He made contact with me again.
"Hello, Colin," he said.
"Hi," I replied. "Listen, tell me who you are."
"I will reveal everything when the time is right."
"Are my brother and friends okay?"
"They are still alive, and they have not given up looking for you. The time for your reunion with them approaches quickly. But you still must follow this path."
I woke up, still remembering the old man in my dreams. He had been contacting me since I became unstuck. I got up and looked around the bedroom; I had decided to sleep sitting against the wall in my duplicate's bedroom. His skeletal remains were still on the bed, undisturbed.
I looked out the window and I noticed it was raining. I also noticed water dripping from the ceiling. Apparently, the roof of the Mallory house cracked in the past decade or so.
I then noticed something lying on the carpet of the bedroom. It was a photograph of two people. One of them was my duplicate. The other girl I recognized.
Two months ago, I ran into someone named Molly, who was married to one of my duplicates. Apparently, the girl here was another duplicate of Molly. She appeared younger in this picture, as this version of Molly died when she was eighteen.
I wondered if I should take the picture with me. I decided against it, and left the photograph in my duplicate's tomb.
I searched the house for an umbrella, but apparently all the umbrellas were gone. So I went out in the rain and believe me, I was getting wet. I ran across the potholed streets, which had grass growing in the cracks.
I made my way to a flat expanse of asphalt, with grass and weeds growing in the cracks. There were lampposts rising from the asphalt. This was a parking lot. and I saw the structure for which the parking lot was built, a Vons supermarket.
I wondered if there was anything to scavenge inside. Frozen and refrigerated foods would have spoiled almost a decade ago, but there could be crackers or canned foods.
The inside of Vons was a mess. The shelves were empty of anything that can be eaten- from canned soup to dry noodles to candy. I saw some magazines strewn on the floor near the magazine rack. I picked up one magazine called ym. Some fellow named Luke Perry was on the cover; I had actually met one of his duplicates two months ago.
I decided to walk over to the storeroom to see if there is anything left. as I walked over there, I heard something roll on the floor. I picked it up, and I saw a bronze cylinder which was hollow. I recognized it as a shell casing for a cartridge.
I went to the storeroom where the merchandise is kept. There was nothing left-nothing left to eat anyway. There were stacks of magazines and piles of books, but that was about it. Cookies, crackers, soup, dried pasta, canned sauces, and such were all gone.
I also noticed bullet holes in the walls.
Apparently, the police ceased to function after the pandemic. The survivors raided supermarkets and the homes of the dead for supplies, which explained why there was no food or clothes in the Mallory residence. From the bullet holes and the shell casings I found, this raid for supplies turned violent.
I decided to explore the supermarket, hoping there was something the survivors missed. Then I came across a corpse.
It looked like the corpse was a decade old. The flesh had decomposed, leaving only dry bone. The skeleton was small, indicating the person whom it belonged to could not have been older than thirteen years old at the time of death. Did this child die of the disease? I examined further, and I saw a big hole in the skull. Apparently, the kid took a bullet in the head. I imagined that the kid came here looking for supplies to raid from the supermarket, and was shot.
It was still raining outside; I decided to stay inside Vons. But I knew there were survivors out there. I decided to wait out the rain.
It was a few hours before the rain was reduced to a drizzle. I went out, making sure not to slip on the wet pavement. It looked like the sun will set soon. I set foot on the deserted neglected streets of San Francisco, hoping to find a settlement. I noticed no human activity anywhere in the city.
I sat down at a bus stop and started thinking. Survivors had to ea tand drink, and they would be almost out of canned goods and bottled water by now. The plague survivors would have to grow their own food and get their own fresh water. So I figured that wherever food was being cultivated, people would live.
I knew that there was not that much farmland near San Francisco, otherwise the city would still be occupied. I walked over to an Arco gas station and rummaged through the am/pm mini market, which apparently had been looted. I opened up a Rand-McNally road map of San Francisco. I noticed green areas representing parks. It is quite possible that park grounds can be plowed for the growing of crops. They needed water for the crops, though. so they would have to settle near a river or lake. The nearest lake was Lake Merced, so I decided to head over there.
I walked along the streets of San Francisco for a few minutes. It was then that I heard it.
I heard a horse braying.
I knew from experience that wild horses can only survive in great open plains, and there were no such thing in San Francisco. Therefore, those must be domesticated horses. So I knew where the nearest survivors were.
I went to the direction where I heardf the horse's noise come from. And then I saw it.
I was on a sidewalk in a residential neighborhood. Just across the street from me was a wrought iron fence. I could the horse in some sort of field, being tended to by someone.
I walked around the perimeter of the fence. I then came across a sign.
OUR LADY OF REFUGE HIGH SCHOOL
This place had been a Catholic high school. Across the street from the school was a big church, called Our Lady of Refuge Roman Catholic Church.
It makes sense for surviviors of the plague to gather here. The high school would have athletic fields thgat could be turned into gardens.
I wonder if they would be willing to give me some sustenance at least for the night. The worst they could do was say no.
I hoped.
I went to the front entrance of the high school. There was a man armed with a rifle guarding the front entrance. He looked like a teenager; he could not be more than sixteen years old.
"Hello," I said. "May I come in?"
"Who are you?" asked the guard.
"My name is Colin Mallory, and I'm a traveler. I want to learn more about this place."
The guard just looked at me, and I noticed he was looking at me funny, like I might bite him or something. Hethen walked over to the wall, and tugged a rope.
Soon, three more people came out, armed with rifles. They were two girls and a boy, all who look much younger than me.
"come inside," a woman said. "The father will want to see you."
And so I was led inside. I noticed the inside of the halls were clean. Apparently, the whole world weas not abandoned. I wondered if the people occupying this school were the only people left on Earth.
They led me to the school principal's office. It was not surprising that the leader of these people decided use the principal's office as his own.
Then I faced the man. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and glasses. He was wearing priestly garments. I recognized him from somewhere.
"Tell me your name," he said.
"Colin Mallory," I replied. "I'm just an itinerant traveler."
"So you've seen other parts of the country."
"Not exactly."
"My name is Father Vincent Feretti, the pastor for the Our Lady of Refuge Parish and headmaster for the Our Lady of Refuge Boarding School."
I remember that name. I had an encounter with one of his duplicates back in October, when I was serving time in prison for a crime my duplicate committed. "Nice to meet you," i said, extending my hand.
He shook my hand. "Tell me about yourself."
So I did, and I told him the truth about my life. I wondered if he would believe me.
"So you say that within a few days, you'll disappear," said Feretti. "I can understand why you would believe this. You could not cope with the death of your parents and loved ones, and were forced to survive in a world where all the institutions you've known died with those who maintained them."
"I just found out about the plague yesterday. Look at this watch." I showed him the watch which had been given to me nine months ago to track how much time I had left. "When this reaches zero, I will disappear from this world."
"Interesting," said Father Feretti. "To keep a digital watch working for ten years would require at least three battery changes. Did you come from Sacramento or Fresno? Only the leaders there would have the resources to keep such things running for a decade."
"No, I was born in San Francisco, but in another world. I then moved around California, and I was living in el Segundo when I met my brother Quinn."
"So why did you come here?"
"I just wanted to learn more about the world. I might even get a job and maybe earn some food so I don't starve to death. I've worked many jobs in the past two years. I'll even shovel manure if I have to."
"Well, there is a fact that you appear old."
"I'm only twenty-eight. It's not that old."
"Around here, twenty-eight is old. Perhaps I should tell you about the world."
"I read from the old newspapers that a plague wiped out most of the human population. From what I can tell from when I arrived here, this resulted in most of San Francisco being abandoned."
"Well, I'm one of the few adult survivors of the plague. It came upon us suddenly. By the time people started dying, nearly all of the population had been infected. This disease only affected adults. Children were immune. I was one of the lucky few to survive. This plague resulted in two generations lost-one of the dead and the other without the wisdom of their parents.
I eblieved that the Lord spared me to provide guidance to these children. So that's what I did. I went around gathering the newly orphaned and inviting them to stay over here at the boarding school. I did this with the help of some of the students here; it seemed the oldest people who were immune were fourteen. After I gathered the children, we started scavenging for supplies and weapons."
"Weapons?" I asked.
"Yes, I knew that there would be no government to administer justice, so we needed weapons. I led a raid of the National Guard armory just a few miles from here. That's where we got our M-16's. I spent the next few years teaching the kids how to survive. I taught them how to grow vegetables and grains, and I even taught a few of them how to catch fish from the Pacific. I also taught them how to boil the water we got from Lake Merced so we could drink it. A few more children joined us in the coming years."
"So that is your mission," I said. "You gathered them here to survive."
"Not just that. We hope to rebuild society. From what our scouts reported, most of the people are living off what their parents left behind, just as we did the first year. But for us to survive as a society, we must become self-sustaining. We might add our wisdom to those who came before us. And we must create a holy society, one that is governed by the law of God and the love of Christ."
"I'm sure you're not the only people trying to rebuild. there must be other people growing their own food, making their own tools."
"We know of others who are doing more than just scavenging their parents' scraps. But their ways can not be the future of our world. Listen, Colin, you said you would be here only temporarily."
"I've no choice in the matter."
"Well, there can be a temporary place for you here. You will work, and in return you will be fed. Now come, let us meet my children."
So that was what I did. I went to the school's cafeteria where everyone ate. I noticed that half of the people were in their teens. The oldest ones were in their early twenties. About a fourth of the girls were pregnant.
Father Feretti introduced me to his senior staff. They were the oldest kids that he raised since the plague. "They helped me raise the younger ones, and some of them even had children of their own."
"What do you do here besides gather food and water?" I asked.
"We gather knowledge," said a woman with shiny blond hair tied in a ponytail. "We also teach the younger generation. It's important that we tell future generations about the history of our country and our world."
"I hope to visit the library," I said.
"We've maintained the library," said a young Chinese man. "I could give you a briefing about the current state of the world. I'm sure you've made plenty of observations."
"On many worlds, not this one."
"Let us feast," said Father Feretti.
And so we did. We feasted in a private dining room which had been reserved for the faculty before the plague took them. Our dinner was meatless; it was just vegetables.
"It takes a lot of resources to raise animals for food," said the woman with blond hair tied in a ponytail, whose name I learned was Deana van Dahl. "We have people gather fish from the ocean for our protein. we also raise chiceksn and hav e them occasionally. On rare occasions, we even have beef."
"There're some cattle farms in the Central Valley," said this thin Negro man. "If we have a huge crop surplus, we go to the market in the Golden Gate Park and trade our vegetables for beef."
"Of course," said Father Feretti, "the cow is butchered right in front of us, and all of the beef has to be eaten that very night. It is very rare occasions that we eat beef."
I had some water to drink. "Is this clean?" I asked.
"We boil all water used for drinking or bathing," said Deana. "We know that other places are not as hygienic as us."
So I drank the water to wash down my dinner of potatoes and carrots. After that, the priest took out a bottle of wine. I read the label; the wine was made in 1977.
"Let us celebrate," he said.
"You;re doing that just for me?" I asked.
"We've hoarded some wine since the plague."
So we all toasted our glasses.
Later that evening, I went to the school library with the Chinese man, whose name was Lee Tan. We sat on a table, which was lit by a candle.
"the entire history of our world prior to the plague is right here," he said.
"So tell me about yourself," I said.
"Well, I used to live in Chinatown before the plague. My parents and my big sister all died, and I was left alone. I stayed at hoem until all the food ran out. I went out to the streets scavenging. I amde my way to the church, and Father Feretti took me in. I later decided to teach history to the young ones. How did you survive the plague? Did you just recover from the illness as Father Ferertti did."
"I wasn;t here; I was in a parallel universe."
"What?"
"You see, there are other universes. We have counterparts in some of these other universes."
"So there's another version of me whose parents and sister are still alive."
"Maybe. But you are here in this universe, and this is where you have to live. I'd like to know more about this version of Earth."
"Well, after we managed to get horses, Father Feretti had us scout. I did some scouting myself. We went as far east as Lake Tahoe, and as far north as Portland which is in Oregon. Wait here, I'll get something." Lee went to the librabnry. A few minutes later, he returned with a map of California made by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1985. "As you might have guessed, we are here near Lake Merced in San Francisco. There are several settlements along the pensinsula, all located near lakes or rivers. The settlements in the peninsula are small, less than a thousand people. Along the coast, there are towns supprting thousands of people such as Monterrey, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. all of these cities are near arable farmland and fresh water, so they have not been completely deserted.
Loes Angeles County is basically a bunch of tiny villages amidst abandoned cities. There is very little arable farmland. The southern part of Los Angeles County is mostly paved over, while the northern part is mostly desert. The largest srttlement in Los Angeles County is in Griffith Park, which was turned into farmland. Orange County is more populated, as there is plenty of farmland just southeast of Santa Ana. There are also a couple of villages located near the Santa Ana River. San Diego county is also littered with villages, although San Diego is mostly deserted except for Balboa Park and some of the nearby reservoirs."
"Interesting how removal of the adult population affects the course of history," I said.
"The Central Valley is different. The Central Valley has major rivers and a lot of farmland. We estimate that a million people migrated from San Francisco and Los Angeles to the Central Valley in the first two years after the plague. The Central Valley has about eighty percent of California's population."
"I wonder why Father Feretti did not relocate you guys over there."
"With most of the state's surviviors migrating to the Central Valley, there was also armed conflict among competing groups of people. It was very violent as various clans fought for control. There were plenty of U.S. military bases located in the valley, and a lot of surplus weapons and equipment to wage war. It took four years before a balance of power was achieved, and during that four years, over one hundred thousand people lost their lives to armed conflict. San Francisco was relatively peaceful during those same four years. We only had a few firefights with bandits back then."
"What's the situation there now?"
"There are three districts. Their capitals are Sacramento, Fresno, and Bakersfield. They are all ruled by charismatic leaders, each with thousands of loyal followers. They've all extended their influence beyond the valley-the people in the Bay Area pay tribute to Sacramento-but they do not exercise much control over the frontier."
"The frontier?"
"Every part of California outside of the valley is considered the frontier."
"What is life like in thoise districts?"
"Most of the people living under their rule simply live as subsistence farmers, with only alcohol and marijuana as entertainment. The leaders of the three cities seek to rebuild the industrial infrastructureof their parents' generation, probably to increase their military might. They've recruited gifted children to work for them in exchange for extra food and luxuries. The three cities all have electric power and running water. Of course, the only ones who get to have electricity and running water are the bosses and their senior lackeys."
"Why not live over there or even work with them? I mean, they want to restore civilization like you do."
"We are trying to build a civilization guided by the law of God and the mercy of Christ. The rulers of the three cities want to build a civilization guided by their greed and pride. Our goals are not compatible. We do have alkies across the state; I was in Santa Barbara just a month ago visting our brethren. You understand we can't operate openly in a place under control by any of the three cities. In the frontier, we just have to pay tribute and they leave us alone."
"Well, Lee, I';m getting a bit tired. I guess I';d better get some rest before Father Feretti assigns work to me."
"As should I. I should see my son before I go."
"How old is he?"
"Six years old. He was born when I was fifteen."
"that's young to be a father."
"Fifteen is not young now. In this time and world, people are considered grown ups at fourteen years."
"I understand why you guys had to grow up so quickly. It's kind of like me in a way. I was orphaned when I was a boy, and I had to grow up real fast. So I sort of understand what you went through."
I left the library and went to sleep.
"Hello, Colin," he said.
"Hi," I replied. "Listen, tell me who you are."
"I will reveal everything when the time is right."
"Are my brother and friends okay?"
"They are still alive, and they have not given up looking for you. The time for your reunion with them approaches quickly. But you still must follow this path."
I woke up, still remembering the old man in my dreams. He had been contacting me since I became unstuck. I got up and looked around the bedroom; I had decided to sleep sitting against the wall in my duplicate's bedroom. His skeletal remains were still on the bed, undisturbed.
I looked out the window and I noticed it was raining. I also noticed water dripping from the ceiling. Apparently, the roof of the Mallory house cracked in the past decade or so.
I then noticed something lying on the carpet of the bedroom. It was a photograph of two people. One of them was my duplicate. The other girl I recognized.
Two months ago, I ran into someone named Molly, who was married to one of my duplicates. Apparently, the girl here was another duplicate of Molly. She appeared younger in this picture, as this version of Molly died when she was eighteen.
I wondered if I should take the picture with me. I decided against it, and left the photograph in my duplicate's tomb.
I searched the house for an umbrella, but apparently all the umbrellas were gone. So I went out in the rain and believe me, I was getting wet. I ran across the potholed streets, which had grass growing in the cracks.
I made my way to a flat expanse of asphalt, with grass and weeds growing in the cracks. There were lampposts rising from the asphalt. This was a parking lot. and I saw the structure for which the parking lot was built, a Vons supermarket.
I wondered if there was anything to scavenge inside. Frozen and refrigerated foods would have spoiled almost a decade ago, but there could be crackers or canned foods.
The inside of Vons was a mess. The shelves were empty of anything that can be eaten- from canned soup to dry noodles to candy. I saw some magazines strewn on the floor near the magazine rack. I picked up one magazine called ym. Some fellow named Luke Perry was on the cover; I had actually met one of his duplicates two months ago.
I decided to walk over to the storeroom to see if there is anything left. as I walked over there, I heard something roll on the floor. I picked it up, and I saw a bronze cylinder which was hollow. I recognized it as a shell casing for a cartridge.
I went to the storeroom where the merchandise is kept. There was nothing left-nothing left to eat anyway. There were stacks of magazines and piles of books, but that was about it. Cookies, crackers, soup, dried pasta, canned sauces, and such were all gone.
I also noticed bullet holes in the walls.
Apparently, the police ceased to function after the pandemic. The survivors raided supermarkets and the homes of the dead for supplies, which explained why there was no food or clothes in the Mallory residence. From the bullet holes and the shell casings I found, this raid for supplies turned violent.
I decided to explore the supermarket, hoping there was something the survivors missed. Then I came across a corpse.
It looked like the corpse was a decade old. The flesh had decomposed, leaving only dry bone. The skeleton was small, indicating the person whom it belonged to could not have been older than thirteen years old at the time of death. Did this child die of the disease? I examined further, and I saw a big hole in the skull. Apparently, the kid took a bullet in the head. I imagined that the kid came here looking for supplies to raid from the supermarket, and was shot.
It was still raining outside; I decided to stay inside Vons. But I knew there were survivors out there. I decided to wait out the rain.
It was a few hours before the rain was reduced to a drizzle. I went out, making sure not to slip on the wet pavement. It looked like the sun will set soon. I set foot on the deserted neglected streets of San Francisco, hoping to find a settlement. I noticed no human activity anywhere in the city.
I sat down at a bus stop and started thinking. Survivors had to ea tand drink, and they would be almost out of canned goods and bottled water by now. The plague survivors would have to grow their own food and get their own fresh water. So I figured that wherever food was being cultivated, people would live.
I knew that there was not that much farmland near San Francisco, otherwise the city would still be occupied. I walked over to an Arco gas station and rummaged through the am/pm mini market, which apparently had been looted. I opened up a Rand-McNally road map of San Francisco. I noticed green areas representing parks. It is quite possible that park grounds can be plowed for the growing of crops. They needed water for the crops, though. so they would have to settle near a river or lake. The nearest lake was Lake Merced, so I decided to head over there.
I walked along the streets of San Francisco for a few minutes. It was then that I heard it.
I heard a horse braying.
I knew from experience that wild horses can only survive in great open plains, and there were no such thing in San Francisco. Therefore, those must be domesticated horses. So I knew where the nearest survivors were.
I went to the direction where I heardf the horse's noise come from. And then I saw it.
I was on a sidewalk in a residential neighborhood. Just across the street from me was a wrought iron fence. I could the horse in some sort of field, being tended to by someone.
I walked around the perimeter of the fence. I then came across a sign.
OUR LADY OF REFUGE HIGH SCHOOL
This place had been a Catholic high school. Across the street from the school was a big church, called Our Lady of Refuge Roman Catholic Church.
It makes sense for surviviors of the plague to gather here. The high school would have athletic fields thgat could be turned into gardens.
I wonder if they would be willing to give me some sustenance at least for the night. The worst they could do was say no.
I hoped.
I went to the front entrance of the high school. There was a man armed with a rifle guarding the front entrance. He looked like a teenager; he could not be more than sixteen years old.
"Hello," I said. "May I come in?"
"Who are you?" asked the guard.
"My name is Colin Mallory, and I'm a traveler. I want to learn more about this place."
The guard just looked at me, and I noticed he was looking at me funny, like I might bite him or something. Hethen walked over to the wall, and tugged a rope.
Soon, three more people came out, armed with rifles. They were two girls and a boy, all who look much younger than me.
"come inside," a woman said. "The father will want to see you."
And so I was led inside. I noticed the inside of the halls were clean. Apparently, the whole world weas not abandoned. I wondered if the people occupying this school were the only people left on Earth.
They led me to the school principal's office. It was not surprising that the leader of these people decided use the principal's office as his own.
Then I faced the man. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and glasses. He was wearing priestly garments. I recognized him from somewhere.
"Tell me your name," he said.
"Colin Mallory," I replied. "I'm just an itinerant traveler."
"So you've seen other parts of the country."
"Not exactly."
"My name is Father Vincent Feretti, the pastor for the Our Lady of Refuge Parish and headmaster for the Our Lady of Refuge Boarding School."
I remember that name. I had an encounter with one of his duplicates back in October, when I was serving time in prison for a crime my duplicate committed. "Nice to meet you," i said, extending my hand.
He shook my hand. "Tell me about yourself."
So I did, and I told him the truth about my life. I wondered if he would believe me.
"So you say that within a few days, you'll disappear," said Feretti. "I can understand why you would believe this. You could not cope with the death of your parents and loved ones, and were forced to survive in a world where all the institutions you've known died with those who maintained them."
"I just found out about the plague yesterday. Look at this watch." I showed him the watch which had been given to me nine months ago to track how much time I had left. "When this reaches zero, I will disappear from this world."
"Interesting," said Father Feretti. "To keep a digital watch working for ten years would require at least three battery changes. Did you come from Sacramento or Fresno? Only the leaders there would have the resources to keep such things running for a decade."
"No, I was born in San Francisco, but in another world. I then moved around California, and I was living in el Segundo when I met my brother Quinn."
"So why did you come here?"
"I just wanted to learn more about the world. I might even get a job and maybe earn some food so I don't starve to death. I've worked many jobs in the past two years. I'll even shovel manure if I have to."
"Well, there is a fact that you appear old."
"I'm only twenty-eight. It's not that old."
"Around here, twenty-eight is old. Perhaps I should tell you about the world."
"I read from the old newspapers that a plague wiped out most of the human population. From what I can tell from when I arrived here, this resulted in most of San Francisco being abandoned."
"Well, I'm one of the few adult survivors of the plague. It came upon us suddenly. By the time people started dying, nearly all of the population had been infected. This disease only affected adults. Children were immune. I was one of the lucky few to survive. This plague resulted in two generations lost-one of the dead and the other without the wisdom of their parents.
I eblieved that the Lord spared me to provide guidance to these children. So that's what I did. I went around gathering the newly orphaned and inviting them to stay over here at the boarding school. I did this with the help of some of the students here; it seemed the oldest people who were immune were fourteen. After I gathered the children, we started scavenging for supplies and weapons."
"Weapons?" I asked.
"Yes, I knew that there would be no government to administer justice, so we needed weapons. I led a raid of the National Guard armory just a few miles from here. That's where we got our M-16's. I spent the next few years teaching the kids how to survive. I taught them how to grow vegetables and grains, and I even taught a few of them how to catch fish from the Pacific. I also taught them how to boil the water we got from Lake Merced so we could drink it. A few more children joined us in the coming years."
"So that is your mission," I said. "You gathered them here to survive."
"Not just that. We hope to rebuild society. From what our scouts reported, most of the people are living off what their parents left behind, just as we did the first year. But for us to survive as a society, we must become self-sustaining. We might add our wisdom to those who came before us. And we must create a holy society, one that is governed by the law of God and the love of Christ."
"I'm sure you're not the only people trying to rebuild. there must be other people growing their own food, making their own tools."
"We know of others who are doing more than just scavenging their parents' scraps. But their ways can not be the future of our world. Listen, Colin, you said you would be here only temporarily."
"I've no choice in the matter."
"Well, there can be a temporary place for you here. You will work, and in return you will be fed. Now come, let us meet my children."
So that was what I did. I went to the school's cafeteria where everyone ate. I noticed that half of the people were in their teens. The oldest ones were in their early twenties. About a fourth of the girls were pregnant.
Father Feretti introduced me to his senior staff. They were the oldest kids that he raised since the plague. "They helped me raise the younger ones, and some of them even had children of their own."
"What do you do here besides gather food and water?" I asked.
"We gather knowledge," said a woman with shiny blond hair tied in a ponytail. "We also teach the younger generation. It's important that we tell future generations about the history of our country and our world."
"I hope to visit the library," I said.
"We've maintained the library," said a young Chinese man. "I could give you a briefing about the current state of the world. I'm sure you've made plenty of observations."
"On many worlds, not this one."
"Let us feast," said Father Feretti.
And so we did. We feasted in a private dining room which had been reserved for the faculty before the plague took them. Our dinner was meatless; it was just vegetables.
"It takes a lot of resources to raise animals for food," said the woman with blond hair tied in a ponytail, whose name I learned was Deana van Dahl. "We have people gather fish from the ocean for our protein. we also raise chiceksn and hav e them occasionally. On rare occasions, we even have beef."
"There're some cattle farms in the Central Valley," said this thin Negro man. "If we have a huge crop surplus, we go to the market in the Golden Gate Park and trade our vegetables for beef."
"Of course," said Father Feretti, "the cow is butchered right in front of us, and all of the beef has to be eaten that very night. It is very rare occasions that we eat beef."
I had some water to drink. "Is this clean?" I asked.
"We boil all water used for drinking or bathing," said Deana. "We know that other places are not as hygienic as us."
So I drank the water to wash down my dinner of potatoes and carrots. After that, the priest took out a bottle of wine. I read the label; the wine was made in 1977.
"Let us celebrate," he said.
"You;re doing that just for me?" I asked.
"We've hoarded some wine since the plague."
So we all toasted our glasses.
Later that evening, I went to the school library with the Chinese man, whose name was Lee Tan. We sat on a table, which was lit by a candle.
"the entire history of our world prior to the plague is right here," he said.
"So tell me about yourself," I said.
"Well, I used to live in Chinatown before the plague. My parents and my big sister all died, and I was left alone. I stayed at hoem until all the food ran out. I went out to the streets scavenging. I amde my way to the church, and Father Feretti took me in. I later decided to teach history to the young ones. How did you survive the plague? Did you just recover from the illness as Father Ferertti did."
"I wasn;t here; I was in a parallel universe."
"What?"
"You see, there are other universes. We have counterparts in some of these other universes."
"So there's another version of me whose parents and sister are still alive."
"Maybe. But you are here in this universe, and this is where you have to live. I'd like to know more about this version of Earth."
"Well, after we managed to get horses, Father Feretti had us scout. I did some scouting myself. We went as far east as Lake Tahoe, and as far north as Portland which is in Oregon. Wait here, I'll get something." Lee went to the librabnry. A few minutes later, he returned with a map of California made by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1985. "As you might have guessed, we are here near Lake Merced in San Francisco. There are several settlements along the pensinsula, all located near lakes or rivers. The settlements in the peninsula are small, less than a thousand people. Along the coast, there are towns supprting thousands of people such as Monterrey, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. all of these cities are near arable farmland and fresh water, so they have not been completely deserted.
Loes Angeles County is basically a bunch of tiny villages amidst abandoned cities. There is very little arable farmland. The southern part of Los Angeles County is mostly paved over, while the northern part is mostly desert. The largest srttlement in Los Angeles County is in Griffith Park, which was turned into farmland. Orange County is more populated, as there is plenty of farmland just southeast of Santa Ana. There are also a couple of villages located near the Santa Ana River. San Diego county is also littered with villages, although San Diego is mostly deserted except for Balboa Park and some of the nearby reservoirs."
"Interesting how removal of the adult population affects the course of history," I said.
"The Central Valley is different. The Central Valley has major rivers and a lot of farmland. We estimate that a million people migrated from San Francisco and Los Angeles to the Central Valley in the first two years after the plague. The Central Valley has about eighty percent of California's population."
"I wonder why Father Feretti did not relocate you guys over there."
"With most of the state's surviviors migrating to the Central Valley, there was also armed conflict among competing groups of people. It was very violent as various clans fought for control. There were plenty of U.S. military bases located in the valley, and a lot of surplus weapons and equipment to wage war. It took four years before a balance of power was achieved, and during that four years, over one hundred thousand people lost their lives to armed conflict. San Francisco was relatively peaceful during those same four years. We only had a few firefights with bandits back then."
"What's the situation there now?"
"There are three districts. Their capitals are Sacramento, Fresno, and Bakersfield. They are all ruled by charismatic leaders, each with thousands of loyal followers. They've all extended their influence beyond the valley-the people in the Bay Area pay tribute to Sacramento-but they do not exercise much control over the frontier."
"The frontier?"
"Every part of California outside of the valley is considered the frontier."
"What is life like in thoise districts?"
"Most of the people living under their rule simply live as subsistence farmers, with only alcohol and marijuana as entertainment. The leaders of the three cities seek to rebuild the industrial infrastructureof their parents' generation, probably to increase their military might. They've recruited gifted children to work for them in exchange for extra food and luxuries. The three cities all have electric power and running water. Of course, the only ones who get to have electricity and running water are the bosses and their senior lackeys."
"Why not live over there or even work with them? I mean, they want to restore civilization like you do."
"We are trying to build a civilization guided by the law of God and the mercy of Christ. The rulers of the three cities want to build a civilization guided by their greed and pride. Our goals are not compatible. We do have alkies across the state; I was in Santa Barbara just a month ago visting our brethren. You understand we can't operate openly in a place under control by any of the three cities. In the frontier, we just have to pay tribute and they leave us alone."
"Well, Lee, I';m getting a bit tired. I guess I';d better get some rest before Father Feretti assigns work to me."
"As should I. I should see my son before I go."
"How old is he?"
"Six years old. He was born when I was fifteen."
"that's young to be a father."
"Fifteen is not young now. In this time and world, people are considered grown ups at fourteen years."
"I understand why you guys had to grow up so quickly. It's kind of like me in a way. I was orphaned when I was a boy, and I had to grow up real fast. So I sort of understand what you went through."
I left the library and went to sleep.
