The Collapse CXXXXVII: Wheat

 20 July 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

We were up and off at the crack of dawn: myself, our group, Cato, and three others with him, the two gentleman we had seen yesterday and a third young man, whom he introduced as his Son (who has become Cato the Younger, of course).

The planned trip was a little over two miles; the intent was to make it to the site, perform a visual assessment of the state of the wheat (and ability to harvest it), and then return back here. We would head out the following day, hopefully bearing news.

The road was similar to what we had seen for the last few days and the trip as ordinary as any other day we had been walking until the flankers, Cato’s men (due to their familiarity with the area) returned with two pieces of news. The first was that there was, in fact, a field with wheat. The second was that there people in the wheat field, with every appearance of folks looking as if they were thinking of a harvest.

This was unexpected to say the least.

A hurried conference was held. Had the scouts seen pickets? No, but they assumed that they were somewhere. Weapons? Nothing obvious – but again, hard to see. Did it look like forced labor – chains, overseers, field bosses? No. Anything that suggested our recent sort of Locusts? Anything distinctive about them? After thinking for a moment, Cato the Younger said “Young. They were almost all young – college age or thereabouts”.

Young, college age kids not under compulsion out in a field, maybe harvesting wheat. We sat there thinking for a moment. Finally the Colonel asked “Didn’t the College up the road have an agricultural program?

We discussed potential outcomes and finally came up with a solution – risky, but maybe not that risky.

Five of us – the good shots – headed up to the edge of the hill. I, stripping down my upper body, tied my undershirt to dead branch. Carefully I edged up to the hill – well below where the firing line was – and raised the shirt/flag.

The reaction was effectively what you might think it was: a scattering of people onto the ground. Likely at this point whatever guards they had were now engaged.

We all sat there – us on the edge of the ridge, my shirt fluttering in the wind, the field to our front shifting with waves in the grain and waves made by bodies – for some period of time, probably much shorter than I think. Then, slowly, someone got up and held his arms wide, clearly unarmed.

Taking what for me as an undue amount of chance (I have become reckless in my old age, Lucilius!) I came up over the rise and held my hands out as well, one grasping the ready-made truce flag, the other wide open.

“We don’t have anything” came the shout form the field, the voice of an older man.

“That is okay” I shouted back. “We are just looking for wheat.”

He seemed to talk to the stalks around him. Another half dozen came up out, youngish men and women from what I could see. From our side, Young Xerxes and Ox rose up, firearms pointed down.

And that, Lucilius, is how we met Epicurus and Themista and their troupe of college students.

After the initial introductions – everyone out slowly, guns down – a slow course of conversation started which eventually became a flood: Where were you from? How did you survive? And you? And why are you here, or how did you even get here?

Within a little while, the conversations had boiled down into smaller groups. The Colonel, Cato the Elder, and the man we now knew as Epicurus were talking higher level items – crops, yields, labor, likelihood of harvesting undisturbed. One of Cato’s men, Josè, was off with some of the students to look at the house that was attached to this part of the property; they said there was some kind of radio but they had no idea if or how it worked. Ox, The Leftenant, and the other of Cato’s men was off walking point along with the group here (The Leftenant, apparently, giving pointers so that our appearance unannounced was not repeated). Young Xerxes and Cato the Younger had fallen in with the students; perhaps the first time in over a year or more they had spent time where a majority of the people were in their age bracket.

I spent time with Themista. Yes, there are notes that will be an entry all its own.

The short – very short – version is that this group was from the Big City State College, a group of effectively marooned students and teachers that had nowhere else to go, so they made do during the Winter and Spring. Epicurus, as it turns out, was an agricultural professor there, and apparently the operating head of this group. He – like me -had remembered this plot of land, regularly planted but far enough from the main centers of population that it might still be a resource.

By the time afternoon had rolled around, the readiness of the grain to be harvested (another 6 weeks or so, without any inclement weather) was guessed at, the aforementioned radio turned on and used to communicate with Cato’s people via the help of a small battery bank (and a message to be relayed on from there to the Garnet Valley), and some level of discussion had occurred about what was to be done with it – or so I surmise; I was scarcely involved in any of the discussions. I spent my time talking, walking, listening, taking notes and pondering (like, for example, how much grain could it be theoretically possible to harvest by hand, and how would that even work).

We set off back to the edge of Cato’s property well before evening, wanting to get an early start on the trip home tomorrow. The group, all of them, waved us a hearty goodbye as we went up and around the corner.

The young, Lucilius. Perhaps a future yet exists for us.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca