Disclaimers: Again, the grammar is exactly as I intended it to be. Everyone in the story is over eighteen (even though most of them haven't been born yet). "Deseret" is a very real thing and it is not a spelling error. Google it if you want.
Sorry it took me six years to get to chapter three.
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August 1, 2074
Not long after Mr. Evans gave me the Kicks he'd had to go to Texas for a trading trip. He had some things that the Texas military wanted and they were offering a good price so he had to go. We didn't see him again until March and for a while we wondered if we would ever see him again.
While he was gone my blood came again so I knew I wasn't pregnant. Maggie explained to me how all of that worked with the blood coming and then you had a few days to yourself before you might get pregnant. My family never spoke of such things so I think I was lucky to have Maggie around to tell me how these things really worked.
I'd helped Maggie and the farm ladies get the gardens planted but I always noticed the farm ladies treated me different. No matter how friendly I'd try to be to them they would all smile and be polite but they were never really friendly.
One time I asked Maggie about it and she says to me, "I wish I could be nicer about it but they think you're Mr. Evan's sex toy and they're right because that's what you are. You're not his wife, you're not his girlfriend, you're a girl he bought and he has his way with you when he wants to."
"But why is any of that my fault?"
Maggie shook her head. "Amy, people been like this forever. I used to be called a whore just because I was a cocktail waitress. I mean I wasn't no nun or anything like that but I never sold myself. Still, you get people who think less of you because for those people it makes them think better of themselves if they can call someone else a name. And all of those so-called farm people are just slaves themselves and they sold themselves into it for food like anyone else would."
No one had ever called me a whore before but that's what this meant. And where Maggie had never sold herself for sex it was true that I had done exactly that. I'd sold myself to Mr. Evans and I guess that made me his sex toy and his whore. I suppose this was all meant to make me feel bad about myself but in a way it made me feel free in a way I had never felt free before.
See, I was raised in a family that always saw the world as us being good people and the rest of the world being people you had to be careful around. And that meant we were all supposed to be good people and there are a lot of rules and things like that when you try to call yourself good. But if you're not so good anymore then you don't have to worry about all those rules so much.
The first thing I changed after that was what I wore to bed at night. Instead of wearing a big nightgown and underwear like Maggie and everyone else did I started just wearing the satiny things Mr. Evans had given to me. And nothing else! It was so daring to get up in the morning and walk out to the kitchen and be wearing just a blue satiny thing. Especially when a farm lady was bringing things in for Maggie and I'd see them. They'd look at me and see me and you could see their eyes get all big! It was funny to me.
Maggie liked that I was making the women talk and she agreed with me that since they were going to talk anyway I might as well be worse than what they thought.
Of course, during the day I'd wear a dress like always but unless I was having my blood I didn't bother with underwear anymore. No one knew I was doing it but it felt naughty and I enjoyed it just because it wasn't something you were supposed to do!
I also took up braiding my hair and that made the women talk, too. Seems you're supposed to let your hair loose to cover you up but I'd put up my hair and show off my neck. Strange thing is it made some of the farmer men take notice but I liked it and would smile at them to make their women jealous!
Then it was the very first day of March when we heard this odd sound outside. It sounded like someone beating a drum way off in the distance but it was louder than a drum. It was a lot louder than a drum! Maggie and I walked outside to see what it was and I noticed a couple men running to the shack where we kept the pulse generator. In a few moments you could feel the energy from the pulse generator running through the air but the sound of the drumming only got louder.
I screamed when the giant machine flew right over us!
It was huge! It was as big as any of the old airplanes in the desert but it didn't look like them. Not at all.
It flew up the valley and then pointed up and turned at the same time. Now it came back our way.
"I ain't seen anything flying for years." Maggie wiped her eyes as if not believing what she was seeing.
I noticed the men staring at the shack where the pulse generator was. We could all feel the familiar energy but it had no effect at all on the flying machine.
As it approached we could see it slow down and everyone relaxed a little. So did I.
I also got a better look at it. It was long and looked mostly like an airplane but it didn't have jet engines. Instead it had these things like huge windmills on each wing and at first they pointed forward but as it slowed and came closer they rotated until they pointed up.
The huge machine blew dust everywhere and then it landed out in the wash, well away from the house. We started walking towards it simply assuming that it had to be friendly and by the time we got to it the big windmills had stopped turning, the engines had stopped, and a ramp at the back had opened up.
We heard a truck start up and then out the back of that aircraft came Mr. Evans' truck! He was driving it and after he got it out of the aircraft he stopped it, got out, and went to talk to the men who were with the machine. We would have got closer but Mr. Evans waved at us to stop. After a few handshakes with the men from the machine he got in the truck and drove up to meet us.
Before he could get out to talk to us we heard the engines on the aircraft start up. It was like a whining that built in intensity and then it just seemed to go from a whine to a roar all at once. The big windmills started turning again and in a few moments the same machine that had carried a whole big truck inside it rose off the ground! I mean I had heard all my life of things like this but here I was seeing it and it just seemed unbelievable that something so big could just fly like that!
It didn't seem right that something could fly without someone or something throwing it into the air! I used to look at birds and see them use their legs to jump into the air and that made sense to me but seeing that machine just float up like it was nothing seemed wrong! Still, it was amazing!
It rose up pretty high and then the windmills started to turn forward and the thing started moving. It moved pretty fast after that. It went back down the valley and then over Tower Mountain and then it was gone! We could hear the drumming sound for a few more seconds after that but then it was over.
We were all just staring at the direction it left and no one said a word for a moment.
"Is anyone gonna welcome me home?" said Mr. Evans from his truck.
It was like we all woke up and suddenly everyone was talking and excited and in all the commotion I never got a chance to say hello to Mr. Evans. Him and Maggie and a few other people got in the truck and drove up to the fortress we just called a house while me and some of the farm people walked on behind them. As I think about it I was dressed for the farm that day so I suppose I just looked like everyone else on the farms.
Maybe that's why Mr. Evans didn't notice me.
When I got back to the house Mr. Evans was explaining to the men how the metal that some of them mined on our mountain was important to the Texas Republic. He said we had 'Rareth Metals' and Maggie later explained to me they were called 'rare earth metals'. Like Mr. Evans was explaining, the Texas scientists had taken some of our metal and instead of making light weight weapons with it they found a way to make electricity work even around a pulse generator. That meant they could make flying machines again and not have to use smoky oil trucks like everyone had to use.
The Texans promised Mr. Evans a lot of things but they paid him first with a truckload of medicines, weapons, and gold. I never saw so much gold at one time! Mr. Evans even said that the rest of what they had paid him would be arriving by train down in Elko in a few days. All of that was for just maybe two full sackweights of the rare earth metals. And I knew we had at least one more sackweight of the stuff stored in an old mine.
Mr. Evans said we were going to start mining the metals all the time now that Texas would buy them.
After the chatter settled down the farm people went back to their business and I went up to the house to clean up. Mr. Evans was still busy with some of the men getting the truck unloaded and getting things put away.
I got myself showered and fresh and after I was dry I put on one of my short satin sleepshirts and was about to put on undershorts but then decided to try being naughty like all the women thought I was.
When I came out to the kitchen Maggie was getting an early dinner started since she said it was dinner time in Texas. I didn't understand how it was a different time in Texas than it was here but I let it go and helped her out.
During dinner Mr. Evans told us all about Texas and how their scientists had figured out how to use rare earth metals to do something with electricity that made pulse generators useless. It was a lot of words I had never heard before but I got the general idea that Texas was going to be running things from now on.
After dinner Mr. Evans stripped down to his teeshirt and undershorts and settled into his recliner chair to watch the holo. I noticed it wasn't one of the old movies but instead it was live news from Texas.
"Yeah, the Texans gave me a paired receiver and now we get the programs from Texas. You even get programs from Israel and England on this thing!" He was clearly very happy with the receiver thing and I kind of liked it too.
The news people were talking about the new capital city being built in Abilene and how the Texas Republic now had twenty million people in it. There was news about the new air force and they showed the aircraft that Mr. Evans had been on and then they showed a picture of at least a hundred or more of the military aircraft and said they were going to build even more of them for regular people to use to get around the Republic. They also told about a hurricane hitting the Cuba Colony and how the Texas Republic was helping Texans in the Colony.
After the news Mr. Evans picked a different holo channel and it was a movie that was just starting.
