Why Not Murder

71. Alternative

71. Alternative

Winnie was cremated and her ashes tossed into her favourite flower bed at the Laymuir residence. Gwen inherited everything and Hilda was her guardian. The bank had proceeded with foreclosure and the house was put up for sale. The enormous glass walls and windows were mostly broken as a result of random vandalism. The yards were let wild. The dogs ran free. Rotting meat was hidden in the forest near the residence boundary to attract bears. The boundary fence was knocked down in places. A swarm of large bees, actually Winnie's drone fleet, would frighten away anyone who came to view the premises. All this deterred potential buyers. In addition to that, the residence was the subject of frightening rumours. It was known that the previous owners had both died mysterious deaths in that house and it was said to be haunted by their angry spirits. Winnie's servants created this situation intentionally. When the asking price was sufficiently lowered, Conrad, Cook and Harriet pooled their savings and bought the place together for Gwen and they all continued living there. They lived frugally. Money required for property tax came from Cook's bakery business and the sale of most of the furniture and knickknacks. Winnie's paintings were selling, more now that she was dead, and that helped pay tax as well. Otherwise they lived off the land.

Whittaker Purcell was released, with the charges that were laid against him exonerated fully, in exchange for information revealing the identity of several key players in the terrorist group, all going by the code name Grey Feather. The echelon that the mastermind of the XX Fuel murders reported to, was investigated and revealed. Members of the police force and government were involved. Whittaker had an arsenal of recorded conversations and videos implicating the authorities he accused. That was enough to grant Whittaker an aborted sentence. He gained his freedom by turning over all the evidence he had and vowing to keep silent. Shortly after Whittaker's release, he died in a traffic accident.

The terrorist activity ceased. Benefits and grants of all kinds were distributed to the citizens helping them to deal with escalating unemployment due to increasing job replacement by artificial intelligence as well as the steady inflation that effectively kept the majority of the population in the same financial situation as they were before receiving the government money. There were still protest marchers but fewer people attended. Free community picnics were always organized such that they occurred whenever there were protests. Free food, all you can eat and carry away on foot, was provided to anyone who came and could show that they were not participating in the protests. Free clothing and vouchers for heating costs were also provided. People who agreed to wear government-provided GPS surveillance necklaces received regular salaries and significant shopping discounts in addition to the government benefits they were already receiving. History moved on and forgot about what drove the rampages of prior years.

Maya was walking through the forest on a cloudy afternoon from the residence to her cabin. The trees were taller and broader, with their trunks growing ever wider. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the leaves. Birds were singing. Decaying leaves and quills coated the ground and the roots of a single vine with small irregular leaves covered the entire forest floor. The vine grew up some trees eventually choking the life from them and used the dead trunks as support for itself. Maya was looking without seeing, her feet guiding her, listening without hearing, trusting the way she was going. Change was happening imperceptibly, such that time slowed too. Maya was not thinking, awake but not aware, lost in the blissful oblivion of wordless blind thought, no longer giving any attention to her feet walking.

Suddenly she was falling, falling fast, deep into the earth below. She had slipped through and between the roots of the vine and the trees and brought sharply back to acute awareness. She thought she was falling down a deep, uncovered, abandoned well, banging from side to side, sliding downwards through a space just large enough for her to pass. She pressed her arms and legs outward in an attempt to stop her slide, but was falling too fast to even slow herself down. At long last a force of mass stopped her. She was wet and her ankles hurt. She stood up in the shallow water listening to the sound of pink and gray stones moving against each other around her feet. Maya continued walking slowly following the stony shore line, the vast lake to her left, the narrow pebbly beach and awesomely tall cliffs to her right. The air was still. Tiny waves lapped her sandaled feet. The water and wet stones glistened in the golden sunlight. It was moments after dawn and there was not a cloud in the sky. Birds nesting in the cliffs chattered incessantly.