Free 3037 by Peggy Holloway

look!”
         He turned off the flashlight and we crawled out into the middle of the city, “Joe, we can’t let them destroy any of those dwellings.”
         As I said this, the tube we had just come out of was ripped away and suddenly there was what looked li ke blood flowing from where we stood and down toward the opening.
         I fell and if Joe hadn’t caught me I would have flowed out with the blood.  The blood seemed to crust over and form what looked like a scab covering the opening.  It had healed itself.
         We looke d down and remembered we were naked.  We ran to the place the girls had found to swim and dove in.  The blue goo came right off and we walked back toward our dwelling.
         We had been talking abo ut clothes earlier and when we walked inside there , lying across one of the spheres , were a pair of bell bottom jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sandals .
         Lying across one of the other ones was a pair of men’s slacks, a shirt, and a pair of loafers.
         “I wish I had a bra and some panties,” I said and Joe pointed to yet another sphere.  Lying there was both men and women’s underwear.
         When we got dressed we went outside and found a group of people gathered around wanting to know where we had been, what we had found out and what we were wearing.
         We explained everything to them and I told them to go inside their houses and get dressed.  They looked confused but soon came back wearing clothes.
         All the women were dressed like me and all the men like Joe .
         I closed my eyes and conducted an experiment.  When I opened them the women were all dre ssed differently, but all in 197 0s clothes.  Some had on bell bottom jeans with peasant blouses, some had on granny dresses, and some had on mumus.  They were either barefoot or wearing sandals.
        I laughed and closed my eyes again and opened them to find the men all in bell bottom jeans.  I loved it.  I decided to try designing clothes in my mind later to see what I could come up with.  I would also see what I could do about hair color too.   I didn’t want everyone to have hair like mine.
         We went down the hill to see what was going on.  Joe’s dwelling had been chopped into tiny pieces and there was blood everywhere.  None of the other dwellings appeared to be destroyed and I wondered if all the blood had made them rethink what they wanted to do.
         As we were walking along, a man ran out of one of the dwellings waving his arms, “They destroyed your house, 65G.  Did you see it?  It bled like a living thing.”
         “I saw it, 47F.  Is it the only one they destroyed?  By the way, I’m called Joe now.”
         “Oh, okay.  They’re having a town meeting at city hall.  I heard them talking and they said that one of the things they were going to discuss is whether or not it would be best to destroy the cave.”
         “Why the cave?” Joe asked.
         “They don’t like that it’s destroying all the work and research they’ve done on us.  I want to go back with you if you don’t mind, and take my family.  We’re very frightened.”
         “Go back with the others.   I want to see if Ashley and I can spy on that meeting.”
     
     
    CHAPTER 16
         As we walked toward city hall I asked Joe why the building was so old, “Why didn’t they move into one of the buildings that grew like everyone else did?”
         “They tried but every time they tried to enter one of those they couldn’t get it to open.  They tried to use one for the museum too.  The authorities couldn’t get into any of them.”
         “How interesting.”
         We hid behind a big boulder and watched as around fifty people went in.  “I wish we had some kind of cap that made our heads look bald so we could walk right in,” I said and almost before the words left my mouth, I looked down and ly ing beside me on