Amanda’s Tale #3 – The Descent Of Darkness – Atlanta, Summer, 2148 A.D.
Amanda stepped to the side of the vault, and told Mary to stand in front of the voice computer input on the front of the vault.
“Mary, my faithful employee and friend, I’m giving you the access code to this vault. Write it down on that memo pad I know you always carry with you. Then memorize it and destroy that paper.” She gave Mary the code, and told her to verbally input the code sequence, which she did. “Pull the door open, Mary,” Amanda requested. As the younger woman opened the vault door, Amanda turned to her. “Mary, I don’t know what future you or Min will have, considering what is facing our country, but for what it’s worth, except for this house I’m leaving everything I have to the both of you. I have no children or surviving family, so now you are my heirs. It’s all been done legally, here in this will.” She removed a document from one of the shelves and opened it.
“Mary, all of the investments and securities I have left I’ve assigned to you and Min, equally, after my death. I’ve sold all my real property investments and converted everything to cash. The royalties I receive from my recordings will keep me going for a year or so, but I probably won’t last that long. As of last week my estate amounts to around five hundred fifty thousand crads, not counting this house. I want you and Min to have this money, although if the barbarians destroy our country and you have to flee to survive, it won’t mean anything. I’m leaving this house to The Christian Missionary Society for them to sell off for cash. But in the meantime, it’s still a goodly sum of money. My attorney at the State Bank in Stone Mountain knows about my will, and he’ll work with both of you. There are no taxes on this, so you and Min won’t have to worry about that.”
Mary looked at her elderly employer—her friend—and was speechless. Tears began to flood her eyes. “Amanda—you—you’d do this for me—for Min and me?” she asked, somewhat incredulously. The old woman, last of a long line of distinguished musicians going back to the late 19th century, smiled and put her arms around her friend.
“Can’t think of two better people to give my money to, Mary. I only pray that a miracle will occur and the Confederated Republics will survive so you and Min can use it. But I asked if you’d be willing to do something very special for me. Let me tell you what I have in mind.” She reached into one of the shelves, and removed two objects. One was a small New Testament Bible sealed in plastic. The other was a chrome plated silver tube, about two feet long and three inches in diameter.
“This New Testament, Mary, is the one I took with me on all of my musical concert tours for almost fifty years. It gave me great comfort to read it every night when I was away from my home and family in strange cities. It’s a bit worn and frazzled, like me, but I want to preserve it into the far future. Except for my friendship with you and Min, it’s the thing I value the most in this life.” Amanda placed the Bible back in the vault. “This silver tube, Mary, is the other thing I value highly. Not as much as my Bible, but still it is something I have valued for many years. This tube, Mary, is to stay in this vault until my death. Then I want you, after my funeral service, to put my Bible and this tube in my coffin with me, and make absolutely certain they are sealed up with me. My grave place is in the Atlanta Memorial Cemetery, in that big mausoleum building that I paid so much to have built twelve years ago. My tomb is in the floor, and is made of reinforced concrete and steel. The top is made of the same material, and will have my name and birth and death dates on it, plus a little about me. I hope that vault survives the centuries. But Mary, it’s very important to me that you place this silver tube and my Bible in my coffin with me. Can you do that for me?” she asked.
“Of course I can, Amanda. But, what’s in the tube?” asked Mary.
“Mary, about forty years ago I bought an old manuscript of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Experts who examined it believe it was printed in the early 1900’s, which makes it well over two hundred years old. It isn’t his original manuscript, of course, but it’s pretty valuable—probably now worth a thousand crads or so. I’ve had it de-acified and sealed up in that tube with a special inert gas, which I was assured will protect it from deterioration for perhaps a thousand years, maybe even a bit more. The way the crazies in Atlanta are behaving, we’ll be fortunate to have anything of the past survive, since they hate everything cultural and historical—everything good that could tell our future who we were. They’ve even started tearing down the statues to our great heroes and leaders of our country. But I want this manuscript and my Bible to survive, Mary. If anyone in the future digs me up and opens up this tube, perhaps at least something of beauty will have survived into our unknown future. It was very expensive to have this done, Mary, but I felt I had to do this. Will you make certain it and my Bible go into my coffin with me?”, she said somewhat anxiously.
“I promise I will, Amanda,” Mary replied. “But I hope that’s not going to be necessary for many years.”
“Well, my faithful friend, that’s probably going to happen sooner rather than later, if my physicians are correct. But that’s fine with me, Mary. ‘Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord’. All three of us are Christians, Mary. Eventually we’ll all meet again in Heaven. Then we’ll rejoice forever as we walk the golden streets with our Savior. There are a few other musical manuscripts here, Mary, but mostly newer. Not very valuable. At least the “No Nos” didn’t get these. I want you to protect them, Mary, if you’re willing. Don’t let these last few reminders of my life be destroyed. There are also some photo images of me over the years, and of my parents, and of this house. Please do what you can to preserve them, my friend, to remember me by.” Amanda then removed some cash from the vault and gave it to her friend.
“Hopefully this will be enough to buy food to last for a few days, Mary. What are the hours that the market is open?” she asked.
“It’s only open from noon to 6 p.m., Amanda,” replied the younger woman. “But it’s always real crowded. I think that folks are gettin’ very nervous about what’s happening in our country. I’ve heard, Amanda, that some folks are startin’ to hoard food and other basics.”
“Panic can set in very easily, Mary, if things continue to deteriorate here in Atlanta and in The Free Republic of Georgia, especially if the next wave of invaders aren’t repelled by the military,” explained Amanda. “Have you and Marky thought at all of what you’ll do if the barbarians come to Atlanta? There’s always Floorda to flee to, if you can manage to get there. Their military is quite strong and they don’t hesitate to use powerful weapons to repel the barbarians that try to get into Floorda.”
“My husband and I won’t leave the Confederacy, Amanda,” Mary replied firmly. “This is our home—our country—and these are our people. We’ll rise or fall with them. Live or die, we stay here and fight. No barbarians are going to force us out of our country that easily. We’re too old to go anywhere else, my friend. You wouldn’t leave, would you?” Mary asked.
The old woman smiled at her fiend and hugged her. “No, Mary, I wouldn’t. If I still had my pistol I’d resist them to the end. But I can always swing a club or use a knife if I have no other choice. They’ll not take me down easily. But I’ll probably be gone before that happens, if it does. It’s you and Min I worry about, Mary. You know what the barbarians might do to women who resist them. Oh Mary, pray for our country,” she pleaded. The two women hugged each other for a moment or two, saying nothing.
Amanda closed the door to her vault, and together she and Mary went back up to the kitchen and joined Min. The sun was shining brightly, and they could hear birds chirping in the back yard, where the fires of mindless destruction were burning themselves out. Despite the trauma of the early morning hours, Amanda Jennings, the last of the musical Titans, was still alive, still representing the last, and the best, of her culture and her civilization. The three women enjoyed hot tea and warm biscuits and jam, as they contemplated the future, each in her own way. It was a frightening future, all three of them realized. But as Christians they knew that God was in control of the present and the future, and that whatever unfolded would be in His Will. That gave them great comfort, as they sat in the sunlight streaming into Amanda’s kitchen windows.
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Next in this series beginning on January 8, 2024: Part 7 of “Civilization’s Interregnum”—The Nationality Wars, ca. 2170 to ca. 2310 A.D., as the “32nd Century history professor continues his lecture on “the History of our Future”.
