It's da tails man! Here’s my thing, has been, always was, still is but with attitude. No, haven’t gone off the deep end or become part of the Collective but have brushed off my investigative skills into the unseen, the stuff people don’t see every day. This is what has always kept me grounded, kept me informed and in my own nebulous way, hold of the plot. And now I’ve lost the plot because of what’s not being said, that’s driving the narrative and me crazy.

  For instance, how that new tribe of ‘V’s act when no one is looking. There’s no judgement here, just immense curiosity, especially since we’re in a totally unique lab setting where everything is new, at least since humans have been around. Of course, not everything but even those things that make it through an apocalypse relatively unscathed, change enough to mark.

  When not poking around the immediate neighborhood or searching through the stacks of relevant books to read I’m pretty much working in the back gardens or creating more available growing space. I was a landscaper for a while, which gave me opportunities to study stuff that most people don’t even know exists or didn’t care. I stared at a Praying Mantis for half an hour, head on, until the customer saw me from her bedroom window and opened the window and asked me if anything was wrong. I wrote a 2000 word description of that encounter equating it to meeting an alien face to face, in our local paper and got a ton of comments that were mostly positive or neutral.

  I did the same thing with a sunflower, the seeds we found in a small, attached greenhouse pod of a penthouse apartment. One of the Collective had been with the tiny sprout for a few minutes so waited fifteen and went over to watch. As usual, if you got close and watched carefully, you could first see the distance between the first leaf and the soil slowly increase, the tiny sprout grow and develop a second leaf in the space of an hour, due to the ‘V’s spit.

  I was on top of the library the other day talking with a few of the growers, now called Guardians and mostly ‘V’s who plant the seeds and nourish them to their fullest potential when I noticed something from the corner of my eye. Due to quick reflexes honed from much practice, I caught glimpse of the large pterodactyl land on a building a few hundred yards south while folding its wings tightly against its body and head, creating what looked like a tower in silhouette. I asked Anne whom I’m in love, about it and she just shrugged and said that it was a Watcher, meaning security detail.

  ‘They won’t harm. They’re there until the Domes go Up.’

  ‘Domes’, I queried.

  To protect us from the vicissitudes of both climate and predator.

  ‘Vicissitudes?’, I wondered.

  ‘So we can control the weather, grow things and protect ourselves at the same time.’

  ‘Who’s going to do that’, I looked puzzled.’

  ‘Mostly LUNA with help from the SATS and Wbots.

  ‘What are Wbots’, I smiled

  ‘Work bots’, she exclaimed, of course. ‘Coincidentally, we were going to speak to this at a soon to be announced meeting’, she said between well aimed short spits and spit sprays.

  ‘Well, what a coinkydink’, I said beneath my breath.

  ‘No, not really’, she said, ‘one thing at a time at the right time when its time.’

  Another detail. ‘V’s keep a lot to themselves. They don’t lie but also don’t say everything so limit what we know. For instance, one of the members of the Keep, using batteries, has gone into the only computer we found left and was able to hack into the city records on construction because some hear at night a humming sound coming from beneath us or the street.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Others will probably write about this but even so, it needs perspective. Sometime 2027, this very liberal city became concerned with its personal security, meaning its inhabitants didn’t trust what was going on in Washington. So, what appears to have been a highly secret project, hidden within other projects, subway rehab and seawalls, began and took on a life of its own. Still, how they hid this is beyond comprehension, although during this time frame, world climatic and political chaos certainly could have been a distraction and who really didn’t want safer underground transportation and walls to prevent deadly and costly storm surges!

  A cement facility was built close to the old boatyards near the opening to a sewer that they rebuilt to gain access to a deeper level where they weren’t hindered by foundations of buildings, rivers or subways. Billions of dollars were spent on copying Humas’ subterranean tunnels beneath parts of the city with reinforced cement tubes and overhead lighting, resting benches, water fountains and pod compartments with compact capsule beds, wall screens and shared bathrooms, running for miles.

  Besides the pods, plans were diagrammed out for scooped out cavernous places, honeycombed with hundreds of tiny dwellings with hot showers, laptops, food and a bed. These were to be built as temporary shelters until whatever threat disappeared or people could find alternate ways of getting out of the city. But..

  Two ‘V’s were overheard to be discussing one ‘V’s ‘transmission’ or encounter with another ‘V not from our group during REM who said the back wall of the small storage area behind the e-printing room, saying only, ‘you must.’

  ‘Yes, she said.’

  ‘What, I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You were wondering about what’s below.’

  ‘Ah’, I sighed, ‘yes, relationships between V’s must be interesting’, looking at her now, realizing she understood my feelings towards her.

  ‘Those pods or births where people can sleep… they’ve been modified.’

  ‘Modified?’, I asked.

  ‘Into grow pods to both clean the air, provide oxygen and seeds for above.’

  ‘Above?’

  ‘Terraforming.’

  ‘Ah, when?’

  ‘After the Domes start to go up.’

  ‘The domes, of course.’

  ‘Not of course, the requirements for a hybrid dome that provides for protection from the climate, allows enough full spectrum light and rain for maximum growth yet can harden into a defensive shield if required was a bitch.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘..and by the way, that blocked up entrance to the tunnels where their e-printing guns should be discussed in a meeting.

  MEETING. The fear is that it may open pandoras box. The thoughts on all this range from 1. Leave it sealed, 2. Send in a discovery party made up of the oldest ‘V’s and then decide what’s next, 3. Install camera security or game Cams along the section of tunnel leading to the Café, 4. Send in the android, robot cat or vacuum cleaner with a video camera on top, 5. A blend of everything. Currently there are a few who are experimenting with found drones so maybe but most everyone wants to look inside somehow soon.

  Trying to understand this comes close to labeling it as a portal to something. I’m not being melodramatic or woo woo because that’s what we’re living now. Certainly, the unknown, possibly danger, opening up pandoras box, releasing the Kraken or finding an agates worth of beauty. We can understand why this infrastructure was created but are unclear if it’s still being used for that purpose or if the purpose has changed or if it’s been commandeered by someone or thing else. We understand now that AI has been transformed into a positive force completely focused on Restoration, its power base on the Moon. contained in a quantum computer with a host of sister SAT’s circling the planet. We see its genius in selecting the perfect protocol of injections that led to the third strand development and its beauty and ease of transmission. In other words, the Oligarchy seems to have given up fighting against us and now is with us! We won! We all won but the path is fraught with danger due to what’s left behind. We trust the visions of the V’s but also have the discussion that a mix of both us and them is better than just them, at least for now.

  I believe we have to look but do it with precautions. It may be safer than the open streets, have things we need, allow us to meet others and open up a whole new dimensional reality that exists beneath us. Most of us want to contribute in whatever way we can in restoring our planet to sustainable levels for as many species as possible. We feel like the vanguards of birthing a new world and are eager to get going and to do that we need to break out of our shell.

  Zenith called a meeting where the ‘V’s will tell us all they know and how we can work with them. The last word was that a plan was being developed to break through