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  “I guess they saw that their species were going to be extinct if they continued since no one can have any babies anymore.” I put my hands over my abdomen.

  “Come on,” Joe said as he pulled me to my feet. “Nothing is going to happen to our baby.”

  We reached the end of the horror show and started up some more stairs. When we got to the top, Evan opened the door and peered out.

  He motioned us forward and we were in a hallway with stretchers along one side of the wall. People were strapped to the stretchers, both men and women, and they looked terrified.

  They apparently hadn’t been given any kind of sedative and were wide awake. As the men unstrapped them, I whispered in their ear, “Come to the cave and be healed. The implants they have planned for you are bombs meant to destroy the cave. Come with us before it’s too late.”

  The hall was long and curved and the men had gotten ahead of me and I could no longer see them. I was bent over whispering into a small very young woman when someone grabbed me from behind.

  Before I had time to even think about calling for help or thinking for help, a cloth was placed over my mouth and I blacked out.

  When I came to, I was in a barber’s chair and my head was being shaved. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t remember where I was and what I had been doing. They must have given me some sort of drug to confuse me.

  When I was completely bald, they strapped me to a stretcher and wheeled me to a room that looked like an operating room. I fought as much as I was able as they placed a mask over my mouth and I knew I was going to be operated on.

  On instinct, I silently cried out for Joe even though I couldn’t remember who he was. I woke up in the city inside the cave. I was in our house and Joe was bent over me smoothing my hair out of my eyes. Hair!! I had hair again.

  I felt my scalp and Joe said, “The cave removed them. You were still drugged. I’m sorry I didn’t find you until after the implants. That place is like a maze. They had already gotten you into a private room and there were two doctors there, and one was giving you a pelvic exam.

  “He was telling the other one that you were pregnant. It made me so mad I went in there and knocked them both out before they had time to think or even for what was left of their brain to register that I was there.

  “As soon as I picked you up and thought about our house we were here. They had given you so many drugs that, even though the cave healed you, we had to wait two days for you to wake up.”

  I hadn’t noticed we weren’t alone but now I looked around and it looked like everyone living in the city had crowded into our house.

  Joe followed my eyes, “They all came. They love you, Ashley. You’ve saved their lives. There are very few people left down the hill.

  “Word has gotten around as far as sections Q and R. They are coming here to be healed.”

  “Can the city hold all these people?” I asked.

  Joe laughed, “You won’t believe it, Ashley, but the city seems to grow as more people arrive. It provides all we need.”

  “Well, right now I need some food. I’m starving.”

  “Irene and some of the other women have fixed a picnic outside. It should be ready by now.” He picked me up and carried me outside.

  Everyone was cheering and clapping. We had a feast. The women had gathered all kinds of vegetables and cooked them all different kinds of ways. In the middle of the table was a pig, Joe said had been cooked on a spit over a fire all day.

  Some of the women had made dessert, cakes and pies mostly made from the fruit growing around us. I have never enjoyed a meal so much in my two lives.

  I had always been shy in my other life and had very few friends, but here I had tons of friends. I had also become more outgoing. In my other life I could have never spoken before a crowd but here it felt natural.

  Evan and Emmitt came and sat down beside me. “Emmitt and I have been trying to figure out what the authority’s next move will be now that we put a stop to their plans.”

  “What have you come up with?” I asked.

  “We think they will try to come into the cave at night and try tossing the bombs they were planning on implanting in the brain. They will have to modify them so we should have time to try and figure out what to do.”

  After they walked off I found Joe, “Let’s go exploring. I want to see what changes have taken place since I was gone.”

  He laughed, “You’re going to be surprised.”

  The countryside was even more beautiful than before. Everything was lush and green. Everything you could possibly think about growing was growing from fruits and vegetables and flowers and trees.

  There were rolling hills and pools of water. There were waterfalls and streams rippling over rocks.

  Then we came upon something I didn’t expect to find. It was a small isolated village nestled in a valley. There were five families living in houses there.

  “They didn’t want to live in the city,” Joe said, “And suddenly this place was here.”

  I walked over and introduced myself to them and they knew who I was. As we walked off I said, “Joe this place is amazing. Is there any limit to what it can provide? If it provides everything then how are we supposed to grow and learn from the bad times?”

  “Maybe you don’t really have to have bad times to grow. Maybe, if you’re not concentrated on earning a living or other problems, maybe you can devote all your energies on improving and growing.”

  “Maybe, but I like to have some challenges. There are things I want to learn to do.”

  “Like what, Ashley?”

  “I always wanted to design clothes, or become an interior designer, learn to paint landscapes. Where am I going to get the materials for all that?”

  Joe laughed, “Where do you think? Actually, I always wanted to learn to play a musical instrument.”

  When we got back to our house there were boxes stacked in the middle of the living room. The first one we opened had a guitar and a flute. Another had a small sewing machine and several bolts of material. I had never seen any like it.

  The material was so soft I couldn’t wait to make something and get it on my body. If I could get more I could make something for every woman. I needed to get some material for men’s clothes also, I was thinking.

  I opened another box as Joe was trying out the guitar. In it were paints, brushes and an easel. In the last box was material that resembled canvas but was much softer. I decided to make the men some pants and shirts out of it.

  I wanted more material so that any of the other women who wanted to learn to sew could do so. But for right now, I had enough to keep me busy.

  CHAPTER 19

  We didn’t worry about the authorities for awhile but concentrated on making a life for ourselves. We didn’t think they could hurt us anymore. There were very few people left down the hill.

  Every few days someone from down the hill came into the entrance of the cave and Irene was there to meet them. When they came into the city and were healed, we questioned them about what was going on down below.

  We learned that there were no more implants planned but that the scientists were working on bombs to try to destroy the cave. I thought they were stupid and should give up. They could never make things back the way they were.

  We operated on the barter system and everyone seemed to enjoy what they were doing. Joe learned to play both the flute and the guitar and some of the other men and women learned to play other instruments and we soon had entertainment.

  It was amazing how quickly everyone learned to do what they wanted to do. One woman wanted to weave silk material and soon there were mulberry trees with plenty of mulberries for all of us and the silk worms to feed on.

  She wove beautiful silks of different colors and traded it for clothes made by some of the other women.

  One man had always wanted to be a farmer and was soon growing the best vegetables I had ever tasted. Although fruits and vegetables grew in great number
we were all willing to trade whatever we had to the farmer for his produce. It was all a matter of pride.

  The clothes I made were simple, pants and shirts for the men and simple shifts for women. I didn’t bother with zippers or buttons but ties out of the same material. None of us were interested in shoes.

  Our lives were simple, serene, and fertile. Then one day Joe brought up marriage. “You know what we need, Ashley? Some form of marriage. We don’t have anyone in authority to marry anyone, though.”

  “Well, we’re forming our own society and we can do anything we want. Why don’t we ask Irene if she wants to perform marriages? Should we hold a town meeting and see what everyone thinks?”

  “Let’s do that.”

  So that’s how so many couples, including Joe and I, came to be married. By then I was almost eight months pregnant and several other women were pregnant also at different stages.

  It was an exciting time for us all and we had pretty much decided that the authorities had given up on us. Most of us didn’t even think about them anymore. That was a mistake.

  CHAPTER 20

  One day we realized that it had been almost a week since anyone new had come into the cave to join us.

  “I’m going to go down and see what’s happening,” Joe said.

  We had just made love and I started getting dressed, “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “I would rather you didn’t, Ashley. You could go into labor any minute and they could grab you and/or the baby to experiment on. Please stay here, honey.”

  I stayed behind but was extremely worried about Joe until Emmitt came and told me that he and Evan were going with Joe. Irene had made some more fake bald heads for them.

  They had hardly left before they came back. Everyone gathered around to see what they had to say. We all gathered around a table we kept outside that was big enough for everyone. We always had some sort of refreshments and today we had wine and cheese.

  After drinking a little wine Joe stood up, “We can no longer get more than halfway down the hill. Neither can anyone else come up to the cave. There are guards all over down there.

  “They must have intercepted everyone trying to get up here for over a week now. I don’t know what they have done with these people but it scares me to think about it.”

  Everyone began talking at once. I could feel a wide range of emotions from everyone, fear, anger, sadness, and desperation, to name a few. There seemed to be more anger than anything else but I was terrified. I wanted so much to be able to help new people to be healed and to live in peace like we were doing.

  I surprised myself with what I said when I spoke up, “I’m sorry but this is war. And it’s not war like Vietnam. That war made no sense. This time we need to fight for our freedom.”

  “What’s Vietnam?” Ina asked. She and Robert had been married when Joe and I were and she was six months pregnant now.

  “Never mind about that, it was a senseless war that took place during my time. In fact, it was still going on when I left. I don’t even know how it turned out.

  “But this is different. To me, we would be fighting to protect ourselves from the kind of life you lived when you didn’t know any better.

  “Are any of you willing to go back to the way you were living before?”

  We voted and it was decided that we would go to war. The cave had so far provided us with the good things we needed but I didn’t know if we could get weapons.

  The cave would not provide any kind of weapons no matter what we tried. Even the rocks we picked up at the mouth disintegrated when we picked them up as if the cave knew we had planned to use them to hurt someone.

  I went into labor a few days later. I was scared at first since there were no hospitals but the other women helped me and it was an easy birth. I gave birth to a hot tempered little girl with a full head of hair. I named her Josephine after Joe.

  Joe had tears in his eyes when he saw her and held her tenderly and whispered to her. I only caught part of what he sad but it was about protecting her and never letting anything happen to her.

  When we had another town meeting, everyone had to take their turn holding Josie, as Joe and I had started calling her. She seemed to love everyone.

  Even though Josie was the center of attention, the purpose of the town meeting was to decide what we could do to help the people from other sectors to get to the cave and join us.

  Surprisingly it was Pud who came up with an idea that we all wondered why anyone else hadn’t come up with it.

  “If Joe and Ashley were able to come up through our dwelling into the city, then why can’t we go down through the dwellings and bring people in that way?”

  We all laughed with relief. “The only question I have,” Ina said, “Is how are the people who are trying to get to us going to know to come inside the dwellings?”

  It was Joe who answered, “If the guards are busy guarding the mouth of the cave, then they’re not going to be guarding the dwellings. They can’t guard all the dwellings even if they tried. There aren’t enough of them.

  “I propose we split up into pairs to go down to the dwellings and we can keep a look out for anyone coming by then bring them inside and up to the city. We will probably miss some of them but we will rescue more than we are now.”

  “Like the underground railroad,” I said and then had to explain about slavery and the attempt to help get some of the slaves away from their masters.

  It took awhile to find the entrances to the tunnels that went down to the dwellings, but once we did, we were able to rescue a lot of people, even more than I had anticipated.

  The guards continued to guard the entrance to the cave but soon gave up when so few people attempted to come in that way. We were afraid they would now resort to violence. We were right.

  One day one of the women who had been helping to bring people in through one of the dwellings didn’t come back. Her name was Rowena and she was a petite blond who had only been with us for about two weeks. She had been excited about saving others and would sometimes go out by herself.

  Joe and I decided to go to the dwelling she had been assigned to and investigate. When we came out of the opening in the ceiling of the kitchen, we didn’t see her at first.

  We found her outside and she had been stabbed through the heart. She had come to the cave with her mother who was in her fifties. Rowena was probably in her early thirties and Emmitt had been mating with her. They had planned on getting married.

  Joe and I took Rowena back up with us and we all did a lot of grieving for over a week. Emmitt was so angry he threatened to go down and kill as many of the guards as he could but we talked him out of it.

  No one went down into the dwellings for almost a month and then when we did go down we could not find anyone. I suspected that the guards had been capturing people trying to get to us and implanting them with programs to try to kill us.

  CHAPTER 21

  One morning Irene knocked on our door. It was early for us and we were still asleep. “I need coffee,” I said as I got off the sphere.

  Joe put on the coffee while I opened the door. “Don’t bother with coffee. Just come with me to the cave entrance,” Irene said. “I see some guards and other folks coming up the hill. Can you see them, Ashley?”

  I closed my eyes, “Yes I see them. But how are we going to stop them? We aren’t allowed to have weapons.” I said as we were running toward the cave entrance.

  “I have no idea but we need to get there. It’s just a feeling I get.”

  “I feel that too,” Joe said.

  They must have both been wrong for when we got almost to the cave entrance, it felt like we were having an earthquake. There was a loud rumble and the floor shook like it was trying to break loose.

  All three of us fell as the passageway we were in began rocking as if we were on a swing. Then it felt like we were swimming under water and it was a smooth ride.

  The walls of the passage became transparent and
we could see out. “We’re in the air,” I said.

  Irene squealed with laughter, “It’s just like my old skywheel. I’m loving it!”

  We looked down and below us the guards and the people were looking up at us. There was no longer a hill and I realized the hill was part of the whole thing we had been living in.

  “Look, the dwellings are attached and are floating along with us,” Joe said, pointing.

  I gazed in wonder. The tunnels we had been using to go to and from the dwellings looked like arms attached to the dwellings. Like they were some sort of hollow appendages and that’s what was being used to propel us along through the sky.

  We went back inside the city and could see through to the outside here too. Everyone was standing looking out as we glided along among the stars.

  “I wonder where we’re going.” I heard someone say.

  “I don’t know where we’re going but this thing we’re in looks like a giant jellyfish.”

  Everyone turned and looked at me, “What is a jellyfish?” Someone asked.

  I started to explain but stopped when I realized these people didn’t live near the ocean and had probably never been there. “Never mind,” I said.

  The city and countryside looked the same as it always did except we could see out. We ate and laughed and danced to music provided by Joe and his band. We finally went to bed as we continued on our journey.

  No one knew where we were going and no one seemed to care.

  CHAPTER 22

  Josie was almost two years old when we finally landed. We had been moving through space for so long I had almost forgotten we had left earth.

  We had spent the last two years living a serene life with plenty of food and laughter. Pud was now seven and Ina and Robert had a 15 month old baby boy named Seth. He was adorable with red hair and freckles across his nose.

  Pud had named him and she, Zen, and Zoe spent a lot of time with Seth and Josey. Zen and Zoe were 16 and 17 and had started dating some of the older men. There were no males their own age. No one thought anything about them dating men in their thirties.