A rather important member, if I say so myself. I finally decided that both time periods were mine and mankind was mankind, no matter the year. What ma...kind did in the present would be referred to as "What we do", what happened in my first life would be "What we used to do." Simple enough. The transition from the old days to the present is actually when man realized he was dying and decided to do something about it. Of course, I wasn't around then but I've seen both sides of it. I just referred. "Valerie," Dan said again in a strangely quavering voice, "Brian is dead. They killed him." Worse and worse. I felt like someone had kicked me in the gut and I sat down hard on a nearby bench with my face in my hands."We had just brought Miri and Brock over to the house for dinner," Dan began. "We were planning on talking to her about the two of you. It was just so obvious how much you were both hurting. We got in the house and they were there, Valerie. They were in our house, OUR house.. The trip over to the place of the contact is short. Once she gives the password to the man behind the door with the sliding slot, she is inside, almost in complete darkness. The light is dim and filled with smoke and the horrible stench of body odor.The man behind the door waves a hand toward the door at the end of the hall and without a word or any acknowledgement, Regina heads for it. Once inside the smell dissipates a little, but the smoke doesn’t nor does the lighting improve.“Welcome. The children thought having them was great fun and they took to trying to knock them out of the air with stones and sticks. Needless to say the drones were far too nimble to be at risk.At first the children missed all of their 'cousins', but the urge to explore the new and exciting places surrounding Aetherkraal soon put that to the back of their minds. Ben even programmed some drones to build them an extensive tree-house with its own steps cut into the trunk of the tree. Sarah wasn't keen on.