Michael Bunker: Pennsylvania

This one is for my family for always encouraging me to write more stories. Thanks for listening to me read them to you, and thanks for loving them. Thanks to my beta readers for all of your help. You are appreciated more than you know. A huge thank-you goes out to David Gatewood, my editor, for your wonderful work and help in making this book and series as good as we can possibly make it.

Thanks to my friend Jason Gurley for the incredible book cover! Check out Jason’s website: http://jason-gurley.squarespace.com/portfolio/

“Explain it to me again, brother. How do you get from here to there?”

Jed pushed his forehead into Zoe’s flank to make certain that she didn’t kick. She didn’t do it often, but she’d nailed him before and he wasn’t anxious for a repeat of that performance. He exhaled in mock annoyance at his little brother’s questions, but the truth was that he loved talking about the journey. He just pretended to hate it. Talking about it made it seem more real, but somehow less imminent in a way that he wasn’t sure he understood completely. He’d explained the whole pilgrimage and the colonization process to Amos a hundred times, at least, but Amos wasn’t going to stop talking about it until his older brother was gone.

“An airbus picks me up there,” he pointed up the long, winding drive, “and we fly to the Columbia checkpoint. From there, I board an English airbus that takes me to the Speedwell Galactic Transport station out in the desert in far West Texas. From there, all the pilgrims will board a ship bound for New Pennsylvania.”

“You’re really going, Jed?”

“I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. I’ve already paid for my ticket, all except the monitoring. Nothing has happened that would change my mind, so I’m going.”

Jed finished stripping out the final teat, and the last squirts of milk buzzed into the bucket, which was now almost overflowing. “Our people have been pioneering for a thousand years or more. When our ancestors came here to Pennsylvania, they came on fearsome and incredible ships, traveling in ways that were strange to them at the time.”

“I felt sure you’d change your mind; just sure of it,” Amos said.

Amos was fourteen, fully four years younger, spry and witty, and he was not old enough yet to go through the initiation and orientation process that was administered to anyone interested in pioneering in New Pennsylvania.

Jed finished wiping down Zoe’s udder with warm water mixed with a light and mild soap, and then he stood, hanging the milking stool on the post with practiced dexterity.

“Once we get on our way…” He paused. This was the hard part to explain. “You see, Amos, New Pennsylvania is very, very far away—outside of our galaxy—in a place with another sun altogether. Anyway, once we board the ship, the passengers go to sleep in these things called ‘pods,’ and, according to the paperwork, we’ll sleep for nine full years. But—and this is the tricky thing—when we wake up, we won’t have aged any at all.”

Amos had heard this explanation from his older brother many times before, but he still whistled at the thought.

“And it will be that nine years will have passed according to the ship’s time. But all in all, to the passenger, it will feel like a journey of just a few hours!”

“I don’t understand it, Jed,” Amos said, screwing up his mouth and shaking his head. “I don’t know why the elders have approved of it.”

“What else can we do, little brother? Where can we go? We’re running out of land here, and no one can afford to buy any more. The government is pushing us out. It’s always been this way. The elders approved of this migration for the same reasons that many centuries ago they approved of our migration from Europe to here. Without it, we’ll be erased as a people. It’s already happening, Amos. Almost everyone we know works in town in the factories. Our population is exploding, and our way of life is dying out. But this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

“No?”

“No. It’s happened many times way far back in history, but it happened during Grandfather’s time too, when the wars came, and the population of the English dwindled, and after that, we had room to spread out more.”

Amos shrugged and his shoulders dropped. “Right. And this time, there is nowhere to go. But why must you go all the way to another planet ? And why must Mother and Father never hear from you ever again?”

“When our people left Germany, Holland, and France to come to Pennsylvania, do you think they kept in touch with the old places after that? They didn’t rush home for weddings or funerals, Amos. It was too far away, and the travel was too expensive and too dangerous. There were no phones, and letters were expensive. Our people were never much for those forms of communication anyway.”

Jed looked at his brother and slapped him on the back. “Once I leave for New Pennsylvania, I’ll be in a place where it’s impossible to communicate back to here. The ships that take us there, they never come back. It’s a one-way voyage because those machines travel millions and millions of miles while we just sleep away there in the pods.” Jed looked at his brother and smiled. “Don’t be sad, little brother. It will only be a few years before you can come too. In fact, if the Lord wills it, when you start on your own journey, you’ll already be on your way by rocket ship before I even get there! Hopefully I’ll have a place set up for us by the time you arrive, and we’ll work the farm together.”

Amos shuffled his feet, his eyes down and his voice lowered, almost in a mumble. “Why can’t Mother and Father join us? Why don’t we all—everyone in the community—travel together at the same time?”

While they talked, Jed poured the milk into a stainless-steel vat, closed the lid, then unhooked Zoe from the tether that kept her in the milking stall. He backed her out and then walked with her out of the barn and into the southwest paddock. Amos followed with his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his black broadfall pants.

“You know the answers to those questions, Amos. They want young people. Eighteen to twenty-five only. They need people to work the land, and the pioneers who go will need every advantage they can get. It’s going to be tough starting out. The new colony cannot yet afford to take care of the elderly and the infirm. Besides, Mother and Father don’t want to go. This has always been their home, and though they support us going when it’s our time, they agree with the elders: only those who are needed should go.”

Jed unhooked the lead from Zoe’s halter and she walked only a few steps away before she started grazing on the lush grass. He folded up her lead and stuck it in his front pocket, and as he continued trying to soothe and placate his troubled brother, the two walked across the paddock.

“Eighteen to twenty-five is the perfect age, anyway. The younger children can work the farms here, and those who emigrate are the ones who would be just starting to look for their own land and new farms. Well, there aren’t many farms to find any more, so pioneering is the new thing. But it’s not new. Like I said before, our people have been doing it since the beginning. There’s nothing really new in this at all.”

Amos looked up as he followed his brother to the pump near the paddock fence. Jed pumped the handle, and when the cool, clear water came bursting forth, Amos scrubbed the milk pail under it until it was spotless. The grass grew thick and lush around their feet, and the water that splashed over it formed into glassy droplets on the blades and made the grass glisten.