To say I was shocked to see my ex-wife was an understatement, I would leave her interview for last. It surprised me but my son-in-law James Lopez who was married to Linda and an attorney had an orange screen. I hadn’t seen too many lawyers with that status. Jacob Schwartz who was married to my daughter Sandra had a green screen which was no surprise. He’s the manager for new car sales for the dealership he works at or worked at but he used to be a used car salesman. My grandbabies were adorable and had orange screens. I questioned them rigorously while bouncing them on my lap. Their giggles were very profound.

My daughters had disappointed me greatly. I found out that they had aided their mother in keeping me in the dark. They had also gotten some of the money my wife had stolen. I had puzzled over how they could afford those overseas trips. But they were my daughters and their children were innocent. I would have my people keep an eye on them and I might speak to their husbands.

Talking with Nancy was an unpleasant chore. I wish Faith was here. Jennifer sat with me to help me keep calm. In the end the three of us drew up an oath for Nancy to say in front of all the adults living here. It might help keep her honest.

Nancy Conner read the oath that she and her ex-husband had drawn up after her interview with him. Every adult was in attendance.

“I Nancy Connor do freely make this oath to the Professional Hermit Vincent Standish. I admit that I stole from him, gave him bad council, besmirched his reputation, broke my wedding vows, and led his daughters astray. I will never again do anything directly or indirectly to harm Vincent Standish, his possessions, his reputation, his employees, his servants, his friends or his family. If I do, I understand that I will be at the very least immediately exiled from his lands. While here, I will be assigned duties and I will do them to the best of my ability. Furthermore, unless rescinded by Mister Standish, I will do my best to stay out his sight and I will take all reasonable actions to do so.

I do so swear this oath to the Professional Hermit Vincent Standish, my daughters; the others gathered here, our Heavenly Father, and the Ding-Ding system.”

DING

Nancy Connor has sworn a powerful oath. In view of the great amount of money that she stole from Vincent Standish, and the debts she left with him, Nancy Connor’s class has been changed to Convict Laborer. That will also be her third title and will remain so long as she is a Convict Laborer. The owner of her contract is her ex-husband, the Professional Hermit Vincent Standish. Convict Laborer is a class beneath Indentured Servant and above Slave. Do with her what you will Mister Standish. The cost to construct a one level dungeon beneath your personal residence will be thirty ounces of gold. Do you wish to have it constructed now?

All those present saw that message screen. Nancy and her daughters paled.

Vincent said. “Crap! No, I don’t want a dungeon. Nancy, just live up to the oath you took and you’ll be okay. I doubt I can change your status right now, or change it so soon without incurring a penalty against myself, so I won’t even try. But I do imagine that eventually your status will change, so don’t screw up. To you others in attendance, historically it is traditional in these situations for the owner of such a contract, which is me in this case, to incur some penalties if their convict laborer messes up; please don’t let Nancy screw up. I don’t know what’s going on but my status might be the only thing that protects us in our new world.”

There were eight former prisoners living there now. They knew all about living with the worst sorts of people. Nancy Conner would find herself almost constantly watched whenever she left the residence assigned to her daughter. A lot of the former prisoners had their own children here and they weren’t going to trust her one bit.

I did have one bit of very good news I had ordered some large steam engines, two 100 hp and two 330 hp engines. While I had paid a lot of money for them I had no expectations that they would be delivered. Glen told me that at roughly noon today a steamed powered truck had arrived with my order. Evidently while the delivery men were here he had relentlessly pestered the team of three with questions about their truck. They were currently using fuel oil to heat the steam to power the vehicle. The manufacturer of the steam engines was refitting conventional trucks (long nose trucks) so they could keep on making deliveries, test their products and advertise them, all at the same time.

I got up early the next morning. I had all kinds of fenced in lands but only twelve modular homes and ten of them were now assigned. Maybe I should get some more? I drove down to the modular homes sales lot. There were still a fair number of units left. I put a hand written letter through the mail slot on the office door. I missed computers and printers already, fuck cell phones.

Up until yesterday I had been contemplating that all of this was some great cosmic joke by aliens and nothing would really happen when the first deadline was reached. I’ve spent tens of millions of dollars buying shit to get ready for this and it all might not be needed or the things I bought might not work. But if everything does come to pass like the warnings say, I pretty much think what I have left in the bank will be valueless. But if this is some cosmic joke, I’ll still have enough for a comfortable retirement.

I left the sales lot and drove to Faith’s home. She seemed really glad to see me and even happier with the armored vest I handed her.

“I don’t know if you heard the gunshots last night since you live so far out but it was terrifying. It sounded like a war zone. I don’t know if it was humans fighting humans or monsters, because there were a lot of roaring noises too. But thank you so much for letting me, live at your enclave Vince.”

“No problem, what do we need to do?”

“I have everything boxed up that I wanted to take with me. We just need to load it into my trailer. I didn’t want to go outside last night it felt too exposed.”

It took us a little longer than an hour to load everything up; I told her if she had forgotten anything then we could always come back. She was happy with that offer.

I took it slow going home, she literally rode shotgun with a shotgun! The fastest I got going was twenty miles per hour and only when I had a long open stretch of road. When slowing down I was even more careful.

To my surprise Bill the owner of the modular home lot was at my gate when I arrived. He was in an old classic Corvette; there was a young woman in the passenger seat. Jennifer and Steve were talking to him, both were armed.

“Hey Bill what’s up?”

“I got your letter. How would you like to buy all of my remaining stock?”

“How much?”

“I don’t want any checks. I’m not asking for much. I want a working car, a couple of guns, extra gasoline, some cash and some gold if you got it.”

“That is one heck of a whole lot Bill. In fact it is too much. A couple of guns I can do but they will only work for less than one hundred hours according to the warnings. I can give you extra gasoline. Gold is out of the question. Cash is no problem. I might be able to do a car. Jennifer, do you know if Glen was able to make that deal we had been talking about?”

“Yes, he bought those things you both wanted.”

“Okay Steve, go find Glen and find out if in his opinion we can spare the 64 Beetle.”

“Okay Boss.” Steve took off jogging through the open gate.

Bill started to complain. “You’re offering me a Bug in exchange for over eight hundred grand in modular homes! You’re crazy! What about the car you just drove up in?”

“The Beetle is newer and probably more reliable than the Belvedere. But I like the Chrysler and I’m only willing to possibly trade the Beetle, depending on what Glen says. You don’t have to take the Bug. There should be other cars out there you can buy or trade for.”

“But no one else is interested in my modular homes, especially now that I can’t deliver them or set them up.”

“Oh, that’s another thing if we make this deal it’s for their transport trailers too. I’ll need them to get the homes over here. And I want the older mobile homes you got on your back lot.”

“Yeah I already figured as much concerning the trailers and you can have those old single wide homes too. What kind of guns do you have?”

“What do you want?”

“A couple of AK47s”

“I can’t do that but I can give you two SKS rifles, they’re kind of like a semi-automatic version of the AK and they fire the same ammunition too. I can also give you a case of ammo. But you don’t seem too familiar with firearms. If I trade with you, you got to spend a few hours here learning how to shoot them. I don’t want you shooting someone by accident.”

“That’s good and I’d appreciate the lessons for me and my daughter. I said I wouldn’t accept any checks but how about a check for fifty thousand dollars. It will be my responsibility to cash it.”

“I can do that but I’ll write on the check that it is not an IOU and you can only use it to get money from my bank. If you can’t get the money out of my bank don’t be coming back to me with it or sending someone else with it.”

“No problem. The guns, ammunition, the car, full tanks for both of my cars, ten extra gallons of gas, the check and five thousand in cash?”

Steve came running, back to us. “Sorry it took so long. Glen says it’s okay to sell the Beetle.”

“Thanks Steve.”

“Okay Bill, I’ll accept your offer.”

Faith had whipped out a notebook. “That check can possibly get you into trouble later. I’m writing up a contract for you both to sign. That way you’ll be protected Vince.”

“Thank you Faith.”

I informed Steve about our deal and to give Bill and his daughter some lessons with the SKS rifles. There was a big hill in back that they could use as a backstop. Bill and I quickly signed both copies of the contract. Jennifer had left briefly and was now back, with my checkbook. We completed the transaction. Jennifer took over driving my car to park Faith’s trailer, she looked excited to do it. I needed to speak with my mechanics.

I went to the pole barn, now called the shop.

“Hello gentlemen and Grace. I just bought the rest of the houses at the modular home place. The problem is moving them here. If you recall I traded for my old tractor with a gentleman just down the road. He has a lot of old tractors left. Some of them look pretty big and powerful. Could we offer this trade to him, if he’ll tow those modular homes here, we’ll convert one of his smaller tractors to steam once we start making our own steam engines?”

The guys and gal exchanged looks and nods. Glen spoke, “yeah boss we can do that but tell him that it might take as long as three months to do the conversion just to stay on the safe side. Personally with Grace’s help I think we can do it in a month.”

I walked out and there was Mack pulling in with some old battered trucks.

“Hi Mack, what’s up?”

“You got any work for us? Do you need some more fencing to go up?”

“I got work for you; I just bought out all the remaining modular homes at the State Street lot. You helped with all the ones already here so you should know what to do. But what do you want in compensation?”

“My guys and I want in with our families. Things are turning ugly out there and this place seems safe or safer than any other place we could hook up at.”

I had been almost expecting that, I had already read the status of every man with him so I knew that they were safe. “Okay but I interview their families too, to make sure there are no bad apples. If there are any bad ones I might not accept them. I know all of you guys are decent human beings so I have no fears there.”

We shook hands on the deal and then I told them about the tractor guy, who he already knew, and the offer we were willing to make. I would let Mack handle the rest. Jennifer was back with my car. Faith and I needed to go to prison. We got there and we found a stream of women leaving the facility. The warden had gotten permission to release everyone with a green screen. That was so she could better keep under guard the blue screen inmates. We were told that the same thing might happen at the men’s prison but no final decision had been reached yet. They were afraid of releasing all of those men without a way to transport them nearer to their former homes. They weren’t really evil men but they could become desperate and the local people nearby could become victims of their desperation. The warden here had wisely provided the newly released women with food packets and had also let them take all of their old bedding and other things too.

I had fifty grand in hundreds. I was dumb and I know it. But I started handing out hundred dollar bills to the now free women. I hoped it would help. I even drove down the road and caught up to some of them that had left before I began giving out cash. I didn’t want to look at Faith and see her condescending expression looking back at me. By the time I was done I had a little over twenty grand left and six additional passengers in my car. They were all in the back seat and three of them were sitting on laps. The passengers were not my fault. Faith had picked them, had me question them and then she had asked my permission to make them an offer. Three of the women were really old and three were really young.

What with passing out money and interviewing the women the day was mostly shot and we headed back to home. I turned the six women over to Jennifer, she and Steve could tell them where to stay for now. I then found Mack who was looking very despondent.

“What’s wrong Mack?”

“I can’t get the concrete we need to pour any more pads. I’ve got my guys scrounging up bags of concrete and we have an old cement mixer but that will give us at best one pad for one single wide home.”

I had been worried about this problem and I had hoped that Mack could solve it for me, but I guess not. There was a small pile of gravel by my feet. It was time to see what this Earth magic was all about. I bent down closed my eyes while concentrating on the stones. When I thought I held the right mental image I willed the stones to form together into one flat piece. I heard Mack mutter, “Holy shit.”

I opened my eyes and looked down. There was a flat stone laying there before me.

“How did you do that?”

“Earth Magic is supposed to be one of the perks of being a hermit and landowner. What happened, I had my eyes closed and didn’t see?”

“The stones melted and flowed together like syrup.”

“Can we get stones?”

“Hell yeah, especially if we load them ourselves the gravel pit is only two miles from here. We can get couple of Clyde’s tractors and hook up our trailers to them. The tractor tows the trailer down there and we use the tractor’s front bucket to load the trailer.”

“Will Clyde give us that much help?”

“He wants to move here with his wife. He thinks it’ll be safer for them. Since he’s an orange screen I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“I’d be happy to have him here.” I knew Clyde besides being a tractor nut, was an ex-tanker from the Vietnam War. He could come in really handy here. “Alright Mack, you get the stones and put them where we need them. No need to level them out I’ll take care of that, but when I’m doing my trick I might need a few guys standing by and ready to toss some more stones or gravel in.”

“Are big stones okay?”

“Not too big, I’m just a beginner, figure head size or less.”

“Got it; Vince.”

“Okay, I’m heading to the shop.”

I spent the day there working on getting some of the old lathes and other tools I recently purchased running on steam power. We were converting our air compressors to run off of steam engines; with them we could run all of our air tools. We might even start plumbing our homes with air lines. That way we could run some appliances converted over to air power; like refrigerators, freezers, water pumps and fans.

I tried to start one of my toys which I had just recently bought. It had been working just the other day but today it was kaput. I had expected as much and if I hadn’t gotten it so cheap I would have never have bought it. If we have time this might be one of the first vehicles we convert over to steam power but we’ll only put a 100hp engine in it, which is far less than the engine that formerly powered it but I don’t want to waste a 330hp monster in this thing. My other green toys all started fine, they better have they certainly cost enough.

It took three hours before Mack had some gravel pads for me to fuse together. On a whim I walked on the gravel barefoot and channeled my power that way, it worked. I was tired by the time I was halfway through the first pad and I was completely whipped by the time I was done with it. I had to rest and eat for an hour before I could start on the second pad.

DING

Earth Magic now at level: 2

Stone Fusing skill at level: 2 Now requires less energy and you can do a greater area.

Suddenly finishing the second pad became much easier. I rested for another hour but it was starting to get dark. Despite that I was able to finish two more pads and I got my fusing skill up to level three. I would do more in the morning. Hopefully I will be able to do four more pads which should be plenty for Mack to get a start at moving homes.

I rested at home listening to an old tube radio. Jennifer was there with her children. She was taking notes of important government announcements. Other areas had encountered real monsters at this point and what only can be called small raiding groups of nonhuman intelligent beings. We had an armed watch now and interior patrols. Every green and orange screen adult living here but me was required to donate two hours to such duties. All watches and patrols were comprised of two people.

I was currently reading books about heat energy, physics and thermodynamics. Supposedly I had pluses for learning magic. I was hoping that we could forgo using fuel to heat our steam and use magic instead. I had a candle which I kept on trying to light with my mind, so far no luck. Presently, I had a children’s energy book in front of me for laughs. It even had some little experiments that should only be done with adult supervision.

DING

Fire Magic Level: 1

I spent the rest of the evening, before going to bed, lighting things on fire and heating up tea kettles full of water. I eventually got three kettles whistling at the same time and I brought my Fire Magic skill up to level two. I think I could have done more kettles if I had them.

I did two double wide pads and two single wide pads in the morning. That was all Mack had ready for me. I brought stone fusing level up to four but my Earth Magic stayed at two. I bet I have to learn some other spells before I get that to go up.

Faith really didn’t want to go to the men’s prison with me but she sucked it up and we went. It was a good thing we did go, we learned some things. As we drove up we saw a stream of old yellow school buses wheezing their way out of the parking lot there. The buses were loaded with men. We were escorted in to see Warden Gordon as soon as we got there.

“Judge Harper, Mister Standish I’m glad that you came. By order of the Governor and the President all green screen prisoners are being released and transported as close to their former homes as is possible. Old military fortifications in this country are being reactivated and since prisons are close to be forts themselves we are being repurposed. We will still keep prisoners here but only the most dangerous. All guards are moving in with their families. The local state police post, the Sheriff’s department and two companies of our National Guard are doing the same thing. The local hospital is moving here as well. By releasing the orange and green prisoners our prison is now only at fifty five percent occupancy. We’ve drawn up a list of blue prisoners that we’d like you to question. If they are truly remorseful and you think they have mended their ways you are authorized by the government to release them. We want as many of them out of here as we can get. We understand that mistakes will be made; but these prisoners you will be questioning are in my opinion the best of what remains. Most of them have not been convicted of deliberate violent acts.”

“How has the government been coordinating all of this?”

He laughed. “Old fashioned phones with switch board operators and old fashioned ham radios. The phones only connect to a few places in each state but it’s enough.”

We spent ten hours there and we saw a new prisoner at least every ten minutes. I lost count of the total but at the end of the day we had approved four hundred and six for release, this was one big prison. Surprisingly I brought back one of them. He was a man convicted of multiple vehicular homicides, he was almost done with his sentence, he was truly remorseful and he was an old machinist which was something we needed. I already had too much work to do. He’s an alcoholic; which is something we’ll have to watch out for but his skills should come in handy.

It looked like Faith and I were out of a job. She breathed a sigh of relief when we got home. I introduced the shop crew to Scott Blaine our new machinist. He appeared to be a very humble and quiet man.

Mack had succeeded in moving two doublewide homes. People that already had homes were opening up their houses so that’s Mack’s crew and our other new people could safely stay in our compound. I didn’t think it was quite so bad yet but everyone else was very nervous.

The next day I got up and called a meeting at the machine shop. Besides the regular shop crew, Steve, Clyde, Mack, Jennifer and my son-in-laws were in attendance.

“I’m teaching myself magic. You all might try doing the same thing. My starting point has been meditation and my knowledge of science. My profession as a hermit gives me an edge in learning. You all know about my small Earth magic ability and how I’m helping to make pads for the new houses. Two nights ago I had a small success with learning a little Fire Magic. Once I learn more about magic I will attempt to teach others but if I tried right now; it would be like the blind leading the blind.

I am very keen on learning fire magic. With it we can heat provide steam to our engines without using fuel. We can also heat our homes and water the same way.

I also have an idea in case our cartridge primers stop working and the few alternatives I’ve researched fail to work as well. Imagine a brass cartridge with holes in the side blocked with paper, that’s so the gunpowder doesn’t fall out. Now on the outside of the barrel is a touchhole, through which a fire mage could direct a small bit of flame down and ignite the black powder through one of those cartridge holes I mentioned before. Using that admittedly cumbersome method we could have manual action repeating firearms. My second idea is my preferred means for getting repeating firearms back in our hands, in short a magical firing pin. Instead of a primer at the back of a brass cartridge there is simply a piece of paper to contain and protect the powder. The firing pin will be hot enough to ignite the paper and powder. I got some ideas on how to approach making one and I’ll be working on it. But I wanted to keep you all informed about what I was doing and you might want to experiment yourselves as you get time.”

I was forced to demonstrate my new ability by boiling some water. Hey, look at me I’m a magical hot pot. Let’s make some ramen!

Clyde wanted to talk to me about my green toys.

“Vince, where the hell did you get tanks?”

“Once I started thinking about black powder, I then thought about cannons because monsters are supposed to be large and I have no confidence in us learning any powerful magical spells at this time. Then I thought about steam engines and protecting the guys shooting the cannons. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel so I did a search on the internet for what was within five hundred miles of here and was old enough to keep working when advanced electronics stopped working. The British Scorpion is obviously too modern and sadly it even has an advanced replacement engine of some type but I got it cheap and hopefully we can modify it. The other three vehicles all run right now but of course their cannons were made deliberately inoperable or their previous owners could never have legally owned them.

The Sherman tank you saw is the Canadian Grizzly variant and there’s a Hellcat Tank Destroyer which I’ve always thought was pretty cool. But I think my best find is the M7-B1 Priest 105 Howitzer Motor Gun Carriage. Except for the cannon barrel being plugged and only able to fire gas now, the rest of the cannon is in pristine shape, which will give us a fine example if we attempt to build our own breechloader. The owner even sent along the old breechblock. With all the quality metals I’ve stockpiled we can easily build our own muzzle loading cannons but breechloaders I think are fundamentally safer since it keeps our gun crews behind the cannon and doesn’t unnecessarily expose them to any monsters or any other potential enemies.”

“Vince, I think you’re nuts.”

“I’m glad you think so, Clyde. Besides making rifles, once we know everything the warnings say are real, we will begin working on cannons with twenty-five, fifty, and seventy-five millimeter bores. We might build larger mortars but they’ll be simple muzzleloaders with loose powder charges, they won’t use shells. We don’t have the time to be making mortar shells; we’ve got too much other stuff we need to do.”

“Vince, you’ve gone around the bend.”

DING

Plus two hundred points for being called, in a roundabout fashion, a crazy hermit.

“I honestly hope we need none of this and the world goes back to normal and I can go back to living alone. But I want everybody here to be safe, especially my grandchildren.”

“I’ll take a look at that Scorpion and see if I can’t get it working or come up with a plan for putting one of your steam engines in it. What size are you planning to put in it?”

“It will be underpowered but a 100hp model is what we have for it. I want to save the big engines for the Sherman and the Priest. We might put another 100HP in the Hellcat. We paid for a set of plans for that size steam engine and we sort of have a licensing agreement in place. I’m confident we can build engines up to forty horsepower and I think we can eventually build 100hp engines within a reasonable time frame. I don’t know about the 330hp monsters.”

He grunted in response and started poking around the Scorpion.

I spent the day working on my magic. I concentrated on three areas, earth, fire and healing. I would exhaust myself for an hour, rest for an hour and repeat. I put a cut on my bicep that I would repeatedly try to heal. I was taking a break walking around through our various interconnected fenced in areas. It was late at night but because of my true sight I seemed to have night vision. I was carrying a nine millimeter carbine and my pistol. I had lent out my more powerful rifles semi-automatic rifles to our patrols and watch. I was in the section that was our most northern fenced in area, when I heard the sounds of the fence clashing together like someone was attempting to climb it and a small number of people casually talking. I jogged over to see what was going and I was shocked and frightened to see monsters attempting to climb the fence and four of my people standing around and doing nothing, they were just calmly watching the jiggling fence and the climbing monsters. The monsters were dark gray and black, bipedal, heads like male lions including the manes, long claws on their hands but luckily they had fat feet that couldn’t easily grip the tight weave of the chain link fence. We were additionally fortunate that the monsters weren’t apparently strong enough to tear open the heavy gauge steel wire fencing that I had specified to be used. The beasts were obviously predators and they had no business on my land!

I first shot the monster that was almost over the barbwire at the top of fence. My people started yelling at me.

“What the hell are you doing Boss?”

“Killing monsters you idiots and saving your lives!”

“But there are no monsters here.”

I kept firing and I emptied my carbine. I ripped an SKS from Andrew’s hands and I discovered that the SKS did a far better job.

“Boss, there are no monsters.”

“Give me another fucking magazine or pack up and leave.”

They started handing me magazines and rifles, while muttering that I had gone nuts.

I had to keep running around this small fenced in section and killing the monsters at other places that they were trying to climb over. Why the fuck couldn’t anyone else see them? Was I nuts? I kept shooting. More people came running up. Steve, Faith, and Mack closed on me.

“Vince what’s going on?”

“Invisible monsters I guess. I have the skill true sight and I think that lets me see them.”

I still think they didn’t believe me but they left me alone so I could blast away. I didn’t dare let one of those things over the fence. It could kill everyone here. This must have gone on for over forty minutes until I finally killed the last one. As soon as that happened people started yelling, screaming and shooting at the dead monsters stuck on the fence.

There had been a lot ding dings while I was shooting but I had ignored them now I would take a look at them.

I used appraisal on one of the corpses.

Night-Stalker Cat Hybrid

Nocturnal Hunter

Unique ability to cloud minds so it and its pride are ignored.

I told the few people around me what I had just read but many of them had appraisal too and had already seen the new information.

I had earned combat shooting level three and I went up to Professional Hermit Level five because I had killed so many interlopers. My true sight skill went up a couple of levels too and with all my experience at the prisons it was now at level six.

People were upset and to keep them from panicking I promised that I would stay awake all night and actively patrol our large compound, I ended up riding a bicycle which let me cover ground far faster and comforted those others still patrolling. People kept me well filled with coffee and tea so long as I stayed on the job. The next morning I had two of the corpses loaded onto a small trailer. We needed to warn other people about these beasts. Figuring the women’s prison would have a phone I drove there since it was only an hour away and an hour closer than the men’s prison.

The Warden there was not happy to hear our story and she did have a phone. Since Faith and I were there, she asked if we would mind talking to a few carefully selected blue screen women. We spent six hours there and I was tired. We took one of them home with us. Gloria Bennett had been a nurse practitioner with a gambling and drug problem. To pay for both she started writing prescriptions she shouldn’t have and dealing drugs. She was remorseful and had been in therapy but we would have to keep an eye on her. Faith drove home, I slept. I got another three hours of sleep when I got home that is until Jennifer timidly woke me up. Everyone was too scared not to have me on night patrol.

I’m supposed to be able to teach people stuff, how the hell I am going to teach true sight so I can get some sleep? I had an idea and it was cruel, perfect for a grumpy hermit. That night was peaceful. Jennifer had been listening to my old radio and she informed me that our monster warning was being broadcasted. The next morning, I slept for six hours and then I gathered all the oranges together and Faith.

“You are the most unlucky people here. You are my guinea pigs. I’ve been informed by the Ding-Ding system that I have certain pluses in teaching people the things I think I know. It also informed me that the meaner I am when teaching the more likely you are to learn. You are all fucked. I got a lot of mean in me because I’m short on sleep and I’m fucking living with a million people when I wanted to be alone.

I figured out this much, true sight which is what I used to see those monsters, is related to both lie detection and night vision or rather it encompasses them both. My thought is to torture you four until you have both skills and work from there. Mack and Faith, you already have lie detection. So I’m going to lock you in my basement with about twenty big garden snakes I have here in this bucket.” Surprising me, it was Mack who looked more frightened than Faith but she didn’t look too happy either. “I’ll go down there from time to time to heckle you and toss a snake on your lap. Hopefully in only a few days you’ll get night vision. Clyde and Jim we’re going to play truth or get smacked. Jim I feel like I especially owe you for the way you treated me after I paid for your wedding and I recently found out that your wife knowingly got some of the money my ex-wife stole from me. I still can’t figure out how you’re an orange screen after all that? Clyde do you remember how you called me nuts yesterday. I decided I didn’t like that so now you’re both screwed. Once you can accurately tell when I’m lying, one hundred percent of the time, I’ll lock you down in the basement too.”

I was a mean grumpy bastard until it got dark, I could get to enjoy this. James picked up lie detection in only two hours, I guess being a lawyer helped. Why I had them I forgot but I had five rubber snakes in some of my old boxes. I would go downstairs and sometimes I would throw a piece of rope and sometimes a rubber snake at my victims, I mean students. The real snakes I would place on their shoulders while holding the snakeheads so that they couldn’t bite. I picked up a new skill, ninja sneak level one. Mack screams like a little girl and Faith just whimpers.

It took Clyde all day to learn to detect my lies; boy was he pissed at the end. I was angry too; I had to patrol all night long again. Nothing attacked us but I did see things that no one else did, what had me worried was that some of the things I saw were flying. Now we fucking need anti-aircraft guns, fucking wonderful. I told the shop that we needed upward pointing searchlights and I went to bed. Fucking bunch of freeloaders is what everybody else here is and the blasted Ding-Ding System says I have no charisma.

DING

“Oh shut up!”

Our modern guns stopped working and none of our alternative primer substances did a thing. Black powder muzzleloaders were issued and so were the crossbows. We didn’t have many rifles so people would have to share them. Mack got true sight and he doesn’t like me anymore. I found a doll in an old box and gave it to him along with a rubber snake. We’re making fifty caliber Hawken style rifles with bayonet lugs. We got some bayonets and we’ll make more but they’ll probably be longer than the modern kind. The shop guys had already made a lot of the parts for the rifles so all we really needed to do was assemble them. We produced four rifles, one muzzle loading 25 mm cannon and one muzzle loading 50mm cannon the first day which I didn’t think was bad. The fifty was mounted to the side of the Priest and could be swung on a pivot for reloading. The shop crew was our only gun crew at this point. Clyde was the driver for the Priest. The 25 millimeter was on a little cart that could be towed behind just about anything.

I split the night with Mack and he didn’t like the things he saw at all. Sleep blissful sleep, I love my bed.

Clyde was a slow learner when it came to lies but he learned fast in the basement and got the true sight skill almost at the same time as Faith did. Or it could have been that I was just extra good at being nasty that day.

Now there were four of us for watches and I told them that they could improve their true sight by having people lie to them. Once Jim graduates I will torture another four. For now I’m working on my magical abilities when not abusing Jim.

Something came down from the sky and nearly made away with Ron. Ron thinks he shoved his bayonet up its ass but he got some claw or talon punctures on his shoulders from it in return. Gloria cleaned him up and gave him some antibiotics that I might have gotten slightly illegally. I tried my healing ability on him and it might have actually done something.

The shop is going to start making armor and helmets. We’ve got a ton of shit to make. I can now enchant a fire pin for a rifle but the magic only lasts for a several minutes. I just have to make it last longer. From time to time I get ding dings but unless their warnings I generally ignore them because the information they give me is like “hey, now you can blank or now you can do blank better.” That is shit I already know because I’m told after I use a new skill or an old skill improves. I don’t need to be distracted and those orange numbers don’t make much sense to me in the first place.

By busting our butts we got the Scorpion and two tractors converted over to steam before we hit five hundred hours. It really helped that steam engines are direct drive, though the steering on the Scorpion needs to be improved. The two small tractors seem to have much more power than they did before and the Scorpion doesn’t seem to be underpowered at all. Jim now has true sight and wants to kill me, fuck him. I’m thinking about two of Mack’s crew and two of our reformed green screen ladies as my next victims. I’m amazed my screen is still orange.

We started making 20mm cannons instead of the twenty-fives; the reason being Clyde knew where could get a whole shitload of 20mm brass. The cannons are basically large bolt actions rifles which are fired from fixed mounting locations. We’re using a variation of my first idea with holes in the brass blocked with paper and a touch hole with a flint lock mechanism from our Hawken rifle production line. The first functional 20mm is going into the Scorpion’s turret. The turret doesn’t rotate yet, but by putting the small cannon in the hole where the old cannon and cover plate were permits the gunner to do a lot of aiming without the need to rotate the turret. The 20mm rifles or cannons have two round magazines, so the rate of fire isn’t too bad. We built the first one in a day and it only cost us three of my old muzzle loaders, and one of them a pistol, for all that 20mm brass we picked up. Our short term standard rifle is going to be our Hawken variant and we’re not trading those.

Mack has all the modular homes moved including the old stuff. We have enough new houses for single people to have their own homes but right now they don’t want them, they’re too scared to live alone. I graduated my third class of people with true sight but three of them failed. They got lie detection and night vision but it didn’t evolve into true sight, maybe I wasn’t nasty enough. There are some other people that I want to try and teach but they’re too busy and really so am I.

Work was proceeding on the Sherman tank and the Priest to get them converted to steam power. We planned on equipping the Priest with multiple 20mm guns with alternate mounting points for the little cannons. So if all the action is on the right side, the left side gunners can move their big ass rifles over to where they are needed so they can help with the fight. We barely got the Priest working by the six hundred hour mark.

We are coming up on six hundred hours, the radio was playing the lights were working and suddenly they weren’t, it was really spooky and all of us would have cried if it wasn’t for the earthquake. It didn’t do any damage but this part of the country doesn’t get earthquakes, not that big. We all had a hard time sleeping and I made it mandatory that half of us be on watch for the next few days and the boilers on our fighting vehicles be kept at a reasonable temperature for rapid deployment. It’s a good thing I did.