When she was young, Nix felt that Ed was clearly a farmer of some kind as he could coax anything to grow. Each strain of marijuana that he planted grew to magnificent, rich, tall plants that were fat with buds. Nix actually found Ed's plants to be beautiful as each one seemed to be the perfect textbook example to represent a species or cultivar. Over the years she discovered that her encyclopedia and botanical books showed specimens that looked so anemic, they hardly looked like the same plants that Ed grew.
Neither Alice nor Ed liked to talk about their years before coming to the compound. They didn't speak much about families, friends, jobs or anything save each other. Over time Nix got the distinct impression that Alice's pregnancy was part of the reason they dropped out of the 'shitty world' and came to live on the commune. One thing was very clear though, no matter how high they were or how just plain odd they were- Ed and Alice were intelligent. They were smart in the way that comes naturally to people, but they had honed their intelligence with education. Rather a lot of education, if Nix put the pieces together correctly.
Old magazines in the attic had her parents names in them, as authors. Those magazines were not the types that were at Nix height when she was allowed to go along to town to the bookstore or the library. She would have to step back and crane her head up to see the titles of the journals that were like the ones gathering so much dust in the attic. Her father wrote about improving crops through continuous genetic selection of the best possible specimens and cultivars from a wide range of plant communities, soil amendment, micro-irrigation and fertilization delivery, and companion planting with border deterrent plants and sacrificial crops which were more attractive to the usual crop pests rather than using traditional pesticides.
Well, looks like he had been on to something there. As she grew older, Nix found out that Ed had designed the crop planting schedule for the whole commune. He had picked the crops, the best areas for each crop to be hosted, tested the soil and brought in what was needed to make it perfect for the plants it would host. He taught a community of non-farmers how to farm, build and repair irrigation lines, make fertilizers, and test for chemical imbalances at all steps so they could be fixed as little problems, long before they became giant problems. Companion planting, cover crops, crop rotation. Keeping the land healthy so you could grow healthy plants.
Not all of Ed's ideas had been well received in the academic community or mass farming industry, but they hit home with some niche markets. NASA was very interested for some obvious reasons involving long term space flight and colonization on Mars. There were a handful of government and foreign government agencies who needed to create better self sustaining operations in remote locations where they preferred to not have people travelling on and off site so often. Ed got used to being driven to sites while wearing a blindfold and mastered napping during such trips. He was contacted by some incredibly rich South Americans who wanted to grow many plants, and he designed terraced plans for them for which he was handsomely paid. Additionally several ultra wealthy people who wanted to fade from life in the public eye and a number of private communal groups offered sometimes remarkable and sometimes just regular sums of money for his designs. He drew them all up, collected all of his pay and while visiting, Ed found a commune he really liked. He brought Alice back to check it out. It turned out that she liked it too.
So, Ed may not have found acceptance in academia or industry, but he found fans in government agencies with trillion dollar budgets and people who didn't care how much they were paying someone for a job, so long as the job did what it said it would do- deliver higher crop yields, take the farms off the grid, create healthier plants and allow the farming to be managed by fewer but more skilled people. It turned out that this method paid very well and that Ed was wise enough to pick a good financial advisor as he knew that was not his strongpoint. He was also able to discern the growing intellect in his daughter as she aged, and he taught her everything he knew along with how to hack the things that were no longer available.
If asked, Alice would simply say that she liked stargazing and being made of star stuff. This was mostly because terms like astrophysics, extragalactic astronomy, gravitational lensing, and space telescope deep field studies seemed to make most people uncomfortable as they did not have a point of reference to continue the conversation. About the closest Alice could ever get was to mention one of the observational or radio telescopes she had used and their locations so people could tell her how much they enjoyed visiting Hawaii or Puerto Rico while she made her face look like a smile. Except in very small circles, cosmology and astronomy just were not vogue conversation topics that could stir up a dull gathering.
When Ed brought Alice to look at a 'bullshit hippie commune' while she was three months pregnant and had to pee all the time, she had stared daggers at him for the entire drive. Once they arrived and Alice began meeting the couples and families starting this new community, she fell in love. Everywhere she looked, everyone she met... it was wall to wall brilliance, stacks of diplomas and hat racks festively hung with doctoral hoods and caps in every color. Scientists, philosophers, engineers, master class musicians, artists, writers and some of the greatest thinkers of their generation had come together not only to create a haven where they might apply their skills and knowledge, but also keep producing their work for publication, performance, and development without the rest of the world in the way and with other great minds to inspire them.
Small problem. It turns out that most great minds like being the big fish in the medium sized pond. However, at the Haven, everyone was the same sized fish in one small pond. Even if they looked different and had neat fins or colors, they were still just as cool as all of the other fish and none of them would swim in a school, because no one knew how. These brilliant creatures were all used to forging their own paths which is fantastic as individuals, but not a effective when it comes to communal living. Some left. Some new people came. Some ordinary folks arrived and that helped a great deal because they showed that work just needed to get done and then you could be whatever remarkable thing you wished to be once the chores were finished. After a few years, things settled out for the most part and people contributed and worked hard for their community.
However, it was the damnedest thing. World class minds are terrible at taking direction, even from their own family. On the day when the sick apprentice blacksmith staggered out of the infirmary as the now undead apprentice blacksmith, no one listened very well as Nix tried her hardest to sound the alarm. Maybe it was because most of the commune had never seen a walking corpse before and did not believe that Kevin was no longer Kevin- instead Kevin was very much dead and very much interested in sampling all the commune had to offer in human blood types and flesh tones.
Kevin had bitten a bunch of people before Nix dropped him with a shovel to the head. She made her pleas to Ed and Alice, to the other longest term settlers to not let his victims die, rise and keep spreading this terrible death. Nix was told that she was 18 and needed to leave this issue to the adults. To Nix, this meant fixing a crew cab pickup truck with a topper on the back, hiding it in a barn with supplies, gas, rations, some guns and go bags, and then teaching all the tame cats how to get into the truck with a whistle. That turned out to be the best of plans.
When the day came that the second wave of sick people shambled out as bitey undead people, Nix was the only one prepared. She scooped up Nocta, grabbed Ed and Alice and told them to follow her and that she had a way out. With one look, she knew they were not coming. The pair handed Nix a bag with water and soil test kits, carefully wrapped and labeled seeds, a spyglass, a compass, a set of star charts and maps, a bag of celestial navigation tools, a solar powered GPS and so many other things she did not have time to consider.
"No. Ed, Alice... I have things packed in the truck for you, come on." Nix tried to explain but Ed just shook his head with a smile. "We'll slow you down. Fly, Phoenix. We put some other things in the truck for you. We love you."
Alice smiled gently and echoed "We love you, now fly, darling. Be free and whole and safe." With that, Alice kissed Nix's forehead and turned her toward the front door. Nix turned her head and sobbed once. "Dad. Mom. Come with me. I need you."
Ed bent and kissed the top of Nix's head and whispered "No Phoenix, you never have. Now run. We love you." And thus her parents pushed her out the front door of their home and closed and locked it behind her. She stood very still, holding her black cat and a bag of God-knew-what and surveyed the wild chaos taking place ahead of her in the commune. Running humans screaming. Dead humans snapping their jaws and giving chase. Things on fire. Shapes on the ground in clothing that Nix decided to consider mannequins at present, for the sake of her sanity.
She considered the layout of the commune, the shape of the land, the routes to the barn and closed her eyes for a moment to let all of that information come together and gel. Still standing as a statue to not draw notice, Nix heard music start inside the house: Fleetwood Mac's Landside began to play, and not quietly. The noise would get attention soon. Ok, she thought, go.
From that first step until her last, Phoenix flew and nothing touched her, nothing even came near her. She did not turn. She did not look back at the house, the buildings, the commune because that was just the past. The only thing to be gotten from that glance would be nightmares or a pillar of salt. Resolutely, she went and watched forward and continued to do so every day since. As she sat in the wagon with Sampson and Garibaldi inside the great old barn on the eve of Market Day, Nix remembered what it looked like to run through your entire world as it caught fire and crumbled around you.
She had no intentions of making that run again or of letting that happen a second time.
Nix curled up in the wagon for a nap and slipped in one ear bud from the iPod she had somehow kept working for years. She pressed play and closed her eyes to the opening notes of Landslide and slipped an arm around Sampson.
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