Epilogue

The story I just related is how I came to be who I am today: a man whose life is spent bestride two different points of history, in effect, two different worlds. One world, my original one, was rich in resources and poor in knowledge. The other had six hundred years of additional knowledge, but had consumed all the resources, including most of the human race. The two worlds were miles apart in terms of how people lived, yet the problems facing both were surprisingly similar.

I never dwelled on the ungodly fate of the millions upon millions of people who died as a result of mankind's stupidity, to do so was to invite madness. I also knew it was fruitless to try to change history that was destined to happen anyway. Instead, I committed myself to make the present and the immediate future a better one in both places and times.

I enjoyed the time I spent in each place, although I have to say that I felt I was accomplishing more in the future. I also felt a greater sense of urgency when it came to helping out in the twenty-sixth century. That was because I knew from reading the future's history books that a golden era was in front of the later part of the nineteenth century. There was no such guarantee for the twenty-sixth. And finally, there was a giant benefit in all this for me personally, in that I was able to satisfy my wanderlust in two different places, in two different times.

It soon became second nature to me to switch roles when I switched eras. I was as comfortable as an explorer and advisor to a queen in the future, as I was as a muleskinner and rancher in the past. I even became comfortable with the technical jargon the future employed.

It took a few trips back and forth to establish a routine that worked for everyone, but by the third trip, we had a system with which everyone (but most especially me) could live. The system wasn't rigidly structured, because I hated regimentation, but it never involved being in the past more than a month. Since time waited for me in the past, but moved implacably forward in the future, my stays in the future were not limited in that manner. Some times I stayed as little as two weeks, sometimes as long as three months.

Many of my friends in the future asked me why I wanted to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in the eighteen hundreds. My answer was simple enough, the time I was from made me what I was; my roots were there and it was my refuge from all the turmoil that the future held.

The scientists in Paradise Valley opened a second channel in time back to the early years of the twenty-first century. Through that link, they brought forward technology and finished materials. Nothing living, not even a microbe, was allowed into the valley from that era, because by that time, the Earth was well on its way to being toxic.

The team in the twenty-first century set themselves up as a small business in a building outside of Atlanta, Georgia. They used knowledge as their coin, by patenting a quick-charging, light weight, high efficiency storage battery not originally invented until 2018. The future men negotiated a contract with Ford Motor Company to manufacture the battery. In exchange, Ford had first choice of the batteries they made. With plenty of money in the bank, a steady stream of materials and completed items were sent forward to the future.

The limiting factor of how much of what could be sent through time was the capacity of the time machine. It could only move about two thousand pounds at once, and the machine could only cycle once in each direction every twenty-four hours.

My curiosity made me visit the twenty first century site. I was astounded with what I saw, as the near future was much more impressive than the distant. I had been shown videos of airplanes of this era, but to actually see an airplanes knifing through the sky was awe inspiring. I was also awed by the endless columns of shiny autos that sped at breakneck speed along black ribbon-like roadways. I saw buildings, tall as mountains and made of glass. And I saw people ... teeming masses of men, women and children in all shapes and sizes and colors.

I was impressed by what I saw, yet I felt no envy for these unfriendly people as they rushed about their business. They appeared to be as uncaring and single minded as soldier ants. Even the very air they breathed was foul and fetid. It burned my nostrils and lay thick and metallic on my tongue. One look around satisfied my curiosity and made me thankful for what I had ... and what I did not have to endure. It would give me something worse to think about the next time I spent four days looking at the north side of a south bound mule.

The medicos from the future were very interested in the plants and animals we took forward. According to them, the genes of everything, including Homo sapiens, were stronger, more resistant to disease and more responsive to their medicines. One of the things we were required to bring to Paradise Valley was the viable sperm of a cross section of ethnically diverse males. The collection of that sperm was accomplished by trickery involving Carol, Sarah, drugged liquor and hypnotic suggestion. Here is how that worked.

Carol, pretending to be a fallen dove, would lure a likely candidate to her room, where she gave him a drink of drugged whiskey. In fewer than five minutes, the subject would be unconscious. Sarah would enter the room and medically withdraw the man's essence with a special syringe. Once she had her sample, Sarah gave the man an injection of some sort of drug that made him susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Carol then spun a story of wild and wanton debauchery into the man's head and left him to believe he was such a superb lover, she gifted him the five gold double eagles he found when he woke up.

I was always close by when the samples were collected, in case anything went awry. Thankfully, that never happened. Carol loved the challenge of luring the men to her room, and to her credit, very few ever turned her down. We conducted most of the collecting activities around Fort Collins, because of the large number of prime males serving there in the cavalry. We left many young horse soldiers with a happy false memory and a hundred extra dollars.

The initial problem with the sperm was at the other end, because Coleen and the other doctors at the university wanted to enhance the genetic composition of the sperm, which would have the affect of altering the children the sperm conceived. I didn't mind the DNA being manipulated to eliminate birth defects and hereditary problems, but I stood firm against any other tinkering. Trying to play God was partially to blame for the conditions the future folks suffered, and I was determined that the practice stop. In the end, Liz Smith backed me up on that.

The valley dwellers abolished the birth permit lottery when joining the New England coalition made new resources available to support a larger population. Plus, genetically diverse and viable sperm was now available for the asking. There was a veritable explosion of births, both in and out of the valley, as thousands of women became pregnant. For the first time in decades, the population of the valley grew.

I led expeditions out into the badlands to support the planned future growth. Our objectives were to find water and arable land, locate and assess old settlements and land fills, recover any usable artifacts, and incorporate individuals or settlements we found into New England.

Because of the way they were bred and conditioned, I had very few men volunteer for my first expedition. However, I had more women volunteer than I could take. It took considerable effort from me, and some gentle prodding from my wives, to overcome my cultural bias against using women for that sort of thing. Once I took off my nineteenth century blinders, I discovered that my new charges were as smart and motivated as any soldier with whom I had ever served.

I took twenty-four people on the first trip, and we traveled by horse and mule. I had twenty mounted scouts and four teamsters aboard two mule drawn wagons. The wagons did the double duty of carrying provisions for our trip and hauling important or interesting things back home. I started small because I was working out procedures and training my scouts as we went.

We explored and remapped a twenty mile square (four hundred square miles) section on the first ten day trip. We used old, pre-catastrophe maps as a starting point. We plotted the limits of the area to be explored on the maps and first visited any mapped old population centers. After that we simply fanned out in teams and poked around. We took copious notes and video taped or photographed anything of interest.

When we returned to New London, I sat down with my troops so we could critique the mission. I floated the idea of us organizing along the lines of a military unit. The twenty-two women and two men quickly agreed, so I took the idea to Queen Elizabeth for her approval. She loved the idea and the New England Scout Battalion was born.

I designated the unit a battalion in case we needed to expand later. For the immediate future though, I planned on a unit with about one hundred people divided into four companies of twenty-five. The companies would have four teams with five scouts each, a company commander and four teamsters who along with the commander could make a fifth scout team or act as the company headquarters. I was the battalion commander, Carol was my executive officer and Sarah was the battalion surgeon.

Since I was a poor organizer, I outlined my plan and got out of the way so Carol and the others could make it work. Within a week, they had recruited the troops we would need, organized the companies and teams, and selected company commanders and team leaders. In their spare time, and without my knowledge, they designed a uniform for themselves.

My first batch of volunteers was selected because they had a yen to do something different. That was the main reason so few men joined. The new men had the boldness bred out of them. For the second group of volunteers, we wanted more scientific professionals: chemists, biologists, and that ilk. So some men saw the expedition as a means of doing actual field research and joined us. I ended up with sixteen men and eighty-eight women. About two thirds of them were from Paradise Valley. All of the males were altered, of course, and so were about three quarters of the females.

I was slightly disappointed that Tonya was not among the volunteers, but she was head of the valley's security forces now, and could not join us. Her big Arabian friend Mona Habib did volunteer though, and at Carols urging, I made her my deputy commander. I was soon to find out that Carol had a purpose past Mona's leadership skills for wanting her with us.

Mona was a quiet and introspective person, but she was a skilled leader with excellent judgment. She was also mighty attractive to me. She had beautiful almond shaped eyes, a flawless dusky complexion and a most pleasing personality. It did not bother me that she was six feet tall and weighed a muscular two hundred pounds. It did not take long for us to develop feelings for each other, which is exactly what Carol and Sarah wanted.

When I asked Carol why she and Sarah wanted me to have a third wife, her answer shocked me.

"We don't want you to have three wives, Honey; we want you to have four. That's how many you had according to the history books," she said.

She started to elaborate, but I held my hand up to silence her. The mere mention of me being in history books made me exceedingly uncomfortable. Besides, I did not want to know how my future happened; I wanted it to be a surprise as I lived it.

Queen Elizabeth did the honors of making my marriage to Mona official, just as she had for Sarah and Carol and me.

They sprung the uniforms on me at the end of our second week back from the badlands. I had been in a planning meeting with the committee of scientists who researched and selected the areas for us to scout. We were pouring over a map of our next target area when someone came into the room and said I was needed outside.

When I exited the building, I found my command drawn up in mounted parade ground formation, dressed in uniforms that were modern and practical copies of the one I wore when I served with General Lee. They wore grey denim trousers with red stripes down the legs and matching grey tunics with red piping. The tunics were long in length, had numerous pockets and were cinched with a black web belt around the waist. A stunner in a holster and a sheathed hunting knife hung from the belts. For head gear, they wore small crowned, grey hats with a medium sized brim. I was struck speechless.