Chapter Ten: “Now I Can Dance.”

Alec had announced the direction he was going, and those with family in that direction had given him letters. A few had hitched a ride most of the way there, and branched off when they got closer to where they wanted to be.

But when they got back to the Train Station they had taken Rachel to, they had a few hours to wait. They found a cart that sold sandwiches and tea, and settled on a park bench.

"Strange, playing Postman again." Alec commented. "I only had the job for a few months, but part of me misses it."

Rachel sipped her drink. "How so?"

"Well, don't get me wrong, I was glad to have everyone back. I saw a whole generation, nearly two generations disappear, one funeral at a time. But... Those were the people I turned to with my problems. When the world sneered at us, and total strangers abused us, those were the ones who picked me up again... And now there are no strangers. There are no..." Alec waved vaguely. "Suddenly they're all over me. They all want to know what it was like, what they missed, what I saw, what I remember as the most interesting part."

"It sounds like a good change."

"I know it does, but I've never once, in my life, been the centre of attention. In school I was the 'kid from the freaky cult who never got a birthday gift'. Then Secondary School, and I was the 'cold fish that never went to parties'. Even in the Cong, I was never exactly the one that people turned to. I wasn't an MS or an Elder, and..." He shook his head. "It was not a hardship, it was like wearing glasses. Not ideal, but not in any way prohibitive, because I was just used to it."

"And now you're one of the people with a miraculous life that everyone wants to know about."

Alec smirked and waved at the statue. "Back in OS, I was the guy who walked through town the whole day and never had a conversation. But I remember the Literature carts. I always went up to them, even when it was brothers I didn't know."

"Me too."

"I have no idea why, but... I just walked up to the people at the cart and said hi."

"Back in the old days, it was considered unseemly to start talking to someone without being formally introduced first. For us, the process was simple. The Congregation, the Magazine, the Lit Cart was your introduction." She offered. "I remember the last International, they told us to wear our ID badges the day before the program started."

"I remember. The whole day, walking around a town I'd never been to, waving and smiling and hugging a bunch of total strangers."

"It's what happens, I guess. Like seeks like. We all had this common thing back then."

"Still do. We're just not outnumbered any more." Alec countered. "That's my point. How does the world change when everyone we meet has the same common thing that made us run to total strangers back in the old days?" He waved at the road. "Any person we meet, we could ask them where they come from, how they got here... They'd all know what the question meant, and they'd all love to tell us the answer. I wonder if we're going to make any kind of distance when everyone we meet will be bursting to tell us something wonderful."

"I wonder if we'll even care how long it takes." She chuckled. "The mortal fear of an introvert is a conversation you can't escape."

"It is. If I'm honest, I was really worried about that. How can you be a JW and be introverted?"

"Hey, it's more common than you think. Especially at the end. God commanded us to love one another, but nobody said anything about being talkative."

"Mm."

"Jesus said 'Do not embrace anybody in greeting along the road.' He was giving his disciples their marching orders for the ministry. He wasn't telling them to be rude. He was telling them not to get distracted. A 'meet and greet' back then was the sort of conversation that would lead to being invited in for a meal. They had work to do then. We do too. We all will. Everyone we meet is making a journey of their own. But we have this common thing and it's our point of introduction. And for at least a thousand years, it always will be."

"Speaking of." Alec inclined his head over Beckah's shoulder.

Beckah looked. There was an elderly woman there, looking faintly lost at the train station. She looked back to Alec. "I'll go. Rachel's train arrives in a few minutes. You meet her, I'll join you as soon as I can."

"Easier to promise, now that the phones are working again." Alec said with a grin.

~~/*\~~

"You look lost." Beckah said cheerfully as she came over to the wayward woman.

"Not lost, just… looking for the right direction." The woman smiled back.  "I'm trying to get to Westchester; check on some family."

"I'm afraid the trains don't run quite that far." Beckah told her. "But transport is working out a lot faster than anyone expected. It won't be hard to find a ride. Do you have a license?"

"I did, but I couldn't exactly show it to you." The woman admitted, moving a lot more smoothly than her face would have indicated a year before. "And I haven't driven in… well, the last fifteen or so years of my life."

"Shouldn't be a problem, now. It's not like we have to worry about running people over anymore." Beckah told her with a smile. "But it won't be hard to find someone going that way. There are ‘Welcomings' scheduled all over the place, and with communications back up, everyone's on the move, trying to get there for someone's first day back at school."

"I know. I had people coming in from all over the place for mine."

"So, where were you?" Beckah asked nicely.

The woman jumped a bit at the question. "Oh, um… 1995. I mean, that was when I… You know." She said awkwardly.

"Yeah, I know." Beckah smiled, and held out a hand. "I'm Beckah."

"I'm Celia." She returned. "And if I'm honest, I'm still trying to decide if I'm dreaming. Seventy years believing in this, and now that I'm seeing it, I'm having trouble believing it." Celia gestured to the plaza out front of the train station. "Can I ask? The statue, is that new?"

Beckah looked at the statute in question. It was a copper statue, depicting two elderly people, standing on either side of a Literature Cart. Each of the figures was carrying a bible. "Yup. You probably don't recognize the Lit Cart. That was how we did it in the leadup to The Big Day. Not enough people at home, even fewer willing to answer the door."

"I would have loved to see that." Celia said softly. "By my end, I was barely mobile. I could have pioneered another five years with Carts."

Beckah chuckled. "Most of the pioneers I know were champing at the bit when the dust settled. There was almost nobody left to preach to, and the biggest example of proof they'd ever had." She smiled. "Seriously, the worst days in human history were wrapped around the last hundred years. I remember after 9/11; everyone wanted to talk. They were shutting the door again a week later, but we-"

"What's nine eleven?" Celia asked, confused.

Beckah froze. "Oh. Right." She almost laughed. "I guess it doesn't matter anymore, anyway."

~~/*\~~

Rachel stepped off the train, into a mass of waving people. It was just like when she had left, only more crowded still. More people coming back every day; everyone on the move.

"Oof." Rachel almost fell off the train when Alec gave her a hand down the steps. "These trains are getting a lot more crowded." She smiled. "It's good to see you."

"And you." Alec smiled back. "You have luggage?"

"In several places along the train. First things first: You're an MS now?" She pulled a paper package out of her jacket and handed it to him. "This should go to you. Pass it around."

Alec looked, and unrolled the papers as Rachel turned back to the train for her travel bag. "Is this… what I think it is?"

"We'll need a number of copies."

"A large number, I should think." Alec bit his lip. "There's a number of congregations… some of them in this area, that had restored printing. Or at least copying. I can pass it to a few places; spread the word faster."

"Mm." Rachel gave him a slight smile, and took a small box out of her travel bag. "Here. For you. Consider it a swap for delivering the Program around." She almost giggled when he opened the box and checked his gift. "I bet Beckah would appreciate it." She looked around. "I half expected to see her here with you, in fact. Or was I misreading that?"

"You wouldn't be the only one to reach the same conclusion." Alec said under his breath.

"Well, I don't usually read things that wrong, but I suppose I owe you-"

"Rachel! Rachel!" Beckah called, running up happily. "Welcome home!"

"Oh, forget I said anything." Rachel grinned at Alec.

~~/*\~~

Alec had taken the program to the nearest Congregation Centre, based near the railway station. Rachel and Beckah had settled at the parking lot. There was a delay while the cargo cars of the train were being unloaded, and Rachel had one more item to take along.

That left Rachel with Beckah, alone suddenly. Beckah darted forward and gave her a tight hug. "You're back!"

Rachel returned the embrace. "Feel like I've been away for ten seconds. It's good to see you too, sister."

There was enough happening that it took a while to tell each other everything that had happened since they last spoke. Beckah related her meeting with Celia while they waited for Alec to return. "It was the first Returnee that I hadn't known Before." She finished the story. "I barely remembered some of the stuff she was used to."

"Same thing happened to me over there." Rachel nodded. "There was a Returned Brother there, said he wanted to know where he could get a ‘Knowledge' book. I'd never heard of it." She rose and led the way back down the length of the train station; where the cargo was being stored. "Give me a hand with something?"

Beckah followed. "Sure. You have some new invention to show off?"

Rachel stepped up into one of the transport cars, which was full of luggage. "Not exactly." She led the way to a large package, wrapped in paper. It was about half the height of a barrel, and just as wide. "This is going to take both of us."

"One thing about being in a wheelchair, nobody asks you to help move furniture." Beckah drawled. "What is it?"

"Get it to the car, I'll show you."

~~/*\~~

Beckah burst out laughing when Rachel peeled the paper back. "Cheese?"

"Delivered to my connecting station in Eastern Europe." Rachel explained. "The brothers there found a large warehouse full of cheese, aging slowly. The climate control was out; so they had to… distribute it or let it spoil. They're sending fifty kilo wheels of cheese across to every congregation in the world. I got handed one just for getting on a connecting train. Anyone who can put it in a safe place is free to keep it for a century or two. Otherwise, hold a cheese and crackers night for the entire Congregation. Or the Circuit."

Beckah found the whole thing hilarious. "Ohh, my mom went on a tour once, all around the wine countries? They were showing off the wine cellars, with hundred year old bottles of wine, seventy year old cheeses… We're all going to be living like that, aren't we?"

"Over at The Conference, there's…" Rachel shook her head. "There's a sort of ‘minimalist' group. We have food; we have drink, why do we need anything else? If we live on stuff so purely gourmet, I can see their point." She noticed Beckah staring at the cheese. "Not a fan of Parmesan?"

"Just… not what I expected." Beckah sighed. "A day ago, I was praying, and… I kind of got some direction to go this way. I come here looking for answers, and I find cheese."

Rachel smothered a laugh. "If you're looking for wisdom, I don't claim to have any more than I left with, though I've been spending some time with really smart people. If it's a spiritual matter… I mean, what was the question?"

"Why like this?" Beckah said quietly.

~~/*\~~

Alec rejoined them at that point, and the three piled into the car. "I got them to make me a copy of the Program, so I can take the original back to…" He paused. "I smell cheese."

Rachel, in the backseat, gestured to her left. The cheese wheel was beside her; taking up half the backseat.

"Okay." Alec said, without even blinking. "So, we can take the Program back to our Cong, get a dozen copies made, send them out to other Circuits."

Beckah looked at him oddly as he got back in the Driver's Seat.. She stared for several seconds before it struck her, and she brought a hand up to touch his chin. "You've shaved." She observed. "Sometime in the last twenty minutes, you've shaved."

"I have." Alec said with a proud smile. "Rachel provided me with a razor. Apparently, they're a popular item right now."

Beckah looked back at their passenger, who nodded. "You'd think they'd be pretty easy to find."

"We don't go back to the cities all that much. Too much to do where we are." Beckah excused her congregation. "Funny thing, but out of the entire circuit, not many brothers thought to bring a shaving kit when they fled to the Halls."

"Every brother in three congregations have been passing two razors back and forth for months." Alec told Rachel. "Just like the clothes, they haven't worn out yet. Good thing too, or we'd be better off shaving with broken glass."

"Hey, it's not like I can judge." Rachel ran a hand through her distinctive silver hair. "Four different sisters wanted to know where I was getting hair dye. Less than four percent of the population has this sort of color naturally. Some thought that I must have been very vain, making hair coloring a priority at a time like this." She was smiling broadly at the two of them.

It took Beckah a moment to realize that she was still holding Alec's face, and broke off, turning red.

"Speaking of the cities, though; there's another part to my visit here." Rachel moved them on. "How are the roads?"

~~/*\~~

Alec drove, Rachel directing him. The warehouse they went to was on the edge of the city. Nature was already moving back into place here, the roads starting to crack. There were railways nearby, but they hadn't seen any people for a while.

"Storage, or industry?" Alec asked.

"Both, but we're here for Storage." Rachel consulted one of her omnipresent notebooks. "I think… another three blocks." She sighed. "So, did I miss anything interesting?"

"Well, one group from our Circuit went around and checked out the Zoo's, but then one of the kids from our Congregation wanted a pet." Beckah offered. "Everyone suddenly remembered animal shelters, pet stores; and one military base."

"Military base?"

"K-9 Units." Alec put in. "There was a bit of a rush to get to them all before… well, all the animals starved to death. Turns out there was no need. The shelters and zoo animals were all turned loose by the time we got there. We checked some of the security footage. Cages just swung open; doors fell off their hinges. Like the cattle, remember?" He took a moment to appreciate the nostalgia. After months apart, the three of them were on the road together again. "But the K-9 pups were still there, like they were waiting for us."

"They probably were." Rachel put in. "There was a man at The Conference who was trying to figure out uses for trained animals. Bomb Sniffing Dogs, Police Dogs, even Seeing-Eye Dogs are now a pack of highly-intuitive, human-dependant creatures that can be trained to do a ridiculous variety of things."

Alec laughed. "Hadn't thought of that. By the way, Rachel? Your warehouse is coming right up."

~~/*\~~

Rachel led the way into the warehouse. Like almost everywhere left in the old civilization, it had been picked over by people looking for food, and then abandoned when the dust settled. But Rachel seemed to know exactly what she was looking for, and she levered one of the crates open.

"Ah! They're still here!" Rachel beamed.

"What is it?" Beckah asked, looking at the many, many shelves with identical crates.

"A solar cell. You can run a house off one of these." Rachel grinned. "There were whole warehouses full of these things all over Europe. If those warehouses survived... We can design our quick builds to run off them, and won't have to worry about power lines or power stations."

"If we had the problem sorted-"

"We had the technology sorted, Alec." Rachel gestured. "This was my thing, before I became a Witness. I lobbied to get this plant open. I saw a chance to eliminate power bills for everyone. Then the lawyers got into it, and..."

"Say no more."

Neither of them understood why Beckah suddenly burst into laughter.

~~/*\~~

"Well, Rachel…" Alec said jovially. "If you brought cheese, we may as well make it a real party." He reached into his bag and brought out a wine bottle, with a light film of dust over it. "Remember these?"

Rachel looked over the faded label and smiled broadly. "This is from the case we found?"

"Seemed appropriate to open another one, now that all three of us are back on the road again." Alec smiled. "See if you can find something to serve that cheese with."

"Oh! I have crackers!" Beckah called. "I like to snack on road trips." She giggled a bit as Alec opened a travel case with fine crystal wine glasses. "A vintage wine, an aged cheese, and us. Aside from the dusty warehouse full of old batteries; it's like we suddenly became posh."

They all laughed as Alec pulled the cork and poured for them. "Well guys, it's been nearly a year since anyone toasted anything, but… I'm glad to have another drink with you both."

"Cheers." They agreed, and drank.

~~/*\~~

Alec and Rachel started going through the inventory. Beckah looked back toward the car, and wasn't surprised to see the Boy with the bible and the guitar. She went over to talk to him. "I get it now." She said quietly. "The problem wasn't that we couldn't fix our problems, it's that we wouldn't. We could have fixed the environment if we stopped focusing on whose job it was to clean it up, and who should profit most. We could have fixed so many diseases if we'd stopped bickering about funding and who got priority. We could have fixed prejudice if we just stopped hating each other, instead of obsessing over who were the goodies and who were the baddies."

"Leadership." The boy nodded. "Leadership, spirit of the world, ‘the devil made me do it'. Pick your phrase. It's easy to say that God's the only one that can properly rule the world because he can conjure food out of thin air, or make storms go quiet with a word; or for that matter, raise the dead. Those things are miracles. Things that no human ruler could ever do. But a great deal of what will set God's kingdom apart from human kingdoms? It's not the magic tricks."

Beckah nodded. "It's the things we could have done ourselves the whole time."

"No human King could claim to wipe out hunger and prejudice and fear for every last human being in the world. But that's because most human kings had limited time, and far different priorities." The boy smiled. "You aren't wrong. God can make a forest grow instantly, can make food fall from the sky forever… But you aren't his pets. You're his subjects. Even his friends. So why doesn't God just ‘snap his cosmic fingers' and do all this work for you?"

"Because that's not leadership." Beckah nodded. "And that's the only thing the world hasn't had in six thousand years." She looked down. "I guess it was a silly question."

"It was a question in need of an answer." The boy nodded. "No one, after lighting a lamp covers it with a vessel or puts it underneath a bed, but he puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see the light. There is nothing hidden that will not become manifest, nor anything carefully concealed that will never become known and not come out in the open."

"Luke 8:17." Beckah nodded, then froze. "Whoa. I didn't know I had that memorized."

"And now, any time someone asks you that question; you will have that particular Light to show them."

Beckah glanced back at her friends, still collecting solar cells. "I wonder how much time will be spent in prep for returnees, and how long we'll spend living all those promises."

"Jah never asked you to go without anything, only to remember what the source of all things was." The boy smiled. "Besides, we've all been waiting for this a whole lot longer than you have. Back in the day, you had to balance your duty to God, and your day-to-day necessities of life. Those two things are a good bit closer together now, wouldn't you say?"

Beckah started to cry. "I spent ten years praying to see the day I could walk again. Now I can." She wiped her eyes. "Less than a year and I'm suddenly doubting?"

"Not doubting, respectfully wondering. There's nothing wrong with questions. Questions were what lead you this way." The boy said. "But if there's one thing your generation is going to need to learn; something that world of a year ago wouldn't teach you… It's patience."

Beckah sniffed, and wiped her eyes again. By the time her hand dropped, the boy had vanished. She smiled a bit and walked back to join her friends.

Alec saw her first. "Can you pass… What's wrong?" He was alarmed at the sight of tears on her face. He almost ran over to her. "Beckah, what is it?"

"Nothing at all." She promised him, and hugged him quickly. "Ten years in that chair, going door-to-door and telling people a better world was coming. Ten years of people telling me I was throwing my life into a fairytale and pitying me too much to try and ‘rescue' me." She wiped her eyes. "Every now and then, realize that I'm fixating on the Dorms, the broken roads..."

"I know." Alec said softly. He noticed Rachel, over at the cars, quietly stepping away and letting them alone for a moment.

Beckah smiled at him, realizing they were the same height now. A year in paradise had given him an extra inch or two. She added to the quotation that the angel had made a moment before. "Therefore, pay attention to how you listen, for whoever has will be given more, but whoever does not have, even what he imagines he has will be taken away from him." She hugged him tightly. "And I have so much already, don't I?"

"We all do. Between understanding the meaning of the scripture, and being free of all the… badness, we may actually have more than any other humans in the history of the world."

"And it's just… every now and then it hits me all over again that this is really happening; and there's only better to come. More learning, more understanding, more light, every minute. Answers to questions we barely finish asking..." Beckah laughed with tears on her face. "Thank God for all of this, Alec… After years and years: Now I can dance."