Vicki and Judd piled into the car; the last rebuild had moved the gasifier - now considerably smaller - from a rickety trailer into the trunk of the car itself. Whoever was in the back seat would have to share the room with any luggage, but the thing now drove like a regular car from before the Rapture, rather than some sort of science project. Lionel had gotten there a couple minutes earlier and loaded the boiler. After a quick talk with the rest of the staff about the day's activities, they were off.

Mount Prospect was, in one word, dusty. Given just the amount of depopulation that had occurred during the Tribulation, after the Glorious Appearing people had either huddled in the remaining cities, usually around what factories could be put back into operation, or spread out to claim a farmstead in what areas were still fertile and untouched by ion storms or plasma hail or worse. The suburbs, unsustainable without cheap fuel for transportation, had been largely abandoned; what had happened to Detroit for economic reasons just before the Rapture had gone on in every other North American city due to simple logistics.

By now, some suburban developments had been reclaimed into self-contained communities or collectives; unlike in industrial style farms, front and back years of American suburbia had generally not been subject to the Eden fertilizer, and made good soil for veggie gardens and the like. Some recovered homesteads looked like they were straight out of the immediate post-WW2, with victory gardens out front. Others had simply been torn down, to minimize fire risk and to recover the resources spent into their construction.

Rayford's neighborhood was, all considered, oddly untouched; about a home in four was inhabited, and while a few houses had suffered fire or looting, most stood.

"Wow. It looks like the day after the Rapture."

"It really does. That's... not a good sign."

The house was in decent shape, with the lawn just a bit overgrown - the three COT workers could see no attempt to grow veggies - and just a bit of sag on the roof. All the curtains were drawn. Rayford's cars on the other hand looked like they hadn't been moved since the Glorious Appearing: there were no visible mods on either of them, and the large one had deflated tires and a layer of dust covering it. The small one had been used more recently; stains on the garage floor showed that gas had been siphoned, somewhat sloppily, from one to the other.

Judd rang the doorbell. It was working. Power seemed to be on, in general.

"Captain Steele? It's Judd, Vicki and Lionel."

"It's open!"

Rayford was sitting in living room; with all the curtains drawn, the room looked bigger and gloomier. Nothing was out of place, but most things - including the frilly knick-knacks set about by Irene Steele at the time, a few of which had been painstakingly repaired - had a layer of dust in it.

The man looked older than his fifty years; he was wearing business casual for Chaim's visit, and did not quite fill his shirt, accentuating the impression of gauntness. His hair was impeccably combed, maybe a little longer than Vicki and Judd remembered, to cover over some thinning. He raised a hand. "Welcome. Sorry for the mess. If you'd like water or a soda, help yourselves."

Soda was making a comeback, although it was still a bit of a luxury; Chicago had a bottling plant, and most neighborhood markets sold a few brands or, more likely, had a stall with a compressor for people to carbonate their own fruit juice with. Lionel and Judd helped themselves and brought some back while Vicki sat down next to Rayford.

"Is Kenny here?" Rayford asked, leaning forward a little. Vicki blushed. She should've brought him.

"...I figured you and Chaim wouldn't want to be interrupted, so I didn't bring him... will you come visit later today instead? We'd love that."

The two other men sat down. "I need to get gas and groceries first. I can come tomorrow, I think..." They'd heard that a few times. It had only happened once.

Dr. Rozsenweig said that he'd swing by once the symposium at McCormick Center was over, but nobody knew when that was going to be; Judd offered to drive the four of them there, but Rayford pointed out that they might drive past each other.

They talked a little - Rayford was very interested in how Kenny was doing, and by extension, the other children. Both Lionel and Judd suggested that he come round, maybe volunteer for a few shifts. Rayford only sighed wistfully.

"Oh, you would't want an old man dragging everyone down."

"C'mon, Captain. You aren't that old."

"I'm fifty this year. Kind of starting to feel it."

"Are you doing well on, you know, groceries and bills and so on?"

The economy was a lot less informal than it had been even last year, to the poit that the commonwealth were starting to regularly collect taxes from businesses again. CATS had been pushing for a unified electronics currency, but response to that had been pretty much universally negative - the Ethernet wasn't secure enough, and even if it had been, neither believers nor unbelievers wanted anything to do with something that brought to mind one of Carpathia's most brutal policies. It was entirely possible that Rayford had come with an arrangement that let him be a recluse, which was exactly what Vicki and the others were worried about.

"Yeah. I had some of those fancy laptops left over from when I bought them from Donny Moore. I've been renting them out to a lab, a couple of factories, and an Academy. That takes care of the bills, really. The rest of the time... I was supposed to go on a mission trip to Indonesia, but it didn't pan out. Been writing, mostly. Do you think there's a market for the memories of a foolish old man?"

The three visitors assented enthusiastically, and reminded Rayford that he may have been a lot of things, but he wasn't foolish.

"So you are saying I'm old." The laughter was just a bit forced.

"You know, Captain Steele, if the CL wins the elections, they said they want to have a proper military again. You were USAF, have been a pilot... why don't you see if they need instructors?"

Communion and Liberation was an uneasy alliance of Christians, Libertarians and former militia members that constituted P.A.T.R.I.O.T.'s version of a conservative party for the first elections after the provisional government relinquished power. Ironically, the militia folks were now campaigning -against- gun ownership outside the cities being made mandatory.

"Heh, maybe. It's just... I don't know if my kind of flying is wanted anymore. I got a job offer from a cargo company last month. It's just... Well, imagine this. How would you feel about going from piloting a powerful airplane that skirts the stratosphere and the sound barrier, to steering some giant gas bag that was designed 80 years ago and moves at less than half the speed?"

"I don't know, they're both pretty cool to me. I mean, I like doing carpentry stuff, Jesus was a carpenter, but... that's what I like. What do you like? Wasn't it always flying?"

"I flew directly for Carpathia, and I'm a Christian. Can't imagine that commanding a lot of respect with what passes for airlines today. As for what I would like... I guess I'd like to be a family man. I did a terrible job at it when I had the chance."

"Hey, they called you, though. Maybe-"

Judd was interrupted by Vicki standing up and giving Rayford a big hug. "You tried to keep everybody safe, Mr. Rayford. We're here by the grace of God, but we're also here because of you. Kenny very much does look up to you, and... we're his family now, and that means you are too."

Rayford hid a tear.

"I figured Kenny needed a proper Mom and Dad. My parents had me when they were fairly old, and well... if there's anothe option, I woudn't wish it on anybody to be raised by their Grandpa." He smiled.

"Careful now Captain, Grandpa has a nice ring to it. We just might start calling you that!"

"We miss Chloe and Buck, too. We'll see them again when it's time, I know it."

"Yeah. " Rayford's smile disappeared as quickly as it had come up.

With the Rapture, the endless string of deaths during the Tribulation, and the Battle of Armageddon to top it off, there wasn't a human being alive who hadn't lost somebody. Rayford knew, as did his young visitors, that those who had been caught up in the Rapture or died as Christian martyrs were in a better place, but this did precious little to compensate for the daily absence of family and friends. Rayford didn't even want to imagine what it might be like for unbelievers. Many had tried to make a clean break with the past, moving to other commonwealth, drastically changing their looks. Some had thrown themselves into reconstruction. Yet others had decided to obey their misunderstanding of the evolutionary imperative, and set to quickly replenishing a new generation; the Quiverfull movement had made a resurgence among the believers, and various heathen cults that had popped up in the chaos preached the same message.

As for Rayford himself... he'd sort of been in a holding pattern, he guessed. Flying in circles. Some days he found himself praying for Chloe and Raymie's safe return. Maybe the Lord had decided that they were better off in Heaven than in the bubbling chaos that Earth had turned into, and that was just it. Maybe this was penance for not paying attention to his family when he had the chance to. He'd heard Vicki's comment that his house looked like it did just after the Rapture; he just couldn't bring himself to move stuff around from where last his loved ones had put it. During a particular episode of manic activity, earlier in the year, he'd even set off to painstakingly repair the damage he'd done to the various knick-knacks that Irene had made. Most recently, he had found comfort in the book of Job; he had his health, of course, and Kenny was doing very well, but the situation otherwise fit. The Biblical passage started off with a sort of challenge, Rayford hesitated to call it a bet, between God and Satan; he knew that the situation did not apply to him, Satan was bound for a thousand years - he'd personally seen Satan be thrown into the abyss! but couldn't help thinking that the situation applied. He wondered about Raymie. Tsion had once told Rayford that in the Millennium, those who had been Raptured as children would return in the prime of adulthood, with new glorified bodies; Tsion had to be wrong yet about most things, of course, but Rayford hoped that he would be on this one. Imagining Raymie having the happiest possible adolescence in Heaven, with his mother and sister, felt a lot better than picturing Raymie simply skipping his formative years.

Immediately after the Rapture, most of the world was in a daze. Sure, there had been some looting and rioting, but the enormity of the event had hit everybody so hard that most everything had sort of kept working, from trash being collected to roads being repaired. A whole civilization on the type of altitude-hold autopilot that Rayford was familiar with. He, of course, had had no time to get into a rut back then. After the Glorious Appearing... there had been a frenzy of activity, people to fly out of the Holy Land, urgent shipments of food and medicine from half-forgotten warehouses, Chloe's legacy. He'd just kept going. Then, one day, he showed up at the airport to be told that everything was grounded, be it lack of fuel or extremely unpredictable weather. And that had been that. He'd been in a holding pattern ever since. Maybe...

Rayford looked up to see his visitors praying; they must've mistaken his reverie for devotion. Chaim had let himself in, and had joined in. Not wanting to interrupt them, Rayford did say a short prayer, thanking the Lord for fellowship and - looking at Vicki and Judd - family, such as it was.

"... amen. Rayford! Door was ajar, so I let myself in. How are you doing!"

The two older men stood up, shook hands, and Chaim pulled just a little to turn it into a hug and slam on the back. Dr. Roszenweig was in excellent shape; next to Rayford, the two looked like they could've been the same age, even though the botanist was easily ten years the pilot's senior.

"Keeping on, Chaim. Sit, have a soda. How was the symposium?"

"Not bad, actually! Much better than I expected. I figured I'd get roasted abut my faith AND my work... nothing further from the truth."

"Oh? What happened?"

"Well, you've got to understand, this sort of conference used to be a series of lectures given by people who wanted the speaking role at the conference on their curricula. Lots of talking, not a lot of listening. I figured, why would something like Armageddon change the ways of academia."

Chaim continued after a bit of laughter from everyone else. "Was I ever wrong. The organizers had prepared various strata samples in what used to be the park near the convention center, so off we went to try various fertilizer and catalyst mixes on them! I'm going to be sore all over tomorrow, but it felt good to do field science again. Clever people, too, young and old! I taught a lot, and learned quite a bit myself, too." The botanist finished with a big broad smile under his mustache.

"That's wonderful! Were you able to do any witnessing?" Rayford asked.

"Not during the conference, but I've invited a couple of Academy kids over for a Bible study session later today."

Chaim spent a bit of time gushing about the extraterritorial Academies, noting that he'd talked to people who had been refugees or Unity Army grunts who, in less than two years, might have been halfway to tehir PhD's in the old world universities. "Basically, take West Point and a Montessori school, stir, add a lot of hands-on experience, and make it its own little country. It works a bit like a medieval university, really. The Academy of Bologna is trying to reclaim the University of Bologna's campus, and they-"

"Wait, their actual name is Academy of Baloney?"

"Well, Bologna as in the city, not the sausage, but yeah. They actually brought baloney for everyone. I don't really have much of a taste for meat anymore, but it went over well. They figured it was funny. Anyway, they were a big help in figuring out how to use the Eden fertilizer to leech nutrients out of the soil that got buried from the global earthquakes, and make new soil. So... I'm back in business, I guess."

Rayford did a bit of math in his head. "You're going to be a very rich man, then."

Chaim smiled. "Oh, not a chance. I plan to donate all my royalties to churches and charities. This is the Millennial Kingdom, and the Church should never want for money. However... Judd, Vicki, you said you were going to transition COT to a boarding school, right?"

"Yeah, that's the plan. We've only got a handful of orphans we haven't placed, and... actually, we were here to ask Captain Steele if we could formally adopt Kenny. Or, Rayford could formally adopt me! Paperwork's probably easier that way, we're all adults so we can just go to City Hall and sort it out."

That had come out of the blue to the former airline pilot. Sure, it was just a matter of downloading a form and turning it in, but still... "I'd love to, Vicki. Thank you."

Chaim and Lionel looked at each other. "Judd can't be a witness being as he's Vicki's husband, but we'd be happy to be."

A phone call later, an appointment had been made. Civilization was coming back, but not the the point that this sort of arrangement between consenting adults needed more than a couple of signatures in front of a public clerk.

"Thank you. I... needed something to get out of my rut. I don't think you'll want an old man around all the time, so why don't I work with you at COT for a few weeks to get my feet wet, and then talk to those cargo airship folks?"

The meeting ended on a much more cheerful note than it had started in, with the five friends deciding they'd meet again to sign the adoption papers.

Chaim had demurred when Rayford offered him his home, rather than a hotel room, to do the Bible study in; that night, Rayford was once again alone. For the first time in a good while, he'd made himself a proper dinner rather than snacking on raw veggies.

Most nights, he slept on the couch, not wanting to unmake the bed that he had shared first with Irene and then with Amanda. He usually dreaded the time between evening prayers and sleep, when memories would return, but this time, he met them with a bit of hope.

The couch had a good view of the porch, Irene having situated it so that it would face the big window, rather than the TV; Amanda had moved it, but Rayford had moved it back after coming home. He still missed both his wives and his children, of course, but... maybe he was ready to have a family again. He looked at the sky, past the porch, a gap between the houses in his neighborhood giving him a relatively unobstructed horizon.

First time I see the man in the Moon in years, Rayford Steele mused before falling asleep.