"Frankly, my dear, Earth Day is not coming this year." The slickly dressed man with the perfectly combed hair returned the baby to it's mother and turned to face the little girl. "What's your name," he asked, motioning the cameras away.

"Bridget. But I'm asking for all of us in iHome4. When can we hold the celebration?" Bridget rose on her toes repeatedly as she talked, agitation nearly levitating her off the ground. With the lowered gravitational pull in this part of the Invironment, she very nearly did float up. Politicians always turned the gravity down when they made appearances; it kept them from getting tired and losing their excellent politician posture.

The man tried to put on a kindly face. "Bridget, you'll have to trust us. The celebration must be cancelled. It's better not to think so much of Earth right now." He remembered, but didn't mention, last year's militant calls for abandoning the Invironment following the Earth Day celebration.

He abruptly turned and walked through the safe door with his entourage, leaving Bridget and her friends to look longingly through the plastic roofing toward their gray and brown, but still lovely, Earth, high in the sky above them.

© 2007 Pamela Parker. Original for CCF  (Parker grants CCF  first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).