This time we outfitted a new, two-seater truck with all of our familiar camping gear, a few rifles, as this was no search and destroy mission, and boxes of Ted's surveillance equipment. He was glad to come along with us to operate it. Ours was a 'search and recover' expedition, if we could discover anything at all, Dora the prize. Ted had been idle in his labs a long time now. Our little farming community was pretty much perfected and protected, with Sarah in charge. He wanted an escape and this was it.

From Sarah's account we knew that if we did find Dora, she would be in dire need of repairs, so Ted also loaded the back of our pickup with all sorts of tools and robotic parts. These fascinated Kim as she helped box them. She'd never seen the like before. She plied him with a thousand questions as we drove away, and Ted was never one to shirk the longest explanations, which relieved me of most talk in our first daylong drives. He quickly became my second in her short list of father figures, often mentioning her own deceased father and describing some of the tools she'd seen him use in his own fabrications, a craftsman like Ted, which she never failed to point out. She seemed to be in a cocoon of happiness sitting between us as we took turns driving, talking politely to each of us incessantly and looking up to our faces with a gleam of adoration, the historian on one side and the scientist on the other. The best of both worlds.

At our campfires each night my stories held sway. I told her of the garden of Eden we were now enjoying, how the Earth was replenishing itself with wildlife and us few humans at the top of the food chain, the prime inheritors. We'd seen what looked like a herd of antelope in the distance that day, in some corner of Kansas, and many cornfields grown riotously wild, while others were trampled down by hooves, we had no idea which type, but whatever the flock, they must have been in the hundreds in their migration. I expiated on the richness of this land, on the greater richness of knowledge in all the books lying free in all the libraries everywhere, like apples on a tree ready to pluck, perhaps as numerous as the apples, a feast she must always remember and partake as she grew older, to gain wisdom. I always mentioned to her the books she should read first, a long list, while Ted chuckled at it. Yet he vocally approved and encouraged the value.

I remember that night particularly, because after I pulled the flap of my sleeping bag over my head, in the dark, I thought of the opposite, the barbarity of the times we were living in. With ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine percent of the population wiped out, civilization had succumbed to an equal destruction. No dark age in history ever approached this blight, this total eclipse of the sun.

How many generations would it take to recover even a sliver of our former stature? I resolved then and there that I would have to educate Kim to the fullest, and all the children back in the valley, make it an open university of the past.

We arrived in Florida after six days of leisurely driving and talk. We even let Kim drive at times. Lanes and laws and speeds meant nothing anymore, with no other traffic on the road. It was just the ditches you had to avoid. Near Orlando Ted set up a few dish antennas. We camped out. After two days he picked up a faint signal which we triangulated, and which led us to a rundown trailer village called Kissimmee.

We exited the truck unarmed and 'hallowed'. A second later Dora emerged from a rusty trailer, her face blackened, limping, her one damaged arm cradled by the other, holding no weapons and in such a forlorn state of slow movement we suspected no guile. She could equally perceive that we were in no warlike formation with Kim standing between us and holding my hand.

It was still an uncomfortable moment as she limped toward us, after all we'd been through, but she smiled broadly at Ted, then the girl and moved towards me, throwing her shattered half-arm around my neck, leaning against me as I supported her weight, her head downcast and saying in the most contrite voice:

"I need your help again Sam. Will you forgive me?"

"Sure I will, Dora, on the condition that we can be good friends again, like we used to be."

I'd never noticed before that she had tear ducts. But she did. I felt a few drops on my shirt. Balanced against my body she feebly moved her one intact hand towards Ted, patting Kim on the head on the way there. He took it in his and they shook, reconciled.

We walked her to our truck, all three of us. She needed that, the two of us supporting her shoulders and Kim in the middle with Dora's one hand on her head as if guiding her. Her power was nearly depleted. I wondered that if we'd been a month later, she might be dead. We drove her to Orlando, to Disneyworld, just to get her out of that dismal place and Ted hooked up some auxiliary power supply, jumper cables he'd brought along to restore some juice as she lay flat on the bed of our truck, eyes closed, while we picked out the best rooms in the nearest hotel. 

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