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  Our community was very unique from anything I could have ever imagined.

  On the day we finally started landing, it felt like we were floating down like a feather floats through the air, so that there was a gently rocking motion along with the sinking feeling.

  We were very excited and most of us were standing along the wall of the thing we were in, which no longer looked anything like a cave. It looked more like a jellyfish as I’ve said before, but when we were finally on the ground, it turned into the cave-like structure and I realized it was the way it disguised itself.

  We could no longer look out and made our way to the entrance of what was now a cave again. It looked like it had before but the old dwellings had been tucked underneath so that they couldn’t be seen.

  There was a crowd of us who went down the hill that day and I could feel the excitement. My heart was beating very fast and I could sense Joe’s excitement too. We had left Josie with the girls and Seth.

  At the bottom of the hill we hiked quite a ways before we finally came to a village. It looked more like the houses and road in my time. The roads were either sand or some sort of hard material that resembled coquina which is made up of small pieces of shell cemented together.

  I knew this couldn’t be earth because we had come so far but it looked just like the Florida I had left and the time I had left.

  “You know what,” Joe said. “This surface hurts my feet. Maybe we need to think about getting some shoes.”

  We all looked down then and we were wearing sandals. They were very comfortable and enabled us to walk more easily on the coquina.

  The houses we were passing were all made of wood and all had porches. There were no lawns but the yards were all sand. We noticed one house at the end of the road we were on that was huge with two stories. It was painted in white and had orange shutters.

  Some of the houses had cars parked in front that looked pretty much like the cars in my time but they didn’t have any names on them.

  The rest of our group were talking and pointing at the cars and I explained what they were.

  We headed toward the big house thinking it was some sort of town hall or something but before we got there a tall thin man with long dark hair and full shaggy beard came out of one of the houses.

  “Hi, friends,” he said. “Welcome. Won’t you come in and share a meal with us? My name’s Ted Monroe.”

  I looked down and noticed he was wearing sandals just like the ones we were wearing. He was also wearing bellbottom jeans like everyone was wearing when I died in my time and a long-sleeved tee shirt in rusty red.

  I liked him right away. He reminded me of Joe. We all introduced ourselves and four of us followed him inside. They were Joe, Ina, Robert and me. The others said they wanted to continue exploring.

  “I wouldn’t go near the pig’s house if I were you,” Ted called after them as we started inside.

  When we got inside it looked just like many houses in my time. A lot of people were living here and, instead of regular furniture there were mattresses on the floors in every room but the kitchen.

  The kitchen was located at the back of the house and Ted lead us back there. I looked out the kitchen window and noticed a garden growing in the back. It looked like the gardens of my time. The vegetables didn’t grow as lush as they did in our city.

  There were three women cooking vegetables in the kitchen. They looked like the hippies of the 60s. They wore long skirts and peasant blouses and were barefoot.

  We all introduced ourselves and they did the same as they began filling plates with a variety of vegetables. There was no meat and I remembered that most hippies in the 60s were vegetarian.

  We all sat at a long table and ate and laughed and got to know each other a little. At one point I turned to Ted and asked. “What did you mean by saying there were pigs living in the big house at the end of the road?”

  It was Rachael, the tall thin woman with long blond hair and ice blue eyes, who answered, “Pigs are what we call people who are greedy and use up things that should be shared. But every time we kill some of them, some more take their place.”

  Shocked I asked, “You kill them?”

  She looked at me like I had lost my mind, “Of course, that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  The four of us looked at each other shocked, like we must have heard wrong, “What do you mean it’s what you’re supposed to do?” Ina asked.

  “We go by the book. We’re Mansonites.” Rachael said. “Get the book and show them, Ted. I don’t think they understand. We need to teach them.”

  Ted left the table and came back with a book. The title of the book was “The Manson Family.”

  I gasped and the other three from my group looked at me. I was the only one who knew what this meant.

  CHAPTER 23

  “The Manson family wasn’t a real family but was made up of a man named Charles Manson and his followers.”

  We had returned to the cave and I had called a meeting. Ted had loaned us the book to bring back to our house and study. We didn’t tell him we lived in a city inside a cave. We didn’t tell him much about ourselves.

  I continued, “Charles Manson had been in and out of jail since he was a kid. The next to the last time he was released, he tried to tell the authorities that they should keep him.

  “He had met another prisoner in jail who had taught him to play the steel guitar and it was his intention to be a musician. But he never made it in the music industry and was very bitter about that.

  “There was a famous singing group at the time who called themselves the Beatles.”

  “I thought beatles were bugs,” someone said.

  I laughed and everyone joined in. I continued, “Back then musical groups called themselves all kinds of crazy names. But don’t worry about that right now. The Beatles had a hit song called Helter Skelter and Manson thought they were talking about a race war.

  “He decided he was meant to help start this race war. He believed that the murders he later ordered his followers to commit would start this war.

  “I want to go off on a tangent here and explain that, until Manson came along, the sixties was a time of peace and free love. The Vietnam War was going on and a part of the younger generation tried to counteract this by starting a peace movement. They had slogans like, ‘Make love not war.’

  “There was the usage of a lot of drugs at that time but they were drugs that made people mostly mellow and not violent. There was a huge concert called Woodstock where some musicians became stars overnight.

  “During this concert there wasn’t a single act of violence and no one overdosed on drugs.

  “I think Charles Manson ruined the sixties. The sixties were about peace but he was about violence. For some reason he attracted a lot of young men and women, especially women.

  “He instructed these people to murder a famous movie star named Sharon Tate and her guests. Some were stabbed and some were shot. Sharon Tate was about six months pregnant.

  “They wrote ‘pigs’ on the walls of her house using the blood of the victims. They continued to terrorize, raping, stealing, and murdering. Bottom line is that Charles Manson was not any hero to look up to but was one of the worst criminals in history.

  “This book makes it look like he was some sort of savior and role model to follow. The problem is that there seems to always be someone who people will follow no matter how evil they are, people who believe they are good instead of evil.

  “The book keeps talking about Helter Skelter like it’s a positive thing. It terrifies me.”

  “So, you think we shouldn’t read the book?” Someone toward the back said.

  “I can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t read or believe, I’m just telling you the truth about Charles Manson who, by the way, was sentenced to life in prison when he and his family were captured.”

  The man in the back spoke up again, “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you but I will always follow
Ashley.”

  “No! You will not follow me. I will not lead and I will not follow. Follow your own heart. But just remember, if and when you read this book who the Manson family was.”

  “I think you should tell this story to those below, but I don’t know if they will believe you,” Joe said.

  “I could try but you’re right. We’re talking about a group of people’s belief system. That’s hard to change.”

  “Is it right to try to change them?” Someone asked.

  Everyone was quiet, lost in their own thoughts. “Why don’t we go down and tell our stories,” I said. “Then they can do with that information what they want. It will be their choice, even if they choose to not believe it.”

  CHAPTER 24

  While the children spent the days frolicking and playing, the adults went down the hill into the small village and mingled with the people there. Each of us had stories to tell and they appeared to be very open to hearing us.

  There were over a hundred of us adults now living in the cave city and seven teens, children and babies all together. We felt perfectly safe leaving the younger set in the cave. An interesting thing happened during this time.

  Irene wanted to go down and mingle with us and decided to see if the cave would let her. For some reason she was able to interact with the outside world here and no longer needed to be the gate keeper.

  One day when we were talking to Ted and his group I noticed that he had a remarkable resemblance to Charles Manson.

  After some hesitation I mentioned it to him. He laughed, “Of course I do.” He got up and got the book and came back. The last 35 pages of the book was a family tree and he was near the bottom on page 35.

  We were dealing with more here than a strong belief system. We were dealing with a heritage. It seemed like an impossible task we had set for ourselves.

  That night when we got home I said to Joe, “I wonder what year this is. It’s obviously not your time and it’s not Irene’s time. It’s more like my time but it’s much later according to the family tree Ted showed us.

  “You know what, Joe. We traveled so long, I’m wondering if we just traveled around and ended up back on earth.”

  “Earth? What’s earth?”

  “Our planet, silly.”

  He looked at me like I had grown two heads, “The planet we left, the one I was born on was Sunio Two.”

  “You mean I was on another planet all that time and never knew it? The air and everything was just like that of earth. Or if it’s not, then my whole physiology is different than in my other life too. I wonder if Irene is from the same planet as either one of us.”

  Irene was washing her hair when we arrived at her house. She was in the small stream in the back of her house that she had wished up and was bent over rinsing it when we walked up.

  She took a fluffy towel and began drying it as she listened to us, “The planet I lived in was Alistar 26,” she said shaking her head. “I can’t believe we all assumed we came from the same planet. We traveled in this thing, whatever it is, for a long time. We must be on still another planet now.”

  “That’s what we were thinking,” Joe said. “Let’s call a meeting and see how many planets are represented among us. Remember some of the people we rescued from the museum came here like you and Ashley, reincarnated as adults.”

  We held a meeting and found out there were 11 planets represented altogether. I had been confused by some of their stories and would wonder how history had taken so many different turns but now that I knew all of this happened on different planets it began to make sense.

  The next day some of us went down the hill to question Ted. He saw us and came out to meet us, “Hey friends,” he said, “We have food prepared. Won’t you join us?”

  We gathered around the big table in the kitchen and the women served us. We waited until the women had joined us at the table and we started eating to start the questions.

  Joe began, “Ted, we were wondering, what year is it now?”

  He laughed, “Why, it’s 2637. What year did you think it was?”

  “We traveled so long we kind of lost tract of the time. What is the name of the planet?”

  Ted laughed again, “Are you kidding me, man? Do we look like we’re from out of space? We’re still on Korona as far as I know.” He sat there looking from one of us to the other, puzzled.

  One of the women spoke up, “We have been here for seven generations after escaping earth. Things had gotten really impossible there. They were putting people like us to death. We actually stole one of the governor’s space ships to escape.”

  I sat there thinking. They had left earth during the 25th century. So that meant there had still been enough of Charles Manson’s followers to set up a settlement here. The planet must have already been inhabited and they may have killed off some of the ones who had lived here.

  Ted was continuing, “…and so we had to make sure to guard the book so we could live by it, according to the chronicles written by our ancesters, and according to Charles Manson himself. We are proud to be a part of the Helter Skelter movement that continues today and we have guarded our heritage.”

  To me, this was more frightening than the brain implants. I didn’t know if we could help these people or even if we were meant to help them. But I had a feeling we were or else why did we land here?

  “Where are you all from?”

  None of us spoke and they all looked at me. I decided to plunge right in, “You’ve told us a little of your story. We’d like to each tell our stories. They are mostly all different.”

  For almost a month we came down the mountain and told our stories. More and more people gathered around to listen. We had to move outside and sit among some large boulders because the crowd got too big for any of the houses. Then one day someone from the mansion at the end of the street came and sat down.

  She was a woman in her thirties with very blond, almost white, hair. Her eyes were the lightest shade of blue I had ever seen. I thought she was beautiful. She was wearing a soft looking flowing dress and high heeled shoes. These were the first I had seen since I had left my time. She wore a lot of jewelry.

  I could see the hatred in the eyes of Ted and the rest of them and it scared me. Before I thought about what could happen, Ted and some of the women drew knives out of their clothing.

  I got to my feet and stood in front of the woman. “You’d better get out of the way unless you want to get cut, Ashley,” Ted said.

  “Why do you want to hurt her? What has she ever done to you?” I asked.

  Ted looked at the others and shook his head like he pitied me for my ignorance, “It’s not what she’s done, Ashley, It’s who she is. Just look at her. She’s one of those Tate people.”

  “Sharon Tate was an actress who never did anything wrong. Charles Manson’s followers killed her and her house guests in cold blood. She never did anything to them. You haven’t heard my story yet but I lived during that time and I know.”

  They all started talking at one time, “Tell us more,” “Did you know him personally?” “Did you ever get to talk to him?” The questions went on and on and when I raised my hands, palm outward, they became silent and sat back down on the rocks.

  “You have been listening to so many different stories today and in all the stories there is at least one common denominator.”

  “What’s a denominator?” Someone yelled out and was silenced by the crowd with a glare from everyone.

  “What I mean,” I continued, “Is that each story has something in common. And that is that most people look to some other authority or book to tell them what to do and how to live, when all they need to do is to trust and listen to their own hearts.

  “I’m from earth and I was born in the year 1937. I was in my thirties when the Manson family came into being. There was another man such as him who lived in a place on earth called Germany. His name was Hitler.

  “He had thousands of followers. He tried to kill all the
Jews or have them killed. He started a major war. This was in the 1940s. I was just a little girl but I remember it well.

  “The 1960s started out as a time of peace and free love. The people were much like you people here, Ted. They ate good food and many were vegetarian like you are here. We had another major war during that time and these peace loving people didn’t want to kill people so some left the country.

  “I know Charles Manson is your great, great, I don’t know how many greats, grandpapa, but he was really not what you think. I probably have some ancestors that I would be ashamed of, but they are not me.

  “I don’t have to live like anyone else but listen to my own heart. If you have always relied on someone else to lead you, you might not know how to listen to your heart…”

  As I continued my speech and my story I was amazed at myself. In my last life I would have never given speeches. And come to that, how did I get so wise? No one had ever wanted to follow me. I was just a timid housewife and mother to a five year old little girl.

  When the meeting broke up, we asked the woman from the mansion if she wanted to come live with us, but she refused. Her name was Marion.

  CHAPTER 25

  When we got home that night I was so tired I didn’t even want to make love with Joe. He held me until I fell asleep.

  The next morning as we were having breakfast with all the others Joe said, “It looks like Ashley was sent to this life to be a true leader and maybe a savior.”

  When I started to protest, he held up his hand, “You might as well face it, honey this may be what is meant to be.”

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to be a leader. People need to listen to their own heart. How many times do I need to say that?”

  Irene had said very little since we had come back from down the hill yesterday. Now she spoke, “Sometimes you don’t get to choose what role you are meant to play. Do you think I like sitting and guarding the cave entrance while everyone else gets to do what they want?