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     All the women were dressed like me and all the men like Joe
.

     I closed my eyes and conducted an experiment.  When I opened them the women were all dre
ssed differently, but all in 197
0s clothes.  Some had on bell bottom jeans with peasant blouses, some had on granny dresses, and some had on mumus.  They were either barefoot or wearing sandals.

    I laughed and closed my eyes again and opened them to find the men all in bell bottom jeans.  I loved it.  I decided to try designing clothes in my mind later to see what I could come up with.  I would also see what I could do about hair color too.
  I didn’t want everyone to have hair like mine.

     We went down the hill to see what was going on.  Joe’s dwelling had been chopped into tiny pieces
and there was blood everywhere.  None of the other dwellings appeared to be destroyed and I wondered if all the blood had made them rethink what they wanted to do.

     As we were walking along, a man ran out of one of the dwellings waving his arms, “They destroyed your house, 65G.  Did you see it?  It bled like a living thing.”

     “I saw it, 47F.  Is it the only one they destroyed?  By the way, I’m called Joe now.”

     “Oh, okay.  They’re having a town meeting at city hall.  I heard them talking and they said that one of the things they were going to discuss is whether or not it would be best to destroy the cave.”

     “Why the cave?” Joe asked.

     “They don’t like that it’s destroying all the work and research they’ve done on us.  I want to go back with you if you don’t mind, and take my family.  We’re very frightened.”

    
“Go back with the others.   I want to see if Ashley and I can spy on that meeting.”

CHAPTER 16

     As we walked toward city hall I asked Joe why the building was so old, “Why didn’t they move into one of the buildings that grew like everyone else did?”

     “They tried but every time they tried to enter one of those they couldn’t get it to open.  They tried to use one for the museum too.  The authorities couldn’t get into any of them.”

     “How interesting.”

     We hid behind a big boulder and watched as around fifty people went in.  “I wish we had some kind of cap that made our heads look bald so we could walk right in,” I said and almost before the words left
my mouth, I looked down and ly
ing beside me on the ground were two cap
s
like I had described.

     We put them on and started to go toward the building but I stopped Joe,
“We look like someone from the 7
0s.  We need those old ugly robes.”  I looked down and we were wearing them.

     We followed the crowd and slipped into the back of the meeting.  No one spoke and then I realized they were communicating through the
implants.  We could sort of tel
l who was talking and who was responding but of course we couldn’t tell what they were saying.

     Every now and then the man at the podium would motion for someone to talk
but there were no words.  It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious.

     I started to tell Joe we might as well leave, we weren’t getting anything out of it anyway, when all of a sudden everyone was standing and straining their necks to look toward a man who was waving his arms.  He looked like he was about 80 years old and had more scars than I had seen on any of the others.

    
He was shaking and tears were running down his face.  His face was very red.  All of a sudden his head exploded.  The scars simply ripped open and what looked like about four pounds of hardware fell out.

     The man next to him caught him as he fell but then jumped back and let him fall to the floor as the old man’s head burst into flames.

     Pandemonium broke out and people ran for the door holding their heads like they were afraid that their heads would also explode.

     We slipped out with the crowd having learned nothing.
  We waited to put some distance between us and the crowd before we took off the caps.  Our clothes were restored as soon as we took the robes off.

     As we started up the hill toward the cave, a group of about 25 people followed us.  They were communicating with each other, waving their arms etc.

     About halfway up, a group of men carrying knives ran after them and started throwing the knives.  One woman fell to the ground as a knife entered her left kidney area.

     Before Joe could stop me, I ran down and
knelt down by the wounded woman.  She was not dead and I put my hand on her wound. 

     When I took my hand away I looked at my palm expecting to see blood but there wasn’t any. 
I heard people gasp and looked down and there was no sign that she had been stabbed.

     I looked up at the men with knives and they looked like I had pulled a gun on them.  They put their knives away and backed down the hill.

     “Come join us,” I said as I held out my hands.  “You don’t have to have
that met
al implanted in your brain.  You can be healed.
”

     The men with knives looked up and I glanced over my shoulder to see some of our redheads coming down the hill.  “Look at all of us,” I continued, “We are healthy and happy and you can be too.  You don’t have to be afraid of what you don’t understand.”

     Some of the men ran down the hill but two
of them
hesitantly moved toward us.  I went down to meet them and took their hands and smiled up at them.

     They smiled and I knew we had some important converts.  They would help us by letting us know what the guards had planned.

     The most important
thing was
, these were human beings who had been harmed and were about to be made whole again.

     Irene was at the entrance to meet us and we sat around while each of us told our stories.  She served refreshments and I could see that this would become part of the orientation for newcomers.

     For the first time Irene warned these two about the pain they would have to go through to become healed.

     We went into the city and these two
new men looked amazed.  We had
barely arrived when they fell to their knees.  It didn’t scare me as much as the first few times I had seen it and I was thinking that I hoped they would have a different color of hair than we did.

    
Once again, the met
al poured out of them and the hair started growing out.  I laughed.  I couldn’t help it.  I had wanted them to have a different color of hair and they did.  It was green.

     The old saying came to me, “Be careful what you wish for.”  I knew I would have to be more specific.

     The girls came back from swimming and they loved the green hair.  “I wish mine was pink,” Pud said.  We looked in amazement as her hair turned from red to pink.  Zen and Zoe wanted purple and it happened.

     “What are you going to be called?” Pud asked the guards.

     They looked at each other and one asked, “What do you mean?”

     “Well, I’m Pud, this is Ashley, This is Joe
, this is Zen
,
and Zoe.”

      When they continued to stare at her she said, “Okay, you’re Evan and you’re Emmitt.”  They agreed and Pud said she wanted to be the official namer from now on.  We agreed.
  Evan and Emmitt chose a green house to share.  It turned out that they were brothers.  They were ha
rd to tell apart except that Eva
n was a little taller.

CHAPTER 17

     Joe, Irene, Evan and Emmitt and I had a meeting in Irene’s house
.

     “They aren’t planning on destroying any more of the dwellings.  They now believe the dwellings are living
things and are somehow connected to the cave,” Evan said.

     Emmitt picked up the explanation, “They have had the cave staked out for some time and have seen people come in and come out with the changes.  They intend to destroy
the cave using bombs
.”

     “When and how do they think they can do this?” Irene asked.

     “They have bombs?” I asked.

     The two guards looked at each other and hesitated.
Finally it was Eva
n who spoke up, “you saw the man at the meeting whose head exploded.  It wasn’t an accident.  The last implant that man, who was only 46 by the way,
the last implant he had was designed to become a human bomb. 

     “They’ve perfected it since then and it will be a larger explosion next time.”

     Joe slammed his hand down on the table.  I jumped.  I had never seen him express anger before.  “I suppose they are going to get people to volunteer by promising them the new implants will enable them to father children?”

     “More than that,” Evan continued.  “They are asking for volunteers from both men and women.  The new implants are supposed to increase the sex drive as well as improve fertilization.”

     I didn’t know if I should tell them of my pregnancy which I had confirmed just that morning.  If we could get to these people who were going to volunteer, and I could tell them about Joe impregnating me after he was healed and made whole maybe we could convert them.

     Joe looked at me and silently communicated, “It’s up to you.  If you want to tell them go ahead.  They are one of us now.”

     I cleared my throat and then just blurted it out, “I’m pregnant!”

    
The two of them looked at me and then looked down at my belly.

     “No, I’m not showing yet but I have all the signs.  I’ve had a baby before and I know and Joe knows for sure.  He’s the father by the way.  He got me pregnant after the implants were removed.

    
“If we could convince these people who are so desperate to have children that they are willing to get yet another implant, that all of that and more can happen for them after they are healed, maybe they would join us.”

     “There’s something else
you don’t know but Joe may know.  When you have the implants, there are some of them that act as a logic distortion.  What I mean by that is that every time you start to question decisions made by the authorities, they block it and your thoughts go somewhere else.”

     “So they actually have some sort of mind control over everyone?”

    
“Yeah, they do and I think it’s getting harder and harder to think for yourself if you have the implants.”

     I looked at Joe and he nodded, “We have to get to these people before they make some of them into human bombs.  When are the volunteers supposed to get these new implants and how many volunteers are there.”

     “The first group will start day after tomorrow.  Then there will be a group of about 20 every day until there are 100 people both men and women.”

     After much discussion we decided to go down early the next morning and tell these volunteers the truth about what they were really volunteering for.
  Evan’s time table was off, we were already too late.

     The first group had just been admitted to the hospital as we headed down the hill.  As we walked around, people outside their dwellings appeared to be anxious.

     When we reached the center of a group of dwellings, a crowd gathered around us.  They stared at our hair and clothes.

     “They’re almost like children,” I thought to myself.  “They have had the authorities thi
nking for them for so long
they are lost.

     We found a group of big rocks and boulders and decided to rest.  As soon as we sat down, they formed a semi circle around us and sat on the grass.

    
“Talk to them, Ashley,” Joe said.

     I looked around among the crowd that was amazingly growing by leaps and bounds.  None of them had spoken.  There must
have been near 100 by then.  I
cleared my throat.

     “The authorities are lying to you.  These new implants you’ve volunteered for aren’t what they told you they were.  They are bombs.  The ones of you who were at the meeting the other night saw a man’s head explode.  It was a test.

     “They had implanted a small bomb in his head.  The ones they have designed for the new volunteers are much bigger and are meant to blow up our cave and city.

     “Some of you have seen the city inside the cave.  There, you can be healed.”

     I stood and put my arms around Evan and Emmitt, “Do you recognize these two men?  They used to be governmental guards.  They have joined us in the city and have been healed.  They know the truth.

     “Are any of you scheduled for the first
new implants tomorrow?”

     An old woman near the back stood and shouted, “There’s a group already there right now.  Two of them are my daughter and son-in-law.  Can you save them?  I tried to talk them out of going, but they’re desperate for a child.”