THE TRIALS OF AN ANGEL Part 7: A New Way of Life

Some of my girls had tears in their eyes. Monica and Janey of Darwin and Canada gebiets sobbed. Both took young male partners and were mothers. I never discouraged it, the opposite in fact. The other girls chose to remain unattached although I’d noticed Greta and Mandy were looking a little plump.  

‘How are we going to teach when we have no real experience other than looking after and guiding young people and kids?’

Viki’s gebiet, Flanders was the last one created. Her residents were the youngest. A late arrival of children meant a hurried construction of a seventh gebiet. Viki dealt with it very well, but with them being younger she was more involved with her charges than her sisters.

‘Viki dear, for a start you have teach your people everything you were taught, as your sisters did. In one way you will have things easier. You are their leader. They’re very young and still rely on you. They’ll accept you know more than them even if you don’t. They’ll be willing to learn ‘cos they’re not settled in their ways yet. Also it’ll be easier to assess what skills individuals could be good at. You will learn from teaching.’

A mumble of agreement rolled around the great room. Most of the girls offered extra support for Viki if she needed it. If there were more questions everybody kept them to themselves at that point. We got on with discussing what needed to be done and listing the most important skills to learn and teach. The meeting lasted for about two hours.

Terry spoke first, ‘I guess we all agree finding a way to get power needs to be tackled first.’

‘That’s not possible at the moment. Everything seems to be live. Alan got a belt so strong it knocked him out.’

‘I’m OK now, Jack.’

‘Yeah, but you could’ve been killed.’

‘Takes more than a little jolt, Bro.’

‘Ok lads, that’s enough.’ I interrupted. ‘From what Terry and I read this won’t last more than twenty-four hours. We’ll just have to wait. You can use that time to figure out your options. No point in getting hurt, we need everybody.’

‘Lights.’

‘Lights, Janey?’

‘We won’t have light tonight if it’s going to last another day. You can’t expect folks to make food and look out for the kids in pitch dark, Ma.’

The other girls raised their voices in agreement.

‘Practical as ever, girls. You’re right we need to find lights. Lanterns maybe?’

‘There won’t be enough for every home, and we got no way to keep them charged.’ Terry pointed out.

Sophie waved her arm around scanning the room. ‘There’s a lot of candle sticks in here. I noticed them all over. In every room I passed through. Some even had candles in them. They can’t be just for decoration. So many. I guess they needed something in a place this size if the power ever went off.’

‘Good point, Doc,’ Junior said, ‘I’ll have a scout round in the basement when we finish here.’

‘There’s never been a thorough search of all the rooms and out buildings of this place. There are some places nobody has ever been in. There must be tons of stuff in here we can use. Make it a job, Junior. Go everywhere, find out exactly what is in this place and make a list of what we can use.’

Searching the mansion never seemed important. Clearly that was a mistake on my part. The concentration was always on education and building the community. Looking back, it almost seemed discouraged.

The tone and mood of the meeting continued in pretty much the same vein. Each of us came up with a topic, it was discussed and a possible solution or path forward chosen.

Terry would use his skills to get the bots and andros working to our commands once there was power for batteries. We had to assume there’d be no satellite guidance so their functions would be limited. He felt certain much could be done with the work-bots, but doubted the andros could be useful. Poor Droid was a thing of my past.

Sophie and I would do a detailed appraisal of all the books in the library and tutorials to gather as much information as we could to put together a sort of “syllabus.”

Terry foisted another job on himself when he said we should try to activate the thousands of memory chips the Andros used for info and skills. I told him to form a team with his brothers since they’d all been taught IT skills. It would be long intensive work. Alan suggested they picked out some willing guys from the community and get them on board.

Next thing, basic survival: Building work; metal fabrication; engineering; medicines; clothing; farming; harvesting; animal care. Taking into account all the elements we realised there was a need for forming specialised groups.

Then there was the most fundamental survival skill of all: SCAVENGING. We had to go everywhere, into every construction used by the AI set up. We had to pull the places apart, take and store everything usable, but we needed to go further -- break out of our comfortable bubble. We had maps. There were abandoned villages even towns relatively near. I had no idea what we could find, but there would be plenty left behind. So much for us to explore. Search groups to be formed. So much to bring back to the nest.