Everything happened all at once as I suspected it would. I witnessed a lot of it before it happened in what I call creative downtime during REM. Consciously; I filled in the gaps while finishing the root cellar and making last minute calculations on what else I should ask of the food drop.
Whenever I focus in on say just the sounds coming from the live forest, I can hear a symphony, playing say noon forest or I can choose the source of one of those sounds. While spreading out another crop of fat beans on a drier I rigged up from layers of chicken wire, my sensorium of all senses periodically probed within a few miles radius. Normally the frequency footprint falls within a certain range unless something new has entered which lowers or raises it so when it began to dramatically change, I stopped working. It was easy to identify and fit the start of my premonition but as I’ve discovered, the discrepancies add up.
Instead of walking, everyone was running but at an uneven pace because I guessed uneven terrain and obstacles like fallen trees. They’d slow down for a few minutes then resume more like fast walking. The CROAK croaked around my neck indicating that a warning was being issued, the shield was going up and to take cover or go inside. Then I heard what seemed like a thousand high pitched drones coming from the southwest and more from the east. My first though was why had the shield been down when they knew they were coming. My second thought was to run to them and possibly carry a child out.
Then, my friends voice, said no, that they were okay. Sbots descended, landing in trees around the perimeter of the farm to record it, as the sun turned to the shielded dull lemon yellow. The CROAK went off again, warning of a conflict about to occur over the shield which was being fortified for numerous concussions. Another thought partly from my just Jenna, why all the hoopla over a bunch of immigrants! Weren’t there bigger fish to fry by the bad people instead of a tired group of women and children and against a fortified protected enclave. And they were recording this to be part of their next DarKarma episode. Another question was what had happened with LUNAS sister SATS guarding the Nodes, why the defensive moves or was this part of the protocol.
My friends voice again. It had been sabotage from within by a rogue hybrid ‘volver who had gained entry into the Core. Through virtue of high recommendations from trusted members of the Consortium and brilliant work on fortifying the shield from ever powerful storms, they had remained under the radar, working undetected by cohorts. But who, how! Male, don’t know. Where is he? Gone.
As she was pushing that out, for the first time my senses conjoined into what was a red alert, danger. It does that for something new, out of the ordinary until it can further assess the threat level. It’s an atonal dissonant sound that lasts only seconds then stops. This didn’t. Without knowing how, I willed it to stop and turned to face the farmhouse and barn. It was homecoming, not the way I had first envisioned. No fear or any of the old instincts of flight or fight, just curiosity on whether he intended to kill me but not before an explanation.
And there he was, sitting with his feet up on the kitchen table, arms crossed with a big grin.
‘So, you did this just to impress me! Wow Bobby’, putting the little finger in my mouth and cosplaying the subservient girlfriend, ‘what else can you do my big strong man, you?”
He just stared out the window at the garden for some time, then turned to face me.
‘You’ve done a lot with the gardens Jen I see, stockpiling food for your refugee friends and oh, you have a cat. What a life, eh? You gonna save the world, one bean at a time. And about that cat.”
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
‘You gonna kill little ‘ole farmgirl me?’
‘You don’t look so little anymore and yea honey, sorry but for some reason, you and this damn Node poses a threat. Those who have extrapolated out the future see you as a significant danger so, my love, it’s my duty.’
‘A threat to saving our species, my love? Who’s they Bobby, your alien warlord!’
Your speaking as though you don’t care or are confident that I’ll change my mind. Ya know your CROAK doesn’t work. Just saying.’
‘It does Bobby but I'm not using it.’
‘So, for old times’ sake, I‘ll give you a choice.’
While this was happening, things were shaking from those concussive hits on the shield. My friends were close in the woods and something else, something near the door, but alarms weren’t going off. Just then the high frequency sound that only we could hear from the CROAK gave me hope, not for a rescue but signaling that not all was lost.
The gun was lying in the middle of the table.
‘Let’s play a game. Ya know we should have played more games hon, had more fun when we were together. If we had, I think this would have been harder.’
Now I laughed, releasing felt and unfelt tension from the past months. The agonizing, the second guessing, the love songs sang while running through the dead forest, the time spent on this journal bemoaning my lost love to the end of the world, the tears at night, the loss of innocence and karma holding me back from true sight, the re-evaluation and hard-earned truths. The whole nine yards. And at the same time, his spit had given me the knowledge I had needed to see our relationship in all its dimensions. To see me! Boon and bane. All this as I laughed, trying to stifle myself by holding my hand over my mouth.
He must have grown tired and possibly angry because he began reaching for the gun as the screen door blew off its hinges. There in the door frame like a portrait was Clover and Nimbus. A small girl with freckles and overalls dwarfed by a two hundred- and fifty-pound resurrected Dire Wolf.
‘No problem’, said Bobby, ‘bullets go through little girls and wolves just as easily as you, my dear and so..’ watching the gun slide over to Jenna.
‘But there’s one thing you have to consider punk, it’s now a Dire Wolf that could decapitate you in seconds, a little girl with a shopping bag full of surprising super powers, your ex who has some tricks up her sleeves and a stupid gun. So, what say you, hummm’, Clover said sweetly, now in the kitchen looking out the window.
My Guatemalan friends were gathering around the gardens, talking, pointing out things and smiling as though nothing was happening, and the kids had there feet in the pond.
‘We’ve got your back.’
So what’s going to happen?’
A transport Heli will be here in a few minutes.’
Nimbus and I followed him to the Heli through the women and children waiting to be greeted properly. Whatever had been attacking us, had stopped, the shield seemed less translucent, the sun a dull dim yellow splotch, the sounds of my forest slowly returning as well as my attention. Clover had disappeared but Nimbus had stayed, the center of attention of all the kids and loving every bit of it.
‘Safe for now’, I heard from my friend looking over, smiling with arms wide open.
It's time to crack those bottles of wine, I thought, that had never been touched since that first night of champagne.
Finished. They're waiting outside around a small fire, our first gathering, and one thing on the list of things is how we should continue the journal.
