Royce's Random Thoughts

And all through Ring,

Not a creature was stirring.

Except for some Things.

The suspicion had started about a month after Tiff and her family had been Awakened on the Ring, and moved into the house that she and her husband Abbad had designed. Aside from it being the largest space she’d ever been able to live in, not a McMansion but comfortable instead of cramped, she’d been able to put in things she’d only dreamed of. A kitchen big enough for two people to work in without bumping into each other. A porch where she could sun herself (and not have to wear a breath mask). A proper work room for all of her projects (and thank the Groupmind that each of her kids had a morph minder now to keep them out of Mom’s Stuff.) A living room with a working fireplace…

She’d been sure the Groupmind was going to put it’s big electronic foot down at that last one. Burning wood and kicking carbon into the atmosphere? Governments around the world had demanded that fireplaces be filled and closed permanently, in a desperate attempt to try and stop the inevitable. The fact that she could have one again in her house was something she couldn’t have dreamed of before.

“Seriously, you’re letting this happen?” Tiff had asked her morph.

“On the Ring it’s a much less serious problem,” Squirbo, her raccoonmorph, had replied. “The local weather is temperate throughout its structure, except where the Roof is set to block enough of the ambient light to lower the local temperature, so even people who want to use it won’t do so very often. Even then most will make do these days with holographic displays and electric heaters instead of risking a real fire in their home. The amount of carbon released is merely a fraction of what it might have been on Earth in the Bad Old Days.”

“Thanks,” Tiff said, smiling. She looked at the floorplan Squirbo had helped draw up on her display. “The chimney is kinda… wide though, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’m not an architect, Miss Tiff,” the little morph replied.