Chapter 175
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Note: Father, Vincent, and Catherine are from the 1980s television series "Beauty and the beast." Anne is from the same universe as my story "Slouching towards Bethlehem."
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Buffy's latest excursion to Hell had not produced the best results. They had returned Faith to Hell, and she was likely to keep working for Wilkins in his kingdom. They had attempted to get Cole, Chrissy, and Bianca out, only for all three to choose to remain in Hell. It seemed they would rather help whom they could in Hell, rather than return to their loved ones in Antarctica. And all they had brought back were about twelve sex workers. Most might have been sent to Hell for venial sins, but they were hardly experiences warriors. No doubt Chase Graves and others would be upset over this turn of events. These twelve were brought to a man who called himself "Father."
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In his own world Father was a man named Jacob Wells, a doctor in the 1950s. He had the task of monitoring radiation in american soldiers exposed to nuclear explosions. Jacob found that the exposure put the soldiers in great harm, but other army doctors said the effects were negligible. Jacob considered the possibility that he was in error, he did the tests mny times over. They all reached the same conclusion. When Jacob tried to warn his superiors, they found his truth inconvenient. He was unfairly labeled a communist and sent to prison. After his release Jacob went underground, created a new society in the sewars. The others were those whom society had rejected, the homeless, former sex workers, and a child who looked like a beast. Jacob adopted this child and named him Vincent. This world below was egalitarian, not corrupted by greed or hatred. But Vincent fell in love with a woman from the world above, Catherine. Father, as Jacob came to call himself, did not approve of this relationship at first, he felt it would bring them both nothing but heartbreak. But Vincent and Catherine were in love, and eventually Father came to accept it. Catherine was murdered, just after giving birth to her and Vincent's son. Vincent grieved for Catherine, but he vowed to protect the baby, little Jacob. And now, as the world's fell apart, Catherine found her way back to Vincent and little Jacob.
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One of the people who helped Father run this refugee camp was Anne. At first Buffy thought she recognized Anne as from her world, but she was from a different world, the slouching towards Bethlehem world. Like the Anne from her world, this Anne helped children and refugees. During world war 3 she ran a refugee camp, trying to give food and medicine to people, from either side, who had been displaced by the war. When the loyalists won in America Anne was rounded up as a suspected collectivist spy, brought to the Brooklyn sector. There she helped people, particularly those from Sangala who'd escaped that country's genocide and were forced to fight by one side or the other. Even after impact, Anne tried to keep her people alive as long as possible. Everything was rationed, even oxygen. Some tried to steal this oxygen, use it to barter for a seat on a plane that was heading to a temporarily warmer climate. Anne shot and killed this man. She wondered, was that one of the reasons she had not made it into Heaven? Perhaps the other Anne had been able to avoid making such a painful choice, perhaps that was why she was in Heaven now. The man Anne killed was here in this camp too. Each knew they had to make amends to the other one, had to do better. That was part of the reason they helped in this refugee camp, to do better. But they also knew it was in Antarctica's best interests for these new immigrants to get help in their assimilation. Both for selfish and selfless reasons, they would help these people.