LORI'S STORY

I am 21 today. Cheese has made me take over the journals. I've been reading about our past and the Ancestors hometime. Life is still exciting but we don't worry about our own. Mindreaders are like that..yes, we are.

In the past 20 years the change has been astounding. With my husbands and our wives we, have moved out of the Valley and started "colonies" farther east and south. West is still wracked with active volcanoes and severe earthquakes. The cold and snowy north is flooded and not flooded as the mood strikes our mother earth. Florida and the Texas coast are beginning to look like the old maps...I'm glad there was no one living there when the ice melt started. Sea level rose much faster than anyone predicted: 120 feet in 100 years.

The destruction and loss of life in the coastal areas of the eastern hemisphere has been immense. So many people lived the easy life near the abundance of the sea. Cities and villages with all the ills of civilization crowded each other. Wars and revolution and the lust for the things of others. Hundreds of thousands of "sheeple" obeying their leaders, stayed in their cities and died. In ten thousand years the sea will have done its work: there will be no artifacts to find and no cities to excavate. Every thing will be 390 feet below the surface and covered with solidifying mud. The Cheese says it will take twelve thousand years before people make that mistake again.

Our flying goddesses and their consorts have been doing their bit by eliminating those leaders who moved inland while denying any coming disaster. Their minions fight and die and we remove the evil doers. The viscousness of potentates is unbelievable but strongarm tactics don't work against us.

There are those who say that the dregs of humanity lived in the mountains away from "people", others ill fit for the masses forced away from the abundance of the sea by their differences. But we are the survivors and they feed the fish. I feel for the dead of drowned islands. The islanders had no where to go. That reminds me, we have to do something about the sharks. The sharks are unafraid of humans and hunt the shorelines.

The Cheese is practicing his death song. When my Gran died my own mortality emerged, and now the Cheese is practicing to die. He is forty four. Only my mom, Carol is older. No one calls Auntie Beck "Auntie" any longer. She hasn't aged since Two Voices changed her. In real time she's nearly one hundred but she still looks a young twenty one.

The Cheese sings this:
My life has been good,
I've had lots of wood.
My children are many,
My wives are nice,
But I don't like the lice, I'm ready.

Cheese is teaching everything he knows. Guitar lessons, both luthier and playing. He's pretty good for classical and folk. He plays down home blues bass best though. He has a weird thing he made from a stick, a round of hollow wood with a rawhide head, and a gut string. People keep asking him to make a real bass but he refuses...I think he's going to ask Two Voices to fetch him one from the music store at hometime. He always did buy local.

He's found a source of really pure iron ore and built a forge and a sort of blast furnace. He makes all kinds of tools and rifle barrels. He says we must be ready. He's been making black powder from the sulphur collected from the volcanos and bat guano from the caves. He says that willow makes the best charcoal. He had to bust up some pretty blue rocks to make copper for tools for the powder. Wood ones he makes with the lathe he got from Coots village but he uses that to make barrels for the rifles too. Many times I have heard him wish for a milling machine. Half the kids in camp know how to run all his equipment and the other half uses what they make. We ARE a force!

The Ancestors(the Six and the Family) have been popping out kids every 3 years. 400 direct descendants from the original Family. The Teens...we still call them that... have been busy producing and Coots kids have too. All told, we are more than a thousand. Pretty prolific for 20 years. It helps to have Two Voices looking out for the idiots.

Flyboy and Hiflier are in charge of the air patrols. Everybody flies. Reading about the hometime, I am amazed at the evil of "Christianity." Dysfunctional, divisive, unforgiving, and all based on books written after...600 years after...the happenings. The lies kings and potentates force down peoples throats...sheeple! Well...we're not going to have it! This is our land and we'll protect it even if we have to displace coming "leaders."

You know we don't kill them...we just move them to a big island where they kill each other trying to grab power. Do you know..not one woman has gone with them.

The land bridge has flooded and the Asians in that neighborhood have gotten pretty superstitious about boats. (sharks, I bet.)

The tribe (Lone Tree's group) moved up to the "landing" on the cliff face 15 years ago. The Cheese gave them the bags of cement he found at Coots. They've built a nice set of very solid adobe buildings and arranged some pretty nifty traps to keep out bad people...not that the patrols have missed any...yet! Hiflyer and Flyboy have been adding to the sheep flock (herd.. there's a lot more than a flock) and the selective breeding had begun to show positive results. The spinners and weavers have pretty much decided to stick with the tribe, nothing like being close to the source of your material. Most of them are Vegans and the rice and soy cultivating take a lot of time. We trade with them and spend time making sure all the children can read and write. A common language and alphabet will be important in defending out lands from invaders. Lone Tree took over raising our crop of smoke and selective harvesting and pollinating has produced some killer bud. The Cheese says he doesn't like the mindlessness the stinky stuff creates so he has his own little patch of "reasonable weed" as he calls it.

Opps...it's my turn on patrol, I have to go.