Hebel sat on the front stoop of the chapel, and looked out across the field at his flock. His herding dog, Snzzules, was out there making sure nobody went astray. Calmly enjoying the cool breeze as the mixed herd of sheep and goats grazed on the fields. Hebel looked behind him at the chapel and the strange collapsed structure next to it. Remnants of the old nation he heard stories about from his grandparents, and parents. His parents are a bit too young to remember as much as their parents, but they remember it more clearly. They tried to pass on what they could to him to "keep the legacy of our ancestors". Things such as reading and writing.
There was writing all over the place, on the building, on a rock close by, and on a sign. Hebel could read some of it. Like the chapel he was sitting in was called the "US center chapel". A strange name for a chapel he was told, but that's where he was sitting. The dead center of the old nation. The old heartland of a nation of 350 million people give or take a few. That number astounded Hebel everytime he remembered it. His village only had about a hundred people, he couldn't imagine a million filling this land. That's more people than heads of sheep and goats in all the herds he has seen in his life combined. But it was just an amusing thought to him. Passing him by as the wind does over the great plains of Kansas.
Relics like this chapel lay dead and silent all over his village of Lebanon. His favorite was the old Lebanon library. Full of dusty tomes and books from before the collapse. They had all sorts of interesting stories about the old world. Like the one he was reading now while watching his flock, a book called "The Girl Who Owned a City" which is about some disease wiping out all adults and the children need to survive in the aftermath. It was his favorite book when he was younger and more rebellious towards "the adults". Now he was rereading it to remember the details of why he loved it in the first place all those years ago.
Some books even had schematics and diagrams of some of the relics around town. Like the giant metal towers called silos on the south side of the village. Or some that explained how cars and tractors worked. Apparently his village used to be solely a farming village until all of the relics ran out of oil. Then they turned to herding. Hebel knows the relics aren't all disused heaps of scrap lying by the side of the road. Down south, the interstate highway was still partly used and maintained by local communities as best they could using dirt, gravel, and sheer tenacity. Traders from far off lands such as Denver or Kansas City travel that route mainly to get the wool and milk communities like Hebels produce. His parents still remember using cars before the last of the oil in Kansas was used. Nowadays they have a few horses they use to travel south to the Russell trading post on the 70 where he can watch the occasional cart lead caravan limp into town.
His parents told him many stories of before the collapse and after. Stories of dangerous lands to both the east and the west. Heroes of the old nation that tried their best to fight both, and ultimately were betrayed by their neighbors. Hebel couldn't imagine hating his neighbors enough to betray them like in the stories. Surely nobody could actually be as hateful and misguided from God's Love as these mythical "Victorians" were. It was probably just a bunch of scary stories used to keep him from running too far off into the plains and getting lost. The only neighbor he was even close to hating was Jebbadiah. The fool kept trying to steal wool from his sheep, saying he got the herds mixed up. Bah whatever, he will get his comeuppance at the christmas festival this year. Hebel is planning a special prank for him involving his precious wool and some superglue he found in an old shed that will be sure to get him good.
YES! Non-canon, but I love it!
