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October 9, 2007

Tuesday

How long have we been walking?

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Jim: The Road To Hell

In numbers beyond measure, we walk the cracking road:
Ever straight, becoming a steel point on the horizon,
While smoke gray clouds growl deeply above.
No daytime, no night. Only the timeless gray.
And on we walk.

The road cuts through black forests of skeletal trees,
Their charred branches grasping toward the heavy clouds
With the futility of good intentions.
And on we walk.

That which is behind us cannot be remembered
And that which is ahead cannot be denied.
And on we walk.

We are drawn by hunger and by thirst.
And on we walk.

And on.

And on.

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Michele: Somewhere Out There

"You shouldn't carry her."

"I can’t leave her body out there for..." he searched futilely for the right word. "..those....things?"

"You can't keep carrying her."

"The hell I can't."

"We've been walking three hours and still haven’t found a safe place."

The man stopped, laid the girl's body down. Her legs torn, her face bloated, her hands gone, she still looked very much like a little girl.

Something stirred in the bushes. An almost human growl could be heard.

"It wants her body."

The boy listened to the growl and picked up the girl’s body. “Let’s keep walking, dad.”

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Dave: Long Walk to a Short Peer

Chrys flopped down on a boulder.  "How long have we been walking?"

Roger glanced at his watch. Again.  "Couple of hours, I guess, but this thing's still not working"

"A-yah.  I should have brought different shoes."

He chuckled.  "Never thought I'd miss the old army boots, but they'd be better on this kind of ground than wingtips."

"Try heels, dearest."

"Me and Uncle Miltie."  Roger surveyed the pinkish rock fields under an orange, sunless sky.  "How much further you think?"

Chrys shrugged.  "Until the Taotai decides the joke's over.  Or we get someplace.  Either way --"  She raised and accepted a hand up. "-- let's go."

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Ted: Early Days, pt 3

The floods took everything. The heavy heat and the snarl took the weakest and slowest. Within a year, the population was down to thirty thousand. Thirty thousand hard survivors.

Their children learned history and language, mathematics and geometry: everything that could be salvaged of Earth knowledge went into this new oral tradition.

But they had to stay hard.

By gen three, the younglings proved themselves ready to marry by walking to all ten hands, alone and naked.

The seven hundred mile circuit claimed less than half of the walkers. The elders tried to not let anyone younger than fourteen try.

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