8 x 39 days…
312 days…
It was the same amount of time it took for Kepler Moon Gamma, a moon we affectionately called “Charlie”, to return to our sky after its annual departure. It was the same amount of time it took to complete Leah’s accelerated calculus course. It could be made to sound like a long period of time, but ultimately, it really wasn’t.
Eight months had passed since Brian Fox left our little hospital and returned home to his nation of New Sumter. A lot had happened in Valhalla since that day. I suppose if I’m to tell you about the day I fell into the underground cave, I need to begin with why I was there in the first place. And in order to explain why I was there, I should probably take you back through those eight months of change.
It began back when Brian volunteered to manage the shipping trade between our “nation” of Valhalla and his home nation. No one among our twenty-six and a half people (Faith was indeed pregnant at the time) knew anything about international trade. Because of this, we agreed to let someone who was at least experienced in the shipping aspect guide us along. Brian had been a cargo handler and to some extent a boatswain aboard the Diana for the past six years.
What had started out as a rescue mission for my now fiancée Henley Knight ended up becoming so much more, all thanks to the ten cases of wine we had left at the house of Brian Fox. We didn’t know it at the time of course, but apparently Renata and Rigel, Henley’s parents, crafted a very fine wine. And by that, I meant that those ten cases that we considered to be useless overstock brought our community two new freezers, a clothing dryer, a slew of medication, two sides of beef which I’d never had before and was now a fan, and several cases of exceptionally sweet and addictive chocolates.
This came as a surprise to us because as Henley and I had harvested the vineyards every week, we were progressively getting more and more dismayed at how much we had in abundance. It hurt us to see so many fresh and beautiful grapes being sent off to become raisins or wine. Henley and I had been doing this for almost four years, watching only a small portion of our harvest make it into our refrigerators as table grapes.
That dismay would turn into joy when Brian returned to show us how valuable that wine was. And little did Brian know that we had over three hundred barrels of wine aging beneath the community center. We also had more than six thousand bottles of wine ready for consumption in that basement as well. And as it was, our village consumed at the most two bottles of wine per day.
Thus began the profitable trade between Valhalla and New Sumter. If I had to pinpoint the time that the significant changes started, this was that moment. The first of the changes happened to be in the satellite imagery of our small continent. Brian was forced to disclose to the people of New Sumter where their favorite new wine was coming from. He ended up sharing the whole story of when he washed up on our shore and learned about the existence of the CP-4 colony. We were unfortunately “famous again” as my mother clearly put it to me one evening. She said this happened back when she contacted the people of Earth to save my father and that didn’t turn out too well.
The people of New Sumter were understandably cautious with us based on our history of preferred seclusion and independence. But at the same time, they remembered the fact that our colony was known to have evicted the USN-SD, an enemy of theirs, from KMA about eighteen years ago. So this helped out our reputation a bit.
This was the time when Valhalla started to become a nation. First of all, we had to invest in a full-size shuttle so that Brian could keep the shipping lane open while making less trips across the ocean. He also needed to take on an employee, which turned out to be our own thirteen year old citizen Ronnie Cox. Instead of going into agriculture like pretty much the rest of our village, Ronnie became the first to take an international job as a cargo handler.
All of this all transpired within the first month of Brian returning to New Sumter. That was about time when the immigration to Valhalla slowly began. These immigrants consisted mostly of unemployed people from New Sumter who were looking for three things – food, shelter, and a steady income. We could offer them the promise of food, but we didn’t have a money-based economy in Valhalla, so we couldn’t offer actual money or what they called “income”. We also didn’t have the means to build more housing for the immigrants. We still had several empty houses that the USN-SD built for us, but those were technically claimed already by the second generation of our colony. And Faith Hart, our chief builder, was on doctor-ordered bedrest until her baby was born, so we were short our best and most qualified builder. Faith’s husband Sean was a builder as well, but he would be working alone for the next few months. While he had a good supply of treated lumber, screws, brick, and mortar, it would have taken him more than three weeks to build a single house all by himself.
This brought in another form of temporary immigration, and that would be people willing to come to Valhalla on contract to build homes, roads, and businesses for the growing population. But these people required money and nothing less. Again, we were faced with the recurring problem that we didn’t have a money-based economy in Valhalla. But at the same time, we needed those immigrants to work our fields because we were already plowing and planting more vineyards, more corn, and more potatoes. We were forced to do the one thing we had tried to avoid, and it happened merely two months after Brian started trading our wine for us.
We explained to him that we wished to trade a portion of the wine shipments for money – money that we would then pay to the construction crews. This then meant that Brian had to explain to us the value of the wine in actual dollars so we could get a better understanding of the dollar and how to spend it. First, he explained to us what our food and crops were worth in dollars, from the price of a carrot all the way up to how much a fully prepared meal would cost an individual. From there, he explained the prices of a refrigerator, an MRI machine, and the shuttle we had already purchased with dollars that Brian had been handling for us in New Sumter.
It was a bit shocking to discover that a single bottle of Valhalla wine was valued at what it would cost to feed a man for ten days. That was the final selling price in New Sumter anyway. A profit needed to be made by the distributors and the stores selling the wine. And Brian needed to be paid as well because he still lived in New Sumter and relied on money to survive. Ultimately, the final consumer paid $100.00 for a bottle of wine that we received $72.00 for. As it was, New Sumter was consuming between fifty and a hundred bottles of Valhalla wine per day around the time we agreed to start receiving cash for half of each shipment. We still needed some material trade for our village which was often in the form of clothing, textiles, and various foods that we couldn’t get over here – mainly beef, venison, and pork.
So by the time that three months had passed, Valhalla had twenty-three new immigrant workers who were willing to work the fields while living in tents for the time being. They shared every meal with us in our community center and we welcomed them as family. Their only payments for the time being was the food we provided and prepared. But we also offered them the promise of free permanent housing backed by their signatures on a document agreeing to five years of indentured service. They could already see the construction crews that were leveling out the future roads and building the foundations of several new houses along the way, so they knew that the promise was real and that their tents were temporary.
Word spread throughout New Sumter and even to the nation of Murphy-Stark now that they received the news of our existence. The migrant workers now started to come looking for a variety of other jobs we were quickly discovering that we needed filled. We needed more people to prepare the daily meals in the community center as our population continued to grow in those first few months. We needed people for kitchen clean-up as well. We needed actual doctors and dentists. We even needed another hair stylist to assist Angela Cox who couldn’t keep up with the current demand. But again, we weren’t offering money as a means of income for these im
migrants. The only ones getting paid cash by this time were the construction workers that were only contracted in Valhalla temporarily for the building of roads and houses. Everyone else would be getting paid in free housing and free meals.
By the time five months had passed, we had an immigrant population of forty-eight, which amounted to nineteen separate families and the need for nineteen homes. Twelve had already been fully built and were already home to twelve of those families. We knew the population would continue to rise, so twenty-two houses were still in the process of being built.
Having a growing population of people who weren’t accustomed to the community lifestyle of our village brought about some people who desired to prepare their own meals in their own homes. This led to a need for a farmer’s market. But again, we didn’t trade food for money in our village. At the same time, we had planned for the expense of feeding these people and if they weren’t going to eat in our community center, they still needed to be fed. So Hannah Richards became the sole proprietor of a free farmer’s market that provided free fruits, vegetables, seasonings, sauces, juices, snacks, breads, oils, eggs, and frozen meats to whomever wanted it for home preparation.
By today, eight months after Brian was released from our hospital, Valhalla had a permanent population of seventy-nine and a temporary population of sixteen contracted workers who were currently building our community a water tower and a better sewage treatment facility. They’d already built housing for all the current population as well as leaving us with fifteen extra houses for future immigrants. Faith and Sean also had a healthy baby boy by this point in time whom they named Conner.
And all the while, our community still had a surplus of over a hundred-thousand dollars in cash with wine still being crafted, aged, and sold regularly to two other nations. We had become a healthy and wealthy nation while maintaining the “family” atmosphere.
Henley and I went from working the vineyards up until three months ago to managing the plowing and planting of new and future vineyards. We spent some of our time following Nancy Cartwright and Marie Lopez on expeditions to locate areas with good soil, level land, and nearby water sources to assist with irrigation. They trained us on what to look for and how to test soil samples. Before long, we were demonstrating what we’d learned and actually gained their trust to perform future surveys alone. We found ourselves operating in the positions of field management at the young ages of seventeen. Our new careers meant that we would be spending a lot of our time researching some uncharted areas outside of our village.
This is where our story began and why Henley and I found ourselves in that cave at the base of Trail Mountain. This is the story of when we made our accidental discovery and how it changed our overall view of KMA.
Chapter Two
“Are you sure that this was the lake we swam in all those times back when we were ten or eleven? The one with the island in the middle?” Henley asked, kneeling as she twisted and shoved the core sampler into the ground.
“Positive! That’s the island over there with the trees,” I replied, pointing to the only four sturdy trees within walking distance.
“But that lake was huge! And deep!” she argued, “It wasn’t some pond, Thatch.”
She continued to twist as she sunk the sampler deeper into the soil. Satisfied finally, she drew the manual drill out of the ground and then set it and the sample it contained inside the nearby bucket.
“It was all glacial water. Remember how clear and cold that lake was?” I asked, taking the bucket.
She stood and looked toward the island that now only existed as a raised hill with a few trees standing watch over it.
“I really miss that lake. I was hoping it was something permanent. Actually, I had assumed it was permanent,” she said.
“I did too. It must have broken through one of the embankments and released all its water,” I said, “Good thing there’s a river between here and the village.”
“I still don’t think this was where the lake was,” she argued, walking toward the island, “And if we find that all the embankments around this place are intact, we may want to reconsider the thought of planting a vineyard here. It could flood again.”
I followed her to the island/hill where she turned around and scanned the area. I located the shade of one of the trees and then sat down on the moss near its base. I watched as my fiancée stood three feet away and squinted her eyes while she looked off into the distance. Right now it looked like she was examining my new blue hopper parked over there.
“I just don’t see it being that lake. I can’t figure where the borders would have been,” she argued.
“You do realize that the lake was nearly a mile across,” I said, “It wasn’t just a little circular bowl.”
“You know what? That lake rested against a cliff face on the side of Trail Mountain!” she said, turning around and pointing behind us, “That should just be a hundred yards in that direction if this were the island that we could see from there.”
The high grass, trees, and shrubs blocked our view of any possible cliff face in that direction. But she was right. If this were the lake, there would be a sheer drop-off in that direction that we used to jump from into the water. That would prove it and get her to stop questioning my sense of direction.
I stood and then gestured for her to follow me down the hill and toward the mountain. The water near that cliff was about ten feet deep and the wall of rock itself rose about six or eight feet above the waterline. I could see the mountain rising up from beyond the thin twisted trees, but I couldn’t tell if there was a wall of rock back there.
“So, what do you think of the Andersons?” Henley asked.
“They’re very interesting people,” I said, stepping over an ancient log, “I just feel bad for the kids.”
“Yeah, they’re a little young to be seeing the life changes that they have. To go from the rich and technological nation of Murphy-Stark to a village that’s just beginning to define itself has got to be rough,” she said.
“And we don’t even have all the toys and electronic games they probably had over there,” I said.
We finally reached the shrubbery and weeds that covered the base of the mountain. And directly behind those twisted trees was indeed a sheer flat cliff-face that rose up nearly twenty feet. I held back one of the shrubs to show her that I was right.
“No way! This really was where we used to swim!” she said, offering a pouty frown and then looking off into the direction that we came from.
“Had we known the lake was temporary, we could have-”
I cried out a startled gasp after I lost my footing, then slipped, and dropped into darkness. I hit the ground with a violent splash, landing on my side in about two feet of water. My hand and knee scraped the bottom a little too hard. I groaned in pain, hearing that same groan echoing back at me. I suddenly heard my name being called in the distance, but the sheer darkness all around me offered no clue to the direction it was coming from.
“Henley! Henley, can you hear me?” I hollered, attempting to stand up in the cold water.
“Yes! What happened? Are you alright?” she hollered back.
“I’m fine, but I can’t see anything. Take the hopper and go get help!” I hollered back.
“No, I need to come get you!”
“If you come down here, we’ll both be trapped. Go get help!” I hollered back.
“Thatch…”
“Please?”
Henley Knight
Chapter Three
“Why the lakebed?” my father asked.
I was grateful that he agreed to fly the hopper. I was still a little too shaken, especially not knowing where I’d left Thatcher or in what condition he was in. Sarai sat in the co-pilot’s seat while I knelt in the short walkway between them.
“The soil looked good, it was flat, and it’s really just across the river from the northern green vineyard,” I said, “We could have eventually built a walking bridge be
tween the two for regular access to green’s tool shed.”
I pointed out the window just then, showing him the base of the mountain where Thatcher disappeared. Sarai was quiet, likely very frightened for her son since I couldn’t give her any helpful information regarding his health or his exact whereabouts. He set down the hopper just a few yards from where we were walking when he had slipped and disappeared.
“You’re saying that he simply slipped and then you couldn’t find him anymore?” his mother asked me as she unbuckled her harness.
“We were by the cliff-face and honestly I hadn’t been watching. I heard him stumble and when I turned around he was gone,” I said.
My father opened the back hatch and I quickly grabbed the ropes and the flashlight. He came up behind me and grabbed another flashlight and a knife.
“What are you thinking, Rigel?” Sarai asked as we started toward the cliff.
“It’s got to be a sinkhole or perhaps a cave,” he replied, “So watch your footing. If we all fall in, there’ll be no one to rescue us.”
We cautiously approached the cliff and I started hollering Thatcher’s name. It wasn’t until we were almost at the cliff before I heard his echoing replies.
“I’m in a cave,” he hollered, “I fell probably six or eight feet into what seems like a fairly large cave. Did you get help?”
“Thatch, honey! Are you alright?” his mom hollered.
“Yeah, just a little soaked, cold, and I think I cut my hand when I fell,” he replied.
“Where were you when you fell?” my father hollered, “I want to find the entrance.”
“I was directly at the base of the cliff, in the shrubs,” he replied, “I was trying to see if I could get a footing to climb to the top.”
My father looked at the very spot where I last saw Thatcher. I approached it almost as quickly as he did. He pulled the closest shrub back and right along the base of the cliff we located a muddy ramp that had been probably created by Thatcher’s body as he slid into the tiny inlet. That cave entrance was really just a long crack alongside the bottom of the cliff, extending nearly ten feet along the base and only about a foot and a half tall. I had to wonder if he hit his head as he slipped through such a small crack.
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