TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037

by Holloway, Peggy

  He ordered his followers to kill many people and they wrote PIGS on the walls of the people’s houses in blood.

  He and his followers were sentenced to life in prison but, according to Ted, Charles Manson had many children and they all tried to follow in his footsteps. A later generation stole a spaceship and came to Korona where they continued to practice their belief.

  Marion and Rory, and their maid were the last of the original inhabitants of Korona. After they joined us, the Mansonites started joining us too. Ted tried to stop them and ended up killing some of them before we were able to rescue them.

  When we lifted off, Ted’s spaceship tried to follow us but the cave thing blasted them out of space.

  When we landed the next time, it was on earth where I had lived in my first life, but the year was 1954. We were able to rescue Charles Manson, whom you have all met, and save him from becoming the monster of my time in my first life.

  We lived on earth that second time for another two years and thought it was our final place to live. The cave had left and we had gotten jobs, the kids were in school and we had made a life for ourselves.

  Then one day the cave was back and we landed here.

  When I finished my story, the all stood and bowed their heads and clicked their teeth together.

  “I will tell our story now.” Abbott said and he began:

  Our people lived here for many years and didn’t know there were other places. We ate what we grew. We swam in the beautiful lakes and bathed in the waterfalls.

  We built houses out of the rocks that were laying around on the ground. We had a good life. But, ever since I was a little boy, I was taught that one day the gods would come down from the sky and make us live a horrible life for ten years. After that, if we were obedient, we would spend eternity in Halla.

  One day we were all sitting around together on the grass, eating the food we had prepared when everything went black like it was nighttime. Then a bright light flashed and set fire to the area around us.

  We ran and everywhere we ran the area around us caught fire. Then it got black again and when the daylight finally came back there were the white people standing in the good area and we were in the burnt area.

  The tall one, the one named Rodena, told us to stay where we were, that we were no longer welcome in the good area and then we knew they were the gods we had been taught to believe in.

  Joe, you asked me if they had weapons to force us to live like we did. Their only weapon was the fire and our own fear.

  He appeared to be finished with his story but no one said anything. Joe and I looked at each other. “I don’t know what to say,” Joe finally said. “Since we have already rescued Abbott and his people and let the cave heal them, and since we are still here, we must still have another mission.”

  “This group is not supposed to come with us,” Irene said. “I don’t know how I know that but we’re somehow supposed to help the two groups live together.”

  “They’ll never agree to it,” Abbott said.

  “Let’s arrange a conference,” I said, “You and Redena. We can all sit down and talk. Some of us will act as mediators. Who would you like? Oh, and we can meet here. It will act as a neutral place.”

  “Will the cave protect us?”

  “Yes it will.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The delegation consisted of Joe, me, Marion, Rory, and Charlie (Charles Manson). Abbott took his wife and his brother Bulla. We left everyone else in the cave and started down the hill to talk to Rodena.

  None of Abbott’s people knew how Rodena and her people had created the darkness, the bright light, and the fire, so we were all, understandably afraid.

  No one was in the area where we had met her, but we heard laughter and voices coming from what Abbott called the main lake.

  We all watched from behind some of the trees surrounding the lake and as I watched I felt such anger at these people for denying Abbott and his people this beauty.

  The lake was huge. It was the same emerald green of the first one we had seen. The water was crystal clear with several waterfalls coming into it. There was a large creek, almost a river, flowing over large rocks and into the lake.

  I thought at first they were having a picnic but I saw no food. No one was even sitting down and only the young girl we had seen on the first day was swimming.

  I heard Roden call out to the young girl, “Fina, you’re risking your life staying out there so long. You need to come in now. You may need a major oil job. You’ve been out so long.

  Fina said as she was coming out of the water, “I’m fine. I don’t need oil.”

  “You’re not going to last long if you keep getting in the water and we have no one to repair us anymore,” Rodena warned.

  Fina picked p a towel and I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. She had no fingernails. I looked at the others and no one had any fingernails.

  I nudged Joe and pointed to my fingernail and pointed to them. He looked and then nodded to me. He then put his mouth against my ear and whispered, “I think they’re androids.”

  I motioned for the others to stay down and whispered to Joe, “I’m going to talk to her by myself first. What do you think? I’m thinking maybe she might talk to me one-on-one.”

  He nodded and I called out to her as I came from behind the tree, “Rodena, can I talk to you?”

  She stood staring at me so long I didn’t think she would answer. Finally she said, “What are you doing here? You’re one of the colored people. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Rodena, we just want to talk to you. We’re interested in how and why you came here and why you made the colored people live in the area you ruined. Can you just give us a little bit of your time?”

  “You said we. Who do you have with you?”

  I motioned the others forward, “This is my husband, Joe. This is Abbott and his wife, Nime and his brother, Bulla. And these two people over here are Irene and Charlie.”

  She nodded, “I will give you eight pensions but no longer.”

  No one knew how long that was but we knew we didn’t have much time. The others walked away and she led us to a group of boulders where we all sat, except her.

  “Sit with us,” I said and she looked like she didn’t want to but finally eased herself onto one of the rocks.

  Knowing there was a time limit, I suddenly didn’t know where to begin. Joe spoke up, “Where did you folks come from?” I almost laughed. Joe had spent the last two years on earth in the south and he was beginning to sound like he was from the south.

  “We are from Creighton,” she replied and I was afraid we would have to drag conversation out of her word by word, but she suddenly opened up and talked for so long, I was sure it must be longer than eight pensions. This is what she said:

  We came into being only a sensing ago. Our creators created us in their image but could not get the color right. The sun on our planet was about to go supernova and the creators decided to find another planet. They didn’t have enough room in all of their spaceships for us so they were going to leave us there.

  They made us very strong and gave us the will to survive. They had planned to inhabit our bodies so they would never die and they had been working on something they called pigmentation before they discovered they needed to leave.

  They should never have given us the will to survive. We overpowered them and took their spaceships. They had made us smart but were planning on disconnecting that part of our neurosets before they inhabited our bodies. Fina heard them talking about this. They had used us to help build the spaceships but they were going to abandon us to die on Creighten.

  We left them there to die instead. When we landed on this planet, we saw some of the same species as our creators. They will not destroy us. We were given the will to live, the will to live.

  We sat there, not sure whether she was finished or not. Finally Abbott spoke up, “We are not like those who wanted to abandon you. W
e’re a very peaceful people. This was our planet before you came and now you have made us live in that black burnt area. We have done nothing to you.

  “We didn’t create you and we would never try to destroy you. We would like to share the beauty of this planet with you. We have been very sick with the coughing disease and we deserve to live with clean air and water. We were here first, after all.”

  We waited for her to reply and she asked something I would never have expected, “Can you teach us to swim and do you know how to oil machinery?”

  Everyone but Abbott laughed. He was very serious as he said, “We can teach you how to swim and some of us knew how to work on that vehicle you’re using for a chair. I imagine we can oil you as well.”

  She looked at me, “Will you make me some garments like these you wear?”

  “I would love to design clothes for everyone here. It’s one of the things I love to do.”

  Charlie hadn’t said anything but now got into the spirit of what we were trying to do. He said, “Joe and I can teach you to play musical instruments.”

  We stayed on Usauris for several months. We found out that the fire was created by a huge laser gun on the spaceships. When they showed us the ships, I noticed they were rusting and I doubted the guns worked any longer.

  I designed clothes for the men and women. There were no children. I also designed clothes for Abbott and his people.

  The androids and Abbotts people were learning a lot from each other. I had grown to love all these people and androids and was sad to leave them. This was the first time we had made friends and had to leave them behind.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Something else was different this time about our departure. The cave had given us notice that we were leaving by becoming transparent before lifting off and before we were all in it.

  We had been having a picnic with all of our new friends by the big lake. Joe and some of the other men were teaching the androids to dive. Abbotts’s people had planted a beautiful garden and we had taken the food for the picnic from there. Besides a big variety of vegetables, we had fresh berries and nuts from the trees that were already growing there.

  All of us women were sitting on the grass talking about fashion. I had designed clothes for everyone and Ginger had made them from the cloth that Sandra had woven.

  We had had a real challenge designing and making clothes for Rodena. She was not only almost seven feet tall, but she had big breast and a very small waist.

  While we were talking, my daughter, Josie came running up and said, “Mommy, the cave has become clear. You can see through to the inside just like when we travel.”

  The androids didn’t have tear ducts but Abbott’s people cried, even the men, as they watched the cave become a living thing that resembled a giant jellyfish.

  I felt sad but excited at the same time and wondered where and when we would end up.

  CHAPTER 10

  We moved through space with the swimming motion we always experienced, living our lives inside the city within the cave and the cave, once again, gave us everything we needed.

  We had births and then were saddened and surprised with a few deaths. We didn’t realize that someone could die in such a healing place. I wondered if these folks would reincarnate somewhere else as babies or would they simply cease to exist.

  Irene was the oldest of all of us and she was still alive and I had more questions than answers. The cave wasn’t giving up any answers.

  We didn’t worry about time or the passage of time but when we started floating like a feather downward Josie was 15 years old. She had been singing with Joe’s band and we discovered she had a beautiful singing voice. Her singing added a whole new dimension to the band. Her voice had a haunting, far away sound to it, if that makes any sense.

  The jellyfish looking thing landed, once again, where there was no one else around. It became opaque once again so it looked like a cave.

  Of course most everyone wanted to go explore but both Irene and I had a feeling that we needed to keep the group small. So, the group consisted of Ina and Robert, Irene, Marion and Rory, and Joe and me.

  We hiked down a one-lane blacktop road for a couple of miles and heard Jazz before we got to the main street of a medium-sized city. It was night time and the streets were live with music and dancing. We walked down the sidewalk and saw block after block of nightclubs.

  Above the nightclubs were balconies made of heavily decorated wrought iron. The cars didn’t look like any I had seen before. They looked older than the cars did in 1973 where I had left when I had died and ended up on Joe’s planet.

  The nightclubs all had their doors open and men were standing in the doorways telling everyone to come in. I looked inside some of them and saw women on stages taking their clothes off.

  “I’m glad we didn’t bring the kids,” I said to Joe and I noticed he was standing there looking inside one of the clubs with his mouth hanging open.

  I elbowed him in the ribs and he grinned at me and winked, “Don’t worry, baby, I’m just looking. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Some of these women look like men made to look like women.”

  “I haven’t seen anything like this before either,” I said, “I thought at first we were back on earth at another time, but I’m not so sure now.”

  “You know what, Ashley? I like this music. I would really like for our band to try some of this. I think I could write some good lyrics for this and Josie could sing like that woman in that club there.”

  I listened as we stood in the doorway of the nightclub, “You’re right, Joe. Josie’s voice is sultry and low just like this woman’s.”

  What happened next was so horrible it’s hard to put into words. When I turned to look at Joe, I could only see the very middle of his face, everything else, the street, the clubs, the other people, were a blur. Then the in focus part of his face got smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a blur like everything else and then there was nothing.

  The next thing I knew, I was being laid out on a seat in a booth inside the very club we had been looking into. A large man with thin gray hair and wearing an apron was wheezing as he laid me down.

  “Are you all right, lady?” He asked between gasps.

  I tried to get up but he pushed me back down, “Let me get you something to drink. You just relax.”

  After he walked off, I sat up and looked around. The place was crowded and I realized I had been mistaken. It wasn’t the same club. This one was newer. But it looked like the same one. It was arranged the same with booths along one wall and a bar with bar stools opposite. But everything looked newer.

  The man who had brought me inside came back and set a tall glass on the table. It looked like iced tea and I realized it was when I sipped it and it was sweet.

  “Where am I?” I asked

  “At Rakie’s, in New Orleans,” He said, and I remembered that was the name of the club we had been looking into.

  “But these seats were covered in green leather, not tan. And where is Joe?”

  “These seats were green when I bought the place but that was over fifty years ago. How could you know that? You weren’t even born yet.”

  I looked around and noticed everyone staring at me, “Did you see my husband who was with me?”

  “Lady, you were alone. You stood there in the doorway looking inside and then you fainted and I brought you inside.”

  I took a large swallow of the tea and looked around me. Most everyone had resumed what they were doing and I was thankful for that.

  The owner patted my hand, “I have to wait on my other customers. You just sit there as long as you want and relax. My name’s Ronnie, by the way.”

  “I’m Ashley, glad to meet you.”

  After I finished my iced tea, I decided to look around but wished I hadn’t. I noticed there were large framed pictures of musicians on the walls.

  I saw a picture of Billy Holiday, one of Fats Domino, one of B. B. King and several
others that I recognized but couldn’t remember their names. I walked along the wall looking at these photos and smiling to myself until I came to one that made me feel like I was losing my mind.

  I gasped when I saw it and Ronnie looked over at me with concern on his face. It was an old black and white picture of Joe and his band in the background with Josie standing in the front with her mouth close to a microphone singing. She looked to be about 22 in this picture.

  I was having a hard time breathing and started hyperventilating. Ronnie brought a paper bag over for me to breathe into and I soon got myself under control enough to point and say, “That’s my husband and his band. And that is my daughter.”

  I guess he decided to humor me and he said, “Okay. Why don’t you go home with me after I close up here? My wife will take good care of you. She’s Creole and her cooking is to die for.”

  “I appreciate the offer, Ronnie, but I need to get back to the cave. Irene will help me figure this out. When you close up will you take me to the cave? It’s just outside of town. I can show you where.”

  He frowned, “I don’t remember ever seeing a cave around here. Since we’re below sea level, it would be under water. But, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I’ll be closing up here in about 15 minutes.”

  I was surprised, “Wow, you close early.”

  He laughed, “If you call three a.m. early.”

  “I must have been out for a long time then. I fainted over twelve hours ago.”

  “No, no, you were out for about three minutes.”

  I didn’t argue with him. He brought me a coke with a little bourbon in it and I sat in the booth sipping until he closed up for the night.

  CHAPTER 11

  He was parked in the back of the club and, as I got into his car, I said, “This is a nice car. What is it?”