While ‘the boys’ scattered, some heading down, others disappearing into the distance, Ma looked up to the sky, keeping the gun pointed at Marcus’ head at all times. When Marcus got up, her head snapped back to him and she hissed, “Easy there, boy. I’ll have you know that, when you’re in my line of work, you grow a second pair of eyes in your back of your head.”
Marcus shuddered at the mental image of an additional pair of eyes suddenly opening and looking at him from the woman’s backside, but he quickly shook it. Obviously it was just a figure of speech.
“I...just want to make myself a little more comfortable, that’s all.”
“...you may.”
Marcus nodded thankfully, got up, walked over to one of the more decent rocks for sitting and sat down on it, about two meters away from the old woman now. The gun trailed his every movement, but Ma seemingly relaxed a little, as Marcus distanced himself from her.

After Marcus had sat down, Ma waved her gun slightly and repeated her question from before, “So, now that the pleasantries are done with...what is your business with Ede?”
“I am...his guest, he says.”
“So you’ve been in the dampening chamber then, huh?”
“...dampening chamber? Is that what his room is called?”
“Ah, so he hasn’t told you everything then, huh? That’s just like him. So? What did he want you to do? Did he also tell you that tale about the weather machines and how And how they need to be ‘fixed or at least shut down’?”
“Wait, you say ‘also’…”
“What, you think you were the first one he tried to enlist? No. As far as I know, he’s been trying time and again with every hapless idiot that stumbled into his chamber. Myself included.”
“So...you were down there yourself?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying, ya git! Care to listen a bit!”
“I-I am sorry,” Marcus was quick to apologize.

About a minute passed with Ma staring off into the distance, but Marcus knew better than to try to assault her or to run away. The bullet would pierce his skull before he could even get up properly. Eventually she sighed again, seemingly lost in thought about something.
“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked, startled by the sudden sound.
“Eh, this all just feels so very...familiar. I was once a lot like you. Naive and lost in this cruel world. Joined the scavengers when I was young. Back then, there was only one ‘Ma’ in these parts who coordinated her kids, so scavenging was all the more difficult. One day, we got caught up in an ambush and all my comrades got killed. Mowed down, their bodies piling over me. I stiffened and pretended to be dead myself. They took everything we had on us, but they did not spare another bullet for me. Didn’t even bother to check for my pulse. Either way, after that, bereft of all sense of direction, confused and lost, I found this here place. Stonehenge. And in its depths, I found Ede. He took me in, gave me direction and purpose again. Helped me survive until I was strong enough again. See that wheat over there? I planted that from some seeds he had in storage. Stuff grew like I had never seen before. Eventually, he told me about those weather machines and how they were responsible for the terrifying weather we were having. He asked me to take some of the seeds return to my settlement and ask for help there, because ‘the undertaking was far too great for a little girl to handle’. Those words got etched into my mind. Damn bigot. But I sure showed him what ‘a little girl’ can do.”
Ma chuckled at the memory and Marcus figured that he must have been itching to tell this story to someone for a long time. But why not tell it to her children? Why tell them about ‘ghosts’ haunting this place? There were only two likely explanations. The first one being, that she wanted to keep Ede for herself and not share him. The second one, that she was scared of Ede and what he could do to her children. Marcus opted for the latter for now, because if it had been the first, she likely wouldn’t be telling him this story, but much rather shoot him for ‘knowing too much already’.

“I did what he told me, you know? Sneaked my way through the ruins of the city, the pouch with the seeds that would change everything for the settlement tied firmly to my belt. ‘With this’, I told myself, ‘they will have to listen to me’. But little did I know.”

Ma pulled out a flask with water, popped it open with one hand, took a sip, closed it again with the same hand and then threw it over to Marcus, “Drink. You must be parched.”
“Ac—“ Marcus started, but Ma interrupted him, “I said, ‘Drink’, didn’t I?!”
Marcus picked up the flask, careful to not give off the impression of trying something funny. He took a gulp, almost spitting out all of it again. The liquid burnt like fire in his mouth, throat and stomach, but quickly dissolved into a comfortable sense of warmth.
“W-what is that?!”
“Just a bit of liquor made from rotting fruits. Makes dealing with this world a whole lot easier. Can’t have too much of it though. I take it, you only drank water up to now?”
Marcus nodded, still trying to figure out the taste in his mouth.
“Yeah, I get that. Drinking that stuff tends to make the head go fuzzy. Really good for treating wounds too. Either way, now that we’re buddies, you asked about the secret of the settlement, yeah?”
“Yes…?” Marcus replied, still unsure what to make of this. He had once read, that most humans are actually terrible at keeping secrets bottled up. He guessed that Ma was one of those ‘most’.
“Yeah well, I’ll get to that in a moment, but look. My boys are back with the material.”

Marcus looked up and indeed many of the boys, which were indeed hardly older than Marcus himself had returned, carrying ropes and some other tools he had not seen before.
Ma noticed his looks and asked, “Never seen a pulley before either, have you?”
“I...don’t think so. What are they for?”
“You’ll see in a moment. Set it up, boys!” Ma shouted.
The boys scurried around like one unit and within three minutes, they had set up a man-sized metal tripod with a pulley attached to its top. They fastened the surprisingly long rope at the pulley and lowered the whole thing down into the hole. Two minutes later, something tugged at the line and the boys started pulling the rope back up. No two minutes later, Sis appeared from the hole, her eyes still wide and empty. They got her out of the noose fastened around her chest and carried her over to the edge of the stone circle and lowered the rope again.
“That’s amazing…” Marcus remarked, but then struck him as strange, “...how do you even have this stuff?”
Ma chuckled lightly and said, “You don’t spend some 50 years in Ede’s neighborhood without preparing for a few eventualities. Either way, the boys will be busy for a while longer. I’m already curious what funny ideas he implanted the kids with this time.”
“How to run a garden...is what he said. Wait, this happened before too?!”
“History tends to repeat itself, didn’t you know that? And yeah, it did. The raiders at the time of course spotted the growing wheat, found the entrance and...well, you know what happened then. Ede only allows those ‘pure of heart’ in his chamber to leave again.”
“But...but he said I was the first visitor in multiple centuries…”
“Guess he lied to you then. What, you think just because he’s a computer he can’t lie? You can too, so why shouldn’t he be able to?”
It was hard for Marcus to argue with that, so he kept silent.

“Either way, get up. I was not done with my stories and the boys don’t need to hear this.”
“Why not, anyway? Why tell this to me and not them?”
“Ya think I want to pull this crap every third blue Monday, because they think ‘they have what it takes’? No, Ede is best left alone. I really should have destroyed the entrance, but it’s dang hard to get your hands on explosives these days.”

The two of them moved away from the working boys and none of them questioned what was happening. They just kept working in silence.
After sitting back down, Marcus asked, “Why...do you hate him so much? I mean, he saved your life, right?”
“That he did, yes. Right before ruined it. If not for him and his tall tales of ‘saving the world’, I would now be living a nice and comfy life in the settlement instead of being forced to take care of those imbeciles over there.”
“But—“ Marcus started, but Ma raised her hand and said, “Let me finish my story, k? Maybe then you’ll understand. Besides, the boys won’t be busy forever and once they are, you will need to make a decision. Be one of my boys or continue to be Ede’s little toy.”
“You...would let me go? Just like that?”
“I am called ‘Ma’ for a reason. I don’t kill kids if I don’t have to. The world tends to take care of that for me after all. Either way, to get back to my story…”

Ma put the gun into her lap, but still kept her fingers wrapped around it. Apparently she thought that Marcus was not going to be an immediate threat to her at this point, however Marcus knew better than to try his chances. Just like when the raiders had followed him into Ede’s resting place, he would not get very far if he tried to run. Regardless of that, he was curious to hear Ma’s story.

“So I weaseled my way back to the settlement, where they received me like some kind of hero, after the scavenging party had not come back. I was even summoned before the council. Old man Markus questioned me about where I had been and when I told them all about Ede and the seeds and all that stuff, they gave me that funny look. It was at that point when I knew I had screwed up. Like big time. They summoned the guardsmen and locked me up into isolation, so I could not speak to anyone else. Funnily enough, it was your father who helped me out of there.”
“My father?! Wait...how do you know who my father is?”
Ma chuckled again, “Could be because you’re his spitting image, that’s how. The family resemblance runs really strong in your family. If I didn’t know better, I’d think your family keeps cloning itself to keep the bloodline alive.”
“Clo—“ Marcus started but then started to giggle.
“Yeah, fat chance, am I right? The last thing they’d need is more mouths to feed, honestly. Anyway, we hid in the bowels of the place, deeper down than I had ever been to. Unfortunately, your father got caught trying to stall for me. I don’t know what happened to him after that, but being small and nimble at the time, I slipped through the cracks the adults wouldn’t fit through.”
‘Sounds familiar…’ Marcus thought to himself, but didn’t say anything.
“Well, when he broke me out, Marc said that he had overheard the grown ups discussing what they intended to do with me and that I needed to ‘disappear’. I think we both know what that means, am I right? Either way, Marc somehow knew that there was a way to the outside world through those ancient tunnels, some ventilation shaft whose grate had rusted through. However on my way there, I got lost and suddenly found myself in front of a really heavy door. You know, one of those ‘Authorized personnel only’ kind of doors?”
“You can read the signs?”
“I can read a little. The beforetimers were really big on that whole ‘writing’ stuff, so to understand what stuff does or how to use it, ‘reading’ is an essential skill to have out here. But you try telling that to the boys. But back then? Nah, I just knew the sign from other doors further up. Either way, when I was hiding in the ventilation shaft, I heard the grown ups talk. Now...once I tell you this, you can never go back to your blissful little ignorant life. If, by some off chance, you manage to return to the settlement and they learn that you know, they will be out to get you.”
“What, did they talk about the clone vats or something?!”
“...no. They talked about how I likely escaped through the vents and that the head of maintenance was about to summon a sandstorm to finish me off.”