off the list. “That’s great. You know, I’ve been thinking. The FBI agents probably aren’t allowed to accept gifts from us.”

Al nodded. “Good call — maybe we could invite them to dinner, instead?”

“And then have Nick and Steve cook?”

“I was going to say pizza, but that would work too.”

“Who would that leave on the list?”

Al pulled their hastily written list out of his jacket pocket. “Just the kids,” he said. “And Harry.”

What did you get your son from the future? “Maybe we should get lunch first,” Harold suggested. And then, just because it seemed like a theme for the day, he added, “Let’s call Rob.”

Apparently the team had already eaten, but Rob said he appreciated the heads up. "It's crazy in here today. I'm at the food court now, and I've got to say, I recommend eating anywhere but here. It's really crowded."

And really, there was only just so long you could walk around the mall before it became overwhelming. A lunch outside the maze of stores could be just what they needed to get those last sparkles of inspiration. Harold was willing to admit that it was possible this was why some people spread out their holiday shopping over more than just one day. He still thought his and Al's method was more efficient.

"I could really go for a sandwich," he said. "There's a place in the next plaza, right?"

"Should we drive over, do you think?" They looked out at the parking lot. The parking lot full of police cars. Rob's Santa investigation must have been more in-depth than he'd let on.

"Let's walk," Harold suggested.

"Good plan."


Chapter 31 (day 16): In which Harold and Al don't get arrested, but do figure out what to give Harry for Christmas (sort of).

"Did that woman just say she was looking for the keys to the elephant?"

They were waiting for their sandwiches to arrive; it had taken longer than expected, since they'd had to be cleared by a police officer to leave the mall. There was quite a crowd at the shop, most of them talking about the police presence. Elephant keys was a new topic, though.

"I don't know," said Al. "I was listening to that guy give his drink order; he has a really good memory."

"I think that could be the perfect gift for the kids," Harold said.

That got him Al's full attention. "What, elephants? I don't know how their parents would feel about that. Where would they keep them?"

“No, not elephants.” Harold got distracted for a second, trying to even imagine the logistics of such a thing. “How would we even get elephants? It would be like trying to give giraffes as gifts, but harder.”

“Because of the peanuts?” Al asked.

He frowned. “What? No, because elephants can weigh almost ten times as much as the average giraffe. And I think elephants are considered threatened animals, so, you know, trade would be banned.”

“There could definitely be customs issues,” Al agreed.

Harold shook his head. “How did we even get on this topic? We’re not giving anyone a large savannah dweller for Christmas. I was thinking keys. You know, to the house.”

Their sandwiches arrived. “I love it,” Al said, carefully unwrapping his straw.

“It’s the only thing I can think of that would really mean something,” Harold said.

“I can’t think of anything they’d like more. It’s perfect.”

“And we don’t even need to call Rob about it,” Harold added.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Al said, “You realize this just leaves Harry.”

“Yeah. Any ideas?”

“Not really. I mean, he’s from the future.”

One of the shop’s employees walked by to wipe off the table next to them. “The greatest gift you can give your children is time,” he said.

Harold looked at Al. Al looked back. “The gift of time. We can work with that,” Al said.


Chapter 32 (day 17): In which the power is still not on, and everybody is getting tired of it.

Harold had been half hoping that after their day off, they’d come home and find the electricity back on. They were lucky to have heat, and lights, but there was a reason indoor plumbing wasn’t just a fad. It was an important part of everyday life. Also, he missed television more than he thought he would have.

On the plus side, the grocery team from Thursday had hit the jackpot in terms of eggs, so that was breakfast covered.

Harry was doing the cooking when Harold arrived in the kitchen. Al was already down in the basement, checking on their generators. No one had expected them to be put to such a massive test so quickly, but they were holding up fairly well.

“I can do scrambled plain or scrambled with stuff added,” Harry said.

“I’ll take added stuff,” said Harold. “Where is everyone this morning?”

“Boycotting.” Harry slid a plate of scrambled eggs across the table. “It’s been almost a week now that the power’s been out. Nick and Steve are having a boycott party in the loft.”

“Am I invited?” It was a tossup between that and ‘what’s a boycott party,’ but he figured if he wasn’t invited, he didn’t need to know what it involved.

“Of course you are — you were invited first. It’s just that there’s not much to a boycott party, so no one thought it was worth waking you guys up.”

Harry sat down across from him. “Happy advent, by the way.”

Right, it was Thursday again. Another advent gift day. He thought it was probably a good day for the travel toothbrush. Maybe a combo gift of the toothbrush and the permanent markers. It didn’t make much sense as a set, but he figured it probably made more sense than the toothbrush and any of the other things.

“Happy advent,” he said. “So what does a boycott party involve?”

Harry shrugged. “Sitting around in your pajamas, reading, watching movies on the laptops, eating snacks. Generally boycotting any kind of productive activity for the day.”

That sounded awesome. “Who came up with that?”

“Well, I always thought it was you,” Harry said. “So I have no idea.”

“Huh. Well, okay. Is everyone there?” The school’s had finally reopened, despite the fact that the need for an emergency shelter hadn’t actually ended. Most people had gone back to work, too — their street seemed to be low down on the priority list for power line crews, but most businesses were up and running again.

He felt like there were probably a hundred things he should be doing instead. Christmas wasn’t getting any further away. His parents and sisters were on their way; they hadn’t cleaned anything except dishes since the power went out. But how often did an opportunity come along to genuinely spend the day all relaxing together?

“PJ and Meshkalla are out with Nimby. And us, and Al, of course. But other than that, yeah, I think everyone’s in the loft. Cate’s on baby duty this morning.”

Harold nodded, and finished off the last of his juice box. It was warm — they were trying not to open the refrigerator, so they were drinking juice boxes out of the cupboard. It was one more thing that had been fun for a few days, kind of like camping, but the thrill was wearing off quickly.

“I’ll go get Al,” he said. “Let’s boycott.”

The loft was warm and bright when they arrived. Nick was playing something quiet on his guitar, and there were pillows and sleeping bags scattered all over the floor. Harold headed straight for the bowls of popcorn and chips; just because he’d just finished breakfast didn’t mean he didn’t have any room for snacks.

“How do you guys feel about car chases and shooting?” Matthew asked.

He was holding up a dvd case, so Harold was pretty sure meant how did they feel about them in movies, but it never hurt to ask. “In real life?” he said.

“In a movie,” Matthew clarified, and Harold breathed a sigh of relief. “We can’t find a case for this one, but Steve said he remembers it having a lot of car chases and guns in it.”

Normally they went with more family-friendly choices, but hey, they were boycotting normal, right? “Sure,” he said. “Let’s try it. We can always switch to something else if people don’t like it.” PJ and Meshkalla were old enough to make their own movie choices, and baby Harry was (hopefully) too young to be influenced by it one way or another.

He drifted over to where Al was sitting on the floor, listening to Nick’s playing and writing something in a notebook. He handed the snacks to Al, got a book of sudoku puzzles in return, and settled in to some serious boycotting. Of course, it didn’t take long before he dozed off.

When he woke up, Al was gone. Harold spotted him at the food table with the baby, and waved. Cate was leading some sort of card game with Steve, Toby, and Harry (Matthew was there, but he wasn’t holding any cards). Nick and the kids were still entranced by the movie. Harold squinted at the screen. He saw clowns and pirates; there were no guns (or cars) in sight. “Is that the same movie?” he asked. Looking closer, he added, “Are those subtitles?”

“Hey, Harold,” Nick said. “The movie wasn’t quite the same as we remembered it. It’s good, though.”

He found that hard to believe. “Really?” he asked, trying not to sound too skeptical.

PJ and Meshkalla both nodded enthusiastically. “The pirates are fighting the clowns over the mystical book,” PJ said.

“I don’t think the clowns have it, though,” said Meshkalla.

“Clowns can be shifty,” Nick said, his tone indicating he was imparting some great wisdom. “But so can mystics. It’s always good to remember that.”

Harold thought maybe things had made more sense before he’d fallen asleep. Luckily, Al came back with a bowl of grapes and distracted him. “Thanks,” Harold said, feeling truly grateful. He didn’t even really like grapes.

Al smiled at him and ate one of the grapes. “No problem. I have more good news, too. The power company says we could be up and running as early as tonight; definitely by tomorrow morning.”

Everyone cheered the news, even though Harold was sure they must have all heard it before, except for him. (He cheered too, of course, because it really was good news.) “Happy advent to all of us,” Harold said.

“Which reminds me, I have your advent present,” Al told him. “It’s in the kitchen, and we need to take the baby.”

That already sounded more exciting than markers and a travel toothbrush, Harold thought. At least he’d wrapped Al’s things in an interesting box this time instead of a gift bag.

Al talked the whole way there. “I know your mom was worried about us having the phones right next to the bed at night, and I started doing some research, and it’s kind of inconclusive, but it could be bad for you, and this is kind of more fun anyway. I made one for baby Harry, too; Betty helped me with it, because I wanted to combine it with the tracker he already has.”

Harold wasn't sure if his brain was still fuzzy from being asleep, or if Al really wasn't making much sense. "What?" he said. Then he realized that might sound rude, especially in the context of receiving a gift. "I mean, that sounds great."

"I can explain better after you open it," said Al, handing over a gift bag. The bag looked familiar. Harold studied it carefully.

"Is this the same bag I gave you your advent gift in? I thought you were going to give that to the neighborhood association gift swap."

Al looked a little embarrassed. "I did give it away, but then during the cleanup they were distributing all the bags and boxes and things. And I ended up with the one I'd brought by accident, but I didn't want to say anything because it seemed ungrateful. Also, the two people on either side of me had really tacky bags and I didn't want to have to swap with either of them."

Harold resisted the urge to laugh, because Al took the association meetings very seriously, and while Harold agreed in principle that things like that were important, he'd never managed to actually participate. Which meant Al was the only attending from their house, and he didn't want to jeopardize their neighborhood standing. (And getting a re-used gift bag was still better than the time they'd had a summer pot-luck and Al wound up bringing home three casseroles full of potato salad. Way better.)

Unfortunately, unwrapping the gifts from the tissue paper inside the bag didn't actually make anything clearer. "Wow," he said enthusiastically. They did look cool, whatever they were.

"It's an EMF blocker for your phone. The small one is for baby Harry's tracker. It just slips on the back; I tested it on mine and it wasn't too bulky." Al had that excited look on his face that he always got when he was explaining something he'd made.

"There's also an earpiece we can test," Al added. "It's wireless, and it works, as long as the phone is within a pretty tight radius." He looked uncertain all of a sudden. "I'm, ah, still working on how to make it more cool-looking."

"It already looks pretty cool," Harold assured him. It looked like one of those wireless over-the-ear things, but smaller. He poked at the tiny device. "What's it made of?"

Al's expression changed to what Harold could only describe as shifty. "Should I not ask?" he said.

"It's perfectly safe," Al told him, which probably answered the question as well as anything.

"You made a set for yourself too, right?" Most things Al made were pretty plug-and-play, so Harold pulled out his phone and tried to get everything to recognize everything else. (Jiggling things never helped, but somehow it was still irresistible.)

“Well, I had to make sure it would work,” Al said.

His phone beeped in an entirely new way, and the earbud echoed it. He looked at Al. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Are you thinking we should wander all over the house calling each other to test them?”

Harold nodded. That was exactly what he was thinking. “Yup,” he said.

Al pulled a second headset out of his pocket. “Let’s do it.”


Chapter 33 (day 18): In which it turns out that Occam's Razor doesn't really apply to Harold and Al.

Harold had waited as long as possible before giving Al his advent gifts the day before, so they wouldn't be in such direct competition with the EMF shields and headsets, which were clearly superior gifts. It had worked out well, actually -- he'd presented the gifts in the evening, right after the power had (finally) come back on. (Al had been right about it being obvious; there were sparks, and the fire alarm went off. No actual fire, though, which was an improvement as far as he was concerned.)

They'd all spent the evening doing things like washing their hands in the kitchen sink, and flipping light switches off and on -- all the little things that hadn't seemed exciting at all a week ago were suddenly cause for delight after nearly seven days without electricity. In the midst of all that enjoyment, even a toothbrush and a package of permanent markers seemed like a great gift. Al certainly seemed to like them, which was the most important thing.

Friday was declared a day to get out of the house and get things done; after spending Thursday boycotting, they had a lot on the list. Harold still couldn't quite believe it was already the 18th. That meant the countdown to Christmas had reached the single digits. Still, no matter how close or far Christmas morning was looming, they needed groceries. Again. Still.

He was contemplating the benefits of the cereal with chocolate in it versus the cereal with marshmallows in it (why wasn't there a kind with both?), when his phone rang.

"Hello?" he said. He was supposed to be able to pick up and talk using Al's headset, but he fumbled his phone out of his pocket anyway, so he'd look less like a crazy person talking to himself in the grocery store.

"Harold? It's Al."

"Hey, what's up? Are you done at the drugstore already? I'm debating cereals."

"I'm still at the drugstore." Al's voice sounded cautious. "Have you noticed anything strange over there?"

It was a grocery store; of course he'd noticed strange things. Grocery stores were like a magnet for weird behavior. "Like what?" he said, hoping Al would narrow it down a little.

Al said, "I think someone's following me. And someone's watching your car, in the parking lot. Not anyone from Rob's team."

"Okay, hang on," Harold said. "Are you okay for right now? Can you stay on the line?"

"I'm picking out greeting cards; they're in full view of the register and the photo counter, so I should be fine."

Harold grabbed the cereal with chocolate and pretended to consult his list. He'd been trying to be methodical in his shopping pattern, but maybe it was time to randomize it more. He reversed course back to the bakery, then the produce section, and finally the deli, giving Al a running commentary the whole time. "Is it a guy wearing gloves?" he asked. "He could definitely be following me."

“Yes! Okay, that’s probably… not good. What should we do now?”

His emergency beacon went off. Flashing lights, loud wailing beeps — for a while it seemed like it had happened every time he went to buy groceries. It hadn’t happened as much recently, and he hadn’t missed it. It was weirder this time, though — he could hear his, but he could also hear Al’s over the phone. “Was that you?” he asked.

“No, not me,” Al said. “You’re right, these things are a pain to deal with in stores. Everyone’s looking at me.”

“Talk to you in a second.” Harold hung up so he could pick up the conference call. It should be Al again, plus Cate, Matthew, Toby, and whoever had activated their beacon.

“It was me,” Toby said. “I’m at the house. We have a problem here. You're not going to believe this, but the front yard is full of, well, pirates. And ninjas. And it looks like they're facing off against each other."

"What?" Harold's exclamation drew multiple irritated looks. He realized his number was almost up at the deli. Shoot -- he couldn't duck away now, it would look suspicious to the person who might be following him.

"Okay, and I was just about to activate my beacon, because we have another problem," Matthew said. "There's a roadblock at the end of the street; a group of people are checking all the vehicles going in and out, and they don't look like police officers."

"Are they wearing gloves?" Al asked.

"I don't know. Probably? I mean, it's December, and they're outside. I hope they are."

"Is someone wearing gloves following you?" Cate asked. "I was just about to call you; I think someone's following me too."

"Okay, we need a plan," Matthew said.

"I'd like a pound of the sliced cheddar," Harold said. He'd waited in line that whole time, he might as well give his order. "No, off the block please. Yes, that's all."

"What was that?" Toby asked.

"Is it a code? Do you need help? Say 'half a pound of gouda' if you need someone to come get you.'"

Harold shook his head, even though he knew they couldn't see him. "No, I'm at the deli in the grocery store. I was listening, though." A vague plan was forming in his head. "Who has access to a second phone?"

He got four variations on 'hang on, let me check,' and figured he'd better try to find one for himself too. He took his cheese and approached a likely-looking elderly woman who was looking at the frozen vegan bacon products. "Hi," he said. "Could I borrow your cell phone?"

"Back off, sonny," she said, shaking her purse in his direction. "Can't you see I've got nothing to steal?"

Harold tried again. "It's an emergency. I need to call the police station."

"I'll call security on you," the woman said, and he stepped back with his hands up. That was the last thing he needed; more people involved who had badges and guns.

"You can use mine," someone said. He turned around to see a trio of kids in hoodies and flip-flops. Students, probably. "You're Harold, right? Toby lives in our apartment building."

“Thanks,” he told them. “I appreciate it.”

“I’ve got one,” Matthew said.

“I’m in the basement now; I’ve got the land line here.”

“I can use the store’s phone, but only if it’s a local call,” Al added.

“Unless I ask the guy following me, there’s no way I can get a hold of a second phone. Sorry guys.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s plenty. Just stay on the line. I’m going to call the police station and get some advice. Matthew, did you see anybody we know go through the roadblock?” Harold moved out of the crowded deli section and into the less popular condiments aisle.

“Yeah, the Zhos were going through when I drove by. Want me to call them?”

“No, Al should probably call them; they’re not a long distance call. Can you call the Chandraskars instead? Find out if they know anything, and if they can be on standby to get everyone out of here if we have to.”

He wanted to say the roadblock couldn’t possibly have anything to do with them, but really, what were the odds of that being true? At least Harry and the baby were with Nick and Steve at the skating rink, and not by themselves somewhere. “Who’s Rob following today?”

“He’s here,” Toby said. “And the cutlasses are seriously freaking us out, so I hope your plan covers them too.”

Cutlasses? Seriously? “Tell him to get Pete there. Maybe he knows what’s going on. They’re not, like, laying siege to the house or anything, right?”

“So far they’re ignoring the house entirely, there are just… a lot of them, all over the place out there. I don’t think anyone should try to drive back in.”

Toby did sound a little weirded out by the whole thing. The students were looking at him (and eavesdropping on his end of the conversation) with undisguised curiosity. Harold dialed the police station by memory, and asked to speak with Rick. Charlotte, of course, was still on the road back from Philadelphia with Eliza, being no help at all.

“Harold Jones, what can I do for you?” came Rick’s calm voice over the line. Rick had been Charlotte’s mentor at one point, and they still worked together frequently.

Harold cleared his throat. He wasn’t really sure where to begin. “Okay, two questions. First, I’d like to report suspicious activity on our street; there’s some guys stopping cars and no one recognizes them. Could you send someone? And second… well, hypothetically, if I was being followed and I didn’t know who it was, and it turned out other people were being followed too, and no one was sure whether it was related to the large group of strangers suddenly gathering around our house or not, do you think that it would make more sense to all gather back at home, or scatter and gather somewhere else? Strategically speaking.”

There was a long silence from Rick’s end of the line. In his other ear, Harold could hear Matthew trying to convince someone to put him through to Tejas. Toby said, “Pete’s on his way.”

“Ayme says the woman at the roadblock showed our pictures,” Al said. “I’m calling Harry next.”

Rick finally worked his way through Harold’s run-on sentences, and said, “You folks sure do find excitement in the strangest ways. I’ll send a squad car to your address and see what they can do. As far as the rest, well, I’d say your best bet is to pool your resources; go somewhere you’re familiar with that has the kind of equipment you might need.”

Harold wondered what, exactly, Cate had told him about their house. “Thanks,” he said. Rick hung up with an invitation to call back if he had more questions, and Harold relayed his suggestions to everyone else. “So, basically, I think we need to get back to the house,” he finished. “But, you know, stealthily.”

Al took over the planning from there, and Harold handed his borrowed phone back to the students. (They looked disappointed, but smiled and waved when he thanked them again and headed for the checkout line.)

“Harold, you should take the car, since you’ve got the groceries. I’ll walk to the cafe at the end of the plaza and have Sam pick me up there. We can leave vehicles at Charlotte and Eliza’s house and Nick and Steve’s; they’re both private property, so it will take longer to figure out we’re not there anymore and they won’t have any excuse to tow the cars. If you’ve got your own transport back to the house, head for Nick and Steve’s — they say just stay out of the kitchen and the basement, and you should be fine. Otherwise, the pass-through is still up at Charlotte and Eliza’s.”

“Where are Harry and the baby?” Harold asked. “Does anyone else need a pickup?”

“We’re back home,” came Harry’s voice. “I’m on Toby’s phone. We can buzz up everyone’s beacons and check in with them.”

Harold counted out change for the cashier, who was giving him a look that said ‘is it really necessary to be talking on your phone during this transaction?’ He could see the man with gloves perusing magazines two aisles over, and in his ear he could hear Al coordinating with Sam. He ignored the look entirely. Obviously, it was necessary, or he wouldn’t be doing it. It wasn’t like he was so good at multitasking that he did it just for fun.

“Okay, I’m on my way,” he said. “Travel safe, everyone.”


Chapter 34 (day 18): In which everyone winds up in the same place, at the same time (for once).

It wasn't a car chase. It wasn't even a slow speed car chase. Even a really, really slow car chase would have been more suspenseful, and probably less safe, than Harold's actual drive to his sisters' house. He obeyed the speed limit, used his turn signals, and did not in any way try to "lose them." (Mostly because he had no idea how to do that, and it seemed like a smarter plan to stay on well-traveled roads so there were witnesses around.) The white van that had parked next to him in the grocery store parking lot didn't seem to make any attempt to hide that it was following him.

Harold did experience a moment of doubt at the end of the driveway, when it looked like the van might be planning to turn in right behind him, but it just paused and then cruised on down the street. He got all the groceries into the house in a single trip, and double checked the locks before heading through the doorway. It was a good thing Al hadn't had a chance to take it down yet.

"Harold!" It looked like quite the crowd had beaten him back home. Al and Sam were there, along with Matthew. Cate was holding a fast-food bag.

"Cate, fast food? Really?"

"I was next to the drive through when you called," she said. "I'm stress eating."

"Who are we still waiting for?" he asked.

Al apparently had a list. "Both Harry's are here, along with Cate, Matthew, Toby, and Sam. Nick and Steve are here, Tina took PJ and Meshkalla to Trudy's house, although they were working on convincing her to bring them back last I heard."

"All the animals are inside and accounted for," Toby said. "Nimby's in the basement with Bruno. Rob's here too. He wants to know if he can get the rest of his trainees here. They're, ah, still surveilling us. Presumably wherever you left your cars, at this point."

"He really wants them here?" Harold asked. Toby shrugged. "Well, I guess I'm fine with it, unless anyone has any objections. It's up to him."

No one voiced any objections, and Toby went off to find Rob to give him the good news. (Harold wasn't entirely convinced it was a good plan, but Rob was the expert.)

"Pete," Al said. "We're still waiting on Pete."

Sam added, "And the Chandraskars said they'd be happy to help any way they can. Tejas said they didn't have anything to do with it, but we've got them on speaker downstairs in case we need to evacuate."

PJ and Meshkalla suddenly appeared in their midst, followed by Tina. "What's happening now?" PJ said.

"Can we help?" Meshkalla looked around like something exciting might be happening at that very instant.

In fact, it seemed like they'd done the 'hurry up' part of the plan, and now they were at the 'and wait' stage. "You could help put the groceries away," he offered.

It seemed like there was a lot of milling around, but the groceries did actually get put away, and then Pete came running up from the basement. “I’m here, I’m here,” he said. “What’s the emergency?”

Harold walked out of the pantry just in time to hear Rob say, “Pete! Thank goodness you’re here. Will someone please go get my trainees? However you have to do it. They’re at the end of the driveway, but I don’t want them to drive through… whatever that is.”

“Yeah, we’re on it. We’ll meet you on the porch.” Nick, Steve, and Toby disappeared.

“You’ve got to see it to believe it,” Rob told Pete.

Everyone headed for the porch. (Harold considered going out the kitchen door, since the porch looped all the way around the side of the house, but his shoes and coat were in the front hall, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be outside without them.)

They were lucky it was a big porch. By the time Harold maneuvered his way through the crowd to the railing, Nick and Steve and Toby were back, with Rob's trainees in tow. All three of them looked both suspicious and full of questions. "Later," Rob said. "Just watch."

"Oh, for crying out loud," he heard Pete say. "This is so embarrassing." He stepped off the porch and headed towards the mass of pirates. "Ahoy!" he shouted. "Lower your cutlasses!"

Sure enough, the pirates all seemed to be putting down their weapons. "I can't believe that worked," someone said quietly.

There were a few moments of quiet discussion (negotiation, maybe?) between Pete and several of the pirates with the most garish outfits. None of them looked familiar. Then they broke off, and Pete called over to the ninja group. "Time out!" he yelled.

One of the ninjas stepped away from their group, and met with Pete and one of the pirates in the middle of the driveway. There appeared to be a great deal of checking watches and pocket calendars, which all seemed very civilized. And then they all left.

Well, the pirates left -- they disappeared, presumably back to their pirate ships, or wherever they hung out while they were on Earth. The ninjas all headed into the forest, which was actually pretty disturbing. Harold made a mental note to avoid the woods for a while.

Of course, once the pirates and ninjas were gone, it was easy to hear the police sirens. Rick must have sent a lot more than one squad car, Harold thought.

"Okay, that's one problem solved," Al said.

"They'll be back, actually," Pete said with a grimace. "Sorry about that. Pirates have always feuded with ninjas; it's sort of their thing. But everyone knows scheduling can get tricky. We worked out a rematch time that should work for everyone."

"Why are they feuding here?” Harold wanted to know. He thought that was a key detail that seemed to be missing from Pete's explanation.

"Do you think we can watch when they come back?" PJ asked, sliding through the crowd to stand next to him. "Was it ninjas who were following you in the grocery store? None of those ninjas were wearing gloves, though."

"Someone was following you in the grocery store?" Pete said. "Rob!"

Rob threw his hands up in the air. “This always happens when I take these assignments. I don’t know why I ever expect anything different.”

From somewhere on the other side of the porch, Harry said, “Can we go back inside now? I couldn’t find the baby’s hat, and I don’t want him to get cold.”

They all shuffled indoors and down to the basement, since it was the only space big enough to hold all of them. Also, that way they could update the Chandraskars on what was going on. (Harold hoped someone else did that part; he wasn’t at all sure he actually knew what was going on, and he didn’t want to have to try to explain it to anyone else.)

“I have an announcement to make,” someone said, and Harold looked around to see who it was.

Claudia was standing by the stairs, waving her hand in the air. Of course. He wondered if they were going to get an explanation for the multiple versions of her in the same place at the same time thing, or if the ‘announcement’ was something more mundane, like ‘I’ve decided you’re all on the crazy train and I would like to get off now, thank you.’

“Claudia?” Rob said, sounding confused.

He looked for Harry, who he figured probably knew as much as anyone about what was going on, and realized he was right behind him. “Is everything okay?” Harold said. Maybe he could get some advance warning if Claudia was about to try arresting them all, or something.

“I think it’s fine,” said Harry. Then he added, “Just so you know, this is another one of those stories that sounds a lot better when you’re retelling it years later. I guess you really can’t make this stuff up.”

“I’m not just an FBI trainee,” Claudia said. “I was sent here for a reason.”

“Was it a vision?” someone called.

“I call prophecy!” someone else said.

“Job aptitude test!” a third person suggested — it sounded like Al, but they were on opposite sides of the room, so he couldn’t be sure. Were they really betting on Claudia’s motives, while she was trying to explain them?

Claudia frowned, and said, “Unfortunately, it looks like I was followed. I believe the people who have been following you are members of the interstellar police force, looking for me.” She paused. “Or possibly the baby.”

“It’s definitely not us,” Harry said, loud enough to carry. “I cleared all our ‘time exempt being’ paperwork through Interstellar PD when I got here. It’s on record in the house book and everything.”

“It is me, then.” Claudia sighed.

“Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding,” Harold said. “That happens to us a lot, actually.”

“Here’s the thing. I’m not really supposed to be here right now,” Claudia said.

Harold was pretty sure no one was surprised by that statement. He didn't even bother saying 'somehow I'm not surprised,' but he thought he heard someone else muttering something similar.

“Although really, to say that anybody who’s moving through time in a less than linear way is ‘supposed’ to be anywhere at any particular moment is to discount the very nature of free will in an unconstrained and fluid universe.” Claudia stopped after that; she looked like she wasn't sure what to say next. (And where did you go next after a sentence like that?)

Harold thought she should probably try to get to the point before any police agents (interstellar or otherwise) knocked on their door. At this point she still hadn’t explained why helping her avoid them should be what they wanted to do, if that was even what she was asking. It seemed rude to ask her to get to the point, though.

Cate apparently wasn't worried about potential rudeness. "Okay, so are you a time traveling ninja, or not?" she asked. "Because I get a pass on grocery shopping till Christmas if you are, and all the way till New Year's if you're also secretly dating Harry."

"No dating your bodyguard," Harold said automatically. "I've seen that movie. It's a thing."

"How did you know she's my bodyguard?" Harry said.

That was the one part Harold was actually pretty confident about. "You said she was coming for Christmas. A few days ago, when she was here twice upstairs? She also wandered through downstairs with blue hair and checked the calendar. I figured it must be her."

"Blue hair?"

"Wait, what do you mean she was here twice? Was it twice or three times?"

"I thought all his bodyguards were guys -- isn't that who the guys at the reunion were?"

"Does this mean we have another fugitive in the family?"

"Hey!"

"Yeah, that was a 'misunderstanding,' remember?"

Almost everyone felt the need to add their two cents to the fray. Harry didn't look upset (Harold figured he probably had this sort of thing happen around him often enough that it got to be routine), and the baby wasn't crying, so he didn't bother to try taking charge. He wasn't sure he could take charge, but he was willing to try if it seemed important.

In the excitement, Al worked his way through the crowd to stand with him and Harry. He’d gotten a bag of popcorn from somewhere and they passed it around. Finally, Rob stood up next to Claudia and waved his hands around. It looked ridiculous, but Harold could appreciate that it didn’t disturb the baby.

Rob said, “Everybody stay calm.” Harold thought that must be in the FBI handbook, or something, as ‘a good thing to start with.’ Everybody already seemed pretty calm to him, but maybe it was just the usual intro for Rob’s speeches to civilians.

He turned to Claudia. “First things first. You lied on your background check?”

“Not exactly?” she said. “Is that really the most important thing right now?” Harold ate more popcorn.

“Okay, why are there people looking for you by following people who live in this house?”

Claudia looked around the group, and then back at Rob. “They know I’m associated with them.”

“We’re not dating,” Harry interjected helpfully. “Sorry, Cate.”

“I don’t know why they’re looking for me, though.”

“She’s been arrested seven times for moving violations,” Harry offered.

Moving violations? “Like parking tickets?” Harold said. He was pretty sure the disbelief was clear in his voice. What kind of police force sent a whole team of people chasing through time and space after someone for moving violations?

“Oh,” said Claudia, her eyes widening. “That could be it, actually. I’m colorblind,” she said, like that explained anything.

Al tried to muffle his laughter and ended up choking on his popcorn. “I’m okay,” he said when Harold pounded on his back.

Rob wisely decided to ignore that part of the conversation, and pressed on. “So you’re here to check up on Harry?”

“And for the training,” Claudia said. “It was mostly a coincidence that we ended up here for this rotation. Also, it was your idea originally, in the future.” The ‘so you really can’t blame me for how it’s turned out’ was unspoken but implicit in her expression.

Even in the basement, the doorbell was loud and clear. Still the Imperial March, and Al started laughing again. “What are we going to do about the interstellar police?” Toby said, clearly deciding that someone had to be the voice of reason.

“Can’t she just pay the tickets?” Matthew asked.

Everyone looked at Claudia. Claudia looked at Harry. “I don’t have any of my cards,” she said.

“That’s what you said last time,” Harry said. “I’m not bailing you out again. I told you to keep an emergency card stashed in the house.”

The doorbell rang again. Harold thought someone should probably go check on it. “Someone should probably go answer the door,” he said.

In a series of rapid pops, three — no, four — no, six people appeared in the basement’s office area. They were all Claudia, and all of them had different colored hair. The Claudia who was standing next to Rob said, “I was just thinking I hoped I remembered to leave myself a note about this!”

“You did,” said one of the new arrivals.

“More than once,” said another one. “But I forgot to bring cards too.”

“I didn’t!” said a third Claudia.

“Great! Let’s go talk to the police!” The seven Claudias headed upstairs as a group, talking about various possible abbreviations for ‘Interstellar Police Force.’ (Apparently in the future, the classic “IPF” was considered too… something — Harold couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation after they turned the corner.)

“See?” he said, mostly just to see if he could get Al to crack up again. “Just a misunderstanding.”


Chapter 35 (day 19): In which it’s the weekend before Christmas, with all that entails.

“It’s the weekend before Christmas.” Harold came to that sudden realization while he was in the front hall, corralling boots (and shoes, and the odd pair of sandals) into Al’s boot corral. There was a fence around it and everything.

No one said anything, but that was probably because there wasn’t anyone within earshot. He walked into the kitchen and repeated himself. “It’s the weekend before Christmas.”

Meshkalla and PJ waved their spoons at him from the table. He wasn’t sure what they were doing, but it appeared to involve dough of some kind. “Toby’s going to take us to a farm to go on a sleigh ride this afternoon, before we go back home!”

“I’m going shopping,” Cate said. “I still can’t believe you and Al got all your shopping done before me this year.”

Harold didn’t bother telling her that they weren’t technically done, in the most exact sense of the word. Mostly done was pretty close, he figured. “Yeah,” he said.

“Are you going by yourself?” Al asked, passing through with a basket of laundry. “We had Rob’s whole team for backup, and it was still crazy.”

Cate shook her head. “Matthew and Sam are coming, and I think Nick and Steve too. Actually, Rob might even be coming. There was a list somewhere. We’re starting with the church fairs, to make sure we get enough baked goods before they’re all gone. Then we’ll drop stuff off here and head out again.”

“Can you get us a can of cookies for the house?” he said. (Cate might have gotten out of grocery shopping, but he figured pastries from a church were still fair game.)

“Already on the list,” she assured him. “And yes, I remember, no pretzels, no matter what they’re covered with.”

It sounded like he and Al were going to have the house to themselves for most of the day. Perfect. They still had to figure out Harry’s gift, and it would give them a chance to fulfill another Christmas tradition, one they’d started the first year they met — watching holiday movies together.

Al was back with another load of laundry. “Movies this afternoon?” he asked.

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Harold promised.


Chapter 36 (day 20): In which the craft room becomes the wrapping room.

The thing about celebrating Christmas with people who hadn’t grown up with any sort of Christmas-like holiday (like, say, people from another planet) was that they rarely had any idea which elements were traditionally considered “important,” and which were just random.

For instance, Santa was traditional. Miniature holographic bows were just random.

“I thought you said trees were part of the holiday spirit,” Harold heard Kim say from the craft room (wrapping central, for the moment). He wasn’t sure why Kim was even wrapping Christmas presents, but Matthew and Betty had dropped her off for the day, so maybe Sam and Matthew had recruited her.

“Usually it’s evergreen trees,” Matthew said. “Like pine trees, and firs, and the ones we have in the house.”

“Palm trees are evergreen trees,” Kim insisted.

“Really? They don’t lose their leaves? Hey, Sam —“

“I’m checking the internet now,” Sam said. “Okay, let’s see, ‘are palm trees deciduous?’ Looks like Kim wins again.”

Kim cheered, and Matthew said, “Huh. All right, palm tree theme it is. I like it.”

“Each leaf can have a bow on it!” Kim said.

Harold backtracked to the kitchen, and wrote ‘more bows’ on the shopping list. He and Harry were doing an afternoon supply run; they could pick some up along the way. He tapped the colored pencil on the edge of the shelf while he perused the list. If they were already getting bows, after all… He added ‘tape’ under bows, and underlined both items for good measure. You could never go wrong with more tape.


Chapter 37 (day 21): In which Nick and Steve go home, and everyone helps.

Nick and Steve decided on Monday that it was "probably safe" to move back into their house, and instantly got more volunteers than they could handle. It wasn't that anyone wanted them out of the loft, but they were all pretty curious about what, exactly, was going on over at Nick and Steve's. Unfortunately (or not -- Harold wasn't sure he wanted to know), Steve went over first, with Bruno, to make sure everything was okay.

By the time Harold got there -- he was in the third wave, which was really just the spectator group -- things looked pretty normal. He had baby Harry with him, along with Nina and Bob. Nick came out to meet him at the car. "Thanks for coming," he said.

"I wouldn't miss it," Harold told him. "Think of the stories."

They walked to the front door together. "The paint's dry in the kitchen, and we've cleaned the whole ground floor. Steve's making lunch -- everyone else is working in the basement. It's still a mess down there."

Harold looked around curiously once he was inside, but he quickly got distracted by the smells coming from the kitchen. Steve was working on some sort of soup and sandwiches combo that looked amazing. "The house looks great," he said.

"We couldn't have done it all in one day like this without everyone's help," Steve said, stirring the soup. "That was huge."

"What happened, exactly?" Harold asked, because it turned out he did sort of want to know, and he figured it couldn't hurt to just come out and say it.

Steve frowned at the soup. "We're not entirely sure. I mean, our pipes definitely burst, and flooded the basement, and that was a problem. It's what happened after that that's a little unclear. Bruno freaked out about something, and the oven sort of exploded, and then we found out that the house was wired backwards, or something, and the power outage left everything shorted out. It’s taken a little doing to get everything back on track.”

Harold nodded. He usually felt that way at least once a day, even without exploding ovens. “Yeah,” he said. “I hear that.”


Chapter 38 (day 22): In which some very convincing arguments are made for pizza becoming a holiday staple.

They hosted an unofficial Christmas dinner on Tuesday evening. Rob was sending Claudia, Sophia, and Tavia home for a week for the holiday, and Harold and Al wanted to get their dinner invitation gift taken care of before they left. (Out of the three of them, only Tavia actually celebrated Christmas, but they all seemed eager for the break.)

The menu consisted of a full three courses, starting with appetizers (small pizzas), entrees (large pizzas), and dessert (cake -- they couldn't figure out a way to make pizza work as a dessert, and no one wanted to give up cake anyway).

"Pizza is my favorite food in the whole universe," Claudia said. Only one of her had showed up for the meal, which he thought was probably good. There was only just so much brain flexibility he could muster up while he was eating, and he was already using most of it trying to figure out how he could eat a slice of all the different pizzas they had and still have room for cake.

"It's not really a traditional Christmas food, though. Or advent, I guess. I'm not sure advent has any traditional foods." Harold looked at Matthew, who was still the only one who knew anything about the actual advent holiday.

"I don't know," Matthew said. "We did spiral sliced ham for every holiday, every year, in my family. Christmas, Advent, Easter, Thanksgiving, New Year's, Valentine's Day -- my parents were big on ham."

"Ham's not vegetarian," Rob said, stating the completely obvious.

Everyone waited to see if he was going to add anything to that, but he just took another slice of pizza. Matthew said, "Well, no. I don't think they were really worried about that."

Cate was never one to pass up an opportunity for random comments. “Pizza’s not vegan, though,” she said. “It has cheese, and stuff.”

“You can still eat cheese in the future,” Claudia said. Then she glared at Harry, who Harold was guessing had just kicked her under the table. “What?” she said. “It’s not like it’s some big secret. You can still eat cheese in the future.”

Harold was starting to see why they might have wanted her as a bodyguard for Harry. She shared a lot. All the time, in fact. They’d learned more about Harry (pineapples gave him hives), Nimby (flight was still a few years off), and what to expect in the future (apparently, veganism wasn’t mandatory) in one dinner than Harry had told them since his arrival. Also, he seemed more relaxed when she was around.

“Is there any more of the mushroom and peppers?” Harold asked.

“Last slice,” Toby said, checking the box and passing it down the table. “Happy advent.”


Chapter 39 (day 23): In which time flies when you have a long to-do list.

“What happened to today?” Al checked his watch, like he might have read it wrong the first two times. “I thought we were going to get everything done before Christmas Eve.”

Harold looked at their list. He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Maybe we should just go to bed now, and get an early start tomorrow.” Al leaned over his shoulder. “Hey, we can cross off ‘laundry,’ at least. Although we’ll probably have to add it back on tomorrow anyway.”

Harold was pretty sure Al’s plan wouldn’t look anywhere near as appealing the next day, when their alarm was going off at five o’clock in the morning. Still, it would mean they would get some sleep, and even five hours without crying babies felt like a miracle at that point.

“Absolutely,” he said.


Chapter 40 (day 24, Christmas Eve): In which it’s Christmas Eve, and all is bright, if not exactly calm.

They grabbed an hour for themselves after lunch, when half the household decided to take a nap, and the other half rushed outside to burn off energy.

It was quiet in their room, away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the house. “Hey,” Harold said. “Happy Christmas Eve.”

Al smiled. “Happy Christmas Eve to you too. I have your Christmas present.”

Harold couldn’t help smiling back. “What a coincidence — I have your Christmas present too.”

There were other gifts under the tree, of course. Brightly wrapped boxes (and gift bags, of course) that said ‘From Harold, To Al,’ and ‘From Al, To Harold.’ But they’d talked about this one for months, been working towards it for nearly a year. (It was important to him, Al had said. First you pick them, then you wear them, then you trade them.)

Harold pulled the chain off over his head and worked the clasp open. He’d replaced the chain twice, but the ring had held up through everything.

“It’s been an honor to wear your ring,” Al said solemnly, holding out a matching band. “And I have been honored to have you wear mine.”

Al had told him there was no set ritual for the words exchanged. Harold had debated what to say for months before deciding to keep it simple. “I love you,” he said.

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Their fist bump made a tiny ‘clink’ when their rings connected. “Here’s to many more.”


Chapter 41 (day 25, Christmas): In which Christmas day is just what you’d expect in a house that includes six adults, one baby, and five guests.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Happy advent!”

“Look how big Harry’s gotten!”

“Your tree looks amazing! Where did those green icicle ornaments come from?”

Harold’s parents had joined them for the morning, along with Charlotte, Eliza, and Tina. (Sam was back home, but Toby had moved in for the winter break, and was rooming with Matthew.) It was a good thing there were so many of them, since it seemed like half the presents were for Harry (one or the other), and baby Harry couldn’t actually open anything.

“Oops, I think this one was for you.” Tina held up the screwdriver kit she’d just unwrapped and passed it to Harry. “It was in pastels, so I thought it was for the baby. It’s from Claudia.”

“This one’s definitely for you,” Harold said, sensing an opportunity. His parents were distracting everyone else by collecting gadgets to test the capacity of their new charger. “It’s from me and Al.”

Harry opened the wrapping carefully. “Can I shake it?” he asked.

Al nodded. “It’s totally shake-proof.”

The box was plain brown, no clues on the outside. Inside the first box was a second box, and inside the second box was a rainbow of tissue paper (Kim had been back for more ‘helping’ with the wrapping when Harold had been working on it.) Finally, Harry came to the last box. “Is it a watch?” he asked, holding it up to the light before fastening it around his wrist. “Whoa.”

“It’s your heartbeat,” Harold said. “Your own unique rhythm of time, no matter where or when you are.”

Al added, “It has multiple modes, but that was our favorite.”

Harry shut his eyes for a few seconds. “That’s incredible,” he said. “I love it.”

Then he was off the floor and hugging them, and Harold had time to think, we did all right this time, thank goodness. And then Eliza was exclaiming over the latest gift, and dragging them all down to the basement to try out the turtle nightlight.

He caught Al’s eye on the way down the stairs. “We did it,” he said.

“You know, there’s actually still one more advent gift to go,” Al said. “Next Thursday.”

That was true. “I got you a pack of utility lighters,” Harold said.

Al said, “I got you a wind-up flashlight keychain. It has a compass in it, so I figured it wasn’t really breaking your mom’s rules.”

“Come on guys, there’s stars everywhere! You can see all the constellations!” Eliza called.

And they went.