“Mornin’, Aunt Flora,” she muttered as she walked past the table and straight to the counter where the coffee pot sat waiting.Her aunt said noth...ng while Roxie poured the magic brown tonic into a coffee mug. Aunt Flora sat at the kitchen table, patiently tapping the ashes from her cigarette into a ceramic ashtray that Roxie had once made for her at Girl Scout camp a long time ago. Roxie skipped the cream and sugar. Straight-up black seemed best at the moment. She set her coffee mug on the table. And he downright hated what he termed, in his mind, my slimy evasiveness. I had no problems with that and left him. Staring after me, as revealed by his reflected image in the glass front door. He would be onto Karla in mere seconds. Poor woman...Elise had to hear the full story of course but I did not want to tell it over and over. Not after that doctor's third degree. I called Alfred and Jake instead and agreed to a full download, got the headache pills handy."Bert, please, stick to English. The children numbered almost twenty but a sizable number of them had expired for various reasons totally unrelated to armed conflict. The sour belly blues and the whooping cough were the main culprits and they were aimed at the youngest amongst us to the disadvantage of the minor children. We had three of the grown women in a family way with no clear idea of which lucky man was the suspected father. In my travels in this somewhat uncivilized time period, I had grown accustomed to the randomness. "I know. I can implant knowledge so you can survive here. We will also restore your youth, as we did to Walter and Mike..." Restore our youth?" Mary asked."Yes, when we recruited Walter and Mike, they were in their sixties. Their bodies are now as they were when they were eighteen ... with a few modifications, that is."Mike started coughing and turned away as he turned bright red."I don't understand, you say they volunteered, but you kidnapped us, and got young James killed," Arthur snapped.