Now that they were back in Ty's bedroom, June bid them all goodnight, and exited by Ty's bedroom door, closing it behind her. Diego went back through the portal door to Lisa's bedroom, and out to get Maria. He came back with her shortly.
"Now you know I don't want to see your magic," Maria said to Ty.
"Mom, you're going to want to see this," Lisa said.
Diego nodded, and added, "I guarantee you'll be impressed. In a good way."
"Alright," Maria said. "Go ahead and show me."
"We'll all hold hands," Ty told her. "That makes it easier, and might lessen any shock." They all held hands, and Ty teleported them all to the space station in Jupiter orbit. Diego continued holding one of Maria's hands, while Ty and Lisa sat down.
"I hope she likes this," Ty whispered to Lisa. "I felt bad after we made her watch the zig-zag 'illusion'."
"Don't worry," Lisa whispered back. "I guarantee she loves this."
Maria and Diego continued looking out the observation window for some time, before Maria turned to Ty, and said, "We're in Jupiter orbit?"
"Yes, that's right," Ty said.
"And there is artificial gravity?" Maria asked.
"Not really," said Ty. "The station we are on is a ring around the entire planet, and it rotates extremely slowly, too slow for us to notice any visual change through the window, but due to the tremendous radius of the station rotation, it's enough to provide 1G equivalent, with down being outward from Jupiter."
"I see," said Maria. "And how did you come across this station?"
"Mom," Lisa said. "Ty MADE this station."
Maria sat down on one of the chairs. "You MADE a toroidal space station that is hundreds of thousands of kilometers in radius?"
"Yes," Ty said. "It would never have occurred to me to make a space station of this size or structure, except that I had a very specific requirement I had to fulfill. I needed enough volume to house a supercomputer a hundred billion times more powerful than any on Earth, and the station had to provide adequate radiation shielding for that computer, as well as for those of us visiting this control room."
"I think my questions are just digging me in deeper," said Maria, "so would I be unhappy if I asked WHY you needed a supercomputer so powerful?"
"I had to solve a very large combinatorial problem," Ty said, "and I discovered the need about half an hour before dinner time. My laptop computer said its estimated time to solve the problem would be ten trillion years, so that just wasn't going to cut it."
"And the reason you needed to solve such a huge combinatorial problem, before dinner?" asked Maria.
"Mom, don't grill him so much," said Lisa.
"No, it's OK," said Ty. "The reason we are here, is that I've already made confessions about breaking a few rules, to Diego and June, and now it's your turn to hear it. But also," Ty said, "Lisa said that you were a space enthusiast, so I'd want you to see this no matter what."
"Well, that is true," said Maria. "Growing up, I loved reading about space, watching science shows about it, and even watching reruns of great space SF TV series. I never believed that I would actually 'go' to space, though that was a secret dream."
"I'll be happy to answer all your questions about the space station, computer, etc., but lets start with my confession, OK? Diego and June already know what I'm about to tell you." Ty explained about having violated the going-out-without-letting-the-family-know rule, and how he had done it only out of the need to undo something bad that he'd done to Lisa, unwittingly. "So I violated the 'never harm Lisa' rule, as well."
"Though he did that at MY request," Lisa said, "and neither of us thought I would be harmed."
"What did you DO to my little girl?" Maria asked.
As before with Diego, Ty and Lisa said that they didn't want to explain what had gone wrong, but that they were happy to explain the fixing of it. Maria wasn't very satisfied with that.
"I wasn't satisfied with that either," Diego said, "nor was June. But June pointed out that the nature of the problem isn't all that important, so they convinced me to skip that and listen to the story of fixing the problem."
"OK," said Maria. "If you are satisfied that we don't need to know those details, then I'll accept that."
"Thank you," said Ty and Lisa. Ty continued with the explanation of determining he needed a lot of computing power to fix the problem, which led to the creation of the space station, which he'd already explained. "Once the station was created and I verified that the life support was working and that there were space suits, I teleported Lisa and myself here. With this computer, the problem took less than 30 minutes to solve, and as you can see, Lisa is unharmed."
Diego told Maria, "I already told Ty that because he traveled here in good faith to solve a problem he'd caused, and to protect Lisa, that I don't intend to impose any punishment for travel without letting us know first."
Maria said, "That's fine. I agree."
"However," Diego said, "Ty broke the rule about never harming Lisa, even though he did not mean to, and it was apparently at her own request. Now, since Ty and Lisa don't want to explain to us the particulars of what they did, I think we have to treat it as a serious failure in judgement, and that's important enough that I think I would be remiss in my parental obligations not to impose some penalty for this one. I've been thinking it over, and I want to discuss the details with Maria privately."
"OK, shall we go back home," Ty asked.
"Yes, please," said Maria. "But regardless of whatever penalty we impose, thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity."
"You're welcome," said Ty. "Our two families are now the only humans to have traveled beyond Earth orbit. Now, if you'll hold hands again..."
They held hands, the space station disappeared, and Ty's bedroom reappeared around them.
"That's... that's a lot." Maria said. "Diego and I will discuss what to do about breaking the rule, and let you know shortly." She and Diego walked back through the portal to Lisa's bedroom, and on into their house, closing Lisa's bedroom door behind them.
"That went about as well as could be expected," Ty said.
"I was hoping for you to get NO punishment," Lisa said, "You didn't do anything to deserve any, and the problematic transform was my idea. You didn't even want to do it."
"Diego's right, though." Ty said. "Regardless of my intent, and yours, I did break the rule."
"Maybe you shouldn't have been so quick to throw confessions around," Lisa suggested. "I mean, if you hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have either, and no one ever would have known."
"I don't want to 'get away' with breaking the rules. They are perfectly reasonable rules, and I shook hands with Diego over them. But I am a bit nervous about what the penalty will be."
"I can't imagine it will be anything too severe," Lisa said. They sat down on Ty's bed, and started kissing.