Adventure Game Studio

    Snick-snick went the scissors in Simon's arthritic fingers.  He pulled one of the stubs of cellotape dangling from his wrinkled, pale lower lip with a grimace nobody was there to notice, adhered it to the paper fallen on his food tray, and then stuck the narrow clipping to the rail of his bed with both hands, one overlapping the other to help still the shakes.  He stuck it facing him, although a multitude of other such notes ranged along his bed's safety bars, facing both toward and away in no particular ratio.

    He took a deep breath as he craned his creaky neck up to the larger papers he had stapled to the care home's white wall at the head of the last bed he would ever use.  He had checked the "no resuscitation" box on the form that cute little Asian nurse, the one with the charming buckteeth that had never been within even shouting distance of braces, had helped him through.  Yes, his last bed, but... (and damn them for shutting him out of the pigeonhole office he had toiled in for them for five decades) ...the work went on.

                                                                                                                                      ***

    The man behind the door of the room she was about to clean did not know it was Meg's last day on the job.  He also did not know that he was her favorite by far, and that was as it should be; She had been in this gig way too long enough to know, as far as old men were concerned, not to give an inch or, as the saying went, they would take the piss.  It was best to not even talk to them.  She made some exemptions for this guy though, and was glad he would be among the last stops of her four-decade cleaning career.  She swiveled her push trolley up next to the corridor wall and took from its lower deck the only thing she would need.  Then she opened the door marked "Simon Bell" and stepped inside.

    "Hey-ho, Simon!  Keeping busy with work as always I see!"

    "Thought I told you to never come back?!"

    "Yup, still workin' on that one.  Get back to me about it tomorrow."

    "How about... tonight?"

    "Sure, keep the bed warm.  Midnight as always?"

    "Friggin' slut!"

    "Charmer!"

                                                                                                                                      ***

    Meg put the plastic wastebasket from her trolley on the countertop that ranged along one wall of the room.  Above its length were framed photographs of Simon with his wife and kids, all in various stages of their lives: from newlyweds to comfortable together, and from newborns to graduates, respectively.  She had only seen the people in the photos with her own eyes a few times, but had found clues in the room; a contact lens stuck to the bin liner here, a solid poo-gob on the toilet bowl there, that informed her of their still-regular visits.

    "Yeah, take that one.  Finished with that one, too."

    "Oh, I dunno, Simon... THIS ONE looks kind of importa—"

    "All done and dusted!  File 'em!"

    "Okay, only if you're sure."

    "Don't think I don't know what you're doing with my figures.  Think I care?"

    "Filing them, as per requested, boss."

                                                                                                                                      ***

    Simon watched as the cleaning lady in the pink sweatpants and white T-Shirt took his accounting work from the bed's railings and from the wall behind him and threw them all away in her trash bin.  What was her name?  Jen?  Mel?  Something one syllable like that.  Certainly not some bucktoothed Asian name.  He went back to the calculation on his notepad on the retractable food tray over his lap.  This one was easy.  He'd done thousands just like it before.  Easily thousands, but he was approaching the end and had to be careful.

    "All done and dusted, Simon."

    "You didn't dust shit."

    "Done and busted, then... Goodbye, Simon."

    "Good riddance!  And don't you ever come back, you hear?!"

    "Hmmm, I might give that a try.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll never see me again."

    "Thanks, Jen.  See you tomorrow."

    "Yup, for sure!"

                                                                                                                                      ***

    Meg snicked the door shut behind her, put the wastebasket back on the bottom deck of the cleaning trolley, and maneuvered it away from the wall, pushing it down the corridor toward the last few rooms of her career.  The charming old coot was still back there, scribbling away at what he thought was the job he was still at, and would be for the next and then the next cleaning staff after her, God willing.  That would be nice, she thought later as she threw smelly, soggy bags down the furnace chute and topped it off with the dumped, fluttering contents of the wastepaper basket.  Then she got changed out of her pink-and-whites into her street clothes, said a round of goodbyes to the care-home staff, and went home to her husband.

                                                                                                                                      ***

    Simon put down his pen and wrung his bony wrist.  He spooled off a centimeter of tape from the dispenser next to his notepad on the plastic food tray and absentmindedly stuck a corner of it to his slack, dry lip.  He looked down at the notepad, thinking back over decades of toil at the university.  Most of it had been what he had come to think of as "office work", but he'd managed to sneak in just enough of his true passion, his "accounting", to keep him going through grading tests and overseeing labs.

    He turned his watery old eyes up to where the only photo that wasn't some combination of him with Caroline and David and Joseph hung, and spoke to a voice only he could hear back:

    "I did it, Al.  You were right.  Well... you were wrong a bit, but I fixed it."

    "Wrong where?  Ah, see: the curvature.  That's not what's really going on, but it worked."

    "No-no, not like that; as a jumping-off point.  Hey, slow down!  I'm tired and it's long.  I'll tell you tomorrow."

    "Don't worry, you were right;  All the forces ARE one."

                                                                                                                                      ***

    In Simon's dream that night, not the last night of his life but ways and ways away at the far, dim end from his first, his conversation with the portrait of Albert Einstein continued.  He told the giant whose shoulders he had stood upon where he had gone mostly right, and where he had overlooked what was now obvious.  Einstein asked Simon where the paper was going to be published, and then tucked his tongue away and smiled a crinkly grin when Simon replied, "The world's not ready, Al... Snick-snick."

"Earth is boring," Jimmy insisted with all the certainty a fourth grader could muster.

"No, it's not," piped up a pair of voces, speaking in unison, from the front of the classroom. This pair of girls were inseparable to the point where they sometimes spoke in stereo.

"Yeah, it is," Jimmy insisted. "It's just blue and green. That's boring."

"The blue is from the oceans," said Mrs. Kittner, as she moved about the room, watching the children working. "And the green is from the land which is covered with life."

"One day we'll have oceans like that here," someone said, though in a tone that didn't sound entirely confident.

"We won't see them," Jimmy said, his blue Crayon sweeping back in forth in wild arcs, spilling ocean out into space.

"You might," said Mrs. Kittner, though she knew better. Oceans here were at best a wish for a future still centuries away at the earliest.

"My dad is from Earth." One of the two voices from the front of the room spoke again, high, clear, and confident.

"Everybody's dad is from Earth."

"My dad is from here," another kid offered rather smugly.

"Just because your granddad was one of the first guys to get here."

"A mechanic," the boy, Robbie, said. If he was not the smuggest boy on mars, he was unquestionably the smuggest boy in this school. "Granddad set all this stuff up so the rest of us could live here."

"Whether our families came in the first wave or the second, the important thing is that we're all here together," Mrs. Kittner said warmly, still making her rounds, threading carefully between the rows of small desks that had started out in neat columns but were becoming more and more disarrayed as the school day wore on. "And Jimmy, I'm seeing a lot of white space still on your drawing."

"That's the ice on the poles," he explained. "It's growing. All that ice's gonna eat the whole planet up one day. That's what my granddad says. And he lives there!"

"I hope not," a girl said from her spot under the air recycler vent, unconcealed worry in her voice. Sherry worried about everything, all the time, or so it seemed.

"The whole world's not gonna freeze," another boy said dismissively.

"Maybe they can bring the extra ice here," Arnie, the teacher's pet, offered hopefully. "We could use it. Can they do that, Mrs. Kittner?"

Mrs. Kittner had no idea, but children expected a measure of certainty from adults, so she replied appropriately. "There are two cyclers running now, and a third one will start making the trip back and forth in another year or two. They bring all kinds of stuff from Earth, so maybe they'll start bringing ice too."

"Told ya," the boy said to no one in particular, relishing the joy of being right or at least right enough.

"My mom's not from Earth," one of the girls at the front said, steering the classroom chatter back to something she wanted to talk about.

"Where is she from, Syrette?" Mrs. Kittner inquired pleasantly, already knowing the answer.

"Beacon."

"That's on Venus," Arnie said.

"Yep. It's way up in the clouds. And Seya's got a pen pal on Venus too," Syrette said, bringing her best friend along for the conversation.

"She's my mom's sister's daughter," Seya said.

"Your mom's sister is your aunt," Mrs. Kittner said. "So her daughter is your cousin."

"Yeah," Seya said, looking up from her drawing. "We're about the same age, Ellarae and me. We write each other all the time and the messages go back and forth from our cyclers to the Earth and then to the one that runs to Venus and then alllllllllllll the way back."

"I'm drawing Venus," Syrette said, holding up her picture, a world of tight, intricate yellow and white swirls. "For my mom."

"It's nice," said another girl. She was drawing Mars, like most of the children in the class. It was her home, after all. When Mrs. Kittner told them they would be drawing their favorite planet, Mars was the natural choice for many of them.

"And what are you drawing, Haseya?" the teacher asked as she glided past the young, dark-haired girl.

"Mars," Seya said. She indicated with one of the three crayons she was holding, each a different shade of red. "See? Here's Mariner Valley. And right here's the school. And that's my dad's plane. He's flying out to take cargo to the people out by the big mountain."

"Olympus Mons," the teacher said. "It looks very nice, Seya."

"I'm giving it to my dad when I get home," she said, her attention on the drawing again, trying to make it perfect for her father. He worked hard and he was raising her all by himself. He deserved a nice picture and she was trying her very best.

"I'm drawing Mars too," said Kyle, the boy closest to the door. "See?"

Mrs. Kittner looked at it from a distance of two rows away. "What are those yellow stars in the middle of the planet?"

"That's the SPP," Kyle explained. "And they're getting blowed up!"

Another boy made whooshing, rumbling explosion noises. Most of the boys laughed. Syrette and Seya and most of the other girls did not.

"We're not at war with anyone here, Kyle," Mrs. Kittner explained, not sharing young boy's eternal enthusiasm about war. "And there's never been a war on Mars. And there isn't going to be one either. The SAU and the SPP are friends... sort of."

"Which one are we?" Seya whispered to Syrette.

"SAU," Syrette replied, almost done with her masterpiece. "Oh, hey, can I still come over this weekend?"

Syrette loved spending the night at Seya's house. Seya didn't fully understand why Syrette liked sleeping over, but she loved having her best friend there. She and her dad lived at the far end of the habitats, near the hangars where his plane was kept. There weren't a lot of kids where she lived, at what her dad called 'the ass end of the habs' so Seya wanted Syrette to visit all the time and her dad didn't' seem to mind much, so Syrette visited often.

"Sure. Dad said it was okay. He's gonna let us order a pizza, I think. With real meat!"

"Nice!" Syrette was practically beaming. Life could not possibly get any better for an eight-and-a-half-year-old. She had a sleepover scheduled and she had just completed her greatest work of art ever. Her mother was sure to love it. She would have only words of praise for her daughter this time.

"What do you think, Sey?" she asked, holding it up between their faces, displaying it in the air on the wall of an invisible art gallery.

"Beautiful," Seya said and meant it. Syrette had a natural talent for art and Seya tried her hardest not to be jealous.

Syrette grinned, pushing a lock of curly auburn hair away from her eyes. "How do you say that in Navajo?"

"Nizhóní," Seya replied. She didn't make a habit of speaking her home language outside the apartment where she lived with her dad, and so it always felt a little weird to make those words around people who weren't family. But Syrette was mostly family, so it was only a little weird.

"Say something else," Arnie said, leaning in, including himself in the girl's conversation.

Seya rolled her eyes, not minding the spotlight but not really liking Arnie much either. She held up her drawing of Mars and tapped it with her finger.

"Chii," she said.

"Wuzzat mean?" he asked.

"Red."

Like me, she wanted to say. Like our home. Like Mars.

Michele sighed when she opened the storage room and jumped aside when an old flower pot tumbled out and clattered on the ground. The room was filled to the brim, old bookshelves leaned haphazardly on a broken refrigerator, a curtain hang down from an opulent chandelier, half hiding a large picture frame that seemed to contain the ugliest painting of a landscape you could think of. It was chaos, pure chaos, just as Michele had expected.

Her dad had been a 'collector'. Which, in truth, only meant that he bought everything and all on the local flee markets, stared at it for a week or two, and then put it away in the storage unit, until you couldn't open the door any longer.

For five minutes, ten, she just stood there and stared at the mess, searching for some, any point of attack, a weakness in the wall of chaos. Maybe, if she took down these antique scales and then climbed over the statue of a seal...

No, that didn't work. Okay, maybe she could wiggle under this desk, lie there and pull out this box of books without the bronze bottle on top of it tumbling down...

Of course it fell. On her head. And it took a layer of dust with it. Michele cursed and coughed and hit her head on the desktop and cursed some more.

"Such language..." a smiling voice came from above and strong hands grabbed her legs and pulled her out from under the desk.

Michele rubbed her burning eyes, only adding more dust particles to the redness, and blinked up at a young, grinning man, who was perching next to her.

"Who are you?" she asked, looking around the empty parking lot in the middle of nowhere where just her red truck stood facing the garage door of the storage unit. She was supposed to be alone here.

"Names! Who needs names?" the young man asked exuberantly, standing up and pulling her on her feet with him. "Names are just so – modern!"

"Modern?" she asked confused, rubbing her pounding head.

"Yes! Yes, indeed!" He let go of her hands and whirled around three or four times, randomly dancing in the afternoon sun. "Modern! Wishes on the other hand, wishes are eternal!" With every syllable, his voice had become louder and he screamed the last word so that it echoed over the parking lot.

Michele flinched and the stranger stopped immediately and steadied her with a gentle touch to her shoulder. "Sorry, sorry," he whispered, "didn't mean to startle you. It's just such a wonderful day, isn't it?"

"Sure," Michele answered, still fairly disorientated.

The young man put his hands on her cheeks and pulled her head up so that he stared right into her eyes. "No, no it is not. I'm sorry, again. I'm a bit rusty on reading people, so sorry, ma'am. It is not a wonderful day, not for you, is it? Your father died. So sorry, ma'am."

Michele shook her head and the man's hands from her cheeks. "No, no it is not," she said slowly, stepping back from the maniac. "I... you should leave." The pepper-spray in her pocket felt really reassuring right now.

"Can't. Sorry." He flopped on the ground and sat there cross-legged, pouting. "You see, my bottle... I'm a genie... You have to tell me a wish." The bronze bottle, that had left a serious bruise on her forehead, now sat in his lap and he petted it gently like a purring cat.

"And then you'll leave?"

"Of course. I really don't want to annoy you or anything. It's just so nice to stroll through this dimension every couple of years. Where I'm from, we don't have sunlight. I mean, crystal-light is amazing and the spectrum of colours in my world is – well, you couldn't see them with your eyes." He talked so fast that he spluttered, his words jumping over each other. "Anyway, it's a great deal for me, coming here every now and then, granting a wish, then spending the next 24 hours dancing in the sun or getting hammered in the next bar – What direction is the next pub, by the way?"

"Over ther- Wait, what? - Oh, whatever. I just tell you a wish and you piss off?" As long as he left, she thought.

"Basically, yes. There are rules, of course. But it's fine. I'll tell you if it doesn't fit. No harm, no foul."

"Fine, whatever. I want to be rich, standard stuff, you know."

The young man laughed. "Standard stuff, indeed. Unfortunately, you already are. There's about a million in gold and diamonds somewhere in this rubble." He pointed with his thumb backwards into the old storage unit.

"Suuure." Michele sighed. "How about world peace?" she asked annoyed.

"You do like the normal asks, don't you? Sorry, again, it has to be something personal. Oh, and before you say it, death is, unfortunately, irreversible, so I can't bring your father back either, sorry."

Exasperated with the whole situation, Michele sighed again and without thinking she said: "Well, then, help me clean out this bloody storage!"

"That I can do!" The genie clapped his hands together excited and jumped on his feet. "Shall we?" He bowed slightly and gestured towards the storage.

Michele hesitated a moment. She wanted to get rid of this guy, not having him work with her. "It was my wish to have this unit cleared out," she said mockingly, "shouldn't it be done now?" Of course she didn't believe it.

The young man grimaced. "I'm so, so sorry," he said, "but you wished for me to help you, not to have it done. And I granted the wish, so I can't change it any longer. It's difficult for my kind to follow the intend of a wish, even if we understand it." He jumped high into the air somersaulting just for the fun of it. "But you have help now, so chop chop," - clap, clap- "let's go!"

Michele was too tired to fight the strange man on this. She just wanted to get it done. And she could use the help, if only so that no other bottle fell on her head.

*

With a helping hand, it was so much easier to clean out the storage unit. Together they easily dragged the heavy desk out and placed it on the far too large parking lot.

"You know," the genie said wistfully with a bright smile on his lips, "your father sat on this desk when he wrote his first love letter to your mother."

"Sure," she said absent-mindedly, wiping sweat and dust from her forehead.

"There's still a spot of ink here, because he tried and failed to write with a feather."

"Sure." she repeated. "Let's not make up stories about my father, shall we? He cared more about this junk than about-" She stopped herself.

"You?" he asked, pulling a little pouch from a drawer and spilling its contents on the tabletop. Diamonds sparkled in the sun. "Of course he didn't. He cared about these things just as much as he cared about you – precisely. But it wasn't his fault, not really."

"Sure. Could we just get this done?"

"Sure." he said in the same tone, "As was your wish, I shall help."

"Then help and shut up."

"Shutting up wasn't part of the deal." the genie pouted, only to replace a frown on his face with a mocking grimace right away. "But I love shutting up! Shutting up his fun!" The exuberant happiness was back in his voice.

"I've never loved anything as much as shutting up!" he shouted as he almost flew over the pile of chaos in the storage unit. Piece after little piece he removed and without prompting or apparent care, he sorted them into three piles while Michele stood still for a moment just watching. "Junk!" he called, pointing to the first pile and spun around himself "Sentimental!" he said to the second, back flipping back to the garage door, "Valuable!" and he spilled an old jewellery box with golden necklaces next to the diamonds.

But suddenly, he stopped. As if he had run against a wall and as if his arms were locked in place.

"What?" she asked exasperated, "What is it now?" She had taken some of the jewellery between her fingertips and inspected it in the setting sun. It sparkled bright where the light fell on the precious stones but was stopped in the tarnished silver that hadn't been polished in many years.

"You're difficult," the genie said, for the first time slightly annoyed himself. "Your wish was for me to help you, not for me to clean it out alone. You have to do something too."

Michele shook her head. He was annoying, but he was also right. It was her father's storage, it was her job to clean it out. Still, she couldn't stop herself from hesitating at the rather large sentimental pile the genie had already created. There were old childhood paintings from when she was a toddler, the candle she had made for the best dad in the world, the veil from her wedding dress, the onesie of the child she lost and the mittens from the one who lived. A blue cup she could not place stood next to a photo from her graduation and a newspaper article from her first exhibition lay underneath.

"He loved you." the young man said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, interrupting her thoughts and slightly leading her forward to the storage unit.

She sighed again. As much as exuberance seemed to be his modus operandi, sighing seemed to be hers today. "He loved this stuff. That he kept things from my life doesn't change the fact."

"No, no it doesn't. It substantiates it. Even when all he treasured he brought here, he brought the memories of you along."

"Suddenly so serious? Who are you anyway, to talk about my father-"

"I am a genie. I told you. And he was a friend."

"Sure."

"When he found my bottle fishing in the ocean, he didn't believe me either. Most people don't. For me it was the best day in two centuries, for him it was Tuesday, the day he would get home to his wife and baby daughter after a week on the sea. - Oh, have you seen a sunset on the sea?" he asked excited, throwing his hands high in the air, "A dolphin's fin breaking the reflection? The silver beams caressing the surface of the water and the white stripes a ship leaves in its wake? Have you heard the seagulls calling to the wind, the whales singing in the depths, the motor howling and pumping and panting? Have you smelled the seagrass on the beach, the salt in the air, the brine on your skin? Have you felt it? Or the wind blowing the hair into your face, your ears flapping in a storm? The rising and falling of a boat in a storm or the heavy raindrops biting into your flesh? Your feet stomping on sun-dried concrete?"

The young man danced around the parking lot, screaming his appreciation of the world into the void. "Oh, it's wonderful, so wondrous, so perfect!" He grabbed her arms and whirled her around with him, first just in random circles, then step by step into a salsa, a cha-cha-cha, just like her dad had done when she was just a teenager, teaching her how to dance in their living room. And for a moment she seemed to hear the music just like back then, playing from the same half-broken boom box that now stood next to a blue cup leaking white crumbly battery acid onto an old desk.

With the last spin, she stumbled and fell onto the ground, laughing. For a moment, she had forgotten why she was here.

"He wished for you to be happy," the genie said, reaching out to grab onto her hand and pulling her up again. "But that, I could not do. It was not personal to him, I could not grant it. What I grant is material, mostly, things to take in your hands, things to love and to cherish. And people are not things."

Slowly, the genie led Michele back to the storage unit. She had hardly noticed how much the had already cleaned out of it. Only a couple of shelves still leaned against the back wall, filled with various boxes of junk. At least it was junk in the genie's opinion, because once they had dragged the boxes into the last remnants of the sun, he threw them unceremoniously onto the junk pile. She couldn't really disagree.

"What did he wish for?" she asked after a while where they worked in silence. "When you couldn't grant him my happiness, what did he wish for?"

The young man sighed. "Something I should not have granted. For something he could treasure. I told him he already had you, Michele, so he asked for things he could treasure just as much as he treasured you, just as valuable as you, something he could love just as much. He thought- he thought he had tricked me. So that he would never love anything more than you. Because nothing would be more valuable to him than you. I don't need tricking, but as I said, it is difficult for my kind to follow the intend of a wish, when it is so easy to grant it literally. So he got stuff. A lot of stuff. All kinds of stuff. And for him it was just as valuable as you."

With the last box dropped onto the last pile, the genie stretched and smiled at the daughter of his old friend. "Well, your wish was granted. Time to get drunk!"

He turned around and started to walk in the direction Michele had indicated several hours earlier. After a few steps he stopped. "Unless you would like some help throwing the junk out and loading the rest in your truck?"

"You grant more than one wish per person?" Michele asked sarcastically but with a slight, mischievous smile on her lips.

"No, normally not. But I did grant a second one to your dad: He asked me to tell you he loved you, which I did. But helping you load your truck? Why shouldn't I help the daughter of an old friend?"

*

When Michele drove away from the empty parking lot and just as empty storage unit, she sighed one last time. Then she smiled.

1. Theft!

It was a day like any other at the Interplanetary School for Non-Gifted Kids -- which means: boring as heck. Suddenly, a scream pierced the air!
It sounded like: "Aaaah" but more terrifying. I mean, you should've been there to hear it, like I was. Freaking annoying too, especially since it came from the desk next to mine and it felt like it broke my left eardrum.

It was Doofy, my deskmate and best friend, who was screaming her lungs out.
"What could've happened?", the beautiful and heroic Loopy (that's me, by the way) asked herself, while running to her friend as fast as she could! Don't know why I'm speaking in third person, let's switch to first.
I ran there as fast as I could. Actually, I was already sitting there. No need for running.
"What happened, Doofy?!", I asked, distressed. Way to spoil my school break nap!
Last time she screamed like that, a bee had stung her and those things are not fun. They leave their butt-stinger inside you and it's as painful as disgusting. I mean, a bee butt. Can't be too clean.
By the way, I had brought the bee for the science hour that day -- and showing the professor what remained of the insect after it was splatted under Doofy's right thigh didn't give me the greatest grades. But I digress.

Luckily, it wasn't a bee sting this time. It was... theft!
"Someone has stolen my cookies!", Doofy shouted, pointing at the missing cookies. I mean, I don't know how you can point at something that is missing, but somehow that's what she was doing. That's why she has all the good grades at school, I guess.
"I haven't seen your cookies", I said, defensively. "Of course, if they were stolen, they're difficult to see", I added, in an outburst of cunningtude. Cunningness? You know what I mean. Sometimes I'm so smart, I surprise myself.
We searched under the desk and in the surroundings, but no trace of the cookie was there. Nilch.

2. An investigation starts

"No one is going to help us in this situation," I said, resolutely. "There's nothing left to do, Doofy, but to put on our thinking cat, whatever that is, and start investigating. I'll be the detective!"
"And I'll be your Watson!"
"My... what?"
"Sherlock Holmes's associate, of course."
"Who?" I asked. Sometimes Doofy has these weird bits of knowledge that no one else knows about. That girl reads too much. "Anyway, let's start from the start. What have you lost?"
"A pack of cookies."
"Describe it to me."
"It was a pack. It contained cookies."
Even for a shrewd detective like me, it wasn't much to go on.
"Where did you see it last time?"
Doofy pointed at her desk. "I left it here, but it could've fallen, or someone took it, I guess."
"Maybe even both!" I said. Boy, what an intuition! "My God, what is this school becoming?! First, they make us study. Then, they steal our stuff!"
"What is this world coming to, Loopy?"
"I'm not sure."
"It was a rhetorical question."

3. A suspect

"I know who did it!" There was certainty in my mind. "It was Clarissa". I pointed at her with my inclined head, so that the fiend couldn't notice me.
"Clarissa? How could you tell?"
"Two words, Doofy: the duction! First of all, she's a hoodie."
"A what?"
"A hoodie. A criminal. The lowest of the low."
"A hoodlum? If she's a hoodlum, so are you".
"I'm not!" I felt miffed. Stabbed in the back by my very best friend!
"You received five suspensions this term," Doofy was counting on her fingers. "You spend more time at the principal's office than in the classroom."
"I just thought he enjoyed my company!"
"You're a hoodlum, Loopy." concluded Doofy, mercilessly.
"Oh well, that means I can recognise the criminal element. And Clarissa, she's one!"
"One element?"
"One criminal. Let's go pose her some questions. Discreetly."

3. 4. Interrogation

We tiptoed stealthily towards Clarissa, who was chatting with her sister in a corner of the classroom.
"Look at her", my voice was a whisper. "The shape of her head, the evil gaze, that unruly clump of hair on the top of her head... The skull of a true ruffian -- she would make Lombroso happy!"
"I think she looks cute." replied poor, naive Doofy. What would that kid do without me guiding her through life?
Clarissa stopped her conversation, turned, and stared at us: a pair of beady, wicked eyes.
"...yes? Do you need something, Loopy?"
"Where were you this morning, before school break started?" I hit her with the tough questions. I learned this trick from a detective comic book and it never fails.
"Where do you think I was, you doofus? At my desk, listening to the professor blabber about equations." Her annoyance was a sign of guilt if I ever saw one. "What is this? An interrogation?"
"Exactly!" I exclaimed. "Admit it! It's you who ate Doofy's cookies, as revenge for me owing you money! We're onto you."
"That makes no sense." Clarissa scratched her head. "If that were the case, I would've eaten your snack, not Doofy's."
"I don't think so." intervened Doofy. "Have you seen what she normally eats?"

5. Stumped

That interrogation turned out to be a failure. But that's how the cookie crumbles (I was waiting the entire time to say that).
"This is one of the hardest cases of my detective career," I admitted.
"It's the only case of your career, Loopy."
"Doesn't make it less true."

This investigation was taxing my brain. My body too. I must've burned thousands of calories, whatever those are.
I searched my pockets and found some of that energetic muesli I was munching on that morning, and popped them down my gullet when someone screamed! (you know it's a tense story when a lot of people scream)
"Those are my cookies!!!" shouted Doofy, pointing an accusatory finger toward me.
"What?", I more or less said, with my mouth full. "This powder with bits of chocolate?"

6. Resolution

"Where did you get that packet?" Doofy was like a hound on its prey.
"I found it on my chair, under my bum," I explained. "I thought it was the muesli I bought last week and forgot under the desk."
"Those were my cookies! You sat on them all morning until they crumbled apart."
"Oh." I thought about it. "I guess you're right. That's why sitting was so uncomfortable."
I shook the packet and a few solitary crumbles fell to the floor, like autumn leaves (poetic, huh?). It was empty.
"Sorry, Doofy. I guess I ate it all by now, eh? Tell you what, I can give you my snack instead."
"Which is...?"
Opening my backpack revealed a tasty sandwich. "Ham, orange jam, and this white stuff."
"Er... what's that?"
"No idea. I found it wriggling inside the fridge this morning. Here, it's all yours!"
"No, thanks," said Doofy. "Maybe the vending machine will have some snacks..."

5. Epilogue

"What are you doing, Loopy?"
"I'm writing down a report of our investigation," I explained. "I thought it might be useful for  future generations."
"Ooh, like Murder, She Wrote!" exclaimed Doofy.
"What? Is that another one of your books?!"

That girl sometimes worries me.

A very quick entry, as I already mentioned earlier, and a nice enough story, though slightly sad. We either have a genius scientist here, who's life's work only get to the result he dreams of at the very end of his life - and nobody will ever really get to see it, work with it, admire it. Or a delusional old man who believes to have found great scientific progress but in truth just scribbles nonsense of random pieces of paper. On the other side, we have a care home worker who "plays-along" with these possible dellusions, jokes with him, yes (if he takes it as jokes and isn't truly annoyed with her) but doesn't have any kind of deep or understanding relationship with him. Honestly, this story just reads as sad. Even if we assume we can take his elation at finally solving the scientific mystery at face value, it still feels pointless, because he's so alone in his discovery.
It's a deep story, a sad story and one I quiet liked - but cozy it is not.

This is a little slice-of-life scene with a couple of cute kids. I'm missing the plot a bit, though. It is just kids talking to each other.
I like how much we get to learn about their home on Mars, and even little snippets of information about other colonized moons, and even a potentially dangerous political situation brewing. - But that's all in the background. It's interesting background information for sure, and I'd be interested in several aspects of this world, but the text as presented here hardly rises to the level of an actual story. It's kids talking, it's an introduction to the world.
Interesting enough, the part that comes closest to being a plot is the probably, maybe sad home-life of Syrette. It's hinted at but never explored, but it certainly seems like she doesn't live in a great situation at home. Throwing this tidbit at the reader towards the end of the story (together with the hint of political tormoil) leads to the impression that the kids overall are in a far less positive situation than they seem to be just from their conversation.

Okay, this one is cute. Maybe a bit too cute for my tastes, a little bit too childish, and a little bit too predictable (which intensifies the impression that I'm the wrong reader here and it is meant for kids no older than maybe 10, where the end might still seem like an actual twist).
Some of the plays on language and sayings are well done, some choices a bit weird, considering they are not really explored at all (I'm mostly refering to the crossed out 3 for "chapter" 4).
This story certainly thrives in its dialog. You mention in your note that these characters are meant for a comic book - and yes, it feels like it. With matching cutsie drawings it would work well as a comic - again, for children, mainly, not adults.
This story certainly comes closest to the cozy theme set by Baron, at least in my opinion. It still misses the mark though, because it is just a children's story, a cute one, with nothing else, nothing more that gives a cozy feeling.

SNICK-SNICK by Mandle: 5 points
The Color of Home by Ponch: 2 points
Loopy & Doofy and the Case of the Stolen Cookies by lorenzo: 3 points

SNICK-SNICK 4
Her Father's Wish 3
Loopy & Doofy and the Case of the Stolen Cookies 3

I really enjoyed this story. The two characters are well-characterised (that's a tongue twister :D ) and their interactions are fun to read. The ending is a nice twist. Is Simon's surname a reference to the Bell test?

A very nice read. I think the text captures well the kids' voices and the way they speak. It makes you feel like you're in a classroom, listening to them. I also enjoyed how, through their conversation, you slowly understood the story's world.

I think it's the one that fits the theme the best, as described in Baron's post.
I like how the real nature of the genie is left ambiguous and the story is warm and positive, in the end. It's a bit too "sentimental" for my tastes, but that's just personal preference -- and even that fits the theme.

SNICK-SNICK 3
The Color of Home 4
Her Father's Wish 3

The crossed-out chapter is just a small visual joke. Loopy is writing the text and since she isn't the most brilliant student and rather messy in general, she's the kind of person who wouldn't bother checking if the chapters are in the right order. That's also why the epilogue is chapter 5, despite coming after chapter 6. Just a silly joke that makes me laugh, but probably no one else  ;)

Firstly I will say that I enjoyed each story pretty much equally, for their own reasons, and this is not just me using a cliche.

Fantastic stuff! I loved the slow reveal of the situation and the Star Trek-esque vibe at the end of all races being accepted on the new world. This was the story that gave me the coziest vibe.

My fave of the bunch! There was a genuine mystery, and the stakes were both low and high. Not-save-the-world stuff, but something that really mattered to the main character. And a great resolution, if a little sad, about the father's "curse". Clever twist indeed!

The comedic timing was ON POINT and it feels like you are actually able to channel the spirits of your two characters. A story written from Loopy's point of view, and then the final reveal that we are reading the report she wrote up, explaining the structure, are great treats! I LOVE these two guys!

Ponch: 3pts
Sinitrena: 4pts
Lorenzo: 3pts
(Although I really wish I could have used decimal fractions)

I loved the interaction between Simon and Meg. Simon is so abrasive and Meg is so condescending, but you can read beneath the surface that they enjoy each other's company. The fact that Meg can piece together that there have been visitors from the viscosity of the poo gobs in the toilet gives me hope that she can sleuth out the mystery at her fingertips, and yet sadly she doesn't spare a glance at the physics proofs she discards. It is heart warming that this was not a tragedy but rather Simon's master plan all along - feeble though he may be, he read Meg as clearly as he read Einstein's convoluted theories. In summary, a thoughtful piece that really makes you think.

I loved the authentic classroom details - the sometimes disinterested kids, the rows of desks that become progressively disordered as the day goes on, the grammar lapses of kids who really should know better by their age...  The hints at great events tantalizingly just beyond the understanding of 9-year-olds is as intriguing as it is maddening: Earth freezing over, settlement in the Venusian stratosphere, conflict between the different Martian sects/tribes/companies—we readers want to know more! In the end the story is about keeping one's identity in an increasingly rootless existence, which is at the same time both hopeful and distressing (in that humanity's ability to balkanize and find conflict with folks even slightly different seems to perpetuate indefinitely). Top marks for the slice-of-life feel, but I did struggle a bit with the size of the cast.

The manic personality of the genie is so endearing! I liked the story arc, impressive in such a short piece, as Michele slowly warms to her dead father and his odd friend. I wish (!) you'd spent a bit more time on the father - he comes across as a pitiable fool, but there are hints at so much more: collector, packrat, lover, seaman, treasure-hunter adventurer....  The gentle quality of your narrative and the spirit of hope and wellness that it instils perfectly fits the topic.

Loopy and Doofy are such engaging characters. Loopy's wandering narrative style and neologisms are a delight to read. I appreciated the roller coaster of suspects and theories, and how the mystery was resolved with no loose ends (unless you count the wriggling white stuff found in the fridge). :)  The low stakes and jolly camaraderie were both uplifting and satisfyingly cozy—well done!