Ship's Holog: June 2078, fragment #19

For security reasons, the following segment and all other italicized passages in the transcript of this holog were excised for security reasons by the crew of the Veritas from their original holocoms in 2078. They were restored some 25 years later when the voyages of the Veritas no longer needed to be kept secret due to the significant changes that took place in world government in 2102.

Phew! That was hairy, wasn’t it? I don’t know, but it seemed like the Coop manager was suspicious even after I lied to her about our family reunion.

I knew I had to warn Marco. By then, he’d probably rented the wagon and oxen from the town stable and was headed over to the hardware store to pick up the supplies my sister, Harriet, had picked out and paid for, especially the marine hardware we might need for repairs, which we hadn’t dared order earlier lest the authorities wonder what a valley family needed marine hardware for. Harriet had also needed to buy fairly large quantities of household supplies like tallow and wick thread to make candles. I sure hoped she hadn’t encountered any suspicion, as these items would have been harder to explain than foodstuffs, although we did have a story for these as well. The problem was, what if the authorities compared notes and linked my food purchases with her hardware store purchases? We knew it was going to be a risk to buy the hardware and household supplies, but we had no choice, really. In the quantities that we needed them for our journey, we just didn’t have enough at home and were uncertain if we’d be able to find sufficient supplies along the way.

I walked calmly, or at least tried to make it look as though I was calm, out of the Coop, and immediately holocommed Marco. We were careful about what we said because we knew that holocoms within Brandon were AI- monitored.

“Marco, it’s Dad. The reunion supplies are ready for pick-up. See you soon at the boat.” Mentioning the reunion should have alerted him to be careful and quick about picking up the supplies at the Coop.

“OK, Dad. I’ll do it as soon as I make a stop at the Ice House.” There he was going to pick up four large ice blocks to put in our on-board refrigerator hold.

Meanwhile, my sister’s partner, Anna, using her own family name, would have stopped into the Health Center Dispensary to pick up the pharmaceuticals we figured we’d need on our journey. I hoped she didn’t get questioned too closely about the quantities the way I had at the Coop. Her story, if she were questioned, was supposed to be that she was picking up for a planned trip to an ashram up north in the Algonquin Wilderness, and that, allegedly these supplies were for the ashram members who had neither money nor access to such supplies, (nor holopod). That would be a pretty hard story to check on!