Home

There were faces that appeared on the blue-glowing screen, wearing white caps, waving and smiling at him. Jonas had always known them: some of his earliest memories were of the faces, staring down at him.

He asked Papa where the faces were. He reached out and touched Papa's face: the whiskers and the ears and the nose. They were not like this.

"They're in their own homes," Papa would say.

"What is a home?" Jonas would ask.

"Well, it's just like what we have here, only someplace else." Papa waved his hand to indicate where that might be.

"Oh," Jonas would say, now understanding. So home meant the World. Which meant there were other Worlds where the faces lived. Were the other worlds very much like his own, he wondered? With a T.V. room, and a kitchen, and a library, and a power plant, and a greenhouse that grew the vegetables, and an airlock, and sleeping quarters, and a gymnasium?

And where exactly were the other Worlds? They were not in here: there were not two T.V. rooms, and two kitchens, and two libraries, and two power plants and all of the rest. Only one of each. So where could they be?

Maybe they were floating somewhere, like the specks of dust that appeared sometimes in the air. Or maybe they were like the birds that came and landed on the high-up screens on the walls that showed the pictures of the vegetables and the blue ceiling that could not be touched. Maybe the other Worlds were flying around, too.

"Are the Homes very, very small?" he asked Papa one day. Jonas picked up a pea from his plate and held it aloft. "Like this?"

"Well, no," Papa said. "They're the same size as our own home."

Jonas' face pursed up. "Then where?" he asked, frustrated.

Papa leaned back in his chair and began to laugh. Then, when they had finished dinner, he was hoisted up in the air and came to rest on Papa's shoulder and they went to the T.V. room. He played games on the floor and Papa read books and he forgot about the whole thing.

But every time he saw a speck of dust floating in the air, or saw a bird flying across the blue ceiling that could not be touched, he wondered if that was where the faces were.