Luckily enough, when I woke up for the second time, Sadie was gone, and I was late enough that Mom was more worried about getting me out the door in time instead of asking why my pillow and blanket were neatly folded and piled on the foot of my bed. I glanced down the street she lived on as I ran past, but could do little more if I wanted escape detention.

I slid into my seat at school and glanced at the virtual newspaper on my desk in the few seconds before the bell rang. I admit it, I was jealous of the technology at the school. The government spared little expense where education was concerned, believing it to be the "foundation and keystone of human civilization" or something overly dramatic like that. Scanning the page, an article caught my eye:

Well that would explain the whole "people in handcuffs" phenomenon that Sadie was so worked up about last night, but it didn't help at all with her fear for her personal safety, unless she too was a felon…

I shook the thought from my mind, and settled in for a long day of school. There was no way she was a criminal.

I sauntered from school to the museum, not particularly looking forward to working and knowing that there wasn't anything terribly important that needed to get done on a timely basis. Finding myself about a block from the place, I decided to take the long way around to give me some more time outside, or as close to outside as I could get. I entertained myself by eavesdropping on other conversations. Yes, it makes me sound like a creeper, but it's not like I'm just staking one person. Just listening to snippets. Most of it isn't even worth listening to, like:

"OMG how R U? IK, it was SO. ANNOYING. I was trying to go out last night, and OMG" and so on and so forth. Really not that incriminating. I did have a couple of laughs when someone quoted an old movie, and it was kinda sad when I overheard a conversation about someone's body getting taken away in the night.

Though, now that I think about it, that is another thing I really don't get about the Earthlings. I mean, seriously, if someone dies you're going to put them in a wooden box and bury them? Why? So they can be dug up and eaten by a beast sometime later? Honestly, I think the major difference between us and the Earthlings is that we had to get rid of all of the silly rituals they still held just to survive. I mean, a body here isn't going to rot, but there are tons of different elements in it: all sorts of rare metals. Even better, there's a lot of carbon there, because all of the cells in the human body and all of the amino acids and everything are made up of carbon chains, which is especially valuable with the rations going on and the shortage and everything. It's basically the main source.

I think I'm going to be sick.

Oh God, what if I'm right?

It makes sense – there aren't any graphite deposits on the moon, only very small, microscopic diamonds, certainly none of those fullerene constructs or nanotubes, and carbon is the basis of organic chemistry so it's found in all living things and we need the plants to survive and make oxygen and food…

And since humans are the only other living animals here…

Oh God, what do I do?