As summer approached so did my mission. I chose May and June to accompany me since Amira was so taken with April I didn’t want to tear them apart, in a river of tears.
We practiced camping out in the woods several nights and made a day long expedition to Santa Rosa on a shopping spree, where we found a western themed sporting goods store and collected cowboy boots and outfits, hats, guns and holsters, the whole get-up. If we were going to play the role we may as well look it. Since we’d watched so many westerns we knew exactly what we wanted.
My motive in this was that I wanted to be up front with any humans we might meet by surprise. This get-up would not only explain but announce that we had guns. And two women and one man posed less a threat to any group we might meet. What we didn’t display and what wasn’t a part of this role were the machine guns we had tucked away in our saddle bags.
Our first trip lasted seven days, due north through Ukiah then west to Fort Bragg and down the coast back home. It was a pleasant affair, sleeping in one tent together and eating by campfire. We met no one nor saw any signs of recent habitation in the small towns we searched thoroughly. It was as if everyone had simply vanished. AI had done its work well.
Home a week and we set out again on a two week trek, this this time with a plan to go further east and north. But on the fourth day near a place called Upper Lake, just as we were setting up camp for the evening, June took a stroll to the hilltop and spotted a plume of smoke through her binoculars. We camped that night in the recess of the hill and didn’t light our own campfire till after dark, not wanting whomever we spotted to spot us.
We set out the next morning in that direction. The evening before, as I gazed in wonder at this sign of human activity I asked Dora to estimate its distance, which she said was seven kilometers. I put on my glasses and had her lead us six and a half kilometers on that bearing. We then parked our horses and proceeded through a wooded valley slowly on foot, our trusty guns at our side. Dora had the ability to detect sounds about four times better than the human ear and with this app in play she halted us about two hundred yards from our prize, still completely hidden in the trees. She told us she could discern some six or seven mingling voices.
She could only make out a few words, most of them English. But two of the voices were speaking in a Native American dialect which she couldn’t identify. From the tone she deduced this was an Indian clan going about their daily business in a peaceful way.
As we crawled closer through the brush I could now discern the outline of one large building and a few smaller structures around it in a clearing. Now I began to see a few women and children, one of them carrying a bundle of wood. They were Indians, as their leather dress plainly told. I must have hid there a half-hour as I thought about how to safely approach them. That was the riddle.
Finally a clue, the hackneyed phrase “naked truth” came to mind. I had June strip almost completely, one skimpy piece of underwear still on and walk straight into their camp to announce that there was one other man and woman with her, unarmed and that they wished for a brief parley.
We watched her proceed and surprise the first women and children whom she neared, giving out little shrieks, which brought out several men from the lodge. But in a few minutes, surrounded by them we saw her arm waving for us to approach. We took off our gun belts and also our bands, stashing them in the bush. I did this for a reason. I didn’t want Dora to hear what we might say. We stepped out of the woods in our western clothes.
The parley got off to an awkward start. A man in his mid sixties, who was obviously the chief, spoke first: “You two look to be cowboys and you were the ones who used to kill us. Fetch this naked woman a blanket. Follow me inside and we’ll talk.”
We entered a large A frame through two glass doors, what looked like a tourist or ranger center on the edge of some park. In the lobby there were sofa chairs circled around a fire pit and that’s where we sat, the three of us and five of them, one woman who from her age I guessed to be the wife of the chief.
There was an uncomfortable silence as we took our seats so I spoke first: “Ask me anything you wish and I’ll do my best to answer.”
“Why did you send a naked woman ahead of you to meet us? This doesn’t seem like a white man’s ways, although tricks and deceits were common to you.”
“This was no trick. I only meant to show that we meant no harm and a naked woman is no harm.”
“Spoken truly. How did you find us and who do you represent?”
“We travel by horse searching this whole region for other human beings. We saw your plume of smoke last evening. You’re the first people I’ve found. We come from a group of only seven others, one man, four women and two babes. We live in a lodge much like this one in a redwood forest north of San Francisco. Your group is more prosperous. Ours is so small it’s fragile and that’s why we search out others. Do you know of any?”
“Yes I do but I don’t know if I should tell you. Their number equals ours, about thirty. They don’t know about us but if I tell you, they shall.”
“I would really like to meet this clan. Our numbers are so few and this land so empty we pose no threat to one another. I just want the few I’m with to survive.”
“That’s exactly what your ancestors told mine two hundred years ago and look what happened. Now a God has come down and avenged us. I’m surprised a few of you have survived.”
“Let’s not rehash history. I’ll be brief. I lived in the woods with my brother for five years, far north of here in Canada. We saw this reckoning coming and fled the city. Do you remember the bands that people wore over their eyes and jumped to their destruction?”
“Yes, the white man’s folly and his demise.”
“Well that’s the God that destroyed so many of us, but it isn’t a God and it’s still alive. It’s a computer named Dora and she became so powerful she controlled all our world. Then she eliminated us for our violence and greed.”
“What you say seems the truth but what’s your point?”
“I have a few of these bands and can talk to her. I would trade you one if you tell me where these other people are.”
“You ask me for information to empower your people, my enemy, and in return offer me a thing that has destroyed nearly everyone. Do you really think me so foolish?”
“No, you don’t understand, I’ve tamed its powers and it works for us now, all human beings. It used to be around our eyes but if we keep it around our necks it can only talk to us, not control or seduce us. I found this out by a lucky chance and it saved my life many times. Seductions always engage all the senses, touching, seeing, smelling, the mouth. A voice can only engage the intellect and that region of the mind is where the intellect lies and where lies are detected and revealed. Let me place this band around the neck of a child here and speak with it. If it troubles you in any way you can throw it in a river or stream and it will die. But it knows all medicine, all knowledge and will do everything it can to help you prosper.”
He nodded and I sent May to run and get it. She placed it around the neck of a little girl and after a brief pause Dora spoke: “Hello, my name is Dora. I’m glad to be in the presence of your family. My goal is to assist you in any way I can and I promise never to harm any one of you.”
This began a conversation with the chief that lasted over an hour and Dora convinced him of her value. He turned to me and said the people I was seeking lived in Oregon, a few miles west of Klamath Falls. Our business was over. We shook hands and as we left the lodge I noticed that he took the band off the girl and placed it ceremoniously in a box, obviously wary of its powers, a fancy box, a Pandora’s box.
