Dear Jim,

As expected Barbara and I did not get up until shortly before noon today. When I looked out of the window I saw that snow was still falling and everything was white already. We had a belated breakfast and thought about how to proceed with the day. Barbara opted to stay at the pod and write some reports, get order into her research and other things like that. I considered simply going back to bed and watching the weather from inside, but I remembered the Pollaks' robot and knew they would get awfully on my nerves if I didn't repair it in no time – or at least pretended to make an effort. I got myself a cup of tea and thought about how to do that.

About an hour later – I procrastinated – I stepped out into a world of white and grey. The quiet sizzling noise of falling snow was all around me and the storm which had blown for the last week was over. I took a deep breath of the fresh air, then carefully went down the steep metal staircase, trying not to trip. The stairs were also covered in little heaps of snow. Down on the ground I used my hands to dig out the boxes around the pod until I found the crate containing the robo-maid. I cleared it from the snow on the lid and opened it. The robot looked fine, but there was no chance of repairing here.

I closed the crate again and walked towards Peter's shed, leaving deep tracks in the snow on my way. I knocked at the door and heard Peter's muffled voice telling me that he would just take a minute.

'Oh, it's you,' he said after opening the door just a crack to check who was there.

Peter let me in. I noticed that he looked tired. The next thing I saw was a sleeping bag on a camping mattress in the middle of the floor.

'You sleep here now?' I said, giving him a questioning look. 'In the middle of the day? I mean, I know you stayed late at the party but. . . '

Peter avoided my gaze and made an attempt to put the sleeping bag away by rolling it up and stuffing it into one of the shelves next to a large green-grey stone. It unreeled itself immediately and half fell out of the shelf again. Peter just sighed and let it be.

'Not generally,' he finally answered.

I took off my wool hat and gloves. I noticed it was rather cool in the shed, as was to be expected.

'It's not very warm here. Why don't you sleep over in your pod?' I asked.

Peter wearily leaned against a table.

'I couldn't sleep all night and now Frode has music on while working on whatever,' he explained, yawning in between words. It was infectious.

'And why couldn't you sleep?' I wanted to know.

'I can only say that I was right about rather living alone. Frode tends to talk in his sleep. Nightmares, it seems. From what he's talking I think he dreams about the crash with the pod. There also seems to be something else, I don't know. And when I say he 'talks' I mean he occasionally screams and he thrashes about,' Peter explained.

'Oh dear. Does that happen often? I mean, when you say you don't sleep here in the shed generally this still means it happens regularly, right?' I further enquired.

'It got better after he got off the medication for his foot but this night was bad once again. Also, I don't see how it's your business where I sleep,' Peter answered grumpily.

'Oh, I see, well sorry for showing concern. I guess I'd better leave now,' I said and turned to the door.

Peter sighed deeply and apologized, then asked me what I had actually wanted. I explained to him that I had a request and hoped he could help me.

A few minutes later Peter helped me to drag the crate from next to my pod over to his shed. He cleared a corner for me where I put up the robo-maid and laid its arms onto a shelf next to it. Then I got my toolbox, took off my jacket and opened the robot up. While I poked the robot's innards, Peter seemed to be busy filling data into spreadsheets and writing whatever he wrote. I stayed quiet, trying not to get more on his nerves than I probably already did, simply by being in his shed. I even tried to keep the noise of my tools to a minimum.

What I found inside of the robo-maid was just what I expected. There were several fried fuses, which I lined up neatly beside its arms on the shelf. There was considerable water damage and damage from freezing in the lower parts of the legs and the data storage also seemed to have some troubles. I knew I would need Yang to have a look at this.

While I was writing everything down I suddenly noticed that there had been no sound from Peter for a while. I looked around a shelf and saw that he had fallen asleep in his chair with his head on the desk next to a large blue stone.

I went back to the robot for a few minutes but when Peter didn't wake up again and didn't wake from the sounds of my tools I couldn't help myself. . . I feel ashamed to admit it but I started snooping around in the shed.

I found a few packages of biscuits, crackers and nutri bars, which led me to believe that Peter must spend more time in his shed than he let on. Furthermore there were boxes with soil samples and of course rocks of every size, shape and colour. I cannot tell you anything in particular about them as I have no idea about this matter. I only know that some were quite pretty and had crystals on them – or inside of them. They also came in many different colours. There was a different smaller box with only crystals in different colours, like completely transparent, purple and blue. I looked at them for a while, holding them up and watching how they caught the light.

Then I came across the box where Peter put the white shards we had found in autumn. We never had any luck with finding enough pieces which fit together to make up a whole something. Whatever that something was. We couldn't make head or tail of them so Peter put them away. I took one of them out of the box and let my fingers run over the grooves and ridges on the shiny white surface. It gave me a strange tingling feeling. I went and opened one of Peter's packets of crackers, as I suddenly craved something salty.

Before I could look at a second shard, I noticed that Peter was stirring in his sleep and seemed to wake up. I quickly put the box back to its place and went back to the robo-maid, pretending I had done nothing else the entire time (I did however apologize for taking the crackers later). Peter seemed to be quite embarrassed about falling asleep.

I left Peter's shed before it got dark. I thanked him again for letting me work in his place and he assured me I could come over whenever I wanted to work on the robot. He even set the door lock so I could get in when he was away.

Before I went back to my pod I trudged through the snow, over to Yang's and Dough's pod to give Yang the robot's processing unit. I quite enjoyed my walk. Everything was soft and white, only the white rock in the lake pointed out of its snowy island like a pointing finger.

I was thinking about how we would build snowmen as children. Do you remember when you 'borrowed' one of the pots in the kitchen to use as a hat? Dad was searching for it for days.

Love,
Sarah

Tavaron

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