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Charlie liked visiting the park with his family. On a bright weekend day like today they would prepare a picnic and head down to near the reservoir, where they were forddien from swimming but which they used water from to fill the paddling pool that they also packed, so they could stay cool and have fun. they could have just used the back yard, of course, but where was the fun in that? It was so much more interesting to use buckets to fill up the paddling pool than the hosepipe, as long as they were careful around the water. They could all swim, of course, he didn't know anyone in Seattle who couldn't swim, given the amount of rain and the number of free pools around, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Only he and his brother were allowed to help their father with the buckets; Frankie was too young, so she was sat with their mother, chattering away about the algebra class she'd had the day before. Most parents might quiet a five year old who started talking about algebra these days, given the whole transgenic 'mess' and the risk of her being taken away, but Charlie's mom was pretty cool about letting her kids talk about subjects that interested them, and Frankie was a math nut. She had already calculated how many buckets she thought it would take to fill the paddling pool, and each time they brought a set of buckets back she added them to the running count that she was keeping alongside the conversation that they were having between themselves, which Charlie only caught the odd snippet of as he worked, looking forward to the time when he could just sit in the paddling pool and be a boy for a little while. Having the intellect of an adult was fun, but sometimes just being a kid was even better.
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