It took Tommy a good minute to figure out what had happened.  Lauren’s bedding had vanished from the nest, and her cooking gear was no longer by the fire.  The first thing she did was check the spare nest, determining that the wagon she had stored in there was also gone.  That meant something had happened to Lauren; she was no longer with them.  She relaxed and confirmed that there was no sense of another verser out there.  She was in that sense alone.

Of course, she wasn’t alone.  She had a hundred local people--indigs, Lauren had called them.  But she was the last verser, the last person with any experience of anything outside the computer-controlled world of the caves and the by now few months surviving in the wilderness.  Whatever she had learned would have to be enough, unless she wanted to try returning to the caves and fixing that computer glitch.  That was probably beyond her--but was this?

She could manage without the cooking gear.  After all, she had that mess kit that Clark had recommended she buy, and while it was a lot smaller than Lauren’s fry pan, she would be cooking for herself from now on.  She would have to do her own hunting and fishing and--wait a minute, she should check.

The first thing she checked was that the Bible Lauren had given her was still there.  That was good; she expected to need that.  Then, something else she was going to need, she found the hunting arrow Lauren had given her for spear fishing.

She would manage.

Stoking the fire, she went to bed.  She would deal with tomorrow when it came.

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #472:  Versers Vanish.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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