0.0.0.0 Would Our Legacy Survive?

by Richard Graupner

  Chapter 14

  ‘I think we need to go,’ said Angela, pointing at the doorway. Standing quietly, and respecting the discussion between Angela and me, were the test subjects for the day, divining equipment in hand.

  ‘We’ll finish later,’ I said to Angela. This was the first time I was telling someone what had really happened with my family, how we had survived. I realised I needed to get it out, and that Angela was capable of hearing and understanding. It would probably also be maturing for her, I thought.

  We left the rondavel, followed by a dozen eager people, mostly young but also a few older ones. ‘Spread the knowledge over at least two generations,’ I remember my father saying. ‘The older ones provide stability while the younger ones are more innocent and more prepared to grow with it, to experiment and expand it.’ So far, he had been right on this. The approach worked very well.

  So much for my old school-day paradigms about teaching, I thought, as we approached the area we were to test.

  Standing in an open section of the village area, I beckoned them all into a line.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Get your instrument ready.’ Walking down the line from each end, Angela and I worked to correct the handling of the tree forks and check the two pendulum holders.

  ‘Right, now walk slowly forward. Slowly, Peter.’ This lad always wanted to rush. He was so much like my father had been before he quit the working world for his plot.

  There were a few false alarms amongst the kids, but the majority, amazingly, picked up the first energy line we came across. From my pendulum and Angela’s divining rods, we concurred it was a positive line. For the others, their dowsing Y-rods had tipped downwards, and we took this as the indication for positive. We moved on, and a few paces later hit a negative line. It was pleasing to see that the Y-rods had nearly all tipped up. Young Marcus looked devastated with no reaction again from his rod. Angela was kneeling in front of him, consoling his soft little heart. He was no hunter, that was for sure – perhaps the male counterpart to Angela in a few years, I wondered. Suddenly the bough in his hand reacted, jumping up. Angela smiled at him, ‘See. You were just holding too tight.’

  We worked for half the morning, moving through the village and marking the lines while at the same time perfecting our feel for the different instruments as we swopped and ensured we all tested each of the various instruments. It became obvious that some worked better than others for the various individuals, and by the end of the session we had a fairly good idea of who needed to work with which type of instrument. Overall, it seemed we had chosen a good spot for the village, a testament perhaps to the increasing intuitive ability of the community already all those years ago before we selected this spot. With only two negative lines of any serious consequence, we decided to focus on those for now and work at reducing the extent of the negativity. In preparation for this, I had recently been reading the book Back to a Future for Mankind25 by Ibrahim Karim, along with notes my father had made, to determine how we might modify anything negative we found.

  I had marvelled at the good condition of the books, even now. We were very careful with our books though, and always returned them daily to the steel cabinets or trommels as my father had called them, in the driest section of the caves, both for safekeeping and to help keep them dry. I remember him having been out once for four days during those awful first years on the plot. He had walked to a large electricity distribution yard, now inactive, and removed the canisters of desiccant material off the electrical transformers and brought it back with him. This trip, unlike many others he had undertaken, had been uneventful. He had removed the material from the containers and placed it on a metal tray in the gas oven. Mostly white in colour, it had slowly turned a dark blue as, according to my father, the moisture it had absorbed was driven off by the heat. He had then placed this material in porous cloths, rolling the cloth and tying the ends to contain the desiccant material. He made many of these, with my assistance, and showed me how to spread these through the trommels holding the books. Constantly repeating the regeneration process of this material over the years had assisted in keeping the books in remarkable shape, considering the circumstances. Since leaving the house all those years ago we had regenerated the desiccant over a fire, having lost the use of the oven to do so.

  We sent the group of diviners off to have a break, after which they were tasked with finding smooth pebbles, as far as possible similar in size, and we needed two separate distinct sizes. At this time of day, around late morning to mid-afternoon, it was still hot, with little to no cloud at this time of year. Angela and I retired to our rondavel, and after some water and fruit, she sat down opposite me and waited. Intuitively, it seemed she understood the catharsis I had begun that morning was to continue, and that she was the recipient.

  ‘Are you sure you want to hear all this?’ I asked.

  She took a moment, and then replied, ‘Yes, I believe I need to hear it, and you need to say it.’ I was right; she was ready to take a major step in her understanding of people and life.

  I made myself a little more comfortable, sitting on a grass pillow of sorts on the floor and leaning on what passed for my stool. Casting my mind back, I began again.

  ‘My father took us on a tour of the plot. The mind actually boggles at what he had achieved, all alone, in that short space of time. According to him, he had nothing else to do and no-one to tell him to rest. This had obviously worked for him.’

  ‘Walking around the plot, my father pointed out the various aspects. “From the entrance we can walk within the trees up into the area where our vegetables are. They are well hidden and will only be found by accident.” We walked up the hidden path, and looked around at the area. It was difficult to get to with the black wattle all around, and from the outside it would look simply like a stand of wild trees with tall veld grass in the middle. “We will let the patches get a little wild so that accidental discovery won’t pique anyone’s interest in the area.”

  ‘He then moved into a thickish section of bush and pointed to the borehole hidden within. “For now this contains a small pump powered by a solar panel over there. The panel is not as effective as it could be out in the open, but even within that bushy area it provides sufficient water for our needs. It feeds both that old, dilapidated-looking tank over there, which still functions and which we can use to water the vegetables, as well as that tank which feeds water into our underground home.” I had not even seen this other tank, hidden as it was within the trees and scrub. “All the piping and cabling is buried, and there are no obvious trenches. The lights are powered by three small solar panels, also dispersed within the bushes. The system works surprisingly well as the LED’s consume such little power.”

  ‘“Our biggest challenge is going to be sound and smell. I have drilled vent holes up into the cavities of the double walls of the house above. This will disperse any smells well above ground level and make it difficult to trace. As hot air rises, this will assist in ventilating the living area, and the tunnel entrance will in fact become an entrance point for air, reducing the possibility of smell exiting here. For sound, I have placed polystyrene sheets between the original perimeter walls supporting the house above, and another layer of bricks I built within. This will also insulate well. The tunnel has a heavy blanket hanging both at the entrance to the house section and about midway down.” I remember seeing them, pulled back out of the way and secured like the drapes of old.’

  ‘“But what stops animals and creepy crawlies coming into the tunnel?” I asked. At that point of my life, spiders and I did not see eye to eye, so to speak. My dad was still frustrated by this. He had taught me very early on to respect spiders and other bugs, and according to my folks, I had been quite happy, even at age three, to toddle off, get a glass tumbler and a piece of paper, put the glass over the spider, slip the piece of paper under it, pick up the glass, paper, and spider, and simply walk
outside and release it. After spending only six months at nursery school though, I became terrified of spiders. Peer pressure, it seems, was a strong motivator.’

  ‘My father, years later after reading about it, put forward the morphic field and morphic resonance theory as a possible motivator for this. “You began spending more time with the spider-fearing kids than with me. You simply tuned into the group field. This is both the danger and the benefit of putting kids and people together. They pick up both the good and the bad from the group. It explains a lot about group dynamics, company cultures, and so on.” It still upset him, though, that I had not been able to get over this yet. I think he took it as a personal failure in some way.’

  ‘“There is a door to stop the animals from coming in,” he replied. I had not noticed the door, so he took us back inside. There was a door, one that fitted in the small part of the entrance. It fitted snug and was solid. The outside was rough-looking though as it had been cleverly disguised as a portion of the rock face. Looking at the entrance from the outside with the door closed, it simply appeared to be a rock with a few overhanging rocks randomly on the outside. It was very well done, and I felt a little more relaxed. There was an air inlet into the tunnel near the entrance, a simple pipe hidden between the rocks that had a cover to prevent rain from entering. My father saw my look and said simply “There is a mesh over the opening – no bugs.”

  ‘Back outside and walking around the property, I could not shake off the impression that my father was trying to distract us with his explanations, which included the four beehives, the potential to fish from the pond if necessary, and the eggs from the hens. These hens were new to me and were running free on the property.’

  ‘“But how are you so sure it is going to happen?” I eventually asked him.’

  ‘“Remember when you were here last, I told you we are able to tune into the energies of nature, even if we perhaps are unable to speak nature, that we could feel things in nature? Well, I feel it, and so do the animals.” Pointing at the waterfowl, he said, “Two days ago they stopped swishing their tails after landing in the water, and abandoned the nest they were building. They, like the hens, have gone quiet, and no eggs have been laid for the last two days. The rooster has not uttered a sound. The normal bird activity is almost non-existent, and the bees seem to have gone into hibernation. They sense something big, even though we are safe here from any direct impact. I am troubled, and feel it throughout my body. It’s not something my mind is sensing, my body is sensing it. I feel as if I will know as it happens, as the animals will.” How prophetic were those words to be.’

  ‘As the sun was setting, the sky meandering through hues that could only be believed by those who have witnessed it in reality in this part of the world, Dad prepared to hide the car in an old small run-down barn. When it was almost dark, so that no one would see, he drove the vehicle in and replaced the old broken door in such a way that the barn appeared empty, the door seeming to hang off its hinges precariously. From the outside, it really appeared as if nothing of value could be found within. If someone did actually enter, they would find the vehicle, but it would appear as if it had been there for some time. I now understood why he had not cleaned the car and why it had looked so filthy. All to play the part, it seemed.’

  Chapter 15

  Noticing the group of eager faces standing at the door with their pebbles, it seemed to me that time had flown but paradoxically had also stood still. Looking at Angela, I realised that before I went any further – and to help her understand where we came from – I would have to go back in time with her and try to explain in a bit more depth what life had been like while I was growing up. That would have to wait for this evening, however.

  ‘How many do you have?’ I asked the group.

  The answers ranged from ‘lots’ to actual numbers.

  ‘Let’s go fix those nasty old negative lines,’ I said, and headed off for the first of the points we had marked out in the morning.

  On the first line, where it went under the perimeter wall, we placed a circle of sixteen of the larger pebbles, about one pace in diameter. With the smaller pebbles, I formed a shape my father had always felt comfortable with and knew to have a positive energy, placing it in such a way as to direct this positive energy along the line from the perimeter inwards.

  ‘What’s that?’ Angela asked.

  ‘An ankh, from ancient Egypt,’ I replied, ‘commonly understood to be a symbol of life.’ I explained that the number sixteen, energetically, produced a carrier wave, an energy wave if you will, that would carry and enhance anything attached to or within it. So I wanted the life energy of the ankh to be carried on this energy line into the earth energy line, helping to transmute it to the positive.

  ‘Bring the stones,’ I yelled, heading for the other end of the energy line, which was at the wall at the river bank. The kids took off, Angela and I following behind at a more leisurely pace. By the time we arrived, we had a duplicate circle, with an ankh in the middle.

  ‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘Let’s check the line.’

  Lining up, we all got ourselves ready and crossed the line slowly.

  ‘Look, look!’ said Marcus, ‘It’s going the other way!’ Of all of us, his reaction was the strongest.

  ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Time now to do the other one. Why don’t you five do the one by the river, and the rest of you the other end?’ Angela followed the river group, and I followed the others.

  ‘How is it going?’ asked Gerry, one of the leaders of the community. At about forty, he was one of the oldest and currently was fit and healthy. I fervently hoped he would remain that way for many years to come. He was gentle, wise, and open to everything. Being a stable influence, which had been necessary more than once over the years, he had built up a solid reputation for his good decision-making. I had worked long and hard to convince him he was too valuable to go out hunting or scouting or undertake any other unnecessary dangerous function. It took others to take my part before we finally had him agree not to partake of those ventures anymore. This was naturally tougher for a male to do than for us females. The village society though did not suffer nearly as much from the malady of the male ego as society as a whole did before the Fall. I doubt in those times whether sense would have prevailed. This kind of decision was critical, as we needed to keep wisdom, knowledge, and good character safe until we at least had it in sufficient number.

  ‘Going well,’ I replied. ‘The group has caught on fast, and we have already converted one of the negative lines we found. One more to go.’

  As he turned away, I suddenly asked him, ‘Could you come back when you have finished what you are doing? I would like a hand with something.’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, and began to walk off towards the granary cave but stopped suddenly. He turned back and said, ‘We found where the leopard got in. One of the logs in the fence had rotted through and fallen over. I have someone testing them to try to identify if there are any others. Not easy to do though. I hope this is not going to become a major issue.’

  I hoped so too, understanding now the noises I had heard earlier from the outside of the fence. I caught up with the group, who had already finished and were checking the line.

  ‘It’s not working.’ Marcus sounded very disappointed. ‘Did we do something wrong?’

  I checked the stone grouping. ‘No, it looks just fine. But do you remember this one was stronger than the other one?’

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I admonished him gently.

  ‘Sorry,’ was all the apology I got. He was fully focused on what I was now doing. Moving the ankh inwards by bringing the pebbles closer together I asked if there were any more pebbles. They scrabbled in the grass where they had obviously dropped the pebbles to begin working on the circle and the ankh. I placed a further seven pebbles within the outer
circle, around the ankh, spacing them evenly. I then rearranged the sixteen external pebbles to leave an opening along the energy line into the village.

  Sarah, standing behind me, said, ‘The circle is not properly done,’ and bent down to fix it.

  ‘Wait,’ I said gently, ‘this is meant to be this way. The seven is also a powerful positive number and used like this with the ankh, it will increase the positive power. By opening the circle of sixteen we now direct the energy mostly down the line into the village amplifying the signal we want.’

  The blank looks confused me for a second, and then it struck me. ‘It makes the signal stronger.’

  ‘Oh,’ came in unison. ‘Does the other side need it?’

  ‘That would be a good idea.’

  There was simply no chance of stopping them. They had something new, which the other group did not. By the time I got there, they had shown and explained to the other group what was required and why, and the grouping of pebbles was complete, with the opening in the circle now facing along the energy line back towards the grouping at the opposite end. They caught on real fast. We all lined up and again tested this line. It was definitely no longer negative, but was not very positive either. I thanked them, telling them to look after their divining tools, and they took off, eager to explain to anyone willing to listen to what they had done today.

  ‘Warms your heart, doesn’t it?’ I had to agree with Angela. It certainly did.

  I saw Gerry heading our way and decided we may as well start where we were.

  ‘I need to look over the wall along both of these lines at either side of the village,’ I said to him.

  ‘I’ll get a ladder,’ he replied. We still had one good ladder from the past, so to speak. It was a well-constructed aluminium ladder, the straight type, six paces in length. We took great care of it as it was invaluable when constructing the roofs of our rondavels and other structures. On returning with the ladder, Gerry placed it next to our circle of pebbles, making it steady.