Fifty Years of Peace (Abrupt Dissent Series) by Charlotte Andrews Page B

fine sweetheart. Just don’t make me do jumping jacks.”
     
    “You two were about as lucky as could be,” Doc Stinson said. He’d cleaned his instruments and repacked his bag, and now knelt in front of Lenora to check her bandage. “George told me it was a sniper that got you. Looks like you both took lucky shots, if there is such a thing.”
     
    Aiden turned to his son.
     
    “We need to have a talk about what you tell people George.”
     
    “It’s all right, it’s all right,” the doctor said, “I could have figured it out myself from the slugs.”
     
    “We owe you both a debt that we can’t repay,” Lenora said.
     
    “Well,” Doc Stinson nodded at Jenny, “if not for this little lady I wouldn’t be here at all.”
     
    Jenny swelled with pride. With everything that was happening to her grandfather and the town, knowing that she’d been able to help George and his family gave her great comfort.
     
    “I’m…” Jenny started. “I’m just glad I could help.”
     
    “There is one thing that I’d like to ask both of you though,” the doctor said.
     
    “Of course,” Aiden answered.
     
    “If I understood George right, you were traveling at night, which means that the sniper would have hit you in the dark and from at least a couple hundred yards…”
     
    Jenny could see George’s parents exchanging glances. They were clearly nervous at how much this man they just met already knew, and she understood why; it would reveal more and more of why they were here.
     
    “You can trust him,” she said. “My grandfather did.”
     
    “Well…Well thank you Jenny,” Doc Stinson said, “what I was getting at is that a shot like that requires night vision. That means batteries, goggles, military grade hardware. Now as I understand it, there hasn’t been anything like that in the New States since the war. So, does someone want to set me straight on what’s happening to my town?”
     
    George’s father stood and looked out over the mountains toward the East. A few clouds hung in the sky like gauzed streamers, curling away from him.
     
    “I suppose you’ve all got a right to know what’s happening,” Aiden started. “Jenny, this is going to be more of a shock to you than it is to anyone else, but we even kept a lot of this from you as well George, just in case…in case anything happened. The technology that your grandfather showed you Jenny, there’s much more of it out there, and it’s still in use. In the United States, we’ve been rebuilding ever since the war ended. The devices we can make are still quite crude, but combined with pre-war technology, our computers and our capabilities are coming along.”
     
    “So can you connect with each other?” Jenny asked. “Can you read things from other machines?”
     
    “Yes, and what’s more, is we’ve even heard things from other countries. If you know how to do it, you can intercept signals from the other devices. We’ve always known the New States’ government still used technology even though they told you they didn’t, but we never knew why they kept it a secret. But…but now we know…”
     
    Jenny’s eyes got large, “Know what?”
     
    “The reason they are keeping the technology a secret, and keeping it out of the hands of the people, is to conceal the truth about what’s really going on across the country. You see, the New States’ government hasn’t been rebuilding the New States at all. All of the increased quotas and stories of helping the northern states are just lies.”
     
    “But why?” she asked.
     
    “Well, for a long time we weren’t entirely sure, but then we were able to intercept some important conversations with the president involving various assemblymen and even other countries. From what we’ve heard, it sounds like there are other countries going through the same starvation problems we went through so many years ago. Farmers in other countries used to depend on a lot of agricultural