Project Purple

6 - The Goatwench

"I can't count them all," she said on that first day, returning to the long wooden table that sat in the grassy center of their colony. The Governor had dubbed the table the central "quad"-though he'd be hard pressed to explain anything quadrangular about the area, other than the table.

"There's got to be a thousand of them," the Buckskinner added, in awe of the sleek technology that greeted them in their new home.

On that first giddy May evening in the colony, the new residents drank to their success, and bantered in their new quad, between the five sturdy wooden huts the colonists would share for living quarters. Three animal pens, with goats, chickens, and a pig, were just a few meters away, as was the provisions hut, which held most of the food, drink and their simple tools. Any additions they wished to make to their colony were to be instigated on their own. All of this had been prepared for them by workers unseen, and it was all here waiting for its fourteen occupants, like an empty movie set. Their colony, for the next three months, was soundly simple and authentically homey.

Except for the all-pervasive surveillance.

"I've never had a Big Brother," the Cowleech said, and to the goatwench his words had a resounding, ominous ring to them, as she poked curiously around the grounds of their new home with the others.

But she knew-they all knew- from the beginning that there would be surveillance; all consented to the idea of their colony being on a 24-hour webcast throughout the world. She was just unprepared for the extent of what was a kind of technological ambush, and she gaped astounded at the plethora of small gadgetry, so expertly planted, even on the very branches of the spruce trees that dotted the colony.

The goatwench sighed, returning to the quad table in the center of their little colony. Settling into their new roles was going to be hard enough, but this omnipresent electronica, though unobtrusive in its size and placement, was as out of place as rocket ships-It imposed a contrapositive unworldliness on the seventeenth century colonists that no one appeared to welcome, now that they were actually there.

Tiffany joined her at the table with a similar expression of concern, and the Cowlech gave them an impish grin. "So which one of ya'all's got a hankering for this singing cowboy?"

"We're colonists, not sodbusters," Tiffany, the colony's Asian-American wordsmith rebuked, "just say "thee", as the object of a sentence, not 'ya'all's'."

"So which one of thees got a hankerin' for this old boy?"

The Cowleech had a disarming smile and cowboy-chiseled good looks. But the humor, clearly meant for the Goatwench, fell on deaf ears, when she stood and scanned, once again, the bowl-shaped valley that was their new home.

The Goatwench was already planning her escape.

***

Peee! Peee! - The hawk soared above her as she hiked.

Everyone knew that the 21st century was off limits. No one was to leave the assigned valley that had become home for their three-month spell as colonizers. They were to preserve, to the fullest extent possible, the authenticity of the 17th century-as they had been told so many times.

But the Goatwench was a hiker, a backpacker, a climber, and her predilection for long strolls through the natural world of their land was more than just a simple passion; she viewed it as not only her right, but a necessity: The goatwench was a walker; when she walked, she was free to let her thoughts drift in and out of pleasantries, and problems, until a kind of clearness took shape that allowed her to re-examine her sentiments from fresh perspectives.