TIME AND TIME AGAIN The sequel to 3037 (13 page)

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 cam
e
to be Seth’s turn, he scared me a little
.  He was fearless.

When he landed he was jum
ping 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 tog
ether 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 mad
e 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 did
n’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 b
e
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 mu
st 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.  W
h
e
n
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, w
e 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 and 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.”

“They’re parallel universes,” Irene spoke up.  “How did you end up here in this same place with us?”

“Well, after mom disappeared the second time, I felt so alone again.  Dad was so old and I was old.  I had grandchildren.  They all had their lives and I felt so alone.  I started taking long walks and one day I walked out a ways away from New Orleans and saw a cave.  I thought it was our cave and so I went in, thinking I would find everyone restored to the right time and place.  It wasn’t our cave.  I was the only one there and there was no city but it had a house for me and everything I would ever need.

“I walked back to get dad but he had disappeared too, along with my kids and grandkids.  I went back to the cave and lived there by myself for awhile until one day it became transparent and took off.  We landed here and I’ve been here ever since.

“I never left the cave because I was afraid to venture out by myself.  Sometimes I would go to the entrance room of the cave and sit and think about how we used to all sit and talk with Irene in the entrance room of our old cave.

“I saw some of the people here from time to time but I never let them see me.
  I thought they looked strange and I didn’t know if they were friendly or not.