Chapter 29
Green Mountains, Homeland
Milton was lying on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling of his barren apartment in the secret Lucid compound when he heard a knock on the door.
“Yeah,” he said loud enough for the visitor to hear.
“It’s me.”
Milton sighed when he recognized Beth’s voice. He got up as if he was decrepit and ambled to the door. He removed the simple crossbar lock and opened the door.
Beth saw Milton’s captured rifle with the scope standing up in the corner of his room. In the other far corner she saw dirty clothes in a big heap in the corner. Milton owned a lot more clothes than most of the people in the chilly underground hidden lair. “Yeah, okay,” she said in disapproval.
“Wut,” Milton said.
Beth said, “I just wanted to come and talk to you.”
“You did? I mean, you do?”
“I’ve been thinking. I think we ought to leave this place.”
“Really? And go where?”
“I think we should go to the ISA.”
“Why, Jenn working you too hard?”
“No. It’s not like that. I told you and told you already. I just keep thinking the smurfs are going to come here again.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much . . .”
“Why? Can you guarantee that they won’t find us?’
Milton was silent, and then said, “This is a safer place than the building in Hartford.”
“But it’s not even just that. Living here has made me realize that we are not really free. I know it would be dangerous and all going to the ISA, but if we are in a free country, we could get rid of this fear hanging over us once and for all. We could go out and do whatever we want. Anyways, I want to go, but I don’t want to go unless you go with me.”
Milton was silent again. He flopped back down on the floor and stared at the rustic split-rail supported ceiling of his dimly lit subterran apartment again.
“Well, what are you thinking?”
“I don’t know; I’m trying to think what Dad would do. What would he want me to do? It’s hard to imagine that he would ever let you . . . or me, get put into danger by making a trip like that. You know, if we tried to escape to the ISA, everyone in Homeland would be out to stop us. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not real popular with the government. Or the people.”
“Don’t you think Dad would want us to be free?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do these creepy robots really need you here that badly?”
“Not really. And I keep telling them they don’t need me because they say my opinion is so important, but then when I do talk they never listen. It makes no sense. It seems like all their plans are really good, but then after they do something they want to do, like a couple days ago when they took down some VR worlds or took over a city, nothing seemed to make the smurfs want to give into their demand that they allow people to talk about God. I don’t know why people are so pig-headed about being against God. It seems like they know He is really there, but they still hate him. Then I think the people just end up hating the Lucids for ruining their VR worlds and TV shows. The people hate me too. I know they do.”
Beth said, “Yeah, and if you think about it, those VR addicts won’t run to a secret church or anything after they lost all their VR stuff, they’ll just go to another VR world or lose their minds. They have to want to find out about God on their own before they will do it. As long as they are in some goofy lalaland, that will never happen.”
“Anyway, right now I don’t really see what the point is in what the androids are doing. I’m just really tired of all this and everything we’ve been through. I miss our life of being in school and Mom. I know this is all my fault. I ruined it for all of us.”
“All you did was to ask a question,” Beth said.
“Anyways, this is a job for an older guy, a guy who has been a Christian a lot longer. So I guess there is nothing really keeping me here, other than not getting caught by the smurfs, which is not a favorite thing to think about. But I’m sure ISA is not perfect either.”
Beth said, “Yeah but If Homeland is so much better than the ISA, then how come they always try to stop you from leaving? This country is run by a bunch of psychos. Everyone says, ‘The ISA is so backwards, you would hate it there, blah blah blah’. What a joke. I’m living underground right now eating green junk. Right now I’d rather go back to some artificial food and that new kind of meat. I know it’s bad for me to say, but I said it.”
“I do agree that the smurfs will eventually have to find out about us sometime. So I guess what you are saying about leaving makes sense.”
“Yeah, it does,” Beth said. “So what do you want to do? Should we tell anyone?”
“I guess so.”
“Daaa! Are you sure about anything?!”
“No! Not really, okay?!”
“It’s okay, Milton. You wanna talk to people tomorrow?”
“Alright.”