Prolouge:
The sun shone off the piles of newly fallen snow as the supplies team made their way by snowshoe slowly through the remains of what had once been the city of Denver. Their tracks lay behind them in a single file, a silent fleeting indication of their passing; soon a fine layer of fresh snow would erase them and leave no indication that any man had passed.

There were six of them. Each of them cursed the weather while clinging firmly to their weapon of choice and holding one of the ropes lashed to a makeshift wagon. For Bruce - a small, portly man – this meant a revolver. He could feel the cold still through his patchwork glove. He thought to himself how nice it would be once they got back to the camp; a nice fire and a hot meal would definitely lift his spirits. But for now, he had to hike through the freezing cold; his life depended on the success of this mission.

The team made their way around the corner of an abandoned warehouse and made their way for it's loading dock. Phillip - a beast of a man coming in at six foot four inches and two hundred and fifty pounds - jumped up onto the dock. He set his fire axe up against the wall and began to heave open the door.

Tanis, a woman of average height and build placed her shotgun on the dock and pulled herself up. She grabbed her shotgun and made her way into the warehouse. Phillip helped the remaining team members on to the dock and then grabbed his fire axe. Tanis returned and gave a hand signal they all recognized to be all-clear and they went inside.

The warehouse was huge, and full of assorted goods, ranging from clothes to canned food and consumer electronics, though these days it seemed like the endless bounty that it had provided was becoming more and more finite Phillip thought as they walked through the rows of crates.

The oldest of them, a young woman in her late 50's turned to the rest of the team and spoke,"The rules are different this time. We still need essentials; grab  fuel, non-perishable food, anything with heavy cloth, batteries, bottled water, and any ammunition you can find. But this time I need you to save room for some toys. Nothing that needs batteries. Dolls, toy cars, balls, the like. Tomorrow is Christmas after all."

Chapter 1:  Life Goes On

"I don't know what the hell you're thinking grandma, but I ain't lugging any god-damned toys five miles back to the camp," shouted Thomas. She turned a keen eye to disgruntled man in an aging army coat. "If that's how you feel Nate, that's fine. No one made you come here and no one's making you stay and help. However, without your help many will suffer and likely die. Each of us can carry enough to support three people for a week; less if the weather stays as it is."

"And that's why we don't need to be carrying any toys. We need the space and weight for provisions!" he snapped back, adjusting the strap for his .30-06 hunting rifle.

The group turned and looked at the old woman. Nate looked confident that he would have his way, but the old woman stood there, unmoved by his outburst. "That's the problem with young people these days. They don't have the wisdom to look past where their next meal is going to come from."

"And why not old hag? If our people don't eat they will die. Every inch of space that we have need to be used for provisions. More provisions mean people live better lives. Right now we can barely take back enough to keep people alive."

"That's not true." said Jennifer, suddenly looking abashed at her outburst and sinking slightly into her pink coat. "Ya, we don't eat well, and occasionally our tummies rumble a bit, but for the most part we do okay."

"Ya, but if we had more I know I wouldn't complain." Bruce said to the thin 16 year old girl thinking of the meals he used to have.

"There's more to life than just your fat tummy," the old woman said with a smile as she turned to look at Nate with her piercing gaze. "Have you considered what will happen after you die?"

"Why the hell would I be worried about that?" Nate said angrily, "I survived the outbreak. But what good is surviving the outbreak if I end up starving to death?"

"It's been almost year since then Nate," Phillip said in his booming voice, "do you plan to live each day as though we're still a few lone stragglers trying to survive against the endless masses of the undead?"

 "Have the undead gone away? Did we suddenly find ourselves in a zombie free utopia? No. As we speak, those blood-thirsty monsters are probably closing in our us; the smell of our meaty flesh drawing them out of the woodwork, craving a fresh meal."

Tanis spoke up, "Speaking of which, can we argue this later? The longer we're here the more likely we're going to end up zombie food and I'd rather not take a premature trip to the afterlife over some philosophical bickering."

The old lady looked up at her, "You're right my dear. Let's get moving. But we're taking the toys. If you don't like it Nate, you can have my rations for the week to distribute to the others." Nate grumbled and everyone got moving.

The team gathered together everything they could find, propane tanks, boxes of cereal, a stash of coats and blankets, crates of water, and some assorted toys and threw it all into the cart. Just as they were strapping everything down they heard it; the ugly moan of the unliving.

***

The zombies began appearing out of every corner. "Shit!" Tanis said. "Grab the cart and cover your eyes!" she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a grenade. She pulled the pin and hurled it at  the ground a dozen feet ahead. There was a sharp crack and a light that everyone could see through their eyelids.

"Go!" Tanis shouted and they all took off running through the stunned zombies. They pressed through the horde for a few moments before the zombies started recovering from the flash. By this time the had made their way through the largest sum of the zombies. However, there were still nearly a hundred zombies between them and the clearing beyond the horde. They each pulled out a weapon and began to fight off the horde. Tannis unloaded a shotgun shell into the head of a nearby zombie while Phillip cleaved through the rotten bodies of half a dozen zombies.

A zombie struck at Jennifer. She nimbly dodged the strike and returned with a deafening blast from her 9 mm; sending fragments of skull and hair into the horde of zombies behind her assailant. Bruce tried his best to take careful shots, he only got 8 before his pistol was out and he was not going to waste even one of them. It seemed as though they were about to get into the clear when a zombie stepped out from behind a tree catching Nate by surprise. He turned an unloaded a round from his .30-06 hunting rifle but in his surprise he missed his shot, even at close range. The zombie reared up to attack, Nate did a dive roll while ejecting the previous casing from his bolt action. However, when he stood up to take the shot, he saw the old lady had already moved passed the zombie; and it fell apart in her wake.

He would have said something about her taking a dangerous step into his line of fire, but given the circumstances he opted to grab a rope and run like hell rather than argue with her. As they made their way into the clearing, they slowed to a fast walk. Bruce pondered as they made their final escape as to why - despite being slow and painfully stupid – the zombies were a threat, but there was no doubt; they were a threat to behold.

The team made a quiet return to their camp. No one spoke another word of the attack or the toys; they were happy that they had survived the zombie onslaught and that was enough for them. It was a long hike back to camp and they weren't going to waste their energy on pointless chatter. After a few hours of trekking through the endless snow they came to their camp. They passed the makeshift zombie traps made from mosquito traps tied to the end of a metal pole. "Good thing we made it back with the propane. If we don't keep those running the zombies would be on the camp in no time." A small swarm of zombies lingered underneath the trap, jumping and reaching for the inaccessible propane powered device.

"I'm just glad we made it back at all," said Nate, "that one was way too close for comfort."

"Agreed," said the old lady, "We need to be more prompt next time. They can smell our breath. The longer we're there the more of them will find us."

They approached the gates to the camp. The camp was more of a fortress, with razor wire on the outside and log walls assembled out of the trees from the area around the camp. The camp was situated at the top of a hill that was now clear due to the logging with nothing on all sides, making it an ideal place to defend against zombie attacks. Occasionally a stray zombie would find a way to destroy one of the zombie traps and all of the zombies would come swarming up to the camp. The sentries placed along the wall would then pick them off with sniper shots, but some days the ammunition would be more scarce than the zombies and the defenses would swarm out of the walls to beat back the zombies. There would be casualties when this happened, so all reasonable effort was made to keep the snipers well equipped and the traps in good working order, but occasionally a supply team would linger too long and be overcome by a zombie attack and either be wiped out or flee the scene, leaving the supply wagon behind so resources would be scarce.

Today they had been lucky; despite the fact that they had been attacked there were no casualties and they had managed to return with the cart, so there would be fresh bullets for the snipers and plenty of food for the camp. They reached the outer gate, which opened for them with little ceremony. The entered into the staging area and waited for the outer gates to lock so that the inner gates could open.

As the inner gates opened they could see the bustling of the camp. There were children playing in the streets, vendors on the corners selling manufactured goods built from materials brought by scrappers and the supply carts, and the ever present armed guards who worked to keep the desperate from getting out of hand and the zombies from getting loose in the compound.

The team made their way to the storehouse in the center of town. The storehouse was largely empty and obviously needed the good that they had in their cart. They began unloading the contents of the cart into the storehouse.

Nate grabbed two of the propane tanks and began moving them over to their corner. "So grandma, do you still think the toys were a good idea?"

"Yes Nate, yes I do," the old woman said, "And we wouldn't have been in that place if we had avoided the unnecessary lingering, but I don't think there was anything wrong with your question. It is essential that we find a system that can carry us into the future. This means that we have to make hard decisions like do we get food or toys, ammunition or pencils. Everything we do has to balance our humanity with our survival."

"What do you mean 'humanity'?!" Nate declared, "the zombies took away our humanity when the outbreak happened. Those of us who survived did so on the very nature of us sacrificing that humanity. We abandoned wives, children, friends who we thought were among the damned and moved away from the cities to the deep wilderness to get away from the blood-thirsty beasts. There's no need for humanity at this point!"

"You're wrong!" interjected Phillip, "It is because of that that it is so important that we preserve what little humanity we have left. It was hard. We all had to accept that there was nothing we could do for them.  But the fact that we couldn't do anything for them doesn't mean that we have to accept that there's nothing we can do for the living."

Jennifer grabbed an armful of cans from the cart, "That's not true. We know that they don't loose all of their mind. There's a little tiny bit of them still in there. That we lived despite them suddenly becoming one of those things in our very homes is proof of that."

"But you still end up shooting them in the end" said Bruce moving a crate of boxed cereal into a corner, "or the brain. Well, usually the brain; a bullet in their butt doesn't really do much."

"We all did what we had to do. There was no warning; it all just happened. One moment you're sitting in your living room, The next you're fending off your 5 year old son as he tries to devour your flesh," said the old lady, "yes they might have had a little of their previous life in there, but they were still one of the damned. In time they would have killed us."

The old lady began unpacking the toys and starting to place them in the empty boxes leftover from storing their pickings. "Nevertheless, we still need to nurture what we have left. If we always think of ourselves as survivors we will never be able to grow beyond that."

"How can we move on? Where would we move to? Everywhere we go beyond this camp there are zombies. All we can do is make it day to day and move on. What more could we ask for?"

Phillip looked over at the Nate, "Can't you see it in the camp? People are adapting. There's culture springing up in this town. Manufacturing and service industries are starting to spring up. Ya, they're working from the goods we bring, but it's there. People are moving on."

"But do they bring in any goods? Do they help feed us? No. They just feed off of what we, who are strong bring into the camp. The live like leaches off of our hard work."

"Do you have any of the things they make from our raids?" The old lady asked, placing a doll into an old cereal box.

"Of course I do! It's made from what I brought into the camp. It's only right that it's mine."

"You don't pay them their asking price?" said the old lady raising an eyebrow.

"What value does money have for us? Can you buy your next meal with it? Hell no! The only way you'll eat is if you go out and get your own god damned food."

"If that's how you feel about it, than I suspect that you would do best to avoid taking their goods. The guard is becoming more aggressive about enforcing the rules for theft," the old lady said.

"Just because you tell them too old hag. You may think you run this place but I can tell you that there are many people who don't think the way you do, and one of these days that will come up to bite you." said Nate.

"I know about your band of survivalists. There's a growing sentiment that by allowing people who cannot forage into the camp, we're bringing on our destruction. I can see where you're coming from but I cannot agree with the conclusion. If anything I would suggest that by focusing strictly on the details of our present survival, you'll find that at some point there will be nothing more for you to scavenge off of the ruins of our past life."

"There will always be resources for us. When we run out of food in the warehouses we will begin hunting."

"And when the ammunition runs out?"

"We will work with knives and spears. Regardless of the challenges, we will go on."

Jennifer looked at Nate, "That sounds like you're going backwards."

"No its forward as compared to the ultimate destruction that will inevitably come when the leaches drag this camp down to oblivion," Nate finished moving the blankets,  "it's only going to be a matter of time before the leaches consume more than the rest of us can provide.”

“If we always focus on our immediate needs, you will be absolutely right. As it stands now we are not positioned to handle the growth of our camp. This is why we need to look at what it would take to make this camp ready.” the old lady said as someone burst into the door. “We've found more survivors!”

Chapter 2: Humanity
“Survivors? Let's see who we've got!” Nate said. The team grabbed their weapons and made their way for the inner gate. As they arrived the guards reported to the old lady, “Sir!”.

“Don't call me that. I've told you I'm not a commander, or a leader, or anything else. That you all listen to me is nice, but please, just call me by my first name.”

“Yes sir! I mean, Yes Helen!”

“Anyway,” she said rubbing her head, “Your report?”

“Yes, a supply team found this lot while on a raid in the northern parts of Denver. From what they could gather they had been roaming the suburbs gathering equipment and supplies.”

The old lady looked at survivors through the gate with a curious eye, “Equipment? Like guns?”

“No. They seemed to be gathering junk together, like solar cells and computers.”

“Hmm...” The old lady said as she walked up to the gate and looked in at the rabble in the lock area. “I think we might have a use for them.”

“What?!” said Nate. “They didn't bring food, or water.”

“Yes we did!” one of them shouted.

“And look at them! They've obviously barely eaten at all. What use could you have for them?”

The old lady ignored Nate turned to look at them. “What were you fellas doing out there?” she asked.

A larger one of them stepped up. “We were working on getting together a communication station. We figured that there had to be someone else out there. However, radios with any kind of range are somewhat hard to find and we couldn't linger very long in any one place. We don't know how they do it but the zombies seem to be able to smell us, so we've kept moving, making sure not to re-visit anywhere too often since they seem to linger where they last found us for a while.”

“You're right, they can smell you, well, technically the wake of carbon dioxide that you leave behind you. They feed on the flesh of the living and use the exhaust of living things to find them. We've found they're very stupid, so we've started putting mosquito traps around our camp to keep them busy.”

“That explains a lot,” another of them said, “We saw your traps, but we couldn't tell what it was that the zombies thought was so interesting about them.”

“They're not full proof,” said the lady, turning and shrugging her shoulders, “but they keep the most of those bastards away from the camp. The rest we shoot when they get here.”

One of the men in the lock flinched and looked away. A third man saw this and stepped forward. “He's seen and had to do some troubling things. Since the original attack we've managed to avoid any direct killings and we know that with a stationary camp that's probably an unavoidable fact, but it doesn't make it any different.”

"We all had to make our own sacrifices sonny," the old lady said shooting a glance at Nate, "But there is hope that we can make things work." She looked at the lot of them, sizing them up; judging their fitness and health with an eye that seemed to see more than was actually visible. "So you said that you're working on getting a communication station put up. Does any of you have any skill or expertise in building or maintaining radios?"

The larger one spoke up, "I'm not a station manager or anything like that, but I am an electrical engineer so given the right things I can improvise and make it work. The other guys here are assorted technical people. All of us have some firearm training and the lean one over there is trained in the use of swords."

"Do you think you could put together some kind of system for artificial light?"

"Well, we could do it with solar power, though we would need to either make or recover some secondary batteries, or we would need some kind of power plant. I could help design the electrical part of it and help put that together, but I don't have the fabrication skills for building it."

"We have some metal workers and a small amount of equipment here. Do you think you would be able to have them fabricate what you need?"

"I'm no mechanical engineer, but if they can build it, I can design something to make it work, though it will be far from ideal."

"What about the rest of you?"

The lean one spoke up, "I'm a trained combatant and in good health. If you need someone to help make excursions into the zombie horde I may be of assistance."

"Ex-military?" Nate said, with hopeful smile.

"No. Private security. I specialize in close range combat with both armed and unarmed opponents and in telephone technical support for Windows based systems. I suspect the latter of the two isn't going to be as important of a skill, given our current circumstances."

The big one interjected, "That depends on if I can get power up and running. Depending on fuel availability it could be feasible to get a few computers up and running, even if only for managing resources."

"True," replied the lean one, "In any case I also used to teach theatric combat and a few practice forms so I might be able to help with training future soldiers."

"And you kid?" the old woman said looking at the young man who had flinched when they talked about shooting the zombies.

The young man, who looked like he was probably in his late thirties turned to look at the old lady. He was slightly gaunt looking and was balding significantly. He gave her a dark look and replied, "well, for the most part my skills are in the design and maintenance of websites and the implementation of unix servers. However, I also have some training in electrical engineering."

"Hmm..." the old lady said, "What do you guys think? Nate?"

"Well grandma, I think that there's only one of them that really has anything to offer us. The other two don't look like they'd fare too well. I wouldn't be surprised if the only one here who's even considered gathering food or water is that one," he said pointing at the lean young man, "What's your name son?"

"Kerberos"

"No son, what is your name?"

"My name is Kerberos."

"What did your mother call you?" Nate said becoming slightly irritated.

"My mother called me 'Blarrrggggurgle' when I put the shell into her rotten zombie brain. I really don't think it matters so much what she named me. The people here, who have been my family for the last year, call me Kerberos, so my name is Kerberos to you and anyone else who would ask. Also, I was not the only one who considered getting food or water. For that matter we decided our outcome by a mutual agreement of basic survival requirements. Food/water first, portable shelter second, weapons third, and if we could manage to accomplish those completely, we would move on to larger concerns such as finding other people, resolving the omni-present zombie threat issue, and anything else more pressing."


"Interesting," the old lady said, "what made you choose that order?"

"It's Maslow's pyramid of needs ma'm," replied the large one, "I suggested that we use it as a guidance of what things would probably lead to the best living conditions given the constraints. The others agreed."

"Please, call me Helen. Anyway, was it a good choice?" she inquired.

"I believe so. It's a lot easier to worry about how you're going to find other similar nomad groups when your belly's full."

"But you did worry about finding nomad groups didn't you?"

"Yes we did. Once we dealt with food, water, shelter, and safety, we began to try and devise ways that we could find other groups. That's why we were working on building a radio and also why we were setting up signal fires and leaving other marks. We figured that between the two projects we were rather likely to come across someone."

"Ya," said the balding gentleman, "though given your description me may have also been doing ourselves a favor by starting the signal fires in that the gasses they were emitting were acting as a distraction to the zombies."

The old lady laughed, "Probably so. So before I make my final decision as to your acceptance to denial from our camp, you two boys, tell me your names."

The big one spoke up, "I'm Jim, and this is Oniakki."

"Why do you have such a normal name when they have such strange ones?" Jennifer asked.

"My full name is Jim the Cactus, Electrical Engineer Extraordinaire my dear, but I felt that such a formal introduction wouldn't be becoming of the question. Especially given that I only know the first name of our host."

The old lady chuckled, "Well than in the spirit of such formal introductions, this young lady here is Jennifer Wright. That rather angry looking gentleman there is Nate Willows. The very large gentleman behind me is Phillip," she leaned in and whispered loudly, "Don't worry about him. He's a teddy bear," she cleared her throat and began speaking loudly again, "This is Bruce Adams, the young russian lady over there with the shotgun is Tanis Marikovich, And my full name," she said with a grin, "is Helen Wright, Elder of the survivor camp 'Shining Hope' and head of the camp immigration board with final authority in matters regarding new applicants."


She looked out across the three men in the gate and got a big smile on her face, "With that authority I declare that all three of the young men here are granted full acceptance into Shining Hope on the condition that Kerberos begin teaching a martial combat class and join in future supply expeditions on a schedule to be determined and that Jim and Oniakki get some form of power system installed in the camp. Even if only the essential areas are granted power this must be your top priority. I want your first proposals on my desk by the end of the week. Failure will result in your expulsion from the camp. Are there any questions?" The three men smiled at their good fortune. "No? Good then. Grab your stuff and get on in here."

The guards waited for the the three men to finish grabbing their things and then they opened the inner gate. "So," Jim said, "how are we on housing arrangements? We have our own shelter from when we were wandering about so is there a place we can setup?"

"Yes. The camp is arranged into two rings. The inner ring is for civic structures such as the warehouse and the school. The outer ring is for residential structures. Shops are present in the front of the camp near the gate here. We have a working currency, but for now that currency is only used for non-essentials. Currently it is mostly used for getting luxuries such as materials for art and other higher order products like toys and books."

"So food and water is provided?"

"Food, water, essential clothing, health care, and schooling are all provided as a base payment for providing whatever your assigned role is in the camp. In the case of supply teams they are required to transport a certain amount of essential goods once a week but are allowed to carry some extra goods for sale in the city. The supply run commander decides how much and reserves the right to deny these things if they feel that the items would be dangerous or that procuring them would endanger the supply mission. Getting the essentials comes first no matter the circumstances.

"Outside of your assigned duties you are free to engage in whatever activities you should so choose so long as  nothing you do causes obvious harm to anyone in the camp or the camp itself. Destruction of property is a serious offense here due to the extreme difficulty of acquiring even the simplest of goods. Generally, the basic moral rules that prevailed in our previous society exist here."

"So basically there's a welfare system setting up the baseline standard of living but anything beyond that requires work above and beyond the base call of duty," Jim said, pondering the nature of the camp's system.

"Largely," said the old woman, "Since the burden of some jobs is more than others and because some jobs are more dangerous than others, the amount of time required on the job will vary from job to job. Jobs that require no advanced skills are 8 hour, 5 day a week jobs with limited days off. Jobs that require significant schooling are 4 days a week, but have significant time off. Jobs that require entering zombie controlled turf are 1 day a week jobs. Any job that requires a skill also requires 1 day a week of education to convey these skills to other people or requires that the work week be extended a day and that the person take on an apprentice. Apprentices can not be taken for zombie zone jobs until the student is deemed proficient in the necessary combat skills."

"Sounds pretty reasonable," Oni said, "so where/when are Jim and I supposed to teach?"

"I've been thinking about that," the old lady said, "and I think we're going to have to handle you two differently. The vast majority of the people here are unskilled laborers. The few who aren't are the kind of people with largely academic degrees. As a consequence we really lack any kind of post-secondary educational system. Your skills may be be focused in electrical engineering, but the additional training you have in english, math, science, history, and philosophy will be of great use to our educational system."

"However I can be of service Helen," Oni said. "For the moment, we have work to do. So if you'll excuse us, we'll be off to setup our residence."

They all said their goodbyes and the three set of to setup their camp. However, Nate hurried after them. "Kerberos, can I have a word with you son?"

Kerberos looked to Jim and Oni, "You guys go on ahead. I'll catch up."

Chapter 2: Progress
Nate and Kerberos walked through the camp, looking at all of the hustle and bustle of daily life. "So, how do you like our camp son?" Nate asked, hands clasped behind him.

"Your camp has it's merits, but it's defensibility is left to be seen. Against the zombies in their current state, I would suspect that at present, you could handle a swarm of probably as many as 50 zombies before they'd breach the outer perimeter of the walls. You've chosen a decent location at the top of a hill in a clearing, which is good for countering any zombies that wander in by accident, but any kind of sabotage of the trap system would lead to a swarm of possibly two or three hundred zombies easy. Given that your camp would be forced to fight in the streets."

"Agreed," Nate said," and do you know why that is?"

"Well, if I had to guess from the nature of the walls, it's because you guys lack someone skilled at masonry," Kerberos postulated, "Currently your walls are all made of wood. The zombies have claws and will eventually penetrate these walls."

"Wrong," Nate said forcefully, "The reason that the walls are the way they are is because the old had insists that we not bring back heavier materials for the wall."

"Why would she do that?" Kerberos asked, giving Nate a confused look.

"She's always cited something about not being able to do it right. I've always said that if we were to bodge something together out of metal plates, we'd be much more protected. But she insists that the carpenters build it."

"A well built wall made of wood will stand much longer than scraps of metal haphazardly stuck together by people who don't have any welding skill," Kerberos said, "Nevertheless I agree that we should have a wall constructed out of a stronger material. Ideally we'd have one that could resist the zombies without us having to actively defend them."

Nate looked at Kerberos with the look of a man with a hunger, "What if I were to tell you that we could get materials to make a heavy metal wall. Would you help us get it?"

"Absolutely yes. That or a good source of concrete. What about welding equipment and machining tools and the people to operate them?" Kerberos asked.

"Well," Nate said, taken somewhat aback, "we have a few of those things in camp, and I'm sure we could figure out how to use them.

"I see. I think I see why she was so interested in Jim and Oni. How many tradesman do you have in camp?"

"Well, I don't know. The old hag is the person who knows those kinds of things and we really don't need to know that anyway. Either we defend the camp or we don't. If we don't put stronger walls up, it's only a matter of time before something happens and the camp is destroyed."

"I agree that we need something stronger, but simply putting up scraps of metal haphazardly isn't going to make a stronger wall. You already have a wall. It's not a great one, and in time it will fail and we'll be forced to fight the zombies in the camp. Nevertheless, by having the wall we have given ourselves time to stop, sit back, and honestly build a better wall. Maybe in time we'll have the skill and expertise to put together a truly superior wall, but for now I think that the wall we have is by far the best we could." 

Kerberos looked around the camp. He noticed the large gaps in the outer ring of the camp and the ample living space they had within their wooden confines. He took a big breath and turned to Nate, "No, the thing we need more than walls is people. As it stands now we have far too few combatants and even fewer skilled laborers like welders, mechanics, and blacksmiths; even fewer experts like engineers and scientists. Without these things we will be able to do nothing more than survive."

"Isn't that all we could ask for?" Nate pleaded, "Our world is gone. You must see that."

"No," Kerberos said, looking out across the camp, "our world is right here. For the sake of ourselves, no, for the sake of our children and our future, we must not only survive, we must thrive."

****

Kerberos turned and headed towards where Jim and Oni had gone. He walked slowly, checking the various bazaars in the camp and taking some time to talk with the residents about the camp, Nate, and Helen. When he arrived at where they were setting up their base, he found that they had already put together the first parts of their portable lab. "Efficient as always," Kerberos said looking over the complex array of electronic devices and systems.

"Well, we have had nearly a year to practice getting put together and torn down in less than a few minutes. I mean if we took any longer you wouldn't be able to keep the stupid zombies from catching up with you," Jim said connecting some wires.

"True, it may seem short when you're talking to someone in a protected fortress, but it sure feels like an eternity when you have 50 of the fuckers chasing you all across the metro," Kerberos replied.

"So, what did Nate want to talk with you about?" Oni asked.

"Building a better wall," Kerberos said shrugging, "Not a bad idea, but I think he's missing a few steps in things."

"Really?" Oni inquired, "What is he missing?"

"Well, he has found a large store of metal, but there really isn't anyone here who has the skills to put anything together, let alone any engineers who might be able to design a better structure. It also kind of explains their use of logs in the design of the camp."

"True," Jim said, "If they don't have any structural engineers they're not going to be able to design something that needs less material."

"Exactly," Kerberos said looking over their neighbors who seemed rather surprised at the high tech outpost springing up next door, "So, do you guys think that you'll be able to continue your research project here?"

"Possibly, but we'll be counting on you," Oni said, "our project depends on having some very specific parts and without me or Jim along to help you find the things that have the parts we need, you'll be flying blind."

"You just tell me what I'm looking for an you'll have it if it's humanly possible." Kerberos said, puffing his chest out a little.

"That's good to hear," Jim said, "because if we can get this up and running, the wall issue will become largely moot."

"Definitely," said Kerberos.

"Do you think they know?" Oni asked.

"The old woman is sure of it. The rest of them are totally oblivious to the fact that anything has happened." Kerberos replied.

"Seriously?" Jim said, hooking a soldering iron up to the solar power bench he had set up.

"Yup. Not a clue. I'm thinking that I may have a chat with the old lady about this. I figure there's a reason and I want to know what she thinks before I do something possibly destructive. We need the safety of the camp to finish, so if we get kicked out because I'm too rash with things, this whole little expedition will be for naught."

"Agreed," Oni said, assembling a device made largely from paper clips and solder, "so for the moment let's keep low about this. We don't need any unnecessary attention at this point."

"What are we keeping low about?" Bruce said as he strolled up, "I just stopped by to say hi and seem to have come across something I possibly shouldn't have."

"I don't know if you have or haven't. You wouldn't happen to know anything about magic would you?" Jim asked.

"Like cutting someone in half?" Bruce said looking confused.

"Not really." Jim said somewhat disappointedly, "In any case is there a good time to get an audience with Helen? Being new we're not really sure how to go about getting things done." 

"Well, usually you can just go and ask her, but right now she's teaching a martial skills class to the children," Bruce replied shrugging lightly, "Is there something specific you need to know?"

"Not in any urgent sense no. But I think I might go see her class," Kerberos said, "You guys gonna be okay here while I wander off again?"

"Ya, we'll be fine." Jim said, adding a dab of solder to a circuit board that looked like a jumbled mass of wire, "Just let us know when dinner is."

"Can do," Kerberos responded, "So... Bruce, was it? Do you think you could show me to where she's teaching the class?"

"Sure, follow me," Bruce said.

****

They walked along the length of the outer circle, watching the flow of life in the camp. "So," Kerberos said after a long pause, "how do you like living here? I mean as relative to some alternative or possibly living out in the zombie turf?"

"Oh, I love it here. By comparison I mean. Life here sucks, but much less than it did when I was on the outside."

"Were you with someone on the outside or were you caught completely alone when the awakening happened?"

"Awakening?" Bruce said giving Kerberos a strange look.

"Oh, what term do you guys use here for when all of the people became zombies?"

"We call that the outbreak, and the zombies themselves the damned."

"Interesting choices of names..." Kerberos said, pondering deeply, "anyway, did you have someone else with you when the outbreak happened?"

"Yes," Bruce said dropping his tone, "My wife."

"I'm sorry to for your loss," Kerberos replied, reading the tone change, "How did you find this camp?"

"Actually, I didn't. After I lost my wife to the zombies, I was wandering around - just trying to stay ahead of the bastards when I happened across Helen and her gang. Though at that time it was just her, Jennifer, and Nate."

"Oh, so Nate was with them from the start?" Kerberos asked.

"Well, of course he was, Nate is her son-in-law. Her oldest daughter was married to him and they had been living at her house while they got themselves established. They were real close too. It may sound like he hates her, but really he respects her a lot."

"Really? It'd be hard to get that from the way he treats her," Kerberos said, stopping to look at a sweets vendor's cart. 

"Ya. Apparently the way they show their affection is to insult each other."

"Interesting," Kerberos said looking over a piece of saran wrapped chocolate cake, "So, when did you guys establish this camp?"

"Shortly after we figured out how the zombies were tracking us. We had wandered around like you guys were, moving from place to place to avoid getting caught by the zombies. Then one day Helen told us that she had an idea and that she was going to go off and test something. We arranged a weeks worth of rendezvous points out near Lakewood and agreed to meet up with here there in a week. If we didn't hear from her after another week we were supposed to presume her dead and move on."

"Not overly wise, but the multiple rendezvous point idea is genius," Kerberos said pulling himself away from the stand and resuming their stroll.

"True. Anyway, when we arrived at the first rendezvous point we were stunned. Not only did we come to one of the largest zombie concentrations we had ever seen, but more surprising still was the fact that they all seemed to be too preoccupied with the traps she had setup at the rendezvous point. She explained what she had done and what she had discovered. She also introduced us to Phillip and Tanis who she had apparently met during the week she was away."

"Really? Were the two traveling together?"

"Yes. From what I've heard, Phillip and Tanis had happened to be in the same place when the outbreak happened. So they had been traveling together. Between the two of them they had been surviving by means of brute force, but they hadn't really worked out that they could keep moving to stay ahead of the zombies. I'd suspect that the only reason that they were able to move at all was their pure strength. Those two are really something when they need to be."

"Ah."

"So, in any case, after they met up at the rendezvous point, Helen suggested to all of us that with the traps we could probably start a camp. Initally, she said, we would need to keep wandering to find all of the parts needed and hopefully some more people to get the camp started, but after a few weeks we had enough traps put together and gathered enough people that we could start to make the camp. Aha, here we are," Bruce said, looking at the small class of ten to fourteen year olds.


****

Kerberos and Bruce stood, watching the slow, deliberate movements of the old lady as she guided the class through a kata. She stepped gracefully but forcefully through each attack, carefully placing every part of her body in precisely where she needed it to be.

At the end of the kata, she turned and looked to see Kerberos and Bruce standing in the back. "It seems we have guests today," she said, "why don't you come up here."

"Naw Helen; I have things I need to be doing but Kerberos said he wanted to see the class," Bruce said turning to leave, "You enjoy your class. Try not to let the kids beat you up too much."

"I promise I won't," Kerberos said waving goodbye to Bruce.

"Everyone say goodbye to Bruce," said the old lady, "And I'd like you all to meet one of the newest people in our camp. His name is Kerberos. I want you to make him feel welcome. How about we do some sparring. Everyone find a partner. Timmy, I want you to work with Kerberos."

"Yes ma'm," a young boy, not more than a day over ten said walking over to Kerberos. The old lady looked at Kerberos and said, "Go easy on him Timmy, he's new you know," giving Kerberos a quick wink.

Kerberos and Timmy gave each other a quick bow and then stepped into their fighting stance. The small boy stepped into a basic aikido stance. Kerberos entered into a balanced Tai Chi Chuan basic form. Kerberos recognized the aikido stance and made the first move to get things rolling. They were both using defensive arts so something was needed to get things moving.

Timmy took a step to execute a throw from Kerberos' attack. Kerberos, however, noticed that the throw was odd. They were running in slow motion to keep things under control, but the moves Timmy used seemed to depend on a super human amount of speed. Not wanting to look as too easy an opponent Kerberos replied with a counter of his own which left them disengaged but with him at the advantage.

This process repeated several times, each time Kerberos applied the initial force and then ultimately the two settled into a position with Kerberos at the advantage but without subduing Timmy. The old lady watched eagerly as the two traded energy back and forth.

Eventually she had seen enough. "Okay kids, I think we've had enough for today."

"We want to see you fight with Kerberos!" one of the young boys said. A chorus of "Ya! Fight Kerberos" spread through the class. The old lady looked a Kerberos with a keen eye, which Kerberos responded to with a gentle smile.

"Oh, all right. If Mr. Kerberos would be so kind as to assist me, I will demonstrate the full speed version of what we were working on today."

Kerberos walked up to the front of the class. "Were you able to watch the Kata today?" she whispered as he came up. "No," Kerberos replied. "Good." she said turning to face him.

They both bowed and entered their respective combat stances, with the old lady settling into a ready aikido stance. Taking the first step as he had with Timmy, he began to move. However, she reacted immediately. Not, very quickly, or as soon as he began moving, but simply immediately. Kerberos moved to counter her attack as soon as he noticed.

"She's fast," he thought to himself, but he knew he was fast too. And not just kinda fast, or really fast, but immediately fast. However, he had a show to put on so he and the old lady exchanged holds and moved from position to position, each responding as though they knew what was coming before it did, and immediately executing the needed counter.

In his mind, Kerberos focused on using only one counter for each of her moves and accepting any counter she might use. If the children saw the true nature of what was happening, it would blow the whole thing.

After a few minutes, they stood, chests heaving, staring at each other from a perfectly neutral position; no champion or even slight bias in the outcome could be seen. The old lady lowered her stance. "Did you take careful note children?"

"Yes Ma'm" they replied.

"Good."

Kerberos turned and bowed at the old lady, "Thank you, I am humbled master."

The old lady nodded and shooed off the students, "I'll see you kids again next week."

As the children started to head back to their homes the old lady turned to Kerberos. "Thank you son for working with me and your complete cooperation."

"I am happy to be of service," Kerberos replied.

"Come, let's go to my house and talk. I have a feeling that I know why you came."

Chapter 3: Discovery
The old lady lead Kerberos down from the dojo smiling at the people as they passed. "I love the people in the camp. Despite all of the things that have happened, life goes on," she turned and looked at him, "Unfortunately it does so with a painfully  large amount of inertia."

She looked out at the children who were busy playing with each other. "How long have you known that you could preform magic?"

"We figured it out after a few weeks. It was pretty obvious all things considered."

"What 'things' are you talking about?"

"The zombies."

"The zombies?"

"Ya, I mean think about it, given all of what you'd seen prior to the awakening, was there anything ever that lead you to believe that zombies were even possible, let alone zombies that could live forever without food and could suddenly just know where you were?"

"In that light I believe it should have been much more obvious to me," the old lady said, nervously scratching the back of her neck.

"Once we got the basics worked out and had some time to think about the nature of our circumstances, we decided that magic had to be the cause for this. After that it only took one spontaneous manifestation for us to realize that the magic that was animating the zombies was also available to us. Since then we've been working on experimenting to try and get a handle on it."

"So, what skills have you been able to accomplish?" she asked, waving at some people as they passed.

"I've been able to work out some adept skills and the other two have worked out some as well. They've got some strategic spells and between the two of them they've worked out a few shield spells."

"That's a lot of skills," she said with a small whistle.

"That's nothing," said Kerberos, "They've done something much better."

"Mmmm?" said the old lady as she opened the door to a hut and began to step inside.

"They've come up with a way to tech it," Kerberos said, stepping into the house, "No, not just a way to teach it; a way to _write_ it."

The old woman, who had started to make some tea stopped in her tracks, "a way to write it?" she said? "I've been trying to teach the people here to use it, but most of them wouldn't even listen to me if it weren't due to the fact that I can create such obvious graphic displays."

Kerberos grinned hearing that, "So it's not because it's some kind of taboo or secret?"

"Heck no son, I just can't get anyone to learn it. We occasionally see a 'spontaneous manifestation' as you called it, but I've never been able to teach them to control it."

"Actually, it turns out that magic is formulaic. Really all you need is to combine the different types of mana at the right times in the right ways."

"Different types of mana?" the old lady said, somewhat confused at the terms.

"Here, let me explain," Kerberos said.

Kerberos walked into the middle of the hut. "There are three types of elemental mana," he concentrated a few moments and three colored balls of energy formed in a row before him. The first was a fiery red, the second was a kind of forest green, and the last was a deep ocean blue.

The old lady jumped in surprise as the balls formed. "H- How- How did you do that?!" she squeaked.

"Oh, mana exists as a physical thing. Normally it pervades through our world in very small quantities. As a consequence it's normal radiance is too dim to notice. What I've done is concentrated a lot of mana into little piles here so you could see it," he turned to the old lady and raised an eyebrow, "When you cast your spells how do you do it?"

"Well, I concentrate my Ki and my Chi, then I apply them together in my body at the muscles where I need the extra strength."

Kerberos allowed the blue ball to dissipate but two of the mana balls to fade, what remained were a green and a red ball. "What you call Ki and Chi we call Red and Green mana, for reasons that I hope are obvious. Red is the mana of power. Essentially it is the basis of spells that add strength to muscles." Kerberos said.

"Green, however, will increase your perception speed and allow you to respond in microseconds to things that normally would require tenths of milliseconds to react to," Kerberos explained, "you're actually casting two spells. One is to increase your strength and the other is to increase your speed. But there is more to magic than just simply speed and power." Kerberos merged the two spheres of light. There was a bright reaction and after a few moments of aggressive activity a single sphere remained, glowing brightly in a warm blue  color.

"What's that?" the old lady said.

"That, my dear, is a blue chi mana ball. It is the consequence of a reaction between pure red and pure green mana. It is not a form of elemental mana, but instead is what we've deemed a 'mana compound'. Mana compounds have their own function and effects on things. When applied to a human, blue chi mana will cause you to grow in height for the period that the mana is applied to your body. We actually suspect that it lowers your density since you don't gain weight when you do. I suspect that if we were to apply the vast amount of mana we have here to you would become a gas, but we don't know and none of us have been foolish enough to try it."

Kerberos concentrated for a period. The ball of mana distorted, flashed, changed colors a few times and eventually it became two spheres of red and green energy respectively.

"What did you do? That was some light show!" the old woman asked claping lightly.

"I separated the red and green mana. That particular recipe took us some time to derive. Mana compounds, like real compounds don't come apart freely. They have to be broken down," Kerberos shrugged, "we're just lucky that we have to deliberately force the mana together to make them mix or magic might have been pointless. It would be nothing but a single homogeneous inert color."

"You said you have a way to teach this, could you show me?"

"Sure," Kerberos said, "Let's start with an easy spell. I'm going to show you the defensive barrier spell, first I need to show you how to find blue mana."

"Find?" She asked.

"Yes, find. All of us who aren't zombies can feel mana. But we don't know what we're looking for. That's probably why you where so surprised when I pulled together the elemental forms. You had never felt blue before and it was startling. What I'm going to do is show you blue mana. Are your eyes closed?"

"Yes, they're closed," the old lady said.

"Good, okay now I'll pull together some blue mana," Kerberos concentrated deeply and drew together a small bead of blue mana, "Can you feel it?"

"Yes," she said with an astonished laugh, "Yes I can."

"Now feel around you, can you feel the blue mana around us?"

"Yes! It feels about the same as the other two, but it's just a little different."

"Okay, now what I want you to do is reach out and grab some like you do with your 'chi' and 'ki' and put it in front of you."

She felt the blue mana and pulled it into a mound in front of her. She could feel it balling up in front of her, like the second ball that was just in front of Kerberos.

"Good. Now, press it into a fine bead."

She pressed it into a small bead, forcing it all as close together as she could move it.

"Excellent!" Kerberos said with an impressed tone, "Now, what I want you to do is hold that bead and slowly open your eyes. Don't break concentration, keep it sitting there."

The old lady slowly opened her eyes, in front of her was a tiny bright ball of light blue light. She jumped for joy at the impressive sight, but unfortunately she broke her concentration and the ball quickly evaporated.

"I told you not to stop concentrating," Kerberos said laughing, "But you've done very well. You now can see the blue mana can't you?"

"Not with my eyes, but I know it. I can feel it everywhere."

"Okay, now, that spell I promised you. Blue mana causes things to be strong, it's like it builds a net and reinforces the objects it's bound to, so objects imbued with blue mana will be strong and act as a shield. So, what I want you to do is gather a small amount of blue mana, like you do with you chi rather than the huge amount you gathered just now and I want to you to put it in your clothes."

The old lady complied with Kerberos' commands. She gathered a small amount of blue mana together and willed it into her clothes. Her clothes immediately became rigid. After a few seconds she felt the blue mana dissipate and her clothes went soft again. Kerberos clapped "You did very well. The lesser shield spell can be used to turn anything solid. If you take a pile of sand and throw it into the air and hit it with blue mana, it will become a solid wall for the period that the mana is in the sand. You can sustain the wall by either holding the mana in or feeding the wall a constant stream of mana."

The old lady walked up to Kerberos and bowed deeply, "I would be honored if you would teach me."

Kerberos laughed, "I'm not the person to be asking that question; Jim and Oni are far better at it than I am. I know only a few basics and most of the spells I know are combat centric. If you really want to learn, the person to ask is Oni. Of the three of us, he is by far our best mage."

The old lady got a smile on her face a mile wide, "I knew I was making the right choice letting you boys in."

"Oh, that? You've probably not noticed before since you're the only one who uses spells, but there's something you should know; people who use mana a lot get lots of it building up around them. Consequentially, for people like me, Jim, and Oni, we probably shine like beacons to you as much as you do to us. As compared to the others in this camp, you're really hard to miss in a crowd," Kerberos said giving the old lady a wink.

"I will have to keep that in mind in the future," she said giving him a little wink of her own, "Would you like some tea while we talk a bit?" she asked.

"Oh, yes please," he said eagerly as she grabbed the kettle from the fire looking at the mid-afternoon sun.

Chapter 4: Plans interrupted

"I think the old hag has gone too far this time!" Nate exclaimed from the confines of Tanis' cramped hut. 

Tanis turned to look at Nate as he paced back and forth. "What makes you say that?" she asked, drinking some hot chocolate she had managed to bring back from their sortie.

"Two of those newcomers are obviously non-combatants. Didn't you hear what they said? 'We didn't have to kill any zombies after the first outbreak,'" he looked Tanis square in the eyes, "You've been out there. You know what it's like. Do you think you could have made it this long without killing any zombies?"

"Hell no. Phillip and I probably killed a hundred zombies a day just trying to stay alive," she replied.

Nate looked at her, "I have to admit yours is somewhat of a special case, I didn't have to kill quite as many," Nate turned and paced the other way, "but the fact remains that killing the zombies was essentially unavoidable. Every day it was kill or be killed." Nate twisted about once more in his frantic march, "what do you think of the newcomers?"

"To be honest I think they're lying. As you said there's no way that the were able to go that long without having to kill any zombies. So it logically follows that they had to have killed some zombies along the way and thus must be liars." Tanis took another careful sip, "However, there's something about them that's different. Something I really can't seem to place. I get the same kind of feeling about Helen. I think Helen could feel it too and that's why she let them into the camp."

"That's bullshit!" Nate declared, "I can feel something is different too, but I'm sure it's a bad thing. They give me the same kind of vibes as the zombies!"

"That's true but so does Helen," 

"Helen's different! She's not like them," Nate snapped.

The sun was fading away in the late evening of the coming winter and the hut's small lamps were becoming the only real source of light in the tight quarters. Nate looked out the window at the daylight retreating across the horizon.

"Oh, how is that so?" Tanis asked.

"The old hag may be a little soft at times, but she at least understands that we need to survive. She can care for herself and had no trouble out with the zombies all by herself. She doesn't need a body guard and she's dependable. If she tells you she'll do something, she'll do it. There's no need to ask if she's lying just to get herself ahead."

"Are you sure that they can't look after themselves?"

"You saw them, didn't you? Do they look like they could fight off a zombie or twelve if they got surrounded? Or do you think they just had the one guy do all of the fighting while they just went along for the ride and gathered junk."

"Well... I guess it doesn't really look like they've done much fighting."

"My point exactly. And we don't need that kind of person hanging around here. If we were ever attacked, we need everyone to be able to come to arms."

"True," Tanis replied. She glanced over at the shotgun sitting on her bed and remembered how many times it had been fired within the camp walls in the defense of her home, "Still, I think that we should ask Helen about it. I mean if it's just trash we can have her kick them out or something."

"The old hag has already made her decision," Nate said, "Do you think she's gonna throw them out just because we ask nicely?"

"Well.. Maybe," Tanis said with a hopeful tone.

"You know as well as I do that once that old bag has made up her mind about something, it's not going to change. No, what we need to do is find a way to kick them out without asking her."

"What would you propose?" Tanis asked, swirling her cocoa.

"Well, the easiest answer would just be to kill them," Nate said pondering, "But that third guy Kerberos would probably get in the way and he can actually fight. No, I think what needs to be sneakier. Maybe we should try and do something that will get them kicked out or cause them to leave on their own."

"Don't you think Helen would notice?"

"Not if we do it right. It's all got to be in the planning. That old hag might be getting senile in her old age, but she's still pretty sharp. Anything simple would get us noticed for sure," Nate explained, considering the varied list of options.

"Well," Tanis said, "Helen said that they had to complete the blueprints for a generator in a week. What if we were to sabotage their efforts there and cause them to not get done in time."

"That's a good idea. But we'll need a way to work it out without anyone finding out. If they do, we'd be in more trouble than they would. It helps that we're senior camp members, but they'd still probably deal with us pretty harshly," Nate said, "I think we'll need someone else to help. Maybe someone who can hurt things by trying to help. Too many cooks spoil the broth you know."

"Hmm, that sounds like a good plan," Tanis commented, "but who should we use?"

"That is a much easier question. Bruce has always wanted to see us get power, but he obviously lacks the skills needed to really do anything with it. So if we have him bring up a million harebrained ideas and demand they be put in, then they'll never be able to satisfy all of the requirements at the same time and finish the design in a week."

"There’s not much of a guarantee that it will work," Nate said disdainfully.

"It's more than you have right now. Do you have a better suggestion?"

"We could just shoot the mooches."

"That better be a joke Nate," Tanis said, "We're better off throwing them out to the zombies; if they survive then good news for them."

Nate gave a forced laugh, "Of course it was a joke," the laughter faded, "Besides, we don't need their corpses littering our gravesites."

Tanis gave him a scorching look. "Okay," Nate said, "We'll have Bruce try to annoy them out of the camp. Happy?"

"Definitely," she said, placing her cocoa on the table and standing up. "I think it's time for me to hit the sack. I'll talk to you later." 

Nate waved a quick goodbye, "I'll have a talk with Bruce tomorrow about what we need him to do. Anyway, sleep well."

Nate walked off into the darkness. Night time in the camp was quiet. Eerily quiet. 'It isn't like when we camped out when I was a kid' Nate thought to himself. 'There's no fires, no marshmallows, no ghost stories. Just people living in fear for their lives from an enemy they know is always there that they can do essentially nothing about.'

Nate glanced up at the heavy wall that separated him and everyone in the camp from their impending demise. A guard stood a careful watch with a flashlight, making sure that no zombies had made their way past the gates. 'No matter how nice things may seem inside the wall, that's only possible because brave souls spend sleepless nights watching out for us; putting their lives on the line so that we can sleep quietly.'

As he was examining the post, he saw a blinding blue flash. He stood stunned for a few moments when a loud crack rang past him at a thousand miles an hour, echoing off the walls and buildings and leaving a deep rumble like thunder all through the camp. In the following silence babies could be heard crying and the few animals that had been let into the camp began to bark and howl.

Nate ran in the direction of the event. He didn't know what happened, but he was sure that there was trouble, and that was good enough. When he arrived at the scene of the explosion, he found the limp body of Jim several feet from the blown down tent Jim and his friends had been staying in. He rushed up to the unconscious man and checked; he could feel him breathing, but he looked pretty badly scraped up. He looked past Jim's body and saw that everything for twenty feet around the tent was emitting a dim blue glow. He tried to walk up and examine some of the damage but he found that at first the air was hard to breath but then it literally started to feel thick like a gel.

He moved away from the tent to escape the seemingly liquid air and caught his breath. 'What the hell is this?!' he thought to himself. In front of him, Jim began to stir. "Ooooh..." Jim said, trying to pull him self up, but flinching in pain as he moved his left arm.

"What the hell happened here boy!" Nate yelled at him as he got to his feet.

"It worked," Jim said, taking in the current scene, "too well I'm afraid, but by jeebus it worked." Jim made an ecstatic pumping action with his right fist.

"Worked, what the hell do you mean 'worked'?! You just about killed yourself and could have blown up the entire camp. And what the hell is that blue glow?! What did you do?!"

Jim gave Nate an absent minded glance and giving him a nonchalant wave of the hand said, "It's just mana residue. It should dissipate in a couple of hours." Jim grabbed his chin and began pacing around, "why didn't the limiter system control the influx rate? I mean ya, the accumulator matrix worked like a charm and the fact that there's an active denial zone here means that the instantiation system did it's job, but there shouldn't have been anywhere near that much involved. It was set to only a few Akkis and that had to have been a megaakki or more. I bet there's an anomaly in the manafield for a mile around with how much..."

"I asked you BOY, what the hell were you doing?" Nate demanded, grabbing Jim by the shoulders and staring him in the face with fire in his eyes.

Jim looked back at him with his eyes still having a bit of trouble focusing, "I was testing the accumulator matrix. Worked BRILLIANTLY. The blue stuff will fade in a few hours and beside my tent being in only slightly better shape than a crater, nothing will be any worse off.

"Also, my friend, I know toothpaste is a rare commodity out here, but if you don't brush once in a while you're going to be real sore until you guys happen to be lucky enough to find a dentist who takes his drill seriously enough to fight off a zombie invasion."

Nate gave Jim a slight push as he let him go. "Do you have any idea what kind of damage you could have caused?"

Jim, finally able to see straight again turned and looked at Nate. "Absolutely," he said, "probably much more so than you. More than a megaakki of mana concentrated in a single point that merely detonates when instantiated is a lucky break for everyone here. But these risks where already assessed and accounted for when I put together the test. The reason for the use of blue mana, as well as the fact that the accumulator was set to do a forced shutdown if it overloaded was because the risks had to be mitigated. The final system will need several megaakkis of mana to sustain the denial field, though admittedly the goal was to gather up only a few akki to prove I could, not a whole megaakki where the emergency shutdown would kick in."

"You're trying to make something that explodes bigger?" Nate exclaimed.

"No," Jim said quietly, "I'm trying to build something that does roughly the opposite.  The final device's job is to be a shield for this whole camp."

"What is wrong with your brain son? Blowing stuff up is no shield. For that matter a shield is impossible," Nate said as Oniakki came running up.

"Dude! I saw it! It worked didn't it?" Oni exclaimed.

"Yes... well mostly. What took you getting here. This mundane got here before you did and from what I can tell he was across the camp," Jim said sourly.

"I was busy checking out the area. I had to get permission to go back through the gate."

"Excuses, excuses," Jim said mockingly, "The accumulator matrix worked! I'm not sure what happened to the limiter though."

"Well, it shows. What was that, a megaakki?"

"Round about. That's where the secondary failsafe limit was set. But as you can see the instantiator definitely worked."

Oni looked at the blue glowing block of air. The blue mana was oozing out of the area and spreading out into the air. Bright blue sparkles were moving off in random directions. "Wow. There's enough mana here that it's clumping." 

"I know, isn't it pretty?" Jim said watching the sparkles. "Too bad the machine was probably damaged when the instantiation happened. That was pretty violent."

"You're telling me. I could hear that clear as day and I was almost a mile away."

Nate stood there while they continued talking. He was confused; not at the strange gelatinous block of air, or the shiny blue speckles radiating in all directions. Instead, he stood in total bewilderment at how any sane human being could possibly be at the scene of a nearly lethal explosion and be excited about it. In all of his time in the army, he had never wanted to be where explosions happened. These two characters were not only okay with the fact they had just put the camp at huge risk, but were excited at the outcome.

He was about to decide on his means of killing them when the old lady arrived. Kerberos was following slightly behind. "What are you doing to my camp young man!"

Jim looked at Kerberos. Kerberos gave him a smile and a wink. "Well ma'm," Jim said, "I'm trying to come up with a new way to get way more attention than really desired."

"Well, then I have to congratulate you, you've done a very good job of waking everyone in the camp up and telling them that you're here."

"Thank you very much for the compliment ma'm" Jim said.

"Okay, seriously though, Jim was it? What where you doing?"

"Well, I've been working on building a barrier generator for some time now. However, to make it work I have to be able to accumulate mana of the right type and instantiate the spell with it. I've been trying to get that to work for some time now, and I've been able to get the machine to instantiate the spell if I gathered up the mana for it, but the accumulator has always been problematic."

"Huh," Helen said, trying to grasp at what she could and disregarding the rest.

"But this evening I was working on drawing up the plans for the generator when it struck me that I had been trying to use a single resonator crystal to gather the mana and that that wouldn't make a suitable mana trap. So I put together a four crystal trap with doppler shift containment and I got a stable energy buildup. The real problem tonight however was that the system worked far better than I had expected. I don't know exactly why the system's limiter didn't cause the buildup to be more modest, but for the moment what I do know is that the system can easily gather a megaakki of mana in the same place over the course of only a second or two whereas before it couldn't exceed the resonator's natural mana levels."

"The point of this machine is? Beyond blowing up our camp that is."

"The machine's job is to cast the lesser shield spell on a scale much greater than is possible by a single person, but moreover to maintain that spell without requiring concentration. Essentially the point is to build a shield generator for the whole camp," Kerberos said calmly. He picked up a rock and threw it into the glowing blue section of camp. The rock slowed and fell gently to the ground.

"It's soft," Kerberos said.

"Of course it's soft," Jim explained, "The machine was damaged in the explosion. There's nothing actively sustaining the spell. All you see here is mana residue slowly leaking back into the area around us."

"Ah. Do you think you can make it stop exploding and damaging the machine?"

"I believe so. In the meantime I need to ascertain why the limiter failed. I thought we had already worked out the mana suppression technique but apparently it only worked in the single crystal design. However, seeing as explosions and horrible disruptions to the mana field - as well as head trauma - kind of suck, I think for any future prototyping I'll be setting the secondary failsafe to a lower limit than it's currently at."

"You're going to set it less than 'kaboom' right?" the old lady said.

"Well, the total output needed for the system to work depends heavily on the magnitude of..."

"You're can set it less than 'kaboom'. Riiiight?" She said emphatically.

Jim hesitated, "Not really ma'm" Jim said, "Until the inhibitor is working there's no way to promise one way or another."

"We'll have to look at what's happening here and make some tough choices," the old lady said examining a little puff of blue wandering around in a hapless little squiggle.

Everyone started getting things cleaned up. Nate just stood there like deer in the headlight for several minutes. Eventually something snapped in his brain, "That's it?! 'Don't do it again'? Hiya, I just blew up my house and endangered possibly the entire camp using a machine that nobody but me understands or has seen do anything but explode! Will you even bother to tell anyone what's going on? No. For all I know this blue stuff's radioactive and we're already all too exposed to expect much more than a few hours to live."

"NATE!" the old woman shouted, startling Nate, "Shut up. I was having tea with Kerberos here and he was explaining all of this to me. Given what we've all seen tonight I think we might all benefit with a bit more explanation."

Nate gave Jim a deep scowl and they all headed to the old lady's hut.

Chapter 5: Revelations
"... and the output from the instantiator takes the mana from the trap and by means of the soggy kitten effect causes the mana to manifest on the target."

"It gathers mana and casts spells with it," Kerberos said, summarizing the hour long explanation of magic and the barrier generator.

"That's all well and good. But I don't believe any of it." Nate said angrily.

"Let's put this in pretty pictures and simple words for you Nate," the old lady said, "There is magic." She gathered together three colored balls, making Nate gasp, "You use it to cast spells, and these three boys have been working on a way to make a machine that uses magic to make an impenetrable wall around the camp."

She allowed the balls to dissipate and looked at Kerberos, "There's not much blue mana around."

"That's to be expected. The machine drew 1 megaakki worth of mana." Jim said.

"I've heard you guys use this megaakki term a lot. What is a megaakki?" the old lady asked.

"Well," Oni said, "when we were doing our initial experiments we needed a uniform way to measure the amount of mana being used. We tried coming up with a standard unit of measurement based on the rather empiric sense of mana we all have. However, it was nearly impossible to really get a handle on the exact amount of things that way. Most of our spell designs worked pretty well given the limits of our measurement system, but we needed to find a better way to measure mana."

Oni reached into his pocket and pulled out a clear white crystal. "That's about when I discovered that some minerals would react to the presence of mana by generating an alternating voltage across the crystal along the grain. Most of them are crystals like this one, and usually they only react to one type of mana. Quartz, however, turned out to be somewhat different. Quartz just seems to respond generically to the presence of mana. After some testing we found that given the same amount of mana the crystal always produced the same voltage. After some tinkering we decided that enough mana to make the crystal generate 1 volt RMS would be called the Akki."

Jim turned to the old lady, "From our experiments, the amount of mana that typically goes into a spell is between 1 and 10 akkis worth of mana. We also found that the average mana around here is about 1 akki per cubic foot. This means that when the barrier generator shutdown at a million akkis of mana, it had to have drawn all of the mana around it for about," Jim did some scribbles on a piece of scrap paper, "about 62 feet. Any spells cast in that area are likely to have some trouble since there won't be any mana. However, it's been a couple of minutes so a lot of the mana nearby has seeped into the low mana spot from the area around it. Thus why there's less mana than usual here."

"Anyway, now do you believe us?" Kerberos said to Nate.

"Oh, I believe you, but that makes you all the more dangerous. I don't see why we should keep you clowns around. It's obvious that you're a threat to the people in this camp. Your blatant disregard for the safety of the people in this camp coupled with playing with an obviously dangerous thing..."

"It wasn't all that dangerous," Jim interjected, "You should see what happens when you instantiate just a few akkis of neon green mana. Woo! Now that's dangerous."

Oni turned and looked at Jim with a horrible look. Jim looked back innocently with the eyes of a ten year old who has just unknowingly said a curse word. Oni rubbed his forehead, "You wouldn't get it would you?"

"Get what?" Jim said. Oni just stared at him for a few moments. Jim looked at all of the eyes watching him and said, "It works, doesn't it? No one was hurt and I was able to verify that the device worked in a spectacular way."

"Jim, spectacular is a code word for dangerous." Kerberos said.

"Oh," Jim said, "I guess you guys don't like that, huh?"

"No. Nobody likes being woken up in the middle of the night by an explosion that has rendered a section of the camp unfit for human occupation," the old lady said. "The camp is supposed to be the safe place, if you're experiments are going to do this than they'll have to stop, regardless of the benefit."

"But in the course of research there are always unforeseen circumstances," Jim pouted.

"And that's why the research has to stop."

"But..."

"No. That's it," the old lady said, "all use of such equipment in this forever prohibited. The only spells that will be cast will be done so only by people operating outside of the camp walls and no one on a supply team may use any spells except the strength and speed spells since they would endanger the critical purpose of those missions."

"BUT!" Jim exclaimed.

"There are no buts here. What you've demonstrated today is obvious proof of why this is important. Yes, having a permanent shield would be strongly desired, but if we have to loose the camp to have it, then there's no point in building it."

Jim looked out across the group, sizing up his ability to refute their rule. The looks on their faces spoke clearly of the end of his experiments. Jim took a deep sip of tea, gagging when he realized how hot it was. After regaining his composure, Jim said, "I'll stop experimenting in the camp."

"That isn't the answer I need to hear. Your experimentation needs to stop. That's all there is," the old lady said. "I cannot allow for something so dangerous to continue."

"Then I guess it's finally come to this," Jim said standing up and putting his hand into his pocket. There was a sudden flash of light and gagging smoke and Jim was gone.

"We'll find him!" Kerberos said.

"There's no need," the old lady said, "Give him some time and he'll come back."

"Actually," Oni said, "You'd be surprised with him. If I know him, he won't come back until he proves that that machine of his will protect the camp. He'd want undeniable acceptance or nothing."

"Is that so?" The old lady said, "Do you think he'll be okay?"

"He'll survive so long as his experiment doesn't go critical on him. He won't be doing great since he tends to get overly involved in his work; but he'll make it," Kerberos replied.

"I'm going to get him," Oni said. Oni stood up and and after a few moments he disappeared; leaving the faint odor of musky woods in his wake. The old lady looked disparagingly at the spot where Oni once stood.

"I'm going as well, but I think I'll be doing it the old fashion way," Kerberos said making haste for the door.

Nate turned and looked at the old lady, "Well old hag, I believe that I've made my point."

"No," the old lady said, "You haven't. That boy is doing his best to help the camp. With some time and practice he'll get this worked out. But for now, the problem is that he's working slightly beyond the limits of his planning, and that leads to accidents. If this were a university it would only take a small bit of oversight and he'd be in a position to do great things."

She left her chair and went to look at a porcelain vase in the corner, "But we can't give that to him. He's the only expert we have in just about any field. That kind of supervision requires someone else who can work with him at his level. A second set of eyes to bring up little things that get overlooked."

Chapter 5: Visions from the not so long ago distant past.

Jim finished running and arrived at the tent. While they had been drinking tea most of the mana had dispersed leaving the area feeling kind of thick, but breathable. Jim tore down the parts of his experiment and his isolation survival backpack that he always kept on him in case he got separated from the group. He took the prototype of the generator he'd been developing and some fuel and headed off. As he was leaving, Oni appeared in front of him.

"GAHH! Oni?! There is so much wrong with this!" Jim said angrily.

"I've come to stop you," Oni said calmly.

"By breaking the rule I'm trying to run from?"

"Yes and no. They don't realize that our personal control of magic is well beyond what your little experiment demonstrates. You know as well as I do that this teleport is perfectly safe. Helen's big concern is that magic is dangerous and this was knowledgeably safe," Oni said.

"Then what's with all of this grumpiness?" Jim said.

"See, teleport is safe. Your mana machine isn't. We know that a normal person's ability to control mana is within an akki or two even if they slip and make a major error. That machine made an error of five orders of magnitude." 

"It was only because the inhibitor failed," Jim exclaimed, "if it hadn't it would have been perfect."

"Yes, but unlike a person casting spells the machine made a severe error and created a very dangerous situation," Oni said, "This sets a very bad precedent and speaks very badly about magic in general."

"But," Jim said.

"You know what the answer is to that Jim. We all know that with time these problems will go away, but while you're doing your research, you endanger everyone nearby; even if you're only using simple spells with predictable easy results."

"Can't I continue my research?"

"Yes," Oni said, "But not in the camp, or really anywhere near it. The problem is that before when things could have gone wrong it was just the three of us. Now we hold in our hands the lives of a few hundred people and thousands of man-hours of labor done during desperate times. We can't afford to have a slip-up cause a blast wave that knocks down all of the trees for a mile radius like we did that one time out in Boulder."

"I guess you're right," Jim said examining the layout of the stitching on his shoes, "I guess I'll have to work out a way to safely test my machinery."

"That would be the idea. Ya," Oni said.

Kerberos came running up, "I figured you wouldn't leave without your project."

"Leave without the prototype shield generator? Not a chance!" Jim exclaimed.

"You shouldn't teleport right after we go through all of the motions to get magic banned you know Oni," Kerberos said staring evilly at Oni.

"You know it's safe," Oni pouted.

"Yes I do, but Helen doesn't," Kerberos said.

"And that's why we need to show her," Oni replied.

"Ya!" Jim said.

"You be quiet explosion boy!" Kerberos exclaimed.

Jim looked to Oni for backup but Oni just gave him a sour look.

"So," Oni said, "we obviously need to continue our research. Any suggestions?"

"Well, we have teleportation, and scrying, we could use point to point jumping and run the lab elsewhere," Oni suggested.

"No go. The reason we kept moving is that the zombies will get you if you linger. That hasn't changed outside the walls of this camp," Kerberos said.

"What if we were to setup the traps there?" Jim brought up.

"That would take several months to get setup. Do you think you could wait that long?" Oni asked.

"Well, maybe... No, not really," Jim realized.

"Then that's probably out then," Oni nodded.

"Well?" Kerberos said impatiently.

"I know," Oni said, "what about a pocket dimension?"

Kerberos just stared at Oni for a few moments. "That spell actually IS dangerous," he said after composing himself, "we all know that that spell requires a lot of mana, and is a complex formula. Moreover, the amount has to be within just a few akkis and you'll be handling thousands of akkis, and that's for a small space. Let alone the fact that you then have to construct a portal to it once you've built it."

"It's doable," Oni said, "Dangerous, but doable. We've done some small pocket dimensions already for storage and other useful things; I don't see why we couldn't just upscale it for use as a lab."

"It's crazy!" Kerberos yelled, "There's no way you'll pull that off on that kind of scale."

Jim, who had been enjoying watching his breath roll out in clouds from between his lips in the cold suddenly jumped in, "Let's do it!"

"What!" Kerberos said, "You know what happens if the pocket closes!"

"So?" Jim said, "I just survived the spontaneous instantiation of a megaakki of mana for the sake of this project; if I wasn't willing to risk a little, I'd have given up long ago after the first zombie attack."

"He's serious isn't he," Kerberos said to Oni, "Tell me he's not and this is all a premeditated joke."

"No can do," Oni said, "I think it's a good idea and he's willing to try it." Oni turned and looked at Jim, "How long do you think it will take you to finish preparations?"

"Twenty minutes, Ten if I hurry."

"We don't need to move that fast. Let's put the tent back up and get on it tomorrow morning when we've had some sleep. It's late."

"I still can't believe you guys are going to do this," Kerberos said to himself. Then he had an epiphany, "What if I were to tell Nate and Helen?"

Oni turned to him and gave him a smile, "I'd have to kill all of you. Now get some sleep, we've got a lot of work to do tomorrow and I'd like your assistance if you wouldn't mind."

Oni walked off and started reassembling the tent. Kerberos stood there in the wake of Oni's comment trying to decide the true gravity of the situation and his next action. He shrugged. "I don't think I'll die today," he proclaimed, "but I'm not going to help you fix the blue manafield in the morning. It's Jim's mess, let him clean it up."

****

The morning came with little fuss. All three couldn't sleep well that night and woke in the morning feeling somewhat tired due to the strangeness of all three of them being able to sleep at the same time with no one on watch.

A knock came on the front of their tent. "Get up sleepyheads! Helen wants to speak with you. Pronto" Nate said through the fabric.

"Ugghh. Five more minutes," Kerberos said.

"NOW!"

"Alright. I'm up," Kerberos said rousing the other two. "We'll be there in ten."

They quickly dressed and headed off to old lady's shack. "Ah, so good to see you boys," the old lady said, "and I see you retrieved your friend." Jim grumbled a bit for show.

"So I've been thinking about it and I've decided that what I said last night was hasty. I've been using magic now for a while and haven't run into any case where what I did seemed even remotely dangerous. The vast majority of the time an error would lead to nothing happening. I admit that what Jim did last night is obviously dangerous, but it's not the magic itself that was dangerous, it was how it was handled."

"I'm glad you've had this change of heart," Jim said ecstatically.

"Oh, you won't be getting off that easy young man," the old lady snapped, "your little machine is a menace to the whole camp. That thing is still banned. Any further experimentation along that line is prohibited."

Jim looked disgusted, but then his face relaxed into an expression of quiet resolve, "Yes ma'm"

She looked at Jim carefully, "You have something planned. I know it. I can see it in your eyes," she stared at Jim intently.

Jim tried carefully to look confused, "What do you mean planned?"

"I don't know what your plan is, but I do know that you're up to something that you think will get you out of my rules."

"If I did, don't you think I might anticipate your discovering my plans and have some kind of contingency?"

"No. I don't. You don't seem the type."

"Well then," Jim said reaching his hand through the old lady like a ghost, "I guess you can't guess all of my plans from my eyes yet."

The illusion vanished leaving everyone in the room stunned.

"Where the hell did he go?!" She asked.

Oni and Kerberos grinned at each other. "You!" she shouted, "Where is he?!"

"He's someplace where his experiments can't harm the camp," Kerberos said.

"We've sent him to a pocket dimension where he can continue his experiment without posing a risk to anyone," Oni said.

"A hoodditty whaddity?" The old lady asked, clearly confused.

"A pocket dimension," Oni said, "It's a space that is outside of space. Kind of a place that isn't part of our normal dimension that can be used to hold anything you could imagine, from trinkets and bobbles all the way up to people.

"It was clear that his experiments weren't going to be allowed to continue here, but we decided that the experiment couldn't be stopped. The product of that work was too valuable to mankind to allow to slip.

"Jim will be back every day for a time to satisfy the requirements of the camp and to sleep, but the rest of his time will be spent in his lab."

The old lady looked at the two boys carefully. "There's something wrong here, it's obvious that you expected me to change my mind and that magic would be re-admitted. Nevertheless, you still hid this from me. There's a catch to this. Spill it boys."

Kerberos hesitated for a moment, and after thinking about it, spoke up, "The problem with this process is that it's dangerous. Forming a pocket dimension is hard. It requires a very large amount of mana to be prepared very precisely. Without the machine that Jim is currently building we're able to do the spell, but we're doing it with the same kind of intuition as a chef who's putting a "dash" in and expecting it to come out right. The difference is that though we've learned a lot, that kind of intuition requires years of training. We've only got a few months of experience with magic and mana handling. As a consequence there was a good chance that the spell would fail, and unfortunately the way it fails is not like the way most spells fail.

"The pocket dimension spell's duration is a function of the precise balance of mana put into it. If the spell is cast correctly the spell will last forever. However, the 'forever' point is an unstable equilibrium. An error of only a few akkis can lead to a pocket that should have lasted forever lasting only a few days."

"And what happens when it collapses?" the old lady asked.

"We don't know," Oni said, "All we know is that when the pocket collapses any existing doorways to the pocket disappear and any attempt to locate the objects that were in the pocket fail."

"And you HELPED your friend go in there?"

"Yes."

"You guys are out of your minds!"

"And that response is why we didn't till you until AFTER we had done it," Kerberos said.

"Well, is he okay?" the old lady asked.

"Let me check," Oni said. Oni concentrated for several seconds, "Yes he's okay. Ohhh. No, no he isn't."

"Huh?" Kerberos said.

"Well, he was okay. Then while I was watching he kinda went poof."

"Poof?" the old lady exclaimed.

"Poof."

Kerberos and the old lady stood there for several seconds. "Is he really ..."

"Poof." Oni repeated, solemnly taking off his hat.

"Good bye old friend," Kerberos sniffled, "we'll burn your character sheet."

"Amen." Oni said, leaving the old lady looking at both of them strangely.

****

Jim looked over his new lab. It had taken them only a few minutes to put together the pocket dimension. It was hasty, but they had to get it put together faster than they had planned due to Nate's intervention. Nevertheless, he was here. The spell had gone off with no apparent hitches. Because of the haste they figured that it probably would only last a week, but that would be long enough for them to convince the old lady to let them work on getting it right.

Jim looked through his stuff. He had the machine, the portable generator prototype that they had developed, some fuel, and all of his tools and parts. He picked up the accumulator and looked it over. Despite the damage it had taken last night, it still looked to be in good working order.

He pulled out the limiter. Looking it over he quickly located the issue that had caused the explosion; a wire had become loose when he had attached the larger accumulator component to the board. He reseated the wire and set it aside. He quickly looked over the remaining parts of his system and decided that a simple cable check and reassembly would have it up and ready for a test in only a few hours.

Jim began running through the motions, singing to himself. "The red thing goes into the – port thingy; the port thingy is connected to the – main board; the main board is connected to the – whatchyamahoosit."

He continued on this way for several minutes, enjoying the quiet solitude of a well established workplace till suddenly there was a bright flash and he was sitting in the middle of a paved street.

"WHA!" He exclaimed as he looked around. A hovering wagon came careening up to him and stopped just short of running him or any of his machine over. A strange tiny man stood up and yelled at him, throwing around several curse words that he recognized and a few that he didn't.

He quickly gathered up his things and moved off of the road. Still recovering his breath he looked around at where he was. All around him were towering skyscrapers reaching up into the sky. Along the street he was so recently camping in, ran dozens of strange vehicles. Most of them flew, but a few of them had wheels and strange animals pulling them. Out in the distant sky he saw a shimmering blue wall which he recognized immediately; it was a barrier spell protecting wherever he was from something.

"Where am I?" he asked himself. He looked out among the hustle and bustle of the city. Through all of the chaos something caught his eye. Well, more precisely, something DIDN'T catch his eye that very much should have. "There's no electricity or high tech here," he said, aghast.

An old bearded gentleman walked up to him and patted him on the back, "that's because there wasn't anyone who knew how to make it."

Chapter 7: Same Bat Channel Anyway
"And you are?" Jim asked, looking at the old man strangely.

"I haven't aged well have I," the old gentleman said, "I am Oniakki, Magister of Shining Hope and head advisor to the master bunny hunter, Kerberos."

"Oni?!" Jim exclaimed. "What? How?"

"You where caught up in the collapse of a pocket dimension. This is where you ended up."

"But"

"How did I know you would be here?" Oni said, "Well, I've had a lot of time to do my research."

"A lot of time?"

"Come with me. I think a little tea will help explain things much better."

Oni led him into a large building. The floors were made of marble and shined with the luster of being carefully waxed. The walked onto a platform which promptly began to rise up towards a hole in the ceiling.

"So my old friend, how was your brief time in the pocket dimension?"

"Well, the machine is in good shape. Only a few small tweaks and some minor repairs and I believe we'll actually be able to make it work. Oh, know why it blew up?"

"Ah yes, that was an interesting night. But do continue."

"Well, the power supply line connecting the inhibitor to the control circuit had become disconnected when I inserted the larger accumulator structure."

Oni laughed, "so it was that simple eh? All of this over a single wire."

"I know, it's retarded!" Jim exclaimed.

"No, you have no idea," Oni said as the platform reached its destination, "after you." 

"Woah!" Jim said, looking out across the expansive office. "What is this place?"

"This would be my office," Oni said, brushing away a fluttering letter that seemed to be demanding his attention, "Here I attend to my important business; which today would be seeing you my friend."

"Well, looking at your diggs I get the impression that I should be honored that you would spend the time."

"No," Oni said looking squarely at Jim, "it is I who should be honored. You see, you have brought something more valuable than anything I have here."

"The machine?" Jim said, looking at his half assembled prototype.

"No, your experience."

"My experience?"

"Yes. But first, let me explain a bit about what's happened / happening. Tea?"

"Oh, yes please!"

Oni poured some tea from a kettle he had sitting over a gas fire into two fine cups. He brought over the cups and handed one to Jim. "Have a seat," he said, motioning to a chair in front of his desk.

"Oh, thank you," Jim replied finding a comfy seat and settling in. "Dude, your chairs are COMFY!"

"They would be by your perspective wouldn't they?"

"Huh?" Jim said.

"Oh yes, I forgot. Allow me to sum up things in one sentence; This is the 'future'" Oni said, making little finger quotes to go with his 'future'.

"The 'future'?" Jim said, making little finger quotes of his own.

"Yes, the future. Technically it's the present, but from your perspective it is most meaningful to look at it as a significant jump forward in time. You see, it has been about twenty years since you did what scientists are calling 'going poof'"

"Poof?"

"Poof."

"So that anomaly with the pocket dimension..."

"Sent you into the future, yes. Well, more accurately it held you in a permanent present until the dimension completely collapsed."

"So when I popped out in the middle of the street..."

"Was when the pocket dimension finally collapsed."

"Hmm," Jim said. Then eagerly looking at Oni he asked, "Does that mean you have my electronics kit?"

"Actually, yes it does and soon I shall give it back, but that is another matter of its own. However, in the meantime I felt you might want this," Oni reached into a drawer of his desk and pulled out a ragged looking stuffed dog.

"PUPPY!" Jim exclaimed, recovering his long lost companion.

"We recovered it when the bubble containing the electronics kit collapsed. Unfortunately some of the bubbles collapsed before we discovered the true nature of a pocket dimension collapse so some of the items we tried placing in them are lost forever."

Jim hugged Puppy for a bit and then looked back at Oni, "Oh, ya. You had said that you would explain what you meant by 'you valued my experience?'"

"Ah, yes I did," Oni said, toying with his beard, "well, once, long ago three people moved into this city. One was a combatant, one was a mage, and the other was an engineer. Since that day many more people have joined that city and cities just like them. But do you know what type of person hasn't joined any of the cities in all of that time?"

"Um... One that bathes regularly?"

Oni laughed loudly, "True, but that isn't really the type in question here. The type of person who hasn't been seen in all of this time is a person with technology skills."

Jim looked back at him aghast, "Not one?"

"Nobody at all."

"Why?"

"Well, our research into the happenings on that day back in 2008 turned up something interesting. All of the people who were turned into zombies lacked magical attunement. However, it seems that people who specialized in technology had some amount of natural dissonance with the magic. By being technical you were by your very nature not attuned."

"Wait, so how do I exist then?"

"To be honest, no one knows. We know you existed, and after the discovery of pocket dimension scrying some ten years after you poofed we were able to confirm that you would still exit, mana-storms permitting, but to this very day we don't know how it's possible you exist. By all rights, you should be one of the zombie horde."

"Zombie horde? You mean after 20 years you guys still haven't found a way to deal with that?"

"Actually we had, but there were some... interfering factors that made that more difficult."

"Interfering factors?"

"Didn't it strike you as odd that Kerberos would be labeled 'head bunny hunter' and that I would be his assistant, yet working in this plush office? I mean seriously! Who gets the corner office as assistant to the head bunny hunter?"

"You apparently."

"Indeed," Oni took a deep sip of his tea, "In the years following the zombie attack we found that humans were not the only things affected by the sudden introduction of magic. Plants, animals, the very earth itself was changed. Most of the changes were minor; the kinds of things that you wouldn't even have noticed, and we didn't notice. Others were more drastic."

Oni waved his hand over his teacup and a puff of steam gathered together in a cloud over the cup. He flicked a finger and the cloud changed into the outline of a rabbit.

"The rabbits had been given a great power. They had been given reason. But not as individuals; instead they had been granted the burrow-mind. The burrow mind took a few years to truly form into a single coherent form, and we suspect that in that time many great bunny battles were waged between conflicting, fledgling burrow-minds, but in the end a single burrow-mind emerged. The burrow-mind worked in the interest of all of it's individuals. But the burrow-mind was powerful, and that power corrupted."

"Burrow-mind?" Jim asked, puzzled, "Is that like a hive mind?"

"Exactly. Like the humans, the burrow-mind discovered magic by accident. With a billion tiny bodies at it's disposal it tried to wage a war against the human encampments."

Oni flicked a finger again and the bunny shrank and was placed next to a human. The human figure kicked the bunny which exploded into a puff of steam. "The humans, however, were ready. Well, not ready to fight an army of angry rabbits, but the continual pressure from the zombies had battle hardened even the weakest of the humans. The war was won on all fronts with little effort."

The man swirled into a sphere with rabbit's head with sharp, pointy teeth. "The battle was lost but the burrow-mind was far from beaten. In the fight with the humans the burrow-mind had discovered that the humans, though living in an unsteady quiet with the zombies in traps just outside their encampments were still threatened by the zombies. By reaching it's massive consciousness out to the mindless zombies it the burrow-mind was able to concur the weak wills of the zombies and have some degree of control over them. This ushered in a new dark age for humanity as the zombies attacked with strategic planning and coherent forces. Their sharp claws ran through the tiny barricades that the humans had erected and many of the human camps were lost. Shining hope survived strictly on the basis that it had an expert in shield generation who taught every member of the camp how to protect themselves from the metal rending claws."

The steam swirled into a family of people huddled into a corner, cowering for their life as a squad of tiny steam zombies clawed through their door.

"However, this meant that the humans needed a solution to their rabbit problem, and fast! It was about this time that Kerberos noticed that the burrow-mind's grasp on the bunnies and zombies was always through a single 'link bunny'. By taking this bunny out he discovered that he could render the remaining bunnies harmless and though the zombies were still dangerous without the burrow-mind's control, they were back to their manageable mindless selves."

"Amazing," Jim said looking at the little steam figures.

"It's a neat trick isn't it?"

"Yes!" Jim exclaimed.

"I'm glad you like it," Oni said, "But have you been listening?"

"Mostly. Something about bunnies trying to take over the world and some history mumbo jumbo that I couldn't be bothered to listen to."

Oni sighed, "I guess that's close enough."

"Anyway," Jim said, "So why do you still need bunny hunters?"

"Well, you see," Oni said, "the burrow-mind can create new link bunnies and hasn't given up it's machinations for ruling the world. What this means is that essentially our foe is indestructible without committing total bunny genocide; a though which as been put forth multiple times, but every time it's been tried, the burrow-mind has seemed to figure out a way of escaping this fate."