Chapter Thirteen:     Dawalasat

SHAMBALLAH MISSION: 2nd Report
ART comments --

Wallace Forest is my uncle once removed, or rather my grandfather Hiram Forest's younger brother. He has lived so long that no one alive remembers Wally Forest as a young man. Last time we saw him he was about 110 years old and still going strong. Incredibly strong; now marching off to do battle with a corrupt Nokhon regime in a hidden city in the Himalaya Mountains. He is not your typical feeble little old man.

Wallace, or Dawalasat as the Nokhontli have renamed him, is perhaps the only white man who has ever lived most of his life among the Sasquatches. He has an equally old Nokhon wife, he speaks the language fluently (more fluently than his native English any more), and he has become a Sha-haka (sorcerer) among them, practicing meditative and dietic disciplines, which have evidently effected his abnormal longevity.

We last saw him at the first kha-rat with our new squatch immigrants, he and Dagrolyt and Daklakht had just survived a revolution in the local Nokhon capital, the "secret city" of Aket, and were passing by on their way to confront the evil Da-starda-hat (guilty of corruption, psychic slavery, murder, and planning to destroy our civilization), who had wormed his way into becoming one of the Ultimate Nine Elders of all the squatches in the world. Sounds like a clichéd adventure-fantasy, I know, but facts is facts, folx: Shamballah really does exist, out there where the Yeti have made a name for themselves.

Adam wanted to go with them, but they insisted that he stay and deal with the Nokhon Nation Project, as he was destined to. So Adam gave Old Uncle Wallace a GPS cell phone, and spent a day instructing him and the two squatches in how to use it. Wallace was almost as unfamiliar with modern telecommunications devices as Dagrolyt or Daklakht, but he was the only one who spoke and could read English at all, so it was up to him to learn the basics. The idea was to keep us informed and to call for help if needed.

It was a smart phone with many functions they would never learn to use, but it contained a "Voice Recorder" app which they all liked and did learn to tell their stories into. Electricity would not always available for recharging their phone where they were going, but they might get lucky every now and then. Like any old man, Wallace complained about the "newfangled contraption", but he is hardly your typical confused or demented old man, his memory is excellent and his intelligence impressive. He learned how to send an SMS, and then how to record and send us the .mp3 files of their dictated reports. And when there were kilobyte restrictions for data transmission on local servers in the Himalayas, he learned how to break a file down into smaller units and send them one at a time. I haven't learned that yet. Smart man.

But to look at him or hear him speak, he resembles a classic "crazy old-geezer" character from old Western movies: a comic-relief side-kick like Gabby Hayes or Smiley Burnett, for example. He looks old, scrawny and wrinkled, but he moves like a young man. His English is almost incomprehensible and you could easily mistake him for a befuddled old hillbilly. That, and his tendency to shift from English to Nokhontli and back, make it necessary to translate his messages for Our Document, simply for coherency and readability. We have strived to balance between retaining some of his colorful speech intact-- which can be rather entertaining but difficult to understand--and presenting a coherent report of events.

Arthur Forest
NNP Language Institute


UNCLE WALLACE / DAWALASAT dictating, translated and transcribed by Art--
file recorded over early November, but first received 8th of March --

This consarned contraption! It's just so gauldarned fiddly with all these "touch-screen" do-hickeys, drive a man to drink! Hello?-- hello? Is it hearing me? hello?

..oh, okay, guess it is. Don't sound like me, tho. Guess it must be, it's saying wha' I said... Hah! Dang, what should I say now? Ain't 'custom to doin' no speechifying...oh, wait, I knows:

Me, Dagrolyt an' Daklakht's made it into the Himalayas, at least we sure do got some wallapaloozing mountains all around us jus' now.

I sent ya a "SMS'ie" when we got ta Katmandoo, and got your "reply". But tha's a while back now, so ye might wanna know how's things over here since then. First I best say that the voyage over here went smooth enuff, I reckon, but it was long and not really comfy. Ain't complainin, just sayin like it is: that governmental cargo plane warn't no fancy air-liner with cozy-comfy seats, but there wuz rows of open Jeeps, so we sat in them as good we could. My Nokhon pals were scared shite-less bein up in the sky and over that seemin' endless ocean, but they hanged in there. Brave fellers.

Shucks, I was skeered too, even tho I been on aereo-planes afore. Just been a long time back: WWII, France, Germany. Yep, I been in a war afore and I reckon I'm goin’ to one now. 'Course back then I was only... what? in my late forties ...I'd volunteered at that age 'cause we'd a had to stop Hitler. I was already half-Nokhon by then, so I reckoned I had some talents for fighting the Nazis hadn't figured on, and I was right. Nokhons are peaceful folk, but I figured I was still NokhSo enough to get 'bout as ruthless as them damn Nazis. But I warn't tho, I's proud to say.

But this is 'nother kinda war. Can be I'm too old this time, but my companions need a guide through the NokhSo world, and him Da-starda-hat is just as evil as Adolf Hitler ever was, so here I is. At least my pals are fit 'n' strong-- a lot stronger than any NokSos we might come up 'gainst --tho it's most likely fit 'n' strong Nokhons we gotta fight.

Anyways, the crew o' that plane were a wee leary o' us at first-- they'd never seen no Bigfoot afore, an' I'm kinda special too, I reckon-- but they warmed to us and were friendly ‘nuff. We got offered food that minded me o' them C-Rations that GIs got in WWII, tho more modern. Mostly we didn' eat meat paté or Spam, white bread or sugary chocolate bars, but there was "vegetarian" combat rations too, and those was jus' fine. They even warmed up some "macaroni and cheese" which warn't half-bad. We was in that rattlin' clatterin' big ol' machine for days and eatin' helped to pass the time. Dag showed Dak how to eat peanut butter & jelly san'wiches after Daklakht 'most strangled hisself tryin to swaller peanut butter all by itself.

Our aero-plane landed a buncha times, for fuel and some military business, but we warn' sposta come out o' the plane, so we never saw or knew 'xactly where we was. "Guam," they said, then some other places they didn' say. Sometimes we waited overnight afore flying onward. The Jeeps got delivered somewhere and we was sittin' on the floor for a while, then we picked up some big wooden boxes an' we could sit on them. We swapped aero-planes from Burma to Nepal, an' finally landed a ways outside Katmandoo.

The flight crew was Nepalese, but they was modern 'nuff to know about the Nokhon Nation on the news and they was a-guessin' that we had some kind of thing goin' on with the Yeti, but they warn't tryin' to mess up our buzness, in fact, they was real helpful. They let us leave some of our stuff in a trunk on their base since we didn't want to drag all our luggage up into the Himalayas. So we could drop off our white city-folk clothes because we wouldn't be needin' em until the trip back home.

We could take that little "cell phone" with us, for recording messages or taking pictures, but wuz 'sposta take the "chip" out so that it wouldn't work like a proper telephone: Adam told us "Do NOT take the assembled cell phone into Shamballah." Point bein' that if'n we did, the "chip" in the phone would send some kinda message to announce the location of the secret Nokhon city to the consarned world-wide surveillance system. Everyone-- the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese --would know exactly where to find Shamballah. Even later on, they could "trace" everywhere our phone "chip" had ever been. Some kinda consarned skesk black magic.

But Adam had also said it was okay to use the phone as a "voice recorder" in Shamballah because it ain't "online" an don't put out no "signal". Not that I know what any o' that means, but I's talkin' into the recorder right now and it seems safe 'nuff.

The only other thing we took with us was the backpack with rope and ice-tools 'n' special snow clothes. Dag 'n' Dak could maybe do without, being hairy Sasquatches and all, but I'm still not quite a Nokhon; where we's a-headed the cold'd kill me. Actually, I talked them into trying out those winter suits Elaine had special-made for them, and they ended up agreein' that wearin' those suits was way better than goin' naked and barefoot up into the highest mountains in the world. They's Nokhons from the Pacific Northwest, not Himalayan Yeti.

We had to sneak out of that airport and into the country of Nepal, since we didn't have no passports nor nothin. But it was a cargo airport, no real security, half-open fences. It was also snowin' lightly an' in the middle of the night, so zero visibility was on our side. We used the good-old "you-don't-see-me trick" and disappeared without any problem. Headed directly 'way from the city, so we never saw Katmandoo-- pity, I woulda kinda liked to. But it was more important we not get seen, nor announce where’s we wuz headin: Shamballah is a secret city and it's gotta stay that way.

Now that the Nokhon Nation has caused so much Sasquatch-noticing, it wouldn't be too hard for some news-report-folks to guess more-or-less where 2-3 suspiciously Yeti-looking strangers heading north into the Mountains might be a-goin.

Normally Nokhons travel with nothin: no 'quipment, no supplies. A Sha-haka may have his traditional shoulder-bag, but it don't hold much. This time we had a backpack with food and *quipment, my clothes, et-cetera, but Daklakht had made this trip years afore, from Aket to Shamballah: it had taken him most of a year and it'd been hard goin'-- he'd had to swim the Bering Strait, for 'sample. We wanted to get to Shamballah kinda quicker than a year, so we tweaked a few Nokhon traditions.

The military had give us some o' them combat rations, and Elaine sent us off with bags of sunflower seeds, raisins and nuts, so we could travel through mountains where there warn't nothin to eat but snow. We had some rope and three ice-axes for serious mountain escaclatin’, if needs be, flashlights, our cell phone & a solar charger. Dagrolyt was worried that if we got seen by any Yeti-Nokhons with all this forbidden skesk we'd be outlawed and exiled afore we could even get inside Shamballah, and he was probably right. But Daklakht, the offical Alutna-Jii and enforcer of Atli-law, said what 'mounts to "Dang'em if they can't take a joke." Kinda lucky for us that snowstorm goin on, so no one could see us nor follow us, not even footprints next day, so we made a clean getaway. Also lucky for me I'd got some military Arctic-weather clothes given ta me on the plane: jacket & boots, long underwear, Mickey Mouse hat; I was toasty warm. Although both Dag and Dak did take an envy to my fluffy down jacket and complained a wee bit that they couldn't get anything in their size. Dj'iies, they just don't make Yetis like they used ta.

It'd been suggested we try'n catch a flight to Base Camp Mount Everest, which coulda saved us a whole lot of trekking. But then everyone could reckon that we wuz Yetis out to find some other Yetis. Asides, there was a nasty snowstorm goin’ on up there, nothing could fly in or out just then, an' it lasted 3 days, so we woulda made 'bout the same time. Asides, Daklakht says Shamballah is farther to the... oh wait, not s'posta say where, not even in this "private" recording-letter.


Okay, now I'm getting’ the hang o' this "digital" contraption. It ain't so hard making a recording, lot like tellin’ tall tales 'round the campfire. Not that this "cell phone" is near so warm and cozy to sit 'round, but it does help pass the time.

Heyyy, I could tell ya about My Life Among the Bigfoots. Now there's a tall tale, by crackee.

(here Wallace shifts over to Nokhontli, which he speaks much more properly than English, so I had to drop the amusing colloquialisms for the translation-- Art)

My pappa, Steffan Forest, was a strict and religious man. Pentecostal, speaking in tongues, fundamentalist. Born in 1871, in the big log house his father Cobham Forest had built just the year before. Now it’s just outside te town of Monroe, but in those days it wuz deep in the woods and far from civilization. The 40 miles to Seattle ware a hard day's travel by horseback, and it was mostly a wild lumberjack's haven back then.

My mother, Anne Marie, died only a few years after I was born, so my older brother Hiram and I were alone with a father who was half-mad with grief and the other half mad with religion. Father was not cruel, but he was harsh and dedicated to molding his sons to be clergymen, for which neither Hiram nor I had any interest whatsoever. He scared us off religion with his incessant praying and baptizing us over and over again, feeling he was God's Man With A Mission. Hiram left home when he was 13, but I was too young and stayed to help pappa work the farm (which you now call Hacienda Forest).

Pappa and I tried to work the farm, just the two of us, but there was no money in it. We were about to lose the house, but I found work with a team of lumberjacks just in time. It was hard, heavy work, and a lot of alcohol was consumed afterwards. If I'd kept on working there I'd a been dead long ago. But my life got saved-- and spun on its head --because I met a Bigfoot.

My team had been cutting on a hillside; dropping and rolling the big logs down to the hill, to be loaded onto a slider. This was in 1922, so we had motor-driven trucks by then; noisy and blowing black smoke, genuine skesk contraptions. I reckon it always stank of diesel and oil, although one day the other guys started complaining about some other stink, like cesspools and rotten meat. No one knew where it was coming from, but you can probably guess. Seems it was bad enough to make some of them regurgitate their lunches. But I didn't notice any smell... well, I never do. I reckon you could call it a physical handicap: I've got almost no sense of smell whatsoever. Having never experienced it I'd never missed it, got along just fine without-- all my other senses were tip-top. And now I know it was a big advantage, not a handicap, considering the life I've lived among the Nokhontli. The stink got so bad we had to quit work early that day, the others had gone down to do the loading and I'd been given the job of gathering tools and coiling ropes, since the smell wasn't bothering me at all. It was a hot day so I was looking forward to a gallon of cold beer with the lads.

So I was alone up on that hill when this Sasquatch stepped out of the bushes and faced me from about ten feet away.

Scared me silly, of course, I just froze. Even back then people talked about Bigfoot, long before they became popular movie monsters, big hairy apes, half-man things. The Indians already had stories going way back. Footprints, sightings, tufts of hair caught on bushes: there'd been clues. I also recalled some talk about the stink. So I knew what it was right away. I just didn't know if it was going to kill me or not.

But we both just stood there, looking at each other, so I had time to study it, too afraid to turn and run anyway. It was a female, I could tell even through all the long shaggy hair, she had breasts and hips just like a human girl, although more stocky and thick-muscled. At first I thought she was ugly as sin, but then I saw that she was crying like a baby. Sad and angry, although not at me. In a flash I realized that she was not some kind of ape-animal, but a person. And a nice person, at that. I felt sympathy for her and wanted to comfort her. So I stepped forward.

She stepped back, afraid of me. That surprised me: she was at least a foot taller than I was and a lot bigger all over. Then I realized I was still holding an axe in my hands. I threw it aside and tried to apologize by bowin’ and showin’ my empty hands; she seemed to understand and became calm. Then we just looked at each other for a long while. There was something magical about it all. Somehow, we LIKED each other.

It slowly dawned on me that she was actually rather beautiful. Her broad face was a pretty collection of human racial traits: Eskimo eyes, a Negroid nose, Irish freckles, a Latina mouth, nice big German breasts, wide Italian hips. I couldn't tell how old she was, but perceived her as a youthful and perfectly desirable woman. Damn me if I wasn't just plain falling in love right there and then. Sounds weird, I know, but men’re men and women’re women.

I tried talking to her and she answered in another language, but it soon became obvious we couldn't communicate with words, so we tried sign-language. She had a natural talent for it and we could actually say a lot with our hands and mimic. I remember being impressed with how smart she was. I came to understand that she was sad because we were cutting down her forest. I realized in a flash of shame and horror that it was ME who was doing this to her world. That revelation was so powerful that I had to promise to her I would never do it again.

It cost me my job, but I never did. Truly, I had always had a bad feeling about cutting down those trees anyway, stripping acre after acre of natural forest and leaving behind nothing but mud and slash and ugliness. But NO-body sympathized with that idea in those days-- there was just so much nature standing in the way of progress: cut it down. I can't say I am over-impressed to see that protecting the environment has finally caught on-- now that it is almost too late.

I came down from that hilltop a changed man-- or boy, I was only 17 at the time --and I am who I am because of that meeting with Mazaza, which I later learned was her name. At that time I had no idea if I would ever see her again. She was a Bigfoot, after all, a mythical creature. I was just a boy without a job, who had to move back in with his religious-fanatic father who was raging for him to become a clergyman. That was a hard time.

Especially after my father died of an infected tooth, so I was alone on the farm. That's when I started panning for gold and found that I was good at it. I could earn a day's wage if I worked hard at it. There was lots of gold dust back then. There still is, but you can only earn a day's wage, you never quite get rich. But I saved the farm, anyway.

I went back up to that hill many times over the next year, but couldna find her. After a while I began to doubt that I had ever met her, or that Sasquatches existed. But I couldn't drop it: I went on camping trips-- alone, so as not to be compromised if I met a Bigfoot. I wandered to find creeks to pan gold from, and eventually stayed out in the woods, learning how to live there. But I just never saw another Bigfoot.

Until three years later, at 20 years old. By then I was already known as a "crazy hermit" and a professional gold miner and skin trader. I was on my knees in a creek, swirling water around in my pan, letting the few gold flakes sink faster than the sand, thinking about what supplies I could afford. Sensed something behind me, turned. And there she was.

She'd found me. It was a surprise… and not. I'd always reckoned that we'd meet again somehow. This time she was wearing something besides her natural fur coat; she had a little shoulder bag weaved from twigs and vines. She bobbed her head at me, which I took for a greeting, so I bobbed mine back at her. And then it happened: she smiled. Thunderation! I was in love again, just like that.

The only women I'd had any traffic with back then were whores around the logging camps. Not that I preferred to, but in those days that was all you could get. Actually, I usually liked them and was grateful for the service they offered, but never fell in love with any of them. That would just be asking for trouble. Lusting after the neighbor's daughter could be even more troublesome because they were amateurs who got pregnant and got you shot. But I had no trouble falling in love with that Bigfoot girl.

But she was Sasquatch and I was human; in those days races didn't mix, much less species. It was considered sinful. Indian & White, Black & White, you could get killed for being intimate with another race, a big tabu back then. So I had only the purest of intentions for Mazaza, I knew this could not go the way of flesh, this could only be a Spiritual Love. I understood that, but wanted to be her friend and to be near her. And she felt the same, which was a miracle.

We were in her world, the forest, so I started learning her language rather than trying to teach her mine. Learning Nokhontli was a challenge, and I had never been a scholar. The words are difficult to pronounce at first and all the unspoken hand-signs can be confusing, so it went pretty slow. But I knew I couldn't take her back to civilization with me. Besides, she was living in a surprisingly comfortable cave up in the Cascades, so I became her guest.

So we were friends for a while, maybe a couple of months. It was very nice. We stayed near each other; I'd pan for gold and she'd forage for squatch food-- thistles and nettles --which I didn't like at first, but it was all for free and I learned to eat it eventually. Or she'd mix some medicines and herbs that put my head in another place, she being some kind of witch-doctor, a Sha-haka-ma.

Whenever the Full Moon came around she'd go somewhere else for a few days, so I'd go back to Monroe to deposit whatever gold dust I had gathered and buy fresh supplies. I still had my house there, standing empty, but decided against selling it, since it was a good base to have and I didn't need the money. Then I would go back to the woods and Mazaza would return to me from wherever she had been.

Of course, she was going to kha-rats for those Full Moons, but I didn't understand what that was, and she couldn't show me because inviting me along was not a good idea at that time. Nokhons had racial tabus too; they hated white men and their noisekillers. I once caught a dose of her early shyøma-- maybe I couldn't smell it but sure could feel it, and don't mean in my nose! And that was just a faint whiff, she'd barely started to flow. But she left in a hurry before I got too aroused.

The third full moon she stayed with me. She tried to explain what would happen, but we still didn't have enough vocabulary between us yet. She gave me some o’ them little blue flowers to eat so that I wouldn’t get sick or go crazy. I was wondering what all this was about when her shyøma told me better than any words. Got the proudest boner of my life up to then, and she insisted on sharing it. So we had a private kha-rat: passionate sexual rutting, of course, but also the whole danged psychedelic mind-blasting experience; walking on the Moon, speaking to God (or Nature). Tasting the juices of her marat caused some kinda mental short-cut and 2 days after the kha-rat I could speak and sign her language much better.

So Mazaza and I became a couple and have been until this very day. Eventually I was allowed to meet other squatches. A few friends, then a kha-rat with her mlønoli, then I started meeting many. It was easy to find them once I learned how.

Nokhons are taught to avoid us nasty little NokhSos, we are the greedy enemy who ravages land and forest, destroying everything in our paths. But like most prejudices it doesn't hold water if you talk things over. So a white man walks through forests all his life and never sees a Bigfoot; although the Bigfoot sees him but won’t make contact. Unless that man calls out a friendly greeting: "Kha, ranoke! O'o yaws-ahat om!" That Bigfoot will be intrigued and curious enough to approach and ask: "Ra, kha, ranoke-- how it is that you speak Nokhontli?" Works every time. It took a while to be accepted into their society, but I found a niche where I could be indispensible to them: as a wandering trader.

The rules of Atli are quite strict and simple: all skesk is forbidden. Which creates a market for forbidden skesk, and which I-- being a native NokhSo --could pick up and deliver as I passed into and out of the "civilized" world.

I generally like Nokhons, but it's not that they are so different from your standard human being, just bigger and hairier that's all. It's only what they believe that makes them act different, but that's the same for Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, etc. Nokhons believe in Atli, a hundred-thousand year-old message, very long, lots of words and stories; but it all boils down to two rules-- actually one, if you say it right. Ø'ø'e'rah, "Be nice" is simple enough. But the second rule is to sacrifice all personal possessions or comfort so that you are already tuned for survival when the next worldwide catastrophes ravage our planet. So you could say: "Be nice-- but never to yourself!"

Some Nokhons actually do obey the rules religiously, and can be very pious about it. But most just pretend to-- and do what they want anyway. I know: I'm the Trader who secretly delivered their forbidden skesk-toys all over the Pacific Northwest.

I didn't judge them: I'd had to pass myself off as a devout Christian while a boy to keep my religious-fanatic pappa from hurting me. But I knew his secrets too, so he ruined religion for me, I believed that "eternal life with Lord Jesus" was nothing but self-deception and wishful thinking. So while I was learning and reciting Atli-- as required to come into Nokhon society--I was taking it all with the proverbial grain of salt. But now, years later... I dunno, now it seems like there's something real about it anyway.

I eventually passed my Enduring, as any Nokhon male must, studied Atli and magic. There was some protest about a hairless little NokhSo being allowed to learn the sacred secrets of Nokhon culture, but I kept at it for years. I had also established a good reputation and much influence as "Dawalasat the Trader", whom many otherwise pious devotees of Atli counted on for delivering their illegal skesk-fix. Wooden matches, small mirrors, fingernail clippers, knives, spoons; there was so much they did not have that I could easily get for them in any small town in the USA.

But I needed to earn money to pay for those things. So what could Nokhons, who are forbidden all material possessions, have worth trading? Only one thing, same as anywhere else in the world: time spent working.

Instead of me panning for gold, I loaned several Nokhons pans and taught them how to do it, so that they had something to trade with. I would bring them skesk; they would give me gold flakes. I was not out to exploit them, trying to balance the time they had invested with the worth of the product they wanted. They could pan gold for a few hours and be done, I could afford to get supplies and whatever skesk they needed. It was illegal according to Atli, but not according to American Capitalism.

And those Nokhons were very good at panning, some had a real talent for it, some enjoyed it. I was bringing home heavy bags of gold dust and depositing healthy amounts of money into my bank account in Monroe. That attracted attention; sometimes I'd be followed on my way back out of town by dishonest men who wanted to know just where I was panning so much gold. Sometimes men even shot at me, trying to rob me, although I never carried any kind of gun. I couldn’t allow them to follow me to Mazaza's cave, I had to lose them. So I concentrated on learning Nokhon magic to confound them. Got quite good at it. Good enough to eventually become a Sha-haka.


Waal, suppos'n I'd better tell a little more 'bout what's goin’ on in the here and now. That snowstorm ended and the weather got good, which was nice for bein' tourists but not so good for sneakin' around. We stayed 'way from roads, mostly going overland in a straight line-- 'xcept for up & down all those foothills 'n' vallies as the Himalayas got closer an' bigger. Down 'tween mountains it was 'most tropical jungle, up on top it was all snow. Lucky for me, my big Nokhon pals had nothing against takin' me piggyback once in a while, 'specially uphill. Ain't so young's I usta be.

The weather was dry & clear when we slipt outta Nepal into Tibet. Saw some Chinese soldiers patrolling the border but they never saw us. But deeper into Tibet there was even more øf 'em, so they got kinda vexing after while. Not many roads thru that area, going up-slope t'wards that sawtooth horizon of big mountains, but the land was so bleak an' empty that there was nowhere to hide for sneaking by.

Chinese soldiers warn't the only problem: there were also many trekkers and tourists out to wander Tibet, mountain climbers of all nationalities, sherpas, herders. Too bad we couldn' jus blend in with them or buy a bus ticket.

One night we caught a ride with a convoy o' Chinese military. 30-40 trucks drove north past where we wuz hidin'. We waited for them to roll on by, Dag took me on his shoulders, then he an' Dak ran and jumped onto the back of the last truck, where no one could see us. It was open and empty so we could even climb inside and lay down to enjoy the ride. Not that those 2 Nokhons ever really enjoyed bein' rattled 'round in skesk-machines, but it ended up bein a long ride and saved us lotsa trekkin’. We jumped off afore our ride drove into a military garrison the next day.

Then we went to... no, wait, can't name that neither, it'd make it too easy to figgur out where we'za goin’. Let's just say we came to a valley intween some big mountains, deep below the snowline, nice and warm, a river and some flat grassy land with a little town in the middle of it. Too open to sneak past in daylight, so we had to wait until night.

I turned on our cell phone, to see if there was a signal, but nothin'. Only an old SMSie from Art readin’ that he’da got our last/first message. But I reckoned I'd play with the phone a spell, all those "apps" thingies, took a "selfie", an' ended up makin’ this recordin-letter.







Chapter 14

Adam Into Babylon