“She always kept herself ready for the end of the world.
“That’s what I remember of my mom.
“She was always prepared.
“Even as we lived the normal suburban lifestyle; quietly she taught me all of the skills I was using in the resistance. Such as camping and lying and getting the most out of people. She taught me how to survive.”
MEMORY: Sitting on a stool in the corner of the kitchen. Watching mother bake and chat with the visiting friends filling the living room. Not a one of them could guess that secretly she didn’t want them in her home.
She was a brilliant liar. She taught him so much. / :MEMORY
Mother could be quite vivacious. She brought energy and positivity to every situation. She had a cold pragmatism to her, but it was wrapped in a layer of silly laughter and a lighthearted intelligence. She charmed everyone that met her, personality shifting like a chameleon.
He loved that only family ever got to see the real her. It taught him to wear different faces in public and at home.
She taught him that family was the most important thing, but that there could also be extended family–*Family* as it were–people to count on and be counted by.
When the government collapsed, all he saw was his family. He kept the people he loved alive, and they fought just as hard to protect him.
And then there were more people and they were a Family.
And other Families appeared and they were Clans.
And there were scuffles and Wars and the Clans, the Companies, the *Nations*–all of them had found their places in the world.
And there was peace for fifty years.
And then the Others came, and even after they were defeated and humanity slipped the bonds of slavery, society still fell into despair and ruin.
There were more baseline humans than ever before and the nanotech factories had long gone silent. All of the technicians were dead.
And he continued to care for his Family, the people that he had gathered together during the rebellion and made his own. They looked to him for guidance, and he made vows to do his best for them.
Which made the discovery of the time machine an intriguing prospect, one that he was unable to turn away from.
Being able to somehow change things and shorten his peoples’ hardships, how could he say no?
He weighed what he knew of the cost and made the choice.
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ASIDE: She lived with a steady sense of urgency. There was something terrible coming in the future. She’d lived long enough to FEEL when the family luck was about to change.
She turned a bunch of toolboxes into survival kits and storage for extra things. Band-Aids at first, then small screw driver sets, rubber mallets [ILLUSTRATION: great for tanning hides and hammering in nails], and first aid kits.
The first survival boxes she made were simple things. Then she began adding changes of clothes and The Friendly Swedes’ magnesium emergency fire starters to the boxes and they evolved into something a bit more complete, with a few days rations, a simple survival pamphlet, and a pencil box of bare necessity supplies in every one.
She didn’t know what was coming, but she wanted to be prepared.
Because she only had to glance into Sean’s eyes to see that he would fight. Whatever the future brought, he would not be content with just surviving. And whatever trouble found him, he would bring it home to her.
A life on the run had no appeal, but she’d done it before. She could teach him all the ways to be small and quiet, unnoticed in crowds of people. She could teach him to blend into the background and wait for chance and opportunity.
But until he became desperate, she despaired of him ever learning subtlety. He was a strutting peacock and she worried for him.
And quietly she prepared. Prepping for her son’s future.
