Chapter 19: Preparations Underway

Date Wednesday, August 8th, 2260

Slightly more than a day later.

Now that Alice's and mine's birthdays are out of the way for another year, I can get back to working and furthering progress towards my goals again. And since I've already covered what progress I've made and what I needed to do the day before yesterday, it's about time I begin preparing the plethora of items and gear I'm going to require for my wasteland adventure. To get things started, I'll first need to have that discussion with my family today.

Planning on talking with my parents and grandparents, I got my butt up from my bed and headed for the bathroom. After quickly cleaning up, I set off in the direction of where my parents usually were in the morning, the living room.

Leaving the hallway behind, I saw them and in their usual spots, thus I greeted them as I did every morning. "Morning Dad, morning Mom."

"Morning son." Dad responded, looking up from his tablet that he was obviously reading something on.

"Good morning sweety, how'd you sleep?" Mom followed in her usual bubbly and upbeat voice.

"Pretty good, you?"

"Slept like a rock."

Following that, we went through our regular routine of chatting for a bit while they had their morning caffeine of either coffee or tea. When the two of them were finished drinking their drinks, we got up and proceeded to the kitchen, where Mom took over the kitchen as per usual. I offered to help, but she declined my offer and said she had everything under control.

Mom, not needing my help, I took a seat at the kitchen table along with Dad as she began preparing breakfast for the three of us. A time later, everything was prepared and as soon as it was all brought over, we started digging into my mom's delicious cooking.

As we were coming upon the end of the meal, I broached the subject I've been needing to. "Mom, Dad, I have something important I would like to talk to you two about."

"Oh, and what's that son?" Dad asked whilst mom looked on curiously.

"Well, it's concerning my progress as of late as well as what I would like to do in the future. But before I bring up what I want to discuss, Grandma and both Grandpa Henry and Grandpa John need to be here for this." I answered him.

"Yeah, that does sound like a pretty important topic. Hun, can you call your dad and my parents and tell them to come on over?" He communicated with me and my mother.

"Sure, honey, but your dad just retired recently and has been enjoying his free time. So I don't think he'll be over in time before we need to go to work…" Mom responded, insinuating my grandpa was busy.

"My old man has been taking advantage of his retirement by sleeping in quite a lot recently, the lucky bastard." Dad said enviously, going into his thinking mode.

…

Moments later, a devious grin made its way onto his face.

"Ohh, I know just what to do. Tell them there's an emergency regarding their grandson. That'll be sure to make them race over." My dad said joyfully after coming up with something that would ruin Grandpa Henry's extra sleep.

Mom released a sigh at my dad's antics prior to going into the other room to give my grandparents a call. After about 10 minutes, my grandparents were hurrying through the front door, coming towards us in the living room. As soon as they stepped foot into the living room, the three of them had questioning looks on their faces, not understanding what was going on, while my dad had a very pleased expression plastered on his face.

With the three of them here now, I got down to business and explained the situation to them and threw my dear old dad right under the bus, where they proceeded to give him death stares and an ear full.

My dad, obviously knowing there would be repercussions for his actions at a later date if he didn't do anything, was quick to sincerely apologize to Grandma Emelia and Grandpa John. As for grandpa Henry, his apology to him was blatantly insincere, pissing off my grandpa even further.

Before the two of them could start fighting, I opened up my mouth and said. "I apologize for my dad, grandpa."

A few seconds passed before Grandpa Henry's anger was placated somewhat and when it was, I continued. "Dad's method of getting you all here may have been inconsiderate, but it's a good thing he did, since there is something really important I need to discuss with you all."

"And that would be?" Grandpa Henry inquired.

"That would be the next step I need to take." I responded, grabbing hold of everyone's attention.

"I'm sure all of you are well aware of the amount of reading I do and the sort of memory I have."

"We are." My mom Jane replied, for everyone.

"Well, I'm nearing the limit of what I can learn from reading, so it's time I take the next step and start creating and researching my own things."

"You've gotten that far already." Grandma Emelia said, clearly surprised.

There was a bit of back and forth with everyone when my gramps, John turned to me and asked me what I needed. "So what do you need, Dom?"

"We don't really have the space at home for the activities I would be doing, so I'm thinking I'm going to need a large warehouse-like space that can accommodate manufacturing and research. The only places I know that have that kind of space available around here would be on the other side of the undercity." I answered him.

"Yeah, there aren't many properties like that around here, if any. Despite that, there should be few relatively close to home." Dad commented.

"There should be some. However, I would much prefer a place in between the mines and the manufacturing area so I can gather resources on my own and don't have to rely on you guys 100% of the time." I responded.

"Oh nonsense, kid, that's the whole point of family. You're supposed to rely on us." Gramps said before the rest of the family piped in saying similar things.

…

"So, do you have a property in mind?" Mom asked me after we were finished talking about a bunch of the other miscellaneous things I'd need for the place.

"No idea, so we'll have to go check out some properties to figure out which of them will suit my needs the best." I answered.

"Well, why don't we go property searching today? I don't have anything going on, now that I'm up." Grandpa Henry said while staring daggers at my dad from across the living room and receiving a mocking face from him.

As my father was directing a mocking expression at his father further riling him up, gramps said. "I got nothing I have to take care of, so I'll come too."

"I'll be coming as well. I have to make sure my grandson gets a good deal." Grandma Emelia followed up.

"Unfortunately, we have work, so we'll be leaving it up to you guys to find what he needs." Mom said, sad at the fact that she couldn't join us in my property search.

"I mean yeah we have work, but with me being handed the company by my old man, I'm sure it won't be an issue if we take a day off or two to join our son in his search, you don't have a problem with that, right old man?" My dad, Robert suggested before turning and asking my grandad.

"The company isn't going to fall apart in a day, so come along." Grandpa Henry responded, holding back his anger that he will clearly take out on his son at some point later today.

With my mom and dad now joining us in my search for the right place, they first called up whoever they needed to at the company and made arrangements. Once that was settled, we collectively headed for the garage to pile into Dad's SUV so we could make our way to the undercity real estate office, but on our way there, the doorbell rang.

"Let me go see who's at the door." I said, already having a premonition of who will be there.

The moment I neared close enough to the front door with my perception field for me to detect who was at it and low and behold, it was Alice, just like I thought it would be.

Guess we'll be adding another person to our group trip. We're running out of space in the car, but we'll make it work.

As soon as I got to the front door, I opened it up and was immediately greeted by an Alice missile that latched on to me with surprising speed.

"As excited as ever to see me, huh, Alice?" I said while she was attached to my front.

"Nnn, of course." She replied before she buried her face in my chest again.

"Okay, Alice, that's enough clinging for now. You'll have plenty of time to do that in the car ride." I piped up after letting her cling to me for a short bit.

"A car ride. We don't usually do that, so where are we going?" She inquired after releasing me, curious about where we were headed.

"Walk with me. I'll tell you on the way to the garage." I told her while presenting my hand that she happily held onto prior to us moving to the garage.

As we were walking to the garage, I started off by saying. "As you know, I've been reaching the limit of what I learn from the many books I have and the undercity web."

"Yeah, you did tell me about that." She responded waiting for me to continue.

"With me nearing that limit and my dream revolving around conquering the wasteland, it's time I start preparing all the items I'll be needing to make that happen. To do that, I'll require a very large space to accommodate all the equipment I'll be using, thus our destination today is the main undercity real estate office that will help me find the space I'm looking for." I explained.

From there, I continued informing her about the rest of the details as we continued our brief journey to the garage. The moment the two of us arrived, Alice greeted everyone before we all loaded up into the SUV as the garage was in the process of opening.

"And we're on our way." Dad said aloud as he began driving off in the direction of the real estate office with the garage closing shut behind us.