Page 51 of Tarek

He blinked. “You don't know Mayberry?”

“No.”

“Andy Griffith?”

“No.”

“Barney Fife?”

I shook my head, increasingly entertained by the expression of dismay spreading across Darren's face.

“Right. Of course you don’t. Why would you? This is going to require an educational intervention.” He grinned at the thought.

“Should I be concerned?”

“Possibly. Depends on how you feel about classic American television.”

“I feel that I am about to learn something whether I want to or not, though I should probably let the record show that I have not experienced any human television at all, so have no opinions about it no matter who made it or when.”

Darren laughed, and I found myself smiling simply because I liked the sound of it. He shifted in his chair, tucked one leg beneath himself, and began searching the data pad for images. Within moments, he had pulled up stills from The Andy Griffith Show, showing a small-town sheriff's office, a jail cell, and two men standing outside a building that looked remarkably like the ones on our screen.

“See?” he said triumphantly. “Mayberry. Small town, friendly people, a sheriff who knows everyone, and a deputy who is occasionally a little too enthusiastic about his job.”

“Is that what you expect your new position to be like?”

“I'm hoping for the small-town community spirit and low level of crime, at least. I could do without the deputy getting himself into trouble every other episode.”

“I'm relieved to hear that.”

He grinned and swiped to another image, this time from what he said was an old Western film. A man wearing a broad-brimmed hat stood outside a wooden building, one hand resting near his holster while dust drifted across the street behind him.

“And this is the Old West look,” Darren explained. “Wide porches, wooden façades, signs painted in big letters, and enough open space for a horse to wander down the street.”

I looked back at the photograph of the sheriff's office. “There aren't any horses on New Haven yet, are there?”

“Not yet, no, but Jesse Wilson is purportedly shipping his over from his family’s ranch, and I doubt they’ll be the last.”

“Perhaps I'll need to get me one, then.”

Darren's expression brightened. “Evan asked you that earlier, didn't he? Whether you had a horse?”

“He did.”

“He'll be delighted if you get one.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

He continued scrolling, showing me more images and explaining the differences between Westerns, small-town dramas, and the sort of family television he'd watched growing up. Before long, he'd moved on to Little House on the Prairie, pointing out the buildings, the clothing, and the way the show portrayed a small community growing into a town.

“That's the other part of it,” he said. “New Haven's name and the way Walnut Grove has been developed seem to draw on that whole frontier-settlement aesthetic. It's like someone decided to build a modern colony but wanted it to feel like a charming little American town from a simpler time. They even named the town itself after it.”

“Do you think that's a good idea?”

“I do, actually. It's welcoming. It feels as though the people building the place want it to become a community, not just a collection of buildings around a spaceport. As for the name, it’s cute, and lots of places on Earth named themselves after other places in homage, so it’s not really that weird if you think about it.”

I considered that. “A place where people know each other and look out for one another, with a name that evokes a place others know and love.”

“Exactly.” His expression softened. “That's what I want for the children. Somewhere they can grow up without feeling as though they're being watched or judged because of what happened to their family. Somewhere they can make friends, go to school, get into ordinary trouble, and have a normal childhood. I’m not bothered by what it’s named.”