💾 Archived View for republic.circumlunar.space › users › joneworlds › 2020-11-29-barn.gmi captured on 2022-06-11 at 20:47:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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I saw something upsetting yesterday, something that I can't tell the meaning of yet.
To get a little grocery money or whatever, Pete and I sometimes go out to the farms in Boyner down on the south slope by the river. There's a couple of old guys & gals out there we know who were friends of Pete's dad, and they are fine to hire us for a day to do some chores and stuff like that. It costs us some gas to get out there unless we can hitch rides, but overall it's usually a pretty good deal for us, whether they pay us with money or food.
Anyways, the other day we were out at old Jim Pierce's place, and he wants us to haul away some junk from inside this ancient fall-down barn on the older part of of his property. He hasn't even been in there for years, he says, but he wants to start using again and so we've got to empty it out so he can start fixing it up. So Pete goes off to bring around our truck with Pierce's trailer, and I go to open the padlock on the barn door, but it's already broken open. That's not so good. With a bit of dread, I swing open the door enough to have a look around. I shine around my flashlight around for a bit, and I nearly drop it in shock at what I see.
Standing in the lofts, the stalls, and about every corner of that building, must be about two hundred or more gnomes. They are all just standing there facing me, hands at their sides and staring at me with dead-looking glassy eyes, like they were garden gnomes or something. Somehow unhealthy looking. Maybe smaller than other gnomes I've seen around these parts?
"What are you all doing in here?" I ask, even though I know we can't understand each other.
Not a one moves. Maybe a few of them blink.
"Are you all... okay?"
Nothing. I back away and close the door.
We go back to the yard by the shop and tell Pierce that Pete's having seizures again, and so we had better get him home right away, and we're sorry we can't get this job done today. He understands, you boys take care now, okay? We mask up and drive home.
I usually think of the Olds as thriving in this world, or at least on their way to that, maybe even to do good bit better than we ever did. Not what I saw today. That was more than poverty, I think. I don't know what that was. Did Pierce have any idea? Something is wrong.