I said, “You know, we should just refer to the cataclysm as ‘The Fall’. Like the fall of civilization. The cataclysm was the actual seismic events, but what happened to civilization was The Fall.”
She said, “OK. Before the fall, the population of north America was on the decline. Birth rates were low and there were other factors. Life expectancy was high, immigration was difficult, and things just went into a population decline. It wasn’t drastic, but it was different than the previous few hundred years. Anyway, we are near what was Portland, Oregon. Portland was the home of the Portland Cement Company. I suspect that somewhere at that huge cement factory that there are what would seem to us to be huge supplies of cement already made.”
I said, “We would need to find a way to get it safely.”
She said, “Exactly. After the fall, the big cities really did fall apart. We monitored it as best we could for the few years before we went to sleep. The death toll was astronomical and when the food supplies ran out, people died or moved away to live in the hills where they might be able to find fish and game. It’s possible that even the rats left. So, in places where the buildings survived, there may be warehouses with things that can still be used.”
I smiled and said, “I am a treasure hunter. How dangerous do you suppose it is?”
Clarice said, “Joshua, you have, if not the biggest, at least the most efficient security force in the world if my bet is right.”
I asked, “I do?”
She said, “You have seen how fast the nymphs and I can move. Think about it. Your artificial ‘uni-coons’, that’s what the nymphs call the robot raccoons, they act as advance reconnaissance. They can go anywhere. And there can be a lot of them. Brenda and I can see everything that they see and hear everything that they hear. You have me, Brenda, three nymphs, and twenty minions that act as one with me and Brenda. We have advanced firearms and basically never miss. One shot, one kill, no exceptions. If that’s what you want and what we find is necessary.”
I said, “Oh. Um, come down here and lay beside me for a bit. This isn’t the kind of sexy talk that lends itself to love making.”
Clarice smiled and lay down on my shoulder and went on, “Of course, I know that killing others is not what you want, and I assume that you wouldn’t do it just for the sake of taking material things, but as far as whether we could be safe, yeah. Unless they call in an air-strike with missiles, we will be able to travel where we want to. Our skin suits protect us and you would wear a similar one with extra body armor. Your suit is already custom fitted and in storage on the lower levels. The car that we took to Stevespont last week was essentially a lightly armored fast-attack vehicle. Bulletproof cabin, Kevlar belted tires, tear gas deployment, the works.”
I said, “Wow. Um, wow. So, if we need something, and we don’t already have it, we go treasure hunting. OK. What about transport?”
She said, “I have three of the cars. They seat six adults comfortably. Nine if needed. They can handle a full platoon of minions in one vehicle.”
I said, “I meant to transport materials, but how many people in a platoon?”
She said, “A platoon is generally fifteen to thirty soldiers. A squad is eight to twelve. A fire team is three to four. If we are going to have a standard for our army, I would say a team is four, a squad is eight, that’s two teams, and a platoon is up to thirty-two, four squads or eight teams. We have five minion teams, one nymph team, and you, Brenda, and I.”
I said, “Yeah, if it comes to that, I want to leave the girls out of it. But I definitely want to be there.”
Clarice said, “And, the twins.”
I said, “The twins? What do you mean?”
She said, “We need to take the twins with us.”
I said, “Why? It might be too dangerous.”
She said, “We will protect them. They need to come. I don’t want to try to explain it right now. I just know. Brenda, are you listening?”
Brenda’s voice said, “Yeah. Captain’s right Chief. The twins gotta be in it. You gotta train ‘em up with that chop-socky sword stuff they say you do. No need for guns for them or for you. You were a fine shot, but we’re better. Infinitely better. But trust the Cap’n, the twins gotta come.”
I said, “But why?”
Clarice said, “Thanks Brenda. Joshua, they just do. Sometimes the data is so complex that an answer pops out even when we don’t know the question. As we run simulations, when we add in the twins, our success rate goes up. If we give you and them guns, the success rate goes down. In fact, we might not take the nymphs. The simulations that ran in the past few seconds say leave the nymphs here. It doesn’t matter what the scenario is, if you come, the twins come. For some scenarios, you send minions only. For others, Brenda and I go and so do you, and so do the twins. But Brenda is right. You need to teach them some martial arts and swordsmanship. But back to your other question.”
I said, “Transport.”
She said, “Yeah. If we want material transport, we will need to find and recover it. Most machinery that exists will be autonomous to some extent and we won’t have to have drivers, except to watch over things. We may find some trucks and trailers in some warehouses, but the roads may be a problem. Even if we find trucks, we may not be able to use them because the roads are gone. Our best bet to get things here may be the river. I don’t know if we will find any ships. If there are in the water, they are probably rusted and sunken by now. We might find some yachts packed in a dry-dock, but they won’t be good for hauling. Our best bet might be to find a dry yacht and build a barge to pull behind it. I really don’t know. We will have to go hunting.”
I said, “And, as we go, we can extend our network.”
She said, “Unless we can restore power to existing infrastructure. And we might be able to in some cases. If we find a network center and can restore power and get the equipment working again. It’s a long shot though.”
I said, “Aren’t we going to need a network all the way to where we are going to go hunting at though? Don’t we need communication back to the house here for everyone to work correctly?”
Clarice answered, “For the most part, yes. Brenda and I can operate autonomously, like I did when we went to Stevespont, but it makes things riskier. I guess that we should make a lot more uni-coons.”
I said, “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do that. They can do the advance scouting to the west and see what we are up against. Cover the road and the river, all the way to Portland if possible. And see if you have records of likely treasure hunting spots.”
Clarice and I were done playing army men by then and were ready to get out of bed. She asked if I wanted to finish what we had started earlier, our lovemaking by the window, but I wasn’t feeling the need for that right now either. I did like to save myself for future activities when I could, and our recent talk had put me out of the mood anyway.
We agreed not to spend too much time thinking about our military options for the next several days at least. I did say that I would start to train the twins soon though.
Breakfast, when it was served about a half hour later, was uneventful. We all agreed that we liked it when we were all together and not split between here and Paul’s farm. I mentioned that Aspen and the twins and I would be going to Paul’s for dinner tonight and it was suggested that when Viola and I went to the village for the morning that Aspen go with us and spend the day helping Yuki and the others at Paul’s house. The twins would come along later in the afternoon.
And then we had the matter of the minions to discuss.
It took some time to explain to the girls how we could just make new people in some secret workshop that I had. Raven, Viola, and Lark didn’t seem troubled by it, because they had already accepted that Clarice and the nymphs were made, not born. Aspen was completely thrown by it, and Willow had a lot of questions. Bamboo just smiled and said that she was happy and that the details were of no concern. Before we were done, we had first one, then two, of the
tiny copies of both Clarice and Brenda come up to the dining area to be inspected. We demonstrated them doing several things that no human could do, and Aspen and Willow seemed to understand by the end. When they had accepted that the minions were real and OK, we had half a dozen of each come join us and described how they would be doing construction, cleanup, gardening, and other chores alongside the nymphs and the girls.
And then Clarice announced that the indoor pool and hot tub and water slide were ready for playing. Raven and Lark squealed in delight. Both of them had worked on cleaning the pool and were excited to finally be able to use it. When it was explained that it was the minions who had finished the work, their credibility skyrocketed and the girls said that the little helpers could do whatever they wanted to from then on. The nymphs and Brenda would still handle preparing meals and housekeeping, all with the girls’ help, but the minions would do more of the larger projects; the first of which was landscaping improvements. I expected that they would also do a lot of the work on building the docks along the river.
Chapter 23 - Business As Usual
When Viola and Aspen and I were dressed, a garden cart drove us to the farm and we left Aspen with the women for the day.
Just before we left, Viola and I had a short discussion about the need to sell some items so that we had more coins available for paying our bills. We still had about a year’s wages left from the two one dollar bills that we had sold on my first day in Bonvale, but we were going to need more. We pulled Clarice into the conversation and decided that the most valuable and yet most worthless thing that we had in inventory was paper money. It had only one use: as a collectible. And we really didn’t need collectibles. We had thousands of bills in different denominations, all worthless to us now, but valuable to a collector if one could be found. We agreed to take a few of them to Tobias and have him make us an offer. I suggested that Viola bring a few of the one dollar bills, but that she also bring a hundred dollar bill. When we had sold the two bills on my first day, we had received more than an average year’s wages of six hundred coins for each. Over one year of salary for a man for each ancient dollar bill. I didn’t know if Tobias could find a buyer for a hundred dollar bill or not. Back in my grandfather’s time, about the year 2015 or so, this would be equivalent to between maybe eight and fifteen million dollars. I doubted that Tobias could find a buyer with that many coins available, but perhaps some complex transaction could be worked out. At least we could expect that he would find a buyer for the smaller bill.
We found that the grocery delivery had already been made early in the morning and we loaded our portion onto the cart and sent it home to Havenrest on its own. Yuki and Tanya were very pleased with the new arrangement and thought that the quality of the goods was higher than they might have gotten otherwise.
Viola and I went on into the village to the cafe and we took our seats and waited to see what the day would bring.
We didn’t wait long before Antonio walked up and greeted us. Both of his women, Orchid and Blossom, were with him and seemed very cheerful. We invited him to sit down and tell us his news. He was more than happy to, since that was the reason that he’d come. We hadn’t really seen him since Friday, and today was the following Tuesday. In the intervening three days, he had made some progress.
He said, “Joshua, my life is happier now than ever.”
I said, “And I’m happy for you. I saw you on Friday, and today is Tuesday. What have you seen in the past few days?”
Blossom said, “I am happy to tell you that much of what we have seen is the inside of a room at the inn. But, we ventured out now and then.”
Antonio said, “Joshua, these women say that you are some legendary king to them and they will not tell me exactly how, but I trust all of you. I will let them speak freely about everything that is on their heart. But, besides the interior of our temporary lodgings at the inn, we have seen a property that we think suits us. It sits toward the south west part of the village and is in great disrepair, but there is also a small house next to it. The owner has offered it to me, both the large one and the small, at a very good price, and our friend Bart has looked at it and says that renovations are possible. My plan is to buy them both and my dear mates and I will move into the small house for now. We will have the larger repaired and when it’s complete, move there. We might sell the smaller one if we no longer need it. Or perhaps we will rent it out to a young couple. After this, we’re going to make final arrangements and to register the change in ownership.”
I smiled and said, “That’s very good news. It will be some work to clean the small house, I assume, to the point where you can move in.”
Orchid said, “It will be some work. It has stood empty for a year and needs new linens and beds and dishes, and yes, the cleaning will take several days, at least.”
I glanced at Viola and winked and she grinned and said, “No. You will have help. You met Ellie, I think. She and her sisters Mandy and Wendy, and myself and Aspen and Lark and the twins will help you. We will make a quick work of it. We will leave Raven to work at home.”
I said, “I think that Marvella and one other of Paul’s household may want to help, but Viola, I would rather that you stay and work on other things. Can we send Ellie and her sisters and four of the girls and two from Paul? They can take direction from Orchid and Blossom and they can make short work of it.”
Viola said, “Who is first-mate in Antonio’s house?”
Blossom smiled and said, “Orchid is first-mate.”
Viola said, “Then Orchid, you will have the use of nine workers to help you with your preparations. And Ellie is exceedingly strong for her size. And the twins are just exceedingly strong. Say when you want them and they will be there.”
Orchid looked surprised and said, “Oh, this is a lot of help. There is a kitchen, two bedrooms, a living room, a bath and shower, and various closets and porches.”
Viola said, “Three can do the kitchen from top to bottom in two hours. Two for the bath for one hour. Two for each bedroom for an hour. That is nine. And after that, the rest will be easy.”
Blossom said, “We might have it done in less than a day. This is too much to ask.”
Viola said, “But, you didn’t ask. We won’t bother you if you don’t want us, but we want to do this for you. It’s how things are done now. We see a friend that can be helped and we help them. You aren’t just friends, but in a very real way, family. All of us are sisters and Joshua is related to all of us in different ways. You are having help from your family.”
Orchid said, “I see what you mean. Then, we will take your help. Husband, when do you think that we will be ready to go to our new home?”
Antonio said, “Um, in a few hours. If we go now, perhaps two hours from now.”
I called the waitress, Lucy, and asked her to bring Jonah, the owner of the cafe to the table for a moment.
When he and Lucy were both with us, I said, “Jonah, our friend Antonio buys a house today. His women and mine will clean it so that it can be slept in tonight. Can I ask you to prepare some meals and have them taken to the house for them for lunch and supper. It will be at my expense. There will be at least twelve people.”
Jonah said, “Certainly. Of course. We will have it ready for lunch. And another for dinner.”
Lucy said, “Let me take it to them. I would like to see their house, and perhaps even help in some small way and visit with new friends. What do you say, Husband?”
Jonah blushed as I said, “Husband? What’s this?”
Jonah said, “Yes, Lucy has become my bedmate and I am very happy about it. And yes, Lucy, go and help our new friends if you like and spend as much time as you want to. Have our son come here and he will learn to pour water for the tables while you are gone.”
She smiled and said, “And you will talk to the Merchant?”
He blushed again and said, “Soon. I will talk with him soon.”
Lucy asked a few questions about the food a
nd Orchid and Viola stepped aside with her to make plans.
When they were gone, Jonah said, “Antonio, Lucy wants another good woman in our house. Joshua has been very generous with us and we can afford an arrangement with another woman soon, perhaps. We have expenses and the fatherless must be cared for, but when I’m able, well, if the price is not too much, she says that she would like us to have another in our house.”
Antonio said, “Jonah, that is splendid. That is very splendid. I am going to go soon to make the rounds and see what needs there are. This is a strange way of doing things, for a man to come to me and ask me to find someone for his house. You are not the first. Another friend has asked me to find one or two for him as well. So now, when I find three good women, as long as things work out, I know that they will have homes that same day. Blossom, this is wonderful.”
Blossom smiled and said, “And what about the fact that this good man has just taken one and has the expenses of her son and other fatherless children? How do you think that he will afford another fine woman to bless his house?”
Jonah looked chagrined and Antonio said quickly, “Jonah, she teases me, not you! Be at ease. She knows that I will tell you that we are more concerned for your welfare and for that of the women than for money. She wants me to tell you that though you pay a fee, it will not be a burden to you, nor will you wait long for lack of funds. You are a good man and goodness will be rewarded. We will find your first mate a second that seems worth far more than you will pay for the arrangement. You and I are partners with Joshua in all kindness, and we work together for the blessing of each and of all.”
Jonah said, “Then your meals today as your house is cleaned will be on me.”
The Watchman Page 22