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  We examined the walls and the ceiling in each room but when we got to the main room and looked up, it looked like a hole in the ceiling leading to another passage.

  The hole looked like it had a muscle in it and was opening and closing about as fast as a normal heartbeat.

  “What is that?” I asked Joe.

  He stood studying it, “I’ve never noticed it before.”

  I laughed, “Joe, how can you have something like that in your house and not know about it?”

  He shrugged, “I don’t know what to tell you except that my mind was always so full I didn’t even notice something as obvious as this.”

  “Lift me up, Joe. I’m going to climb through there.”

  “Are you crazy? Look at it. It will close on you and crush you to death.”

  “No, look, it doesn’t close all the way. It leaves an opening big enough for either of us.”

  “It’s like a spasm. It could close even tighter when you get in there.”

  “No, it’s more like a pulse, see? Lift me up.”

  He reluctantly lifted me up and, as I raised my hands to go through, I was sucked up into the opening. It felt like I would think being swallowed would feel like. There was a gentle squeeze and I heard Joe cry out.

  “I’m okay,” I called from inside and I was lying in a slight soft depression. “Get a flashlight before you come in here, Joe it’s very dark in here but very comfortable.”

  “How am I supposed to get up there?”

  “Don’t you have a step ladder? Of course you don’t. You probably don’t even have a flashlight.”

  “Wow!!!”

  “What? What?”

  “One of resting spheres has formed itself into steps and on top is what must be a flashlight, although I’ve never really seen one.”

  He soon joined me, “That squeeze was a little scary.” He shined the flashlight and we saw that the tunnel rose above us at about 30 degrees slope. We got out of the depression and started walking up the tunnel.

  All of a sudden there was a surge of blue liquid rushing down from above us. Joe and I held onto each other as the liquid rushed over us and then went back the way it had come.

  It left a thin membrane looking layer, light blue in color, but had taken our clothes. Once again I was naked.

  As we continued going up into the tunnel, the tunnel became smaller and we soon had to get on our belly and slide upward.

  “I think this blue gook on our bodies is supposed to help us continue upward,” Joe said.

  “I believe you’re right. I see a light up ahead, Joe, look!”

  He turned off the flashlight and we crawled out into the middle of the city, “Joe, we can’t let them destroy any of those dwellings.”

  As I said this, the tube we had just come out of was ripped away and suddenly there was what looked like blood flowing from where we stood and down toward the opening.

  I fell and if Joe hadn’t caught me I would have flowed out with the blood. The blood seemed to crust over and form what looked like a scab covering the opening. It had healed itself.

  We looked down and remembered we were naked. We ran to the place the girls had found to swim and dove in. The blue goo came right off and we walked back toward our dwelling.

  We had been talking about clothes earlier and when we walked inside there, lying across one of the spheres, were a pair of bell bottom jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sandals.

  Lying across one of the other ones was a pair of men’s slacks, a shirt, and a pair of loafers.

  “I wish I had a bra and some panties,” I said and Joe pointed to yet another sphere. Lying there was both men and women’s underwear.

  When we got dressed we went outside and found a group of people gathered around wanting to know where we had been, what we had found out and what we were wearing.

  We explained everything to them and I told them to go inside their houses and get dressed. They looked confused but soon came back wearing clothes.

  All the women were dressed like me and all the men like Joe.

  I closed my eyes and conducted an experiment. When I opened them the women were all dressed differently, but all in 1970s clothes. Some had on bell bottom jeans with peasant blouses, some had on granny dresses, and some had on mumus. They were either barefoot or wearing sandals.

  I laughed and closed my eyes again and opened them to find the men all in bell bottom jeans. I loved it. I decided to try designing clothes in my mind later to see what I could come up with. I would also see what I could do about hair color too. I didn’t want everyone to have hair like mine.

  We went down the hill to see what was going on. Joe’s dwelling had been chopped into tiny pieces and there was blood everywhere. None of the other dwellings appeared to be destroyed and I wondered if all the blood had made them rethink what they wanted to do.

  As we were walking along, a man ran out of one of the dwellings waving his arms, “They destroyed your house, 65G. Did you see it? It bled like a living thing.”

  “I saw it, 47F. Is it the only one they destroyed? By the way, I’m called Joe now.”

  “Oh, okay. They’re having a town meeting at city hall. I heard them talking and they said that one of the things they were going to discuss is whether or not it would be best to destroy the cave.”

  “Why the cave?” Joe asked.

  “They don’t like that it’s destroying all the work and research they’ve done on us. I want to go back with you if you don’t mind, and take my family. We’re very frightened.”

  “Go back with the others. I want to see if Ashley and I can spy on that meeting.”

  CHAPTER 16

  As we walked toward city hall I asked Joe why the building was so old, “Why didn’t they move into one of the buildings that grew like everyone else did?”

  “They tried but every time they tried to enter one of those they couldn’t get it to open. They tried to use one for the museum too. The authorities couldn’t get into any of them.”

  “How interesting.”

  We hid behind a big boulder and watched as around fifty people went in. “I wish we had some kind of cap that made our heads look bald so we could walk right in,” I said and almost before the words left my mouth, I looked down and lying beside me on the ground were two caps like I had described.

  We put them on and started to go toward the building but I stopped Joe, “We look like someone from the 70s. We need those old ugly robes.” I looked down and we were wearing them.

  We followed the crowd and slipped into the back of the meeting. No one spoke and then I realized they were communicating through the implants. We could sort of tell who was talking and who was responding but of course we couldn’t tell what they were saying.

  Every now and then the man at the podium would motion for someone to talk but there were no words. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious.

  I started to tell Joe we might as well leave, we weren’t getting anything out of it anyway, when all of a sudden everyone was standing and straining their necks to look toward a man who was waving his arms. He looked like he was about 80 years old and had more scars than I had seen on any of the others.

  He was shaking and tears were running down his face. His face was very red. All of a sudden his head exploded. The scars simply ripped open and what looked like about four pounds of hardware fell out.

  The man next to him caught him as he fell but then jumped back and let him fall to the floor as the old man’s head burst into flames.

  Pandemonium broke out and people ran for the door holding their heads like they were afraid that their heads would also explode.

  We slipped out with the crowd having learned nothing. We waited to put some distance between us and the crowd before we took off the caps. Our clothes were restored as soon as we took the robes off.

  As we started up the hill toward the cave, a group of about 25 people followed us. They were communicating with each other, waving their arms et
c.

  About halfway up, a group of men carrying knives ran after them and started throwing the knives. One woman fell to the ground as a knife entered her left kidney area.

  Before Joe could stop me, I ran down and knelt down by the wounded woman. She was not dead and I put my hand on her wound.

  When I took my hand away I looked at my palm expecting to see blood but there wasn’t any. I heard people gasp and looked down and there was no sign that she had been stabbed.

  I looked up at the men with knives and they looked like I had pulled a gun on them. They put their knives away and backed down the hill.

  “Come join us,” I said as I held out my hands. “You don’t have to have that metal implanted in your brain. You can be healed.”

  The men with knives looked up and I glanced over my shoulder to see some of our redheads coming down the hill. “Look at all of us,” I continued, “We are healthy and happy and you can be too. You don’t have to be afraid of what you don’t understand.”

  Some of the men ran down the hill but two of them hesitantly moved toward us. I went down to meet them and took their hands and smiled up at them.

  They smiled and I knew we had some important converts. They would help us by letting us know what the guards had planned.

  The most important thing was, these were human beings who had been harmed and were about to be made whole again.

  Irene was at the entrance to meet us and we sat around while each of us told our stories. She served refreshments and I could see that this would become part of the orientation for newcomers.

  For the first time Irene warned these two about the pain they would have to go through to become healed.

  We went into the city and these two new men looked amazed. We had barely arrived when they fell to their knees. It didn’t scare me as much as the first few times I had seen it and I was thinking that I hoped they would have a different color of hair than we did.

  Once again, the metal poured out of them and the hair started growing out. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I had wanted them to have a different color of hair and they did. It was green.

  The old saying came to me, “Be careful what you wish for.” I knew I would have to be more specific.

  The girls came back from swimming and they loved the green hair. “I wish mine was pink,” Pud said. We looked in amazement as her hair turned from red to pink. Zen and Zoe wanted purple and it happened.

  “What are you going to be called?” Pud asked the guards.

  They looked at each other and one asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m Pud, this is Ashley, This is Joe, this is Zen, and Zoe.”

  When they continued to stare at her she said, “Okay, you’re Evan and you’re Emmitt.” They agreed and Pud said she wanted to be the official namer from now on. We agreed. Evan and Emmitt chose a green house to share. It turned out that they were brothers. They were hard to tell apart except that Evan was a little taller.

  CHAPTER 17

  Joe, Irene, Evan and Emmitt and I had a meeting in Irene’s house.

  “They aren’t planning on destroying any more of the dwellings. They now believe the dwellings are living things and are somehow connected to the cave,” Evan said.

  Emmitt picked up the explanation, “They have had the cave staked out for some time and have seen people come in and come out with the changes. They intend to destroy the cave using bombs.”

  “When and how do they think they can do this?” Irene asked.

  “They have bombs?” I asked.

  The two guards looked at each other and hesitated. Finally it was Evan who spoke up, “you saw the man at the meeting whose head exploded. It wasn’t an accident. The last implant that man, who was only 46 by the way, the last implant he had was designed to become a human bomb.

  “They’ve perfected it since then and it will be a larger explosion next time.”

  Joe slammed his hand down on the table. I jumped. I had never seen him express anger before. “I suppose they are going to get people to volunteer by promising them the new implants will enable them to father children?”

  “More than that,” Evan continued. “They are asking for volunteers from both men and women. The new implants are supposed to increase the sex drive as well as improve fertilization.”

  I didn’t know if I should tell them of my pregnancy which I had confirmed just that morning. If we could get to these people who were going to volunteer, and I could tell them about Joe impregnating me after he was healed and made whole maybe we could convert them.

  Joe looked at me and silently communicated, “It’s up to you. If you want to tell them go ahead. They are one of us now.”

  I cleared my throat and then just blurted it out, “I’m pregnant!”

  The two of them looked at me and then looked down at my belly.

  “No, I’m not showing yet but I have all the signs. I’ve had a baby before and I know and Joe knows for sure. He’s the father by the way. He got me pregnant after the implants were removed.

  “If we could convince these people who are so desperate to have children that they are willing to get yet another implant, that all of that and more can happen for them after they are healed, maybe they would join us.”

  “There’s something else you don’t know but Joe may know. When you have the implants, there are some of them that act as a logic distortion. What I mean by that is that every time you start to question decisions made by the authorities, they block it and your thoughts go somewhere else.”

  “So they actually have some sort of mind control over everyone?”

  “Yeah, they do and I think it’s getting harder and harder to think for yourself if you have the implants.”

  I looked at Joe and he nodded, “We have to get to these people before they make some of them into human bombs. When are the volunteers supposed to get these new implants and how many volunteers are there.”

  “The first group will start day after tomorrow. Then there will be a group of about 20 every day until there are 100 people both men and women.”

  After much discussion we decided to go down early the next morning and tell these volunteers the truth about what they were really volunteering for. Evan’s time table was off, we were already too late.

  The first group had just been admitted to the hospital as we headed down the hill. As we walked around, people outside their dwellings appeared to be anxious.

  When we reached the center of a group of dwellings, a crowd gathered around us. They stared at our hair and clothes.

  “They’re almost like children,” I thought to myself. “They have had the authorities thinking for them for so long they are lost.

  We found a group of big rocks and boulders and decided to rest. As soon as we sat down, they formed a semi circle around us and sat on the grass.

  “Talk to them, Ashley,” Joe said.

  I looked around among the crowd that was amazingly growing by leaps and bounds. None of them had spoken. There must have been near 100 by then. I cleared my throat.

  “The authorities are lying to you. These new implants you’ve volunteered for aren’t what they told you they were. They are bombs. The ones of you who were at the meeting the other night saw a man’s head explode. It was a test.

  “They had implanted a small bomb in his head. The ones they have designed for the new volunteers are much bigger and are meant to blow up our cave and city.

  “Some of you have seen the city inside the cave. There, you can be healed.”

  I stood and put my arms around Evan and Emmitt, “Do you recognize these two men? They used to be governmental guards. They have joined us in the city and have been healed. They know the truth.

  “Are any of you scheduled for the first new implants tomorrow?”

  An old woman near the back stood and shouted, “There’s a group already there right now. Two of them are my daughter and son-in-law. Can you save them? I tried to talk them out of going, but they’re despe
rate for a child.”

  Both Evan and Emmitt started running and we followed them, as I yelled over my shoulder, “The rest of you, go to the cave.” I silently sent a message to Irene to meet them at the entrance but she telepathically told me she was there waiting. I should have known.

  CHAPTER 18

  They led us to a big old gray building that looked more like a prison than a medical facility.

  There was no way we could blend in with hair in all colors. We followed them around the back where they opened a door with a key that I hadn’t noticed before hanging around their necks.

  We went down some stairs and ended up in the basement. It looked like a storage room for a hardware store. There were packages of nuts and bolts and screws but there were also clear plastic containers of what Joe said were computer chips.

  We came to another room that resembled something from a horror movie. There were big glass jars and, suspended in blue liquid, were different parts of a brain. They had hardware and computer chips from the other room attached.

  As we walked along I read the labels on the jars. There were program names and underneath was a description of which part of the brain was used and what the program was supposed to have accomplished and what they learned from the experiment.

  It broke my heart to see into the future like this and see how, what started out as progress went too far and ended up as crippling. They had turned people into retards who could no longer think for themselves and they didn’t even realize it.

  It had happened so slowly over so many generations that no one knew any differently. I began to cry and Joe put his arms around me, “I know,” he said. “Don’t get discouraged, Ashley, you’ve already made a huge difference.”

  He led me farther along the room and what we saw next brought me to my knees. There were babies of all stages of development in jars. They had their heads cut open and their brains exposed.

  The same hardware was attached to them and there were labels on the jars with the steps that had been taken to use the babies as experimental tools.

  “My God!” said Joe, “They used infants to experiment on. But they apparently don’t do that anymore. The last one is dated over a century ago.”