Chapter 4: Lessons and curiosity.

Chapter 4: lessons and curiosity.

Next morning all went like a normal morning.
There was quiet time for breakfast and Billy could walk on an easy pace to Nemo’s place for the next lessons.
Besides him was, now becoming to feel ‘normal’, Petra. So they talked.

Billy asked: “Why do you seldom eat something?
We all do have to eat to grow, don’t we?”
Petra answered: “I did tell you, I am from Homeland. That is, what makes the difference.
Homeland is a very special place, where all paper things live and…”

Here interrupted Billy her story: “But you do not feel like paper, you do feel like Lilo, or mom, or me!”

“Still I do tell the truth.
Some day, when we are good friends, and some other things are done, I will take you there, so you can see.
But paper does not need to eat, although for us, when we live in Homeland, time goes like on dry land, and we do everything all people do, so eating too.
But when we are with our friends, we do need very little, and do live for the friendship of our friends.”

“So if I do understand you well, when we are friends, you do not need to eat? But can, while you are curious how our food does taste?”

"That is true.
By the way, Homeland does look more like what you mom did call ‘dry land’.
So I really do hope we can go there in a short time, but not now!”

On Billy’s face disappointment and eagerness did struggle to get first place.
Thát would be an adventure…

“But why not now?”
“While we have to learn a lot more about each other, make a lot of preparations before we can go.”
“What are preparations again? These days there is so much new, I did forget”, Billy answered.

“Preparations are the things, you have to do, to be ready to go and do something.
One of them is keeping awake in this lesson, for the better you listen, the more we can answer all we need to know, to go on an adventure to Homeland.”

At that moment they stepped into Nemo’s house, so the conversation was over.
Nemo welcomed Billy with a new slate and piece of coral and asked him, to draw from memory the map he had seen yesterday.

After that, they did talk about trees and scrubs, and growing greenery for air and food, but it still was not totally clear for Billy, how all did fit together.

“So if there is no greenery, we cannot breath properly, you do say.
But there is not so much greenery over here and there is still enough air.”

“You are a curious young man,” said Nemo. "But for biology lessons you are a bit young still.”
"What is biology?”

“That has to do with all things living, and how your body works.
And also how things in nature depend on one and other to keep in balance.
To understand that, you first have to learn about other things that make understanding this all easier.” Nemo answered.

“But one thing I will explain very simple by doing: here is a pot with soil, and there are a few beans and some cress seeds.
We are going to water the soil, put in the beans on one side, and the cress on the other. Every day we will look, if the soil is still a bit wet and what happens next.
That will be your first lesson in gardening ánd biology.”

With the tip of his tongue out of his mouth Billy did as asked.

“Now,” Nemo said, we are going to make a record.”

“What’s a record? We never talked about that before?”

“A record is something like you yesterday did see in that book: a history of something, written down in the order it happens.”

“Are we going to do that on paper? Daddy always says, it is to difficult to make, just to draw on it!” Billy wondered. “I even do not know were that comes from or how it is made!”

“Here in our Bubble it is extremely difficult to make, while only seaweed is available. That does not stay good as long as real paper.
So we have to do with either slate, or clay and the last will be to big at the end. So thin slate it becomes.

Write down,” he dictated, “On the first of Decamonth of the year 11.765 at midday time, I did put in the ground the seeds of beans and cress, and watered it as it should be, point.
Than I put the pot under the hot lamp, that goes on and of every 12 hours of the day, point.”

Billy wrote, and after that he had to put this slate on his special, own place in this room, and the pot under the lamp.
After that they talked a bit further about ships.

So at the end of the lesson, Billy did understand, that wood, a material he only did know from chairs and tables, grew in very big size as a living tree.

And that people could do a lot with that, like building houses, boats and even more. He would become to see that, when he was growing bigger, stronger.

Sometimes, Billy wished, he was able to let time go faster or slower on demand, but he realized, that was not possible.

After this lesson Nemo ordered Billy to walk around the Bubble, and when he had done so, draw a map of the city inside, as good as he remembered.
So out Billy went, and of course Petra went with him, although it was difficult to keep his attention to his task, while he still had so much to ask to Petra.

But she wanted them to make the best map they could, so she did not answer any question about Homeland, until this was finished to Nemo’s satisfaction.

To both their surprise this city map looked nearly a duplicate of the City of Atlantis.
So nów Billy understood, why it did look so familiar, when he did see this map yesterday.
It made him more curious, but after the drawing was finished, Nemo did send him home: end of classes!

And while they talked about this discovery, Petra and Billy did forget to talk about Homeland, but that would not last very long!

© Nan van Daalen, all rights reserved.