Ro fell asleep against Zee's shoulder fretting over the unnerving omen. He shook her shoulder slightly to wake her up when they arrived at the bus depot and it was time to transfer to another bus, or perhaps a train. "We should see about getting to a Ground Wire so I can hack into the local law enforcement database and see what security at the airport will be like," Zee sounded like his usual self when they stepped off of the bus.
The outside temperature was hot and humid—typical weather for this time of year. It was hard to believe that in a few months it would be freezing cold and icy. She pitied the original settlers. What were they thinking? Most likely they were exhausted from the thousands of miles they'd already traveled on foot, and couldn't possibly bear the extra couple hundred miles to make it to Nevada, much less California.
Ro sat down in the shade of the bus shelter as Zee studied the various bus routes and the map of the city. "Looks like there's a free shuttle that goes downtown," Zee noted. "That will be our best bet at finding a Ground Wire, and perhaps someplace to have lunch."
The only downside to taking the free shuttle was that it was sponsored by the religious church that most of the residents belonged to, and so they were stuck listening to the subtle preaching of the religion's beliefs that were mixed in with the informative historical history audio tour dialogue. Ro tried to ignore the audio commentator, but her interest was queued when they passed by a large building called the "Family History Center" and the commentator started speaking of "genie-ology". Genealogy was something about making a family tree and mapping deceased ancestors to their living descendants. The church's zealous dedication to this hobby was stemmed from their belief that families could be together forever. Begrudgingly Ro found that she had been "had" by their scheme and was now curious to find out more. Not necessarily about eternal families, but about finding her ancestors. She had been on Skye's show to see if they could reunite her with her brother, and had been greatly disappointed to find out it was just a setup. But this "genie" thing sounded like it was available for personal use and that even someone like herself could go in and get help tracing her own family line—for free! She didn't allow herself to hope too much, but perhaps if they were stuck here waiting for a flight they could go check it out? Maybe these people might be able to find something out about her family in their huge database they were boasting?
Ro turned to Zee to ask him to remember the address of the building they'd just passed but it seemed that Zee had been listening and was already a step ahead of her. He'd reached up and had pushed the "request stop" button. "We may not make it back here if we wait," he gently smiled.
The bus didn't immediately pull over, but continued to the next historical location before it stopped. Apparently by "free service" they should have specified that the bus only stopped at the historical locations and that it didn't take midpoint call stops. Rather than waiting for the next shuttle in the opposite direction, they decided to just walk the couple of blocks back to the genealogy center.
As they arrived at the Family History Center, Ro realized they probably could have just gone on the website and have gotten the same information they were going to get from visiting in person. But, as they'd already walked here, they might as well stop in and get a personalized experience.
The woman that greeted them at the reception desk was overly cheery in her greeting, then almost ecstatic when she learned that this was their first time visiting. Ro shyly repeated what she could remember of the message she'd heard on the bus, and then asked if they were indeed welcome to this service.
The receptionist assured her that the Family History Center was open for public use, and even called a volunteer over to help her get started. An elderly woman with a name tag that read "Sister Woods" invited them to have a seat at a computer then pulled up a chair next to them.
Hesitantly Ro sat down. She didn't want to get too comfortable as she didn't want to feel obligated to do anything as she wasn't the least interested in their church and just wanted to ask if perhaps they could help her with her situation.
"So what brings you here today?" Sister Woods asked as she entered her name and password into the computer.
Ro didn't know where to start. She didn't want to reveal too much about her personal life, but then this woman probably wouldn't be able to help her much if she didn't. "Well, I don't really know. We were on the bus when we heard about some of the things you did here, and I guess I just wanted to ask if perhaps you might help me find my family."
The woman smiled, and clicked a few things then brought up a screen and began assembling a few pamphlets and brochures for Ro to look through. She then began explaining how she'd help her get started with a four generation family tree, and then from there Ro could come back and they could further help her find the rest of her ancestors. "Now, right here, " she was showing her how to fill out a basic pedigree chart, you're going to put your father's name, and then on this line, you put your mother's maiden name."
As she was explaining how to fill out the form, Ro dismally interrupted her. "What if I don't know the names of my parents?" Sister Woods stopped explaining and looked at her curiously. It was a look of wonderment if she was perhaps mentally handicapped which was why she didn't know such basic information, but as she appeared sound of mind, she went with her second conclusion. "You can put your adoptive parent's instead if you want."
She had missed the mark slightly. Ro shyly explained, "I'm not really interested in my foster parents 'genie-ology'…" she knew she was mispronouncing it, "… but I was hoping that perhaps you could help me find out the names of my real parents."
The woman then stopped what she was doing and looked at her sympathetically. "I'm sorry dear, but we don't have access to adoption records. You'd best ask your foster parents for that kind of information. Also, we only have access to records of those who are deceased for privacy and security reasons."
"I've asked, and they couldn't find any record of them." It was a little harder for her to admit the next part, " On top of that, I don't know if they're even alive. I'm hoping they are, but there's no way I can know for sure. I do know that my grandparents are dead though."
"Do you know their names?" the woman then opened a new webpage on the computer.
Ro shook her head. "Not the slightest clue. Only a year ago, I found I had a brother , and he was the one who told me they had died."
The woman looked at Zee, "Oh, is this your brother?" she asked naively.
"No, I'm just a close friend," Zee corrected her. He was surprised that she would even think they were related as he didn't share any facial similarities with Ro as family members usually did.
The woman was beginning to show a bit of discouragement. "Do you have any other relatives that might know?" she asked them.
"Not that I know of."
The woman turned from her computer. "I'm afraid we can't help you much without more information, but let's see what we can find out," she turned back to the computer.
Zee saw her accessing the U.S. social security death index. "Do you know if your last name is the same, or has it been changed?" she asked Ro.
Ro looked to Zee for advice. Should she give out her last name, especially with the woman sitting right in front of a computer? What if she typed in her name and their mug shots on their "WANTED" ad popped up? Zee wasn't any help and just shrugged his shoulders, leaving the decision up to her. The woman looked to Ro, her fingers on the keyboard, eagerly waiting to type. "It's Rowen." Ro then spelled it for her.
Sister Woods typed in the last name then studied the results on the screen. "581 hits," she mused. "Now let's see if we can narrow that down. Do you know how long ago they died?"
"I was really young, but not more than 20 years," Ro answered.
Sister Woods then narrowed the date parameters to only show those people with the last name of Rowen that had died in the last 20 years. There were still almost a hundred matches. "Some of these have varied spellings," the woman noted.
Looking over her shoulder, Ro saw listings for Rouen, Rowan, Roughan, and Roewen. The woman excluded all of these by checking the parameter: "Exact Spelling Only". The filtered results were only 36 names.
"Thirty-six, now that's not too bad." Somehow, Ro had thought the list would be much longer. It seemed "Rowen" was not a common last name if only thirty-six people in the United States had died in the last 20 years with that name. Zee made a mental picture of the list, even though the woman was printing a copy of it for Ro. "Now, this will be the hard part," she said, handing Ro the list. "From here, you'll have to look at each name on the website, looking closely at their family tree and where they lived or died, and then decide for yourself if it's a possible match or just someone else who shares the same name."
"And how do I tell if it's a match?" Ro was completely unfamiliar with the theories for elimination.
"The easiest way is if you know where they were living before they died. The Social Security Death Index lists names and locations for the deceased. If you knew that your grandparents were living in Utah when they died, then you could eliminate all the ones outside of Utah…" she gave an example.
Ro knew she had been in a girl's home in Maryland for a long time, but it wasn't the first home she'd been in, so she couldn't say that that was where her grandparents had been living before she had been sent to the orphanage. "I don't know where they lived. I was really young, and I've moved around a ton."
This girl certainly wasn't an easy case, but that was what made genealogy so addicting. Playing detective and finding ancestors was just a fun mystery that unraveled itself one clue at a time. "The other thing you can do, which is less reliable, is to go on our website and look at the census reports for the area and cross reference them to see if—your name in this case—is listed under the household as living with them. I know several people have discovered distant cousins when they learned that their ancestors had siblings from census reports, and have been able to reverse map them. There's years and years of backlogged information that have yet to be digitally scanned in and entered onto our database, but most of the recent decades are in there. Of course, census records are only performed once every ten years, so if they've died recently, or if they moved around a lot, you might have some trouble finding them."
"At least it's a start," Ro was beginning to realize how difficult this ancestry thing actually was.
"A less helpful tactic might be to look at the newspaper films we have on file and see if perhaps an obituary was printed for them in the local paper, and if it makes any references to living relatives. Unfortunately since you don't have much to go off of, you'll have your work cut out for you."
This woman was clearly experienced in her field to know of so many tips. But, as she'd said, with so little information to go off of, it would be hard to figure out which of these Rowens were her grandparents.
"Another thing you have to consider," the woman pointed out, "is if your grandmother kept her maiden name, she won't be on this list, and you'll have to go off of your grandfather's information."
"I understand. Thank you for your time," She began to get up from her seat. She realized now how foolish she was for thinking that they could help her. She should have known better than to believe something that seemed too good to be true. What this woman was suggesting was trying to find a needle in a haystack. "Thank you for your time," she said, gathering her bag.
The woman handed Zee all the pamphlets and quickly summarized some of the different searches he could do while Ro took off toward the door. Zee took them from her then hurried after Ro. The receptionist thanked them for visiting then got up to open the door for them on the way out.
"That was a little disappointing," Ro sighed as they walked to the bus shelter. She had a list of names, but didn't feel any closer to finding her parents.
"Perhaps not as much as you might think," Zee was scanning the brochures into his memory, then discarding them in the trash bin so he wouldn't have to hold them. "Records of the living aren't available for public viewing, but the government has a file for every person born on American soil. Ro, you should at least have a birth certificate on file somewhere, and that would have your parent's names on it."
"So you want to hack into the national Social Security database, and do a search on me?"
"We'd need a government computer to do it on."
"Like the Sub-Rosa Terminal?" Ro suggested.
"Perhaps not that far. The local police department is a part of the government's intra-network and would have such information available. "
Ro was reminded of the time she'd been caught shoplifting for Slam and his gang, and had had her prints run at the police station. The officer had known that she'd run away from the girl's home from her file. Perhaps there was more in her file about her than she hadn't thought of previously. If not her parent's names, perhaps the name of the city she was living in when her grandparent's died and she was first put in an orphanage? If she knew the city, then she might find which of these 36 people could be her grandparents and then perhaps on a census report—the names of her parents.
As she reminisced on her escape from the officer, she was reminded of her first encounter with Zee. Crippled from a large hole in his armor from saving her from Slam, he'd begged for her to save him from being reprogrammed. So much had gone through her mind at that moment, and against logic, she'd gotten into the car and sped off with him. In hindsight, it was the best decision she'd made in life so far. She was far better off with Zee than she would have been on her own. She had so much to thank him for, not just the way he took care of her, but the way he was able to keep her chin up and give her hope that she hadn't felt for a long time. Hope that perhaps with him, she'd be able to find her family again.
"Well it will be really easy getting into the police station. We could just tell them our names and they'd roll out the red carpet for us. Getting out though won't be so easy."
"I don't know if it'd be wise to try anything here with the feds being so close. But sometime later, we might devise a plan to infiltrate and see if I can get your file."
Zee explained some of the other services the Family History Center provided on their continued bus ride downtown. He mentioned that an easier task besides getting into the government's records would be to access the administrative files of the Family History Center users and search for the living users with the last names of Rowen, and see if Ro was referenced as a distant cousin to anyone. It would only work though if someone had created a family tree and listed her in it, which would be unlikely, as if she had any living relatives, she would have been sent to live with them preferably and not to an orphanage.
Getting off at the Temple Square stop, they walked to the mall, and got lunch at the food court, then looking at a city directory, they found a Groundwire. Doing his "thing" Zee checked the security airport security alert and found that they were on the hot list to be on the watch for. It seemed they'd get to finish the bus ride back to the central hub and take a train or touring bus out of the state, or at least to another airport.
Comfortably settled in their seats on a train heading out of Salt Lake, Ro permitted herself to fall asleep in the safety of the crook of Zee's arm, leaning against his shoulder. While she wasn't necessarily that tired, she knew that if she was awake, eventually Zee was going to bring up the fortune teller again, and right now, she really didn't want to talk about it.