Home, again.

[Maxmars]

"My great great great great grandma's head would be exploding right about now..." The girl heard some lady saying... to a window....

"Sarita sit down, like a proper lady!"

Sarita swung around and plopped into the airline seat... let out a half-grunt, half-moan... and went limp ... jiggling around like she was apoplectic... giggling as she abruptly stopped, opened one eye in a clever wink, and smiled.  Who had taught her that terrible stunt?... she was sure it had been her father in law... she knew he would be laughing out loud right now.

The few side glancing onlookers seemed flatly uninterested... not a bad thing... all things considered.

"What does she mean about exploding heads?" Sarita asked... schoolroom voice... carried with painful clarity.

The woman, obviously not deaf, responded to the little girl with the question...

"Because back then the idea of millions of Americans emigrating all together to China en masse would have shattered their will to live...."

The statement was about a teen level... Sarita was 11... Her mom didn't like the energy this woman was putting out..

"Sarita attend."  She said firmly, and Sarita complied.

"I'm sorry she disturbed you madam."  Sarita thought her mom would have made a great queen.

Someone, somewhere behind them said something that Sarita couldn't make out... the woman turned to face back there.. but before she could listen closely, her mom clasped her face in both hands and said...
"Sarita Iniga, this is not your affair... watch the video."

The argument behind her continued for a bit... and Sarita risked a peek behind to see the woman facing the window, with her hands in front of her face... maybe crying... but quietly.

Then an attendant flashed pass Sarita and began to talk to the woman.... gently patting her wrist... and applying a small white patch to the back of the woman's hand...  five minutes later that same woman was chatting an giggling with everyone...

She had seen this three times on the trip.  She wanted to ask her mom, but... she also wanted to figure it out for herself...  Mom was so.... Mom.

[Maxmars]

Vincent wasn't at all comfortable...

He scanned the transport interior, now barely lit.

He thought, "I am in the worst place, at the worst time... and I can't allow my family to go through this."

Only he, however was committed this far... a minor blessing.

Some two dozen people, milling about in a cargo container converted for mass transport, this was about 4 families worth the odd loner here and there....

He was that loner in this group... parents stalking his every moment for signs of danger.  Mothers actually hissing at their children, to keep them from speaking to the stranger... most spent idle moments, 'arranging' their "carryons," as the literature described them.

The automated repeating messages often encouraged "Passengers will so please to secure their carryons - remember: to be safe is to act safe."

He thought about these poor people being replaced with his family... on their way to a transport facility... maybe even now on already on their way to transit.

He spoke into his message device... "Honey, I'll send this as soon as I can... DO NOT FOLLOW... this is not right... I'll explain later... DO NOT FOLLOW!   I will explain when I get to a hub."  He flicked the switch the old man told him about... 

Making his way to the exit to the corridors, feeling 'watched' the whole way, he pulled open the door to a symphony of squealing hinges...and left.  He could almost feel the wave of relief that spread through the unit as he walked away.

The corridors were just that walkway space around the converted personnel containers... it was - initially - daunting - even smothering... but after a few weeks he didn't feel it as much.

He had been on this trip to "The New Colonies" for quite a while now, smelling and hearing the water beneath the ship.  He was certain he was on a ship.... but never once saw the water.

He recollected the nervous chatter among the few dozen loners he met.  "People are disappearing... mostly loners... but even entire families are missing."  One anxious man shared... a nearby woman whispered "I think we're their food."

He couldn't tell his wife that!

He only had this "quantum" device ... consumed as the message is sent... (But the old man told him a way to double your money with some trick of tech.)

There were distant spurious bangs and bumps... not explosions... the sounds of heavy objects.

He waked toward the transmitting terminal but never reached it.

He was interrupted by a big clanging sound... swirled and saw a huge pipe wrench on the deck... quickly joined by someone from above...

"Careful there!" the big man said...

[midicon]

I'm not sure why but somehow this reminded me of the Jewish people boarding trains in Germany. It is also a fine piece of writing that invokes imagination.

[Maxmars]

A bit more to follow... it will coalesce soon.

[Maxmars]

Valerie had worked very hard as a young woman... managing to be around when people realized their kids were never going to learn to read... she was a tutor... for about 10 families in her community.  That made it possible for her to save and scrimp and get all her certifications and trainings to teach on the market... legit.

The last part happened while she and Vincent raised their daughter, Sarah... (who had chosen Sarita as her favorite name... what her grandma used to call her.)

The world was an ugly place in some sense... while there was no competition for resources... there was nothing to build for anymore... No one could really communicate past a few hundred miles, and the government had apparently vanished... or found somewhere to hide....

Families held on tight, so many just left the cities and spread out into places they could never survive...
for decades there weren't real communities ... but some groups became mercantile... traveling, carrying news and goods... others developed similar civilization-building things...

It's been a while now... no news of 'recovery' for at least two generations.. until the flyers fell from the sky....

[Maxmars]

The family decided to go...  Only the daughter refused to be very happy to be leaving.

But there was no "looking forward" to things getting better, or so both her Mom and Dad had repeated often.

She was "lucky" the parents of her friends said, "You're Mom is smart, and you learned about reading early."

"Yes, mam.." She had said, almost tired of it.

She knew that last winter had been the worst... and her Mom and Dad were always very worried about food and water... some days were only little meal days...

She had read that long ago, such weather came in long cycles... and her parents said..."This can't work forever!"

Her father had been all over the links... referring to the communications between communities.

He said when he was a child, there was talk of far away communities, just like their own... and that some of them had even reached across the oceans using salvaged technologies and ingenuity... That tech spread even here, or was spreading as she had heard, and her father wanted to be part of it... she could never really understand what he meant by that.

Sometimes her father would say excitedly about something he was reading "... isn't that amazing?"

(Her grandfather taught her that at times like these... and ONLY with her parents..., it's perfectly appropriate to drop to the floor and flop around,  shimmy and shake like someone being electrocuted... just as a way of saying "enough!"  She knew Pops was just joking... but sometimes went ahead and did it anyway...)

Mom and dad were always talking about what they read, sometimes they would relay the words ... even though she couldn't really 'get it'...

It was soooo boring. 

But one day when she was just a little girl, the news came of a great colony... in a place called China on the old maps... Huge boats to carry colonists, and even heavy flying machines were flying everywhere dropping leaflets...

a promise of a future without punishing climate... infrastructure, buildings in place, cattle, grain, hospitals...
and even help to get there... from the far west coast...

There was a rumor of a surviving nation, after all these generations... with technologies like the one's her father was pouring over all the time.

His attitude changed... 
and Mom's too.