Chapter 18: Summer planning

[April/May 2373 AD – POV Timotheus Sinterguth – Erlangen]

In late April I had taken the youth group to the Sinterguth family cave, and they had all enjoyed the excursion; we had had nice conversations with our guides, too, and some of the kids had asked very good questions, not only about the cave itself, but also on ice age living conditions, mammoth extinction and such. I had to admit that the cave visit with my youth group had helped a lot with bonding, and during the following youth group meetings, I actually managed to participate in 'normal' conversations with the kids more and more. A few times I prepared a short topic, like about something in the Bible or what was going on in our church community, and once I even talked about my work, green energy and energy storage considerations. My initial shyness was soon completely gone in the group; I particularly enjoyed playing with the boys and girls, both board games and table football indoors, ball games or such on the parish hall lawn or a large playground outdoors, or even going for a short hike in the neighborhood and along the river Regnitz, passing through the city not far from church and parish hall. The Wednesday afternoons developed into a time I was now eagerly looking forward to each week, and the kids seemed to feel like that, too, although maybe they just enjoyed seeing and experiencing my clumsiness with specific social topics. But, they all attended on a regular basis, considering that the youth group attendance was entirely voluntary. A few times, when one of them mentioned that they had trouble understanding something at school, I offered to sit together with them, and we started occasional private lessons with one or more of them at my apartment, when needed. I could sometimes provide insight into school related topics from a completely different perspective, and my technical way of behaving and talking seemed to help, at least sometimes.

Somehow I found dealing and talking with children, specifically those in an age range the youth group had, all preteens, easier than talking to adult people. Talking to adults on technical topics was fine for me, but adult social conversations were awkward. With kids, talks were somehow more direct and honest and so much easier, or that's how I conceived them to be at least. I had learned that many adults perceived this the other way round, preferring talking to adults rather than children, but I was clearly different. Even in the home bible study group I attended I was quite on the shy and reserved side when the 'official' part was over and socializing was on the agenda; sometimes I excused myself and left early to skip that part which was, in my opinion, much more demanding than talking about some 'technical' topics. Maybe I was weird, but that was the way my brain and mind worked. Fortunately, the people around me, specifically those in the church community, accepted me as I was.

Over the next weeks and months I also could not avoid seeing the tall fair-haired girl – Corinna՚s and Christine's older sister Primrose, as I had learned – from time to time, mostly from a distance, though. On a few occasions we even briefly got close to each other for a moment, like when passing each other in the aisle in church or when she picked up her sisters from the youth group, which she sometimes did. Almost each time I saw her close, she seemed to blush. I had heard about girls who blushed easily, although those had mostly very pale skin, whereas all of the Seeberger girls had somewhat darker skin, like a natural sun tan, which was not so frequently found in combination with light blond hair. I felt pity for Primrose; the blushing probably got her some not so nice remarks from time to time.

Also, except for church, when I saw her, she usually seemed to be clothed shabbily. At church she always wore a dress, as it was custom at our church community to dress up for the Sunday service, but the dresses she wore were always very conservative ones, covering almost all of her body, with nothing like much cleavage or so. When she sometimes picked up her sisters from the youth group, she usually wore old and stained lose fit jeans, sometimes with holes around the knees, and a very lose fit sweatshirt. Many teenage girls seemed to like wearing skinny jeans and tops which looked like they were at least one size too small, or short and tight skirts, but not Primrose, at least not when I saw her. This kind of clothing she usually wore almost completely hid her figure as well, but I caught myself a few times imagining what her chest might look like under the sweat shirt. I mean, she was a tall blond teenage girl with blue eyes and very long slim legs, and I just could not help myself. Of course, I never dared to talk to her, neither at church nor somewhere else, and she made no effort to initiate a conversation with me either. Besides, she was too young anyway.

Rather than getting too much worried about the tall and pretty girl, though, I sometimes relaxed at home in my apartment by playing some computer games. A company had picked up some games from the pre-war era and modified them for current hardware, including holographic displays, voice control, and more. I had to admit that I was not good at all in those games you needed a quick reaction for, like what they used to call 'first person shooters'. Rather, I preferred games which allowed you to roam foreign lands, preferably either in a medieval fantasy like environment or some kind of science fiction space exploration with spacecraft and aliens and such; a fine example for the latter category were games based on the 'Avatar' movies of the early 21st century.

Since a few years ago a specific series had become my favorite. The entertainment company had taken a few games from a group of titles called 'The Elder Scrolls' and modified them extensively. With my state of the art equipment I could walk around in a fantasy world, talk to people, do good things or not so good things, fight bandits, kill dragons, and, best of all, save damsels in distress. At least in the game I could be the proverbial knight in shining armor, getting at least a kiss from the princess, and in the game you could also marry your favorite female, including some of alien races, like intelligent and bipedal cat folks, the Khajiit.

Sometimes one or two of the children from my youth group would come over for a few hours and we'd play together, or I let them play and just watched. The game had options for adult content, too, like when you defeated a female bandit you could give them a choice between getting killed or become a slave to you, providing special favors, but those options somehow seemed unclean to me, and I avoided them not only for my visitors' sake.

Corinna, one of the youngest girls in my youth group, had seen me play a few times, and she had begged me to allow her some play time as well. Once I mentioned that I had a cousin about her age and that she also played with my twin cousin, there was no stopping her, and I had to arrange time slots for Ruth and her to play together, explore lands called 'Cyrodiil' and 'Skyrim', and have a parallel video chat running. I had asked Corinna՚s parents' permission, of course, and a few times other girls from my group joined us as well. For the kids, we used a special violence free version, where we could tame animals and such rather than killing them. Taming a dragon and riding on it was one of the highlights. Those gaming sessions also helped to improve language skills; Ruth and Corinna talked a lot, and they did it in a mix of German and English, eagerly learning from each other.

Meanwhile, preparations had started for the summer holidays, and that was also something I wrote to my cousin about. Summer holidays and Christmas were the two typical times in the year when we almost always met, and while the Christmas holidays always had the extended family and friends together, summer time was something for just the two of us doing something fully on our own or with only few selected friends and/or family.

In past years, we had sometimes spent a few weeks together in and around Rainbow Valley in District Sixteen, with swimming and hiking and stuff, or we had explored some areas in Europe together, like hiking in the Alps. For this year, a former co-student of us, Finnick Odair, had suggested to visit him in District Four; he was getting married, and both my cousin and I were invited. Actually Finnick had studied in Panem, but he had been for a semester once in Erlangen, and I had shown him around at that time, as he had already been a good friend of my cousin.

Finnick has also studied ecological engineering, but with emphasis on marine technology. They had a very long coastline in District Four in Panem, and Finnick had a few times proudly mentioned that he and his family were direct descendants from the one and only Finnick Odair who had won the 65th Hunger Games. It had been a tradition in their family since, he always said, to name at least one boy in each generation after that tribute, and he was very proud of his name.

Anyway, my cousin and I were invited to attend the wedding and stay for a few weeks, and I liked that idea. Fortunately, weddings were not as formal as they used to be in earlier times, and there was no problem at all to show up for a wedding without a female companion at one's side. That's what I thought, at least, until my cousin called me:

"We need to talk about that wedding again, I am afraid."

"What about it?"

"We had both assumed that we simply show up without companions, right?"

"Of course, yes."

"Finnick just told me yesterday, when we talked on the phone, that his bride's parents are very traditional, and contrary to most other weddings, they do indeed expect only couples to show up. Or at the very least, they'd be very disappointed if someone violated that tradition."

"So, do we care?"

"Yes, we do, because if we did not, they'd be angry at Finnick for having friends not behaving as they should."

"Good point; so what do we do?"

"Well, there are a few girls I like, but I don't think that I could show up with my baby sister, I guess."

I chuckled and replied: "No, I do not think so; I assume that they have an age limit?"

"Indeed they have; sixteen minimum, no children, at least for the main ceremony."

We both kept silent for a minute or two, and then he spoke:

"Wait a second, we do know two nice and pretty girls, don't we?"

"We do? Whom are you talking about?"

"Well, the Heidecker girls of course!"

"Yeah, but we are not romantically involved with them."

"No, we are not, but this should not be a prerequisite. Do you really think that they have every couple exchange hot kisses to make sure that they are lovers?"

I chuckled again and replied: "No, of course not, you are right. Yes, I guess that we can ask them. Let me do that, and I will get back to you."

I got on the phone to my mother, and when she learned that my cousin and I were thinking about inviting the two Heidecker girls to a wedding in Panem, she was getting quite enthusiastic. We were in a video chat, and she jumped around almost like a little girl, but that was my Mom. Usually she worked very hard, but when the occasion offered that, she sometimes behaved like a young teenager, too. Of course I knew that she wanted one of us at least to get together with one of the Heidecker girls, and despite both of us claiming that we loved them like sisters, she had not given up on that plan just yet.

Mom promised to contact her friend immediately to find out if they were available, and just one hour later I got a quick email message saying that they were. I called the Heidecker residence and explained the situation in more detail, and they seemed to be in favor of the idea, too. The Heidecker family had never had a chance to visit Panem with their children. Both of the girls were available at the designated time, and although Rebecka had just turned sixteen and was still a minor, their mother trusted us fully and would allow her to travel with us, too. They were also not very wealthy and might have struggled to pay for the flights and accommodation and all, but of course I insisted that we – my cousin and I – were going to cover all expenses; after all, the girls were invited.

When I chatted with the two girls, Esther and Rebecka, I learned that they were quite looking forward to the upcoming summer vacation. Not only had they never been in Panem, but they also has not been at the sea for many years, since their earlier childhood. Neither of them had a boyfriend at this time, so that there was nobody to become jealous when they traveled with us.

When I mentioned the plans for summer to my youth group, they became very interested. Of course the geography of Panem had been covered at school already, at least roughly, but they had additional questions, about language, culture, people, and much more. As I had never been in District Four, I could not answer most of the questions, and I had to promise to provide a detailed report when I was back, best with many photos and video clips.

Meanwhile, as summer was not there just yet, Heike and I planned another team event for my youth group, the second one this year after the cave visit. There was a climbing area not far from the city, a high rope course, easily reachable by public transportation. They had routes both for beginners and those for advanced climbers, and I managed to get two other youth groups from our large church community to get interested as well, so that finally more than 30 children signed up. I had reserved half a day just for us, and I was gladly going to pay for it. Spending money for something like this was fun and well used, in my opinion; Heike had worried about that at first, but I had been able to override her concerns, truthfully claiming that I was reasonably affluent and enjoyed paying for such activities.

When the tour day dawned, we were lucky to not have rain, although there were lots of clouds. We met at the city's railway station, boarded the train, and arrived close to our destination half an hour later. After five minutes of walking we got to the site, where the staff already waited. First item of the day was, of course, myself delivering the parental approval sheets I had collected before and the payment, and second was the safety instructions. Everybody was told and shown in detail how to use the safety harness and how to operate the short part connecting to the safety lines. As in most parks of that kind, each harness was connected to the safety lines with two connectors, and only one at a time could be opened to change to the next section.

Once the instructions were done, one of the staff explained the color coding for the routes, also giving information on minimum height and weight for each one. A few minutes later, the kids were dismissed and started to climb up the stairs to the first routes. I was going to climb, too, but first I waited until all of the kids had fond the proper colors. Of course, not all of them were willing to do that kind of climbing and balancing, but the instructor had pointed out a couple of courses very close to the ground, so that even those few who were afraid of heights could do at least something.

Christine turned out to be one of the most eager and skilled climbers. She started with a medium difficulty tour to get a feeling, and half an hour later she was at the most challenging one allowed for her size and weight, which was the second toughest overall; the course with top difficulty required a minimum age of 16. It looked interesting and I followed her, and I had to admit that I admired her agility. I slipped a few times and had to start a few sections several times before I managed them, but she managed to pass them like she was walking on flat ground. My personal favorites were the sections with very long ropeways, where one could attach the connectors to a long rope leading down from high up on a tree and glide down, gaining speed and eventually getting to a platform lower down. The longest one had a length of more than 100 meters, and it was on that tour. I had a lot of fun and already decided that I wanted to do that again, when I watched one of the smaller girls from another youth group. She was probably only seven or eight years old, and I recalled that her name was Jutta; she seemed to enjoy the park a lot. She came down another ropeway, but for some reason missed to reach the destination by a few meters and slowly slid back, hanging from the rope but unable to proceed further.

The safety instructor had warned us that this might happen when a child was just at the weight limit, and fortunately the girl did not panic. I called up to her, as I was quite close:

"Hey, Jutta, are you all right?"

She nodded and called down to me: "Sure, no problem, but can you get me out?"

"Yes, I will get help – hang on."

I walked to the entrance area and told one of the staff what had happened. He just took a long rope and asked me: "Do you think that you can throw the rope and pull her in?"

"I guess so, sure, thanks."

A couple of minutes later I was back and tried to throw one end of the rope up to Julia. That turned out to be more difficult than I had expected, though. On the third attempt I threw a few tight loops together, and eventually Jutta was able to grab one end. The rest was easy; I walked towards the tree which had the target platform on it and pulled her in. Once that was done, she happily dropped the rope and continued with the tour as if nothing had happened.

After a few hours of climbing everybody was getting tired and exhausted, and we decided that this was enough. We returned the safety harnesses and walked back to the station, where we found a restaurant with a large open area; all of the children were hungry, and I invited them for lunch. At the end of the day, when we were back in Erlangen again, everyone was happy.

[Author's Notes: In real life, computer games from the 'Elder Scrolls' series, specifically 'TES V Skyrim', are indeed my favorites. I also have a couple of fan fiction stories on Skyrim here on fanfiction dot net.]