Growing Older

As their oldest son, Peter, became a teenager, Jamie and Rich Rand weren't feeling so young themselves. They were moving slowly, but surely, towards middle age. As Jamie noticed her first wrinkles, and Rich noticed his first gray hairs, Peter was launching himself into a new hobby. Inventing.

They told him under no circumstances was he allowed to perform such dangerous experiments in the house, so the ingenious teen set up his workbench at the far end of their property, just within sight of the back door. He went to that workbench straight after school almost every day, and proceeded to hammer, weld and smash scrap metal into submission. Rich was dismayed to notice that he wasn't excelling in high school as much as he had in elementary school, and was quick to blame the new hobby. He had wanted so much to have a child follow him into a scientific career, but it seemed that his eldest was destined to the quirkier side of the sciences. Jamie didn't handle the change in her son as well as her husband had; she thought that it was only a matter of time until he seriously injured or killed himself. But, since his grades were still satisfactory, if not stellar, neither parent spoke to him about them.

What worried them more was the eclectic collection of junk that was beginning to spring up in the far reaches of their backyard, courtesy of Peter's salvaging efforts. They were also concerned that their younger son, Jason, was spending his evenings after he finished his homework watching his older brother, though for different reasons. Jamie was mostly concerned for his safety, because the tools and techniques employed by the tinkering teen weren't exactly up to code. Rich, on the other hand, was still worried that none of his children would consider a career in medicine or scientific research.

The twins, Roman and Erika, were growing up as well. No longer infants, they were beginning to reach into the wider world as toddlers. Rich was quick to point out that they were fraternal, rather than identical, twins, and that they had slightly different facial features, skintone, and hair color.Roman took mostly after his father, while Erika had many of her mother's features. They learned quickly, as toddlers do, and life began to settle into a steady rhythm, the most stable since the surprise double birth.

Soon, Jason was growing up as well. He knew his parents were too busy to throw a party, so he chose to just blow the candles out on a cake by himself. Peter was busy outside at his workbench - when wasn't he? - Jamie was with the twins, and Rich was on call at the hospital, so Jason was left alone in the house. As Jason was bending down to blow out the candles, Peter was outside, setting a blowtorch down on his workbench to examine his product. He turned it one way, then the other, absent-mindedly leaning towards his bench as he'd been prone to doing lately. Jason straightened up, candles extinguished, and heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the backyard.