“I left you on earth for a time because I thought I knew where I could find others of my kind. I was wrong and so I came back to get you.
“There is another who is similar to me but he will try to trick you. That’s how you ended up in all those different universes. I have tried to give you what you need to be happy. I did not want to be alone anymore.
“Seth wanted to build a skywheel and that’s why I brought him here. I had no idea that there was another one like me here. It’s a miracle. I can see her but I can’t quite reach her. She is beautiful
“I need to uproot and move gently so that you all will be safe. Tell the others that we aren’t leaving. I just need to move closer. I need her or I will die.”
A sweet peace swept over me and I knew we needed to help this creature. He had been so good to us. I was thinking all this but didn’t have to verbalize it. He said, “Thank you, Ashley. I still need you humans and I will continue to provide for you, but I want to stay here for awhile. I’m so old and so tired. Do you understand? I know you do. Thank you so much for the companionship you’ve given me. Oh, you’re welcome.”
He was carrying on a conversation with me but I didn’t have to verbalize anything. He was getting answers right out of my mind.
I was going to ask him what we should call him and he said, “I am Homan. Call me that from now on. I am not a cave.”
CHAPTER 24
When I came out of the dark passageway, everyone looked up. Joe came over and hugged me, “You look beautiful, radiant, Ashley. You were gone so long. What happened?”
By now everyone was in the entrance room of the cave and they were all asking questions at once.
I held up my hand, “I need to get something to drink and then I will tell you everything I learned.”
Marion brought lemonade and we all settled back on the spheres and got relaxed.
I took a big swallow, “First, he is not a cave. His name is Homan and he is more like a jellyfish than anything else. He is very old and very lonely. He thought he was the last of his kind and he connected to us, giving us everything we needed so that we would stay with him.
“When he left us on earth, it was because he thought he knew where he could find another like himself. He was mistaken and so he came back for us.” I finished off my lemonade and caught my breath.
For some reason, I didn’t want to go into the other evil thing that had messed our lives up in New Orleans. I was wondering how to skip over that and still make sense when Irene said, “Just tell us what he wants now, Ashley.”
I shrugged and said, “He’s in love.”
There was a lot of talking at one time and I held up my hand, “He came here because he wanted Seth to meet these people so he could build his skywheel. He didn’t realize there was another being like himself here. He said he could see her but not touch her. He tried to feel for her but was unable to. He tried to move sideways but he upset everyone.
“He wants to uproot just long enough to move over close to her. He assured me that he would not leave. He just needs to uproot and move close to her.”
“That’s good,” Joe said. “That way we won’t have to look for the other cave, uh, sorry Homan.”
I looked around and didn’t see Seth, “Seth hasn’t gotten back yet?” I asked.
“Someone asking about me?” Seth said as he walked up to the entrance of the cave and I had never seen him look so happy.
He looked around and asked, “What’s going on?”
We filled him in and he grinned from ear to ear, “The only thing that would now make everything perfect is for us to find Josie again. Hey Irene, guess what. We have the skywheel designed and a prototype already made. No one wants to try it out and Foe is asking for volunteers. These folks are on the ball.
“I wonder if they sleep. It seems like they work all the time. So, what do you think, Irene? I’ll do it if you don’t want to.”
She didn’t hesitate, “I think I should be the one to try it out. I’m an old lady and if something goes wrong, I’ve lived a good life or I should say lifes. You have your whole life ahead of you. Besides, since it was my idea, I should be the one to go.
“So, when is the test day?”
“It’s now. They don’t wait til tomorrow, ever. Let’s all go down and watch.”
There was an empty field not far from the cave and, as we walked toward it, Homan uprooted and became transparent and rose up and started the swimming motion. It moved a few yards over and settled back down next to another cave-like creature.
The people on this planet didn’t seem to notice, they were so focused on the skywheel. They were circling around it and talking in excited voices. When we got to where they were, they finally noticed us and Foe asked, “Which one of you is going to test it?”
Irene stepped forward and they all stared at her. “Why are you still here?” Foe asked. “You are old. You should have left a long time age.”
They all gathered around Irene like she was something they had never seen before and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen any old people here.
Foe gently put her hand on Irene’s shoulder and spoke kindly to her, “You are past production age. You don’t have to do any more. We’ll let Seth test the skywheel and then we will take you to the village for the tired people. You’ll love it there. You don’t have to do anything. Then when you want to terminate we will help you with that too. Would you like that?”
“Hell, no I wouldn’t like that. What’s with you people? You think that I need to be put out to pasture just because I’m older than you? What kind of place is this?”
I had never seen Irene that angry. She ranted and raved for some time and the whole time Foe and her people looked totally confused. They stood and watched her until she started toward the skywheel. She got inside and started the thing up. The motor was quiet. It looked a lot like pictures I had seen of a flying saucer, in the first life I remembered, on covers of comic books.
When the thing lifted off the ground, it did so in a graceful movement similar to the way Homan landed, in a sort of rocking motion. We started clapping and I noticed that Foe’s people were slapping the sides of their faces. I guessed it was their way of clapping.
Irene put on quite a show and I think it was partly because she wanted to show them how productive she still was. She made the thing tilt sideways and shoot straight up in the air and then dive straight down so low that I thought she was going to crash. She saved it just in time and then, from then on out it looked like a Frisbee that someone was throwing in the park.
When she landed she slide the thing in sideways and it reminded me of a baseball player sliding into home plate.
“Whew,” She said when she got out. “Seth, you are a genius. Why that thing is better than ten of the one I used to have. I don’t see any problems with it except the slow rocking motion during takeoff, but I think I could have handled that better. That might just be me, trying to get used to it again.”
She turned to Foe, “How non-productive is that, honey?” She walked off toward Homan without waiting for a reply.
Foe stared after her and slapped both hands over her heart and I wondered if that meant that her feelings were hurt. I smiled at Foe and she smiled back.
“It was nice of you to want to help Irene, Foe. But where we come from, the older people do as much as they want to until they can’t anymore.”
“So, they wait until they are in pain or sick or too weak to do anything more? Hmm, that seems so cruel. We put them in a community where they can rest and leave us in a calm quiet manner. We have a termination celebration when they decide to leave us and we give them things to make it all painless. In other words, we have herbs to help them at the end.”
“Our people are different, Foe and most of them are insulted if you suggest that they are not productive anymore.”
She again put both of her hands over her heart and said, “Woe, soulful, me.”
I took it as an apology, �
��That’s okay. She will forgive you. She’s a great girl.”
The others went back to Homan but Joe and I stayed and watched as many of Foe’s people went up in the skywheel. When it came to be Seth’s turn, he scared me a little. He was fearless.
When he landed he was jumping for joy. “They’re going to make enough for everyone. They’re going to pull an all nighter. Can I stay and help, mom?”
I looked at Joe. He shrugged and said, “Is it going to hurt anything for him to stay up all night?”
We approved and watched him run off to catch up with the others. I saw the teenage girl run to catch up with him. He took her hand and she looked down at their joined hands like she wondered what it meant.
CHAPTER 25
I almost went into the wrong cave until Joe stopped me. They were sitting so close together and I noticed their hands were joined.
When we got inside, the entrance room looked brighter, the dark passage was less dark but the city had the major changes. It was always bright but now the colors were so vibrant and bright it almost hurt your eyes.
“I think you’re right, Ashley. I think Homan is in love. I wonder if there will be any baby Homans,” Joe whispered in my ear.
“Maybe they need some privacy for that,” I said as I looked around at all the people living in the city. “Maybe we should look into those stacked rooms Foe tried to get us to stay in.”
After supper Joe gathered everyone around and ask everyone what they thought about going down the hill and renting some rooms and letting the two love birds have some alone time.
Everyone agreed and we went in search of Foe. She and Seth were coming out of the building where they had been working. They were a deep discussion and didn’t see us for awhile. I watched our son and I felt so proud. He was so smart. I wished we could find Josie.
When he looked up and saw us, Seth ran toward us, “Hi, mom and dad. Guess what, we’re going to build so many things together. I love this place.”
“That’s great, son,” Joe said. “We came to ask Foe about those rooms she mentioned before. We want to give Homan and his girlfriend some time alone.”
Seth laughed, “Wow, that‘s so cool. Do you have enough room for everyone, Foe?”
She nodded, “We have enough for ten times more than this. I’m glad you decided to stay with us instead of inside a dark cave.”
No one corrected her and she led us to a building that reminded me of a beehive. It was so big that the rooms looked like little holes. They turned out to be very luxurious and Seth had his own so that Joe and I had our own alone time.
The same spheres that we had in our own house were in these rooms and, if I had had any doubts about how these buildings came about, I didn’t have any anymore.
Joe and I made love all through the night. I guess it was because of the new surroundings. It was kind of like when you go on a trip and all of a sudden you fall in love all over again.
We ended up staying away from the caves for three days and enjoyed being around Foe’s people. They didn’t seem to have a whole lot of time to talk and interact with us because they put great importance in work. Compared to them, we were very laid back. They must have thought we were lazy.
The hotel we stayed in had people working hard preparing our meals and cleaning our rooms and I told them we could do it ourselves. They seemed to need to work hard and seemed to be disappointed when we told them we’d do for ourselves.
“We need to teach these people how to relax,” Joe said.
“What do you suggest?”
“Let’s set up a giant picnic. Me and the band can act as the entertainment. You can give a fashion show and maybe entice some of these women into wearing something more feminine.”
When we approached Foe with our idea she looked confused, “Why would you want to do this thing? It seems so non-productive. What would you gain from it? You will not end up with anything to use like we did with the skywheel. Now that was worth the effort.” She shook her head, “I’m sorry but I don’t understand the purpose.”
“The purpose is relaxation,” Joe said. “Don’t you people ever relax?”
“I don’t know what that is but if it’s what you want to do, we don’t mind.”
The men started building a stage out of some building materials that the cave must have left for them. The women found material, some sewing machines, and all the other supplies we needed to make the clothes I designed. It was amazing to me that the cave was still anticipating our needs. I decided to make some easy living clothes for the women. I wanted to make them comfortable and pretty at the same time.
I designed dresses, all in silk, and all in floral prints. They were so different from anything the women wore that I wondered if they would be interested in them at all.
Some of Foe’s people would stop long enough in their busy days to look, with curiosity, at the stage and bleachers our men were building, but then they would hurry on.
Our hotel rooms were getting piled high with fashions and we now had eighteen of our women who were going to act as models. As I drew, Ginger sewed and oversaw the other seamstresses.
After the men completed the stage and set up the sound equipment, they built a runway. I went in search of Foe to find out where I could get some microphones. When I explained it to her she said, “I think we might need something like that too. I’ll get my people on it right away. We’ll give it to you tonight.” The ones she gave us were very different from anything I had ever seen. They were about the size of my little finger but they worked really well.
We finally had everything ready and the big day arrived. I had decided at the last minute to also have swimsuits, shorts, and halters in the show.
Joe blew into the microphone and then said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” I looked around. There were three people standing around and looking like they wondered what we were up to. One was the teenage girl that Seth seemed to have a crush on and she had brought another girl with her. Then there was a man standing a ways back like he didn’t want anyone to see him there.
Joe continued as if he had a crowd, “For our first number, we would like to sing a song we wrote a few years back and it’s call Razzle Dazzle, Black and White. Hope you enjoy it.”
By the third number, the crowd had grown a tiny bit and some were going over to the hot dog stands and getting food. The teenagers grew in number and I began to notice them moving to the music.
Eventually Seth came out and grabbed the hand of the girl he seemed to like and started swinging her around and teaching her dance steps. More and more teenagers joined them and tried copying what they were doing and before long we had a good dance going on. More and more adults joined in and by the time Joe and his band took a break, some of them were getting into it.
We proceeded to the fashion show and I saw more and more women come and take a seat and watch. When the models came out in the shorts and halter tops and later in the swim suits, I saw the women whispering among themselves. They looked shocked.
Then I saw something I didn’t think I would ever see. I saw some of these women look at the bikinis and giggle.
After the fashion show was over, many of the women gathered around and asked us about the clothes. We agreed to make some of the styles for them but they weren’t sure about the shorts and swimsuits. They felt the silk material with the look of sheer pleasure on their faces. I gave some of the clothes to some of the women to take home with them. They looked less stressed out than I had ever seen them.
As I interacted with these wonderful women, I could see how we could learn from each other. They needed to learn to relax and enjoy themselves and we needed to become more productive and maybe learn some technology.
They had accomplished so much but I felt like they had paid a big price for their accomplishments.
When Joe and his band came back on stage, we had a huge crowd and by the end of the second set, Foe’s people were clapping and moving to the music. Eventually Foe an
d some of the more high powered technical people came out and joined in and I saw Foe dancing with Seth at one point. He was teaching her the steps. When the band came back for the final set, Joe introduced a song I had never heard.
“This is a song my daughter, Josie, and I used to sing together. It’s a blues.”
When he started singing I got tears in my eyes. It was beautiful. It was about him wanting her to be real and her wanting him to be happy. To be real and to be happy, they kept repeating and all of a sudden I heard Josie’s voice and saw her coming down the hill as she sang.
Joe saw my face and he turned and saw her too. Tears streamed down his face as he sang along with her and when she stepped up on the stage, they held each other while they finished the song. Then I ran up on the stage to join them and soon Seth noticed what was going on and ran onto the stage and we were all hugging and crying together.
Foe’s people must have thought it was part of the act. They too started hugging each other and pretending to cry but there was no tears. It made me kind of mad at first but then I had to laugh and Joe and the whole band was laughing. Foe’s people started laughing too.
It was so interesting. At first they were copying our laughter but then they were laughing for real and for reason it made me laugh harder. I wondered if any of them had ever really had a good laugh.
CHAPTER 26
“Where have you been, Josie?” I asked. We had finished the picnic, fashion show, and music and given some of the women some of the clothes and came back to our hotel room.
“I have been in so many times and places, mom. I even OD’d on heroine once. It was such an awful time for me. I don’t understand time at all. I don’t see how we can have so many different possible lives.”
TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037 Page 8
