This is totally opposite from Wordless Wednesday.

Brenners at Time and Season had a challenge on her blog last Wednesday. You can read all about it here.

I decided to write a fiction story about a Mother of 3, on top of a skyscraper, in the future. [Sorry, Brenners, I cheated a little and picked the letter after I read the choices.]

She wrote about the same subjects along a totally different line. You can read her story here.

Without further ado, here is my futuristic fiction story.

Any similarities with living people is only partly intentional.

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Chapter Two: A Day In The City

She had planned all her city errands for one day. She had not planned to be hiding behind this row of plants frantically searching for her three children.

There! There’s Peter, her 12 year old, in the electronics row to her left. Straight ahead she could see Melanie’s 8 year old feet under the rack of dresses. Slightly behind Melanie was Laura, her 10 year old, looking through a row of blouses.

The security guards would come up the elevators to her right. Quickly she voice commanded her phone headset to conference call her children. She was glad for some of the technology available in the year 2050; but she was even more glad that she had a place not totally reliant on that technology.

The city people thought people like her and her family were weird, a threat to society, and behind the times. That’s why she avoided trips to the city as much as possible. It just was not accurate to get Peter’s contacts online. She couldn’t have a dentist delivered to work on Laura’s cavity, and it was much easier to have the doctor give Melanie her immunizations. Most everything else could be delivered to her secluded home – away from the cold, technological city.

After she had finished the appointments she wanted to treat the kids to lunch and check out a couple sales. Peter, Laura, and Melanie had been excited to visit the café above the offices and watch the machines cook the food. She was glad that she didn’t have to eat the preservative laden, plastic-resembling food on a regular basis. How glad she was for her wholesome, green, organic garden back home.

There had been only one human running the whole café from a central computer. He had seemed like a nice enough guy, but obviously he had alerted security.

Her husband had cautioned her to have the security scanner playing through her phone headset. She was so glad she did. At least she had a couple minutes to plan before the two guards and their robots arrived.

Their family’s autogyro was parked on the top of this skyscraper. The very top had parking, next down were the stores, restaurants in the middle, and offices closest to ground level. Since security would use the escalator she would try to evade them in the elevators behind her to the left.

Good. Her girls were casually heading towards Peter. There was no human personnel working on this store level today. She just had to watch the cameras and cashier robot.

Since she knew they were not interested in her by herself she strolled back and pushed the elevator up button.

Her children were healthy, tan, and physically fit. They were so unlike the emaciated city kids that the government wanted to control them and their loyalties. The authorities needed healthy young people to carry on their programs. However, they did not seem to learn that the only reason her children were like they were was because they did not participate in the government schools and programs.

As per her phone instructions Laura managed to drop a blouse over the rolling robot that watched the store. It promptly retreated to it’s cubicle to report and get another robot. The siblings ran quietly to the open elevator and gathered around their mother inside.

She opened the elevator doors two floors up and had all four of them jump out. After sending both elevators down to the ground level they raced to the emergency stairs.

Security would not remember to check the stairwell until more time passed. Modern city dwellers were not athletic enough to run up five flights of stairs. She and her children were; thanks to clean food, fresh air, hard work, and good sleep without pills or the beeping and flashing of electronics.

One more flight of stairs.

Their phones were still on conference call, but her children were silent. She had gone over scenarios with them many times. They didn’t always understand why their whole household had to share one computer and didn’t have a TV. They knew that their personal digital assistants would be put away once they returned home. Yet her children were glad to be with their parents and learning from them instead of in a boarding school mainly run by robots.

The stairway door burst open but the light was not much brighter. The sky over the city was always cloudy and grey, not like the bright blue of the sky over their home.

She made sure they were all safely in the autogyro before she maneuvered it up and away from the skyscraper. Security would give up once they saw her family was gone. It wasn’t worth that much trouble to them.

Soon she would be home where her main job was to be a wife and mother. It was harder work without robots and tons of gadgets, but it was worth it when she looked at her children.