12/10/2015

I did a general edit of this chapter; hopefully I made it easier to read.

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Chapter 2: The Lights Start Going Out

I was in my barn trying to figure out how I could build a water tower next to my house. I’ll need to insulate it and the pipes running from the water tank to my home. I should probably enclose the whole tower and put a Franklin stove beneath the water storage tank. That way I can keep the water from freezing. I like running water and I don’t want to start using buckets. I’ll use one of my new steam engines to power the pump to periodically fill the tank. Damn I should order some more hand pumps too! I only got one now and it might break. What about a windmill powered pump, they’ve had them for centuries!

Shit, the Dinger mentioned servants. I don’t want any servants but some situation might force me into getting a few. Hell, NPCs might even just show up. I don’t want anyone else living in my house or here for that matter. I better order a couple of double wide homes. They got some for sale down the road. I bet not many people will be buying them now. I’ll pour some pads and get them installed in a week. I don’t need to worry about running electricity to them, only water and sewage. My septic field is over engineered and I can tie into that. But I should order some wood stoves right now. Hell, I’ll get in my truck and run to the feed store and pick up a couple. They’ll be sold out too fast if I don’t do it now.

I was driving down the road when my phone rang. I answered it.

“Hello”

“Daddy, did you get one of those funny blue screens?”

It was my daughter Linda. “What are you talking about? I got a nice gentle on the eyes orange screen, just like the fruit. Not too bright, it’s kind of pretty.”

I heard a little crying. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I’ll call you back later, okay?”

“Okay, goodbye.”

Damn it. I’ll have to extend my fence and get two more double wide homes. I just know that my daughters and their families will want to move out here but not in my fucking house. Goodbye my glorious life as a hermit. Fuck!”

DING

You can still be a hermit with blood relatives or their spouses living nearby. It’s not like you want them living close. You just have to be cantankerous and you’ve got that covered.

I called the fencing company that had put in my old fence.

“Mack; it’s Vincent Standish. Crazy shit happening with all those screens isn’t it?”

“Yeah, when that orange screen appeared in front of me I thought I was having a heart attack.”

“I don’t know if you can get it done but I’ll pay double if you can build me another fenced in enclosure connected to mine. The same size fencing and such, but with its own entrances as well as gates between my old one and the new one. On second thought, make the new fencing even tougher I want something that can stop several angry full grown stampeding buffalos. When you got that figured out and done, then reinforce my existing fence. I want the new area to be at least two acres in size and larger if you can do it. ”

“Hell Vincent, I imagine it will be either feast or famine for my business during the next few weeks. But you’re the first one in with an order and for double pay I’ll have a crew out there tomorrow.”

“Do you do concrete work?”

“We can but not normally.”

“I need pads for some double wide homes in that new area, if you can pour them I’ll pay top dollar.”

“Consider it done.”

While I had a shit pot of money in the bank, I was probably one of the few people around that had a half a million in cash and two hundred thousand, when I bought it, in gold and silver. I wasn’t even going to bother trying to get into my bank right now. I would make all of my purchases over the internet using direct payments from my account. Locally, I’d pay cash because unless they were stupid that’s all they should take.

Shit, I better transfer a lot of cash to those local charities I donate to. With this shit coming down they’ll need everything they can get.

DING

Most hermits aren’t known for being charitable.

“Listen here, Dinger. If I take care of them now and from a distance maybe they won’t come knocking on my door later.”

DING

Plus one hundred points for planning ahead so you won’t be bothered in the future, one hundred percent chance of failure.

“Hey Dinger, why is this all happening?”

Silence

“Oh well, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

The next ten days were busy ones. I had multiple fenced in enclosures built. The reason being, the fencing company wasn’t getting much other business, they had materials on hand and I paid cash. They put in extra larger steel pipes, twice as many verticals and they used five times as many cross members. The additional cross members made the lower five feet look like one of those heavy metal enclosures used at cattle yards. One fenced in compound got six homes, the others got one each. The other enclosures were intended for gardens or livestock. I had a well drilling company come in and drill a well for each fenced in area. A plumber I hired, for cash, connected up all the plumbing for the modular houses and laid out the septic fields. We pulled no permits with the county and no inspections were done.

There was a huge problem our country faced and that was the large number of people in prison with either orange or green screens. It seems that blue was bad, green was sort of okay and orange was good. Three days after I saw that orange Warning message, I joined a large protest demanding that all of the orange screen people be immediately released and that work should also immediately start on evaluating all of the green screen prisoners. We had no time for bureaucratic bullshit.

It almost came to violence especially since a lot of politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, policemen and prosecutors; had blue screens or at best green screens. They we’re the ones saying that we couldn’t trust in the screens and let all of those people go. A few days after our protest, the President was forced by civil unrest to grant pardons and immediate release, to all the people with orange screens that were locked up in this country. That happened on day six. The President had a green screen. We would worry about the blue screen people who had positions of power later. The priority now was to help screwed-over people and stop the pain. The same day, a bunch of ordinary people were given files of prisoners, with green screens, to review. I was spotted with my orange status so I got roped into helping out.

I hired one of Mack’s employees who had a green screen to get done what I needed done on my property and accept deliveries of all the shit that I was ordering. Mack got dragged into the prison situation too because of his screen color. We both had the appraisal ability but I had true sight, which is like a super lie detector. He got the skill, lie detection the first day we spent interviewing people with green screens. It was looking like fifteen percent of the prison population in our area shouldn’t be locked up. That is a lot of people. There was a judge with us. If we said that they were innocent, the prisoner was immediately let go then and there. I would give them, one hundred dollars in cash, and a two thousand dollar check out of my own pocket and wish them well. I hoped that they could find some place to cash the check.

We worked for ten hours a day, six days a week. Personally I thought that the prison system would collapse in about three weeks. But we still needed to keep the really bad ones locked up for as long as possible so they didn’t prey on innocent. When we first started it took us an hour for each prisoner interview. Within two days we had it down to twenty minutes and the word was out, not to even try and lie to us; so some people didn’t even bother showing up. The people with green screens that we didn’t let go were mostly convicted of bullshit crimes but it was still a crime so we couldn’t just release them, according to the judge. Though we did keep their names in a separate file and we recommended that the government pardon them.

I very quickly acquired some servants that way, crap. They were men or women that shouldn’t be in prison and had no place to go. Truthfully in my opinion, many of them were borderline oranges. So most days, I would come home with a person or sometimes two. A lot of times they would contact their significant others, who would then soon show up and add to my headaches. I had given away about six million to local charities, another ten million to the local orange men and women that had been wrongly incarcerated and now I’m spending about thirty thousand a day for the released green prisoners. But I still got a lot of dough in the bank. I’ve started delegating things with my new servants in terms of getting us prepared, they don’t dare lie to me because I’ll spot it. I ordered four more homes, that’s another place that has been getting no business the big modular home yard between my home and town. I’m buying their display models now.

I think if I didn’t bitch out the Dinger in my head so much, that I would lose my status as a hermit. Fuck, I want my privacy back! I fucking hate people.

Many countries were doing similar things with the people incarcerated in their prisons. Another thing that many countries were doing was deporting foreigners with blue screens back to their home countries. The United States hasn’t started doing that yet and I doubt they will.

People all over the world are trying to get back to their homes. The President has brought back a lot of troops. I understand that they are trying to get back in service all of the old warships that work on steam power. I think that the only ships the United States can possibly do that with are the old battleships.

Somehow, I received the majority of the orders I placed on the internet those first two days, including twenty of the twenty-four steam engines I ordered. I should be spending all of my time practicing skills and leveling up but I got to get as many of those poor bastards out of prison as I can, before it all goes to crap.

DING

This is warning, inter-reality barriers are failing. Expect penetrations by what can only be called MONSTERS.

There will be other sentient species arriving besides humans; these may be friend or foe, good luck.

“Ah, crap!”

We still got sixty hours on the lose-communications’ and electronics’ clock, I thought we had at least until then before monsters started showing up.

Mack wasn’t able to make it any longer and I got a new judge to work with. Judges with orange screens are permitted to do this alone but a judge with a green screen is expected to have someone like me. Today I’m wearing class III body armor with stab resistance and a helmet. I also have gauntlets, combat boots and a combat helmet. My weapons are an M1A rifle and a nine millimeter pistol. When I first moved into my home I went a little crazy and I bought a lot of those bang, bang toys that I always wanted to own. I almost brought my fifty caliber Beowulf rifle today but I thought it might be overkill; but don’t monsters usually take a lot of killing?

I thought the judge would be intimidated to see me packing but she brought her own shotgun and a nine millimeter pistol. We’ve both heard reports of large bears, wolves and large cats appearing all over the world. I’m glad that it’s the small stuff for now.

I got home that night and both my girls, conference called me. “Daddy we’re really sorry for what we did. We behaved badly and wronged you. We’re scared Daddy, we both have little babies now and we live in apartments. What will happen to your grandchildren when we lose electricity, phone service, natural gas, water and sewage? We know we have no right to ask after what we both did but can our two families move in with you until we figure out what’s going on?”

“You both have never been out here before but you have my address. You had better get moving, we only have ten more hours before the phones and your modern cars stop working according to those notices. I won’t be here when you arrive. But I’ve got some people working for me now and they’ll show you where you can put your stuff. I was expecting this to happen so don’t sweat it. I really like my privacy now so don’t you two knock yourselves out trying to form some kind of bond with me, okay?”

“Sniff, okay Daddy we won’t. But how can you afford to have people working for you?”

“Over a year ago while I was working at that gas station; I did something stupid, I bought a lottery ticket and surprisingly I won. I didn’t tell either of you because I wanted to know if you wanted me in your lives because you loved me or because you needed something like money or protection. The people I hired are men and women that I recently helped release from prison because they were wrongly convicted, they’re good folks. I’ll see you in the next few days when I’m not too busy but you all should hurry up and get here as fast and as safely as you can. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye Daddy.”

I really don’t want to know what my true sight will tell me about my own daughters but while I don’t like them, I do love them and I have to do whatever I can to protect my grandchildren.

I was picking up Judge Faith Harper today, so I drove one of my good cars, a 1954 fully loaded blue and white Chrysler Belvedere. I saw it at a small car show just after I won my money. The older man who had owned it; had loved the car and he had beautifully restored it. However he was hard up and needed some money but nobody would pay him what he thought the car was worth. It was fully loaded and I thought it was the coolest car there. I paid him what he was asking, maybe I could have gotten it for five grand cheaper, but the car was in mint condition. Soon after that, I bought a gorgeous Model A, a not so bad 1964 VW Beetle, an old Jeep, and a 1949 Custom Desoto. I just got the Desoto restored when all this Ding-Ding stuff happened. I’m hoping I can put steam engines in some of my cars but you never know.

Linda arrived, at her father’s address, leading a little convoy and she was shocked to see extremely tall chain link fences topped with barbwire. Hanging on the inside of the fences were heavy dark green privacy tarps. By the driveway there was an outside intercom with a press to talk button. So she pressed the button.

“Hello, I give you notice that you are now on the lands of Vincent Standish, Professional Hermit. Per the change in the world Mister Standish has certain rights, powers, skills, and abilities but he has responsibilities towards none, other than himself. I am Ms. Boon, his public intermediary. How may I help you?”

Jennifer Boon read off her prepared speech. Mister Standish had her doing that because he thought it would better establish his status in regards to the Ding-Ding system, as he called it, and maybe get him some more experience points. To Jennifer’s surprise he did in fact receive a small amount of experience points when she delivered that little speech to visitors, to her further surprise she got some as well. She was happy to be out of jail, have her children back and a safe place to live.

“This is his daughter Linda. I’m at the gate, can you let us in?”

“Please drive down to the next gate. That is for the compound where your new residence is located. This gate is for Mister Standish’s private home. I’ll alert Mister Monet and he’ll open the other gate and show you where you’ll be living.”

Jennifer sat back with a happy sigh, noticing her additional experience points. Every point helped, she knew how the boss bemoaned the fact that he was stuck working at the prisons instead of learning skills and earning points. But if he hadn’t have been at the prisons Jennifer would probably never have been released at all, she vowed that she would one day repay him.

Today, she was overjoyed at her latest success. She had successfully negotiated with four different companies for detailed plans for their products as well as production and construction notes. None of their products were patented since they were all old inventions. Three of the companies made steam engines and the fourth made wind powered water pumps. Multiple copies of the files that she had just received were even now being printed off. In every home within the compound people had been furiously downloading and printing paper copies of online books, how-to manuals and other similar documents.

Though her personal favorite big score; were the three truckloads of toilet paper, and the split truckload of baby and feminine products. The Boss originally hadn’t had anything in stock for babies or for a woman’s personal needs. She had even managed to buy the trailers too, so they didn’t even have to unload them. However her greatest success must have been when she was able to negotiate the purchases of over one hundred and sixty acres, from three different parties, surrounding Vincent’s original forty acres. That had earned both her and the boss a ton of experience points and bumped them both up a level.

Steve Monet hurried over to the gate and opened it for his boss’s daughters. Mister Standish had already warned his employees that he wasn’t on good terms with his daughters but they were still family and he wanted to see them safe. All of his new employees could understand that.

The cars pulled in and Steve was surprised and glad to see one of the new men was an orange but he was dismayed to see that all three of incoming adult women were blues. Of course the babies were both oranges and there was another man who was a green. Steve had gotten the appraisal skill when he became a servant for the Professional Hermit Vincent Standish.

He asked for identifications, you had to be careful nowadays. Two of the blues were the boss’s daughters, the third blue’s identification showed her name as being Nancy Conner. Since she would be staying in the same house as the orange man, he would let it go, but he’d inform the boss as soon as he got back that night. The orange would be permitted personal weapons if he had them. All others would have to sit for an interview session with the boss before they would be allowed to use or carry a weapon. He informed them of the policy, the green guy was a little upset but nothing too bad. Steve pointed out that he himself was a green and the boss had hired him.

Mister Monet showed them to their new homes and got back to work. They had to get those new greenhouses assembled while their modern tractors still worked. The orange, lemon, lime, cacao and coffee trees would need the protection. They had an old 1940’s model tractor that the boss had bought from a collector down the road but it was a pain in the ass to operate and the attachments weren’t nearly as good.

Glen Stewart, Ronald Lewis and Andrew Thomas were working frantically to get functioning alternatives for everything that they thought would fail when the countdown clock hit three hundred hours. The men had already rewired the compounds freezers and refrigerators so they weren’t using their fancy electronics anymore. Now they just had simple mechanical thermostats and relays to turn the power on and off.

The men were all afraid that they would lose outside electricity when the clock hit three hundred hours since the electric grid was computer controlled. But the Boss had paid a fortune to acquire an ancient huge WWII era generator and with luck their little community would have electricity until the very end. They were already connecting one of the Boss’s small steam engines to parts taken from another generator which would hopefully work all the way to the six hundred hour expiration limit. It was lucky that Mister Standish was kind of old fashioned and because of that, all of his machine tools were all 1950’s and early 1960’s stuff so they should keep on working until the very end. By that time they should be ready to run them off of steam power or compressed air.

We had gone to the women’s prison today and I was bringing home two new additions. The first was Grace Lee a retired Navy petty officer and helicopter mechanic. She was a green screen and we had bent the rules with her but it was actually the Judge that did it. Her husband had ripped her off, given her a nasty but curable STD and thought that he could hit her. Grace didn’t take kindly to that and according to the prosecutor and her judge; Grace had gone beyond what was necessary in defending herself. I think her husband had gotten less than he deserved. Grace had been in prison for almost a year. She had sold everything rather than risk it being stolen while she was in the joint. So she had no place to go home to and with the way the banks were messed up, she probably had no way to get her money out either, though I expected money to be worthless or almost worthless very shortly. She was a trained mechanic and knew some martial arts, so I made her an offer. I was hoping her knowledge of jet turbines might help us with our steam engines.

The other woman was Isabella Gomez and she was plant crazy and not plain crazy. She was basically a self taught botanist, who loved and knew everything about plants. She should never have been in prison in the first place and was only in there because of an abuse of power. There was a difference of opinion between her and the city in which she lived. They said she couldn’t have a vegetable garden on the side of her house, which sat on a corner lot. It was in a fenced in area too. She fought them and told them to go to hell; sadly she didn’t have any living family or local friends to help her with the situation. The city got fed up with her defiance and sent out a city crew to remove her garden. Words were exchanged, admittedly nasty words but that was no reason for the boss of the crew to punch her. Now they had a problem. The crew put some bruises on their boss and even cut him using an old knife that Isabella used for weeding her garden. She was sent away for assault with a deadly weapon. Her home was sold and her “victim” got half of the money. I was furious when I heard her story. Isabella though was overjoyed about being my new botanist. I just couldn’t figure out why she was a green screen while I was an orange.

“Vincent?”

“Yes, Judge Harper”

“What are we going to do now, with no phones and no computers? Do we go back to the prisons tomorrow? And call me Faith, please.”

“Well Grace Please, that is up to you. I can’t do anything on my own. The prisons might still be as functional tomorrow as they were when we left today or they could be out of control madhouses. We could drive by them tomorrow and see if they look safe, if they do then we can go in and if not we drive away.”

She groaned and punched my shoulder because of the Grace Please. “That sounds reasonable, but can we go to the women’s prison again? Women are normally less violent than men, so we should be safer there.”

“We will do, what you want us to do. You are the boss; I am the mere lie detecting flunky.”

“Vincent, could I see your home tonight? You’ve been moving so many people there, that I’ve gotten curious.”

“No problem, it’s on the way to your house.

We pulled down my road and my three passengers got silent when they saw my fenced in compounds and Faith had a question. “Vincent, why do you have all this tall fencing, you’re not starting some kind of cult are you?”

“Actually I wanted to be a hermit so the original fence was to keep me safe and visitors out. When the first warning came I had a gut reaction to it. In all the stories I’ve read, when you get a warning like that you soon get angry mobs and monsters. So having more than enough money; I called the company that installed my first fence. I ordered another large area fenced in; originally I was thinking to use it for my daughters’ families. But it turns out in this situation that nobody else was having their property fenced in or maybe they wanted walls instead of fencing. So the fencing company had nothing to keep them busy or any income to pay themselves or their employees. Again I had money, in fact I had cash. Though to my surprise I’ve been able to use my debit card for a lot of things, I pay with it and they in turn use the electronic money to pay other businesses. I’ve kept the fencing company busy, putting up fences and doing other side projects for me.”

Steve showed Grace and Isabella to their new homes. I showed the Judge around. It was nice to see that all of the greenhouse kits had been assembled. They weren’t huge but I had a lot of them, which I thought might be better but I could be wrong. I had three sizes: eight by twenty-four, eight by twenty and sixteen by twenty. I thought that the eight food wide models with their clear panels were prettier than the white sixteen by twenty greenhouses but I had no idea which model was the best. I or Jennifer simply bought what we could get. I hoped Isabella would approve.

Faith seemed to be impressed with my tiny kingdom. She was quiet as I drove her home. She almost froze in her seat when she saw the empty roads and the stalled modern cars. When she finally realized that there were only a few electric lights shining I think she got really scared. It seemed like the twilight of mankind.

“Vincent, an old boyfriend of mine got me into camping. We bought a trailer but then we broke up. I kept the trailer. Could I move out to your compound? Do you think this car could pull my trailer?”

“How big is your trailer?”

“Eighteen feet”

“Maybe if we drive slowly, I do have a hitch on this car. The car came with it when I bought it. I don’t know about the electrical connections or whether your trailer brakes will work but if we go slowly enough, we should be able to make it. Do you want to go tonight or in the morning?”

“I’m afraid but I’ve got a lot of packing to do, so please pick me up in the morning.”

“Fine, but I’ll be by early in case you need any help, say about five thirty. You don’t have to be ready then, that’s just the time I will arrive.”

I pulled into her drive an escorted her to the door. My body armor and combat helmet seemed to make an impression on the watching neighbors. I’ll bring a spare set for her when I come back tomorrow. I drove home to interview my new guests.