“Don’t look at it. We have to get down!” Jed shouted. He moved toward the stairs and pulled Matthias behind him. Once they were on the way down, they put their hats back on their heads and took the stairs two at a time. They were thirty feet down when the blast blew over the wall. It sounded exactly like they would have imagined the end of time would sound, and the hurricane winds blowing over their heads made a deafening roar.
“What could it be?” Matthias asked, out of breath from the running.
Jed steadied his friend as they continued their descent. “If it isn’t the return of Christ, then something terrible bad has happened.”
The City ceased to exist in a microsecond. Merrill’s Antique Shoppe, Ye Olde World English Tavern, and thousands of other businesses, homes, and lives flashed into dust, and then blasted outward in a wind that reached hundreds of miles an hour in the blink of an eye.
On the command deck of the Tulsa, hundreds of miles away, an old man watched a wall screen, and what he saw took his breath and his words away. The mushroom cloud grew and grew. The old man’s mouth flew open, but nothing came out.
From the telltale blues and purples, he could see that it had been an okcillium detonation. And because it was okcillium, the land would not be poisoned from radiation, and the sickness would not kill those who—thanks to distance or other geographical protection—weren’t killed in the initial detonation of the bomb. The river would have boiled away nearest the City, and the land would be flat as a tabletop when and if intrepid explorers chose to investigate this spot. This vast, empty spot that had once been a large urban area, but was now, for all intents and purposes, a parking lot.
An officer appeared between Amos and the wall screen, and the man’s eyes betrayed his fear and wonder. “Who—”
Amos didn’t hesitate. “It was them.” He ran his fingers through his graying hair. “They did it to themselves!”
KNOT 4:
Thou Shalt Not
(20
BREAKING GROUND
The plow dug into the soft loam, and the earth offered little resistance as the share turned the deep black soil up and out of the furrow. Jed clasped the reins in one hand, and used the other to pull off his hat and wipe his brow with his sleeve. This was going to be a new field for Matthias, beans for man and beast along with more nitrogen fixed in the soil. It was an important addition to Matthias’s farm, as it meant independence from the feed store, and more product to share and trade in the community. Over the past year, the horses had grazed here, fertilizing the soil for the crop to come; now they’d been moved to the north field so that this one could go into production. As for Jedediah, he was being cut in on half of the prospective profits, to be used to pay for his barn when it came time to build it. Work like today’s was money in the bank for a young Amishman.
The plow was fancy as far as Jedediah was concerned—far more than he would need to get started. It was a two-bottom with step pedals in the forecart, so the farmer could plow in either direction without circling around each time like he had to with a single-bottom plow. Matthias had said he’d bought this plow from a young blacksmith who was fabricating them based on plans someone found in an old catalog from the City. Of course, that was back when there was a City. Back before the explosion.
Meeting tonight, Jed thought as he looked back across the field. The elders had called a voluntary meeting so that the Amish could talk about the destruction of the City, and what that portended for the community.
Ten days had passed since the big bomb had ended the plain people’s love-hate relationship with the City. And with the closest urban center reduced to dust, ash, and soot, things had necessarily changed in the AZ. Things were tighter now. There was some trepidation and worry; some of the Amish had grown too dependent on city goods and services. Trade with the English had ground to a halt, traffic at the emigration point had virtually stopped, and memorial funerals for those Amish who’d been out of the AZ and doing business in or near the city were still taking place on Sundays. Ten at a time on most Sabbath days, and sometimes there was a single service for a whole family. The funerals would probably be going on for a month or more, Jed thought, as he pulled up at the end of the row. He tied the reins around the brake and stepped off the forecart to stretch his back and legs.
That’s when the lights went off in his mind again—the first time it had happened since the big bomb—and he found himself once again standing in the inky blackness, staring at the white screen. It always scared him when it happened, but somehow he knew, somewhere deep inside himself, that he wasn’t going to be harmed.
He expected her. The woman he thought would soon appear before him. The woman that he knew he loved. He didn’t know how he knew this, or who the woman might be, but still he knew that he loved her. Right now, standing in the darkness, he couldn’t even picture her, but with only the bright glow of the screen illuminating his form, he waited for her. And then she was there.
“Jed,” Dawn said.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember me?”
“No.”
“I’m Dawn, and I’m your friend.”
“I know.” Somehow he did. Now that she said it.
She took his hand, and when she did, a part of his mind engaged, and he remembered her more completely. The screen expanded and wrapped around them like he knew it would, and they were at his farm in Old Pennsylvania. It stopped being a screen, and it felt like they were really there. As they passed the barn, walking up to the old porch, he felt the pull, and he glanced up and saw that the window was still missing.
Dawn led him by the hand until they were seated on the porch. Jed felt the soft breeze and smelled foxglove and touch-me-nots in the air, and off in the distance he saw himself walking down the drive, away from his home, heading for the airbus stop up by the road. They were in his last day on Earth.
Just as Jed was becoming completely absorbed in the scene, Dawn threw up her hand, did a little tap with it, and everything around them froze. Then Dawn swiped her hand, and the scene shrank down to a tiny square that she moved to one side with her finger. As she did this, the word “minimized” appeared in Jed’s view. The word followed the small picture, and once he’d noticed and absorbed its meaning, it faded away.
That’s when Jed realized that some kind of program must be giving him the vocabulary for whatever was happening. It was a little alarming to him that he hadn’t really registered this before, and yet all of this knowledge overflowed him like he was being baptized in it. He’d always been too wrapped up in the strangeness of it all to recognize the background reality. But now he understood that his mind was being rapidly trained to function in this new world, and he realized that Dawn—or someone else—had probably done this for him.
Once again, the two of them were standing together in the dark room.
“Do you know what year it is, Jed?” Dawn asked.
“This… this vision—when I left home—was nine years ago. When I emigrated. That was the day I met you. I was eighteen, and the year was 2068.”
Dawn nodded again and smiled at him, “So what year is it now? Right now. While you’re plowing that field in New Pennsylvania?”
“Nine years of travel,” Jed said, “so it’s 2077, right?”
Dawn smiled, but it was a nervous smile, as if she wanted to soften a blow, but had something she really needed to say. “Wrong. It’s 2121, Jed. You arrived here in the year 2121.”