May 2037: Five years after the pandemic changed the world.

     It has been quite a struggle but we have made progress. The village has doubled in size over the years as people have come from all over for the safety, convenience and general benefits living in a community like Los Angeles. A climate and location it always had that made LA so great in the first place. 

       As a result, we've made progress because of the people that joined our construction company and started other companies doing all kinds of things that needed to be done to reestablish some semblance of the life we had before the pandemic and for California, the two “Great Ones” as we call the earthquakes that set our progress back but didn't totally defeat us like it seemed in the beginning, three years ago, they would.

       With no real port except the damaged one in San Diego, Captain Jens Jensen and Dani, his wife, came ashore by a tender boat to a town meeting shortly after the tsunami and made the following announcement for everyone who was there or online to hear… Jens appeared haggard and tired, but was dressed in his full white captain's uniform.

     “I want to first tell you that it has been amazing to be a part of this community for the past two years as we worked together and recovered from probably the greatest tragedy that has hit our world–ever. But the earthquake and tsunami has struck a blow to the port and my ship that is nearly insurmountable. 

     “I have been in touch with our corporation in Denmark and have decided, the first thing in spring, to take the Northern Passage back to the Rambler's birthplace on a river in Germany. To be refitted with a reduced crew they have there to do the work.”

     There was a collective gasp among the people in the audience as they heard the news. Having been dependent upon the ship for so many things for so long. When the good captain sensed their concern, he raised his hand to stop the murmuring and spoke again…

       “Please don't despair… Any of my shipmates, my crew who want to stay here, can. And any of you who wish to take the long voyage can certainly join us in the journey that will require you to work as hard as you ever have to make sure that we make it with so many windows out through the frigid waters full of icebergs until we reach the North Sea open water again by August if everything goes well. But the Rambler is a good ship and still one of the fastest and most maneuverable of cruise ships, ever. I think we will make the trip there and back within three years, maybe four.”

      With that there was a cheer from the audience and as soon as the meeting was over, several people came to the stage to sign up for the trip and to help with the refitting half a world away.

       And, I'm pleased to write that it took us only a short while to reestablish the fish market after we removed debris from the destroyed hotel and moved the few people that still had lived there to housing in neighborhoods beyond the elevation the tsunami had reached.

     Rebuilding the port to accept the Rambler when it came back earlier this year required removing a lot of debris in the channel and a lot of concrete work to restore the pier from both earthquake and tsunami damage. It is so good to have the ship back with even some new people from Germany and other parts of Europe wishing to come to Southern California with our increasing droughts and periods of hurricanes and rain. Not to mention, earthquakes. But I believe more big ones are a long way off, given our history of earthquake cycles.

       Henricks Construction Company is the only one in town, except for some loyal subcontractors who managed to survive and continue to work with us. And, we have engaged in a tremendous public works project funded only by money stolen from all the coffers in all the bank's safe-deposit boxes, unclaimed, to help pay all of the people who had to learn new trades and work very hard to rebuild, better than before, our town from a village to someday, a great metropolis again.

       We have been opening, first the highways through town, and then, streets, as necessary, so that commerce can continue using many driverless, solar powered vehicles and taxis that our meager automotive repair people can make roadworthy. 

       One of our greatest accomplishments, about three years ago, was being able to get driverless, AI operated, 18 wheelers on the road coast-to-coast that are solar powered. With a normal range of about 600 miles on a charge, whenever there are periods of no sun, they just park by the side of the road until their batteries are fully charged again and then continue on automatically to their next destination that may or may not be occupied by humans. Robots and drones do much of the loading and offloading and distribution for us as well.

       Our nurseries and preschools have continued to grow. Melody and I, not only have Ron and Reg who are 4 and already showing Derek and me how to run our operations with their skillful toys, like flying drones as skillfully as any of us oldsters; she has also blessed me with Mindy, 3, Chase, 2, Cindy, 1, and a boy we hope to call, Rake, due in about 4 months. 

       In addition, I have about 15 other kids who I won't bore you with all of their names and ages from women who needed a helping hand and needed children to help them reestablish their lives again, overcoming depression and giving them purpose and hope. I promise to support every one of them financially, if need be. In preschool, they are all playing together and studying together as one big happy family.

       We are reopening elementary schools for the expected surge of young students to come. In the meantime, using what is still operating on the Internet, our preschools are using smart technology and AI to enhance the minds of these young children in ways that we never imagined when Derek and I were in school. We may have some Einsteins, Steve Jobs or Elon Musks already in their midst, soaking up knowledge we can't believe as we work on mundane nuts and bolts projects getting things working again.

       We now have every available helicopter in the Los Angeles area flying with pilots. But also, countless drones doing daily deliveries of many things up to 50 pounds and other duties like canvassing areas for infrastructure repairs. 

       We are a very busy community these days but not in the way we were before the pandemic. Most of us go to our place of work in the morning and return in the evening to relax and unwind. But there's no more long commutes and busy business office activity during the days. 

       Actually, it's quite quiet and a place where wildlife are flourishing in all the new open spaces along with our domestic animals grazing. It is an almost pastoral scene going back to the beginning of Los Angeles over 500 years ago.

          Ray, Derek and I relax some evenings after a hard day’s work by taking the helicopter up to the abandoned estate at the end of the compound to look for quail, emu and ostrich eggs, shoot some of the birds in season, help reduce the growing population of wild pigs, and bag an occasion blacktail buck. If the bear become a problem, we kill them for food because their population is growing and stable. The same with other predators, like bobcat and cougar. When they become a threat to our village people and children we find it best to eliminate them. The food is always welcome for its freshness and taste.

       During the spring while egg hunting, we bring the kids because they always find it a lot of fun along with helping us pick mushrooms, locate tasty cactus, and other wild food that we can add to our diet. Ron and Reg have become part of our fall deer and bear hunting, although we have to carry them sometimes when they grow tired of walking through the chaparral hills with us.

       For the last three years we have launched weeklong hunting expeditions including over 100 of our Village people to the Sierras. There, we can hunt mountain goat and elk along with what we hunt in the coastal ranges. Of course, we always stop by to see Gramps along the way.

       Grandpa Ralph Hendricks is thriving since he took in the 17-year-old orphan, Stephanie, the only family member that survived from the gang in town. Two years ago, they were blessed with a new arrival, Abilene (Able), and the farmhouse no longer looks like a bachelor pad.

       Gramps always reminds me, “I don’t know who he looks like more, Drake, you or Julio Iglesias… from the way he yells, I think he’s going to be a singer.” 

         And then, he chuckles loudly, a proud father again after all these years.

     We have sent our representatives and senators to Washington, but they mostly remain here and work through the Internet. Like everything else, websites that were still active after the pandemic have begun to fail for lack of maintenance. We have had to enlist the genius of Augie Palmer, assisted by Wondah, to find some major servers in town, to restore some websites and create new ones for our use.

    Washington assures us that our greatly downsized military are doing great work helping others throughout the world recover using our warships and planes. They are also drawing on funds from banks all over to fund projects on the order of the New Deal to help us get the railroads back working, refineries working to provide all of the synthetics and chemicals we have become so dependent upon. As well as help decentralize power sources because the grid in most places no longer operates.

       Assurance that everyone who survived is moved to safer places to live as the droughts, violent storms and resulting floods ravaging more and more of the country until they can be turned around by lowering the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Something that happened almost overnight when the pandemic occurred, but needs to be enhanced if we are going to make it to the 21st century without everyone and every animal, bird and insect dying along with fish and aquatic life in the rivers and seas.

       It's a daunting task to turn things around, but from what I hear worldwide, everyone, everywhere, is doing it in a cooperative way. So many wars have ended while survivors from warring factions are now cooperating with each other. I hate to say it too soon, but it's a great time to be alive.

Copyright 2024 © Ronald W. Hull

5/10/24