I knew that I was going to starve if I tried to keep begging. I wasgetting too old, even if I was too small for my age. "You are a very proper one, ...ell me, what is it that you are called?"the maid asked me."My baptized Christian name is Stephan milady," I said "Well Stephan, your clothes fit you well enough for now. We will havethe tailor gather them up to fit better. I had expected someone thesame size and age to replace the old runner but you are much smaller." What happened to the old. She snapped at Maria to watchor she was next. She grabbed another cigar and lit it, picking up the remote/mikeand spoke with venom. Her Asiatic eyes narrowed to slits. "Pet. You miserable twit! I told you one simple order. Shut the fuck up.But you can't even do that. Well, prepare to visit hell." She set the remote down and placed the cigar in her mouth, taking a quickbut hard drag and exhaling as she spoke. "Maria, assemble the staff. This wasgoing to be a quite night, but I can see you all. Of course, it helped that our birthdays were two days apart and we had both turned eighteen in D.C.Tiffany's parents had recently moved away to Michigan for a job, but since she was a senior, they opted for her to stay in the dorms at the school, to which she didn't object. The "dorm parents" were this couple involved with the church running the school who had been overseeing the dorms for decades, and they were good people, but they could be strict, a common theme among the people of that. "I specialize in pre-sickness history, but what remains in the ruins of the old cities is very sparse, thanks to the heavy-handedness of the scavengers after the Sickness." Those archives are in remarkably good condition, thanks to the conditions in the mine shaft in which they were stored," the speaker answered. "They contain computer equipment and ancient optical media as well as paper books and news publications, as you saw in the holo. Those materials, or at least their contents, will be.