We set off down the dirt road and soon on a highway. I figured we'd drive a few hours into the night just to get away, to distance ourselves from these throwbacks and the hardships she must have felt living with them.
I wanted to size her up, so I began talking with my usual adult vocabulary.
"What sorts of duties were expected of you during your stay with these people?"
"Oh, not much, washing clothes and skinning animals, feeding the dogs and chickens. Just staying out of the way most of the time."
"Were there other children?"
"No, just me. There was a newborn, but they wouldn't let me hold her. I don't know why?"
That she used the word 'newborn' instead of 'baby' spoke volumes. Her parents must have had medical or scientific backgrounds. The fact that her father survived and preserved her also suggested this. Perhaps he was a doctor and her mother a nurse.
While I bothered my head with such conjectures the thought occurred that I should just ask her and free my mind from vagaries. But I'd been living alone or on the road so many years that idle hypothesizing was a mental norm.
"What did your dad do?"
"He was a scientist and so was my mom. We escaped to this area, an old farmhouse, but a plane came one day and killed my mother and wounded my father. We still managed the farm and animals a few more years but he brought me to those people when he grew sick. I'm sure happy that you found me."
"And so am I. There's a colony of people I helped collect, people like us, families with children of all ages and I'm going to take you there. It's very far away but in a safe place, a valley of farms. There's no more hiding there, just living."
She beamed me a smile as I said this.
An hour later we pulled into a hamlet, choosing the only two-story house for our rest stop. It had a porch and a swing seat where we ate a cold meal from cans, under the moonlight.
We spoke little while eating, but it was a huge pleasure to have her company, as if not saying anything, not having to say anything, but knowing you could say something if you cared to, was a delightful possibility.
It was such a pleasant experience that I began to devise ways to continue such calm, social evenings into my future. Camping out in the past, in the woods by my horse, was once a favorite pastime. But it was almost always with adults, droids or friends, and involved serious conversations about our cares and concerns that night and about the unknowns we faced.
With this child all of that vanished. Our talk was pure trivia or such as delighted our imaginations, what to enjoy the next day, fishing, marshmallows, or sleeping in hammocks for a change. Our whole future was one rosy apple tree to raid.
It occurred to me now that my precipitous flight from Sarah and her droid boot camp four days earlier was my own soul sickness at this never-ending battle against Dora. From my first emergence from the woods, five years earlier, the enervating battle of wits with AI and Dora had begun, amplified by her siren songs beckoning me to love her, poisoned by the truth of her near-complete destruction of the human race.
The woods had always been my one escape, my mistress one might say, my hermitage, lonely after my brother's demise and filled with cares and purposes after that.
Now, with this little girl Kim my only care, I could take a well-deserved break. I could return to Sarah for a few days, inform her of Dora's whereabouts and vulnerabilities, set her and her well-armed droids on their mission, with RPG's and tanks in a column, straight to Gainsville and Dora begone. I decided I would set all this in motion in the next few days.
Nor would I rush back along the I 90 to deliver Kim to our Oregon community and enmesh myself once again in all its bedroom snares and complexities. If Sarah's mission succeeded, as well it might, all danger, all cares would be erased. I'd been the founder, the planner, organizer, first president, factotum for years. What more could they demand of me?
I had many friends there and even lovers. But the babes I fathered were in the finest communal cradle possible, cuddled by numerous mothers and fathers, still forming their first words.
But here was the girl, Kim, right in front of me, without a father and needing one. This was no responsibility to shirk.
No, our encounter was too fortuitous to dismiss. Our fates were intertwined. I decided then and there that I would try to fill that father-figure with all my heart, teach her all I could, books, history, culture, character. I would teach her woodsmanship and our close bond with nature, how we lived by a symbiosis or perished neglecting it, food for the ants in our stupidity.
Such thoughts kept me awake late into the night. I awoke well after sunrise. I could hear Kim rummaging downstairs. I joined her and we built a small campfire right outside in front of the porch, breaking up a few useless, kitchen chairs.
