Alfred and I got up early to to finish our trek in a timely manner. We have just spent a long time driving, and although I love this planet, I really wish I could have just taken my ship and saved a significant amount of time. One good deed, accompanying Alfred, is enough to satisfy my personal belief in karma. It's important to do good for yourself, but doing good for others helps me feel safe when I go to leave. I need all the good luck I can get when I have to fly light years away without anything breaking on me.
We are making our way up the hill currently and I’m excited to see what awaits us. My GPS tracker is showing heat signatures all over the map. So these buildings are producing energy and might be self sustained, whether or not anyone will be there is the next answer we are seeking, but I've got my fingers crossed. We just have to keep pushing through the brush and ground cover. At the top of the hill we get our first glance at these large brick buildings, some of them are covered in glass, and I think I can see some movement in the windows. Hopefully these people here are friendly.
We are stopped by several soldiers at this white gate and they understand that we aren’t here to hurt anyone, we've got no weapons on us. They let us in and we are able to speak with the people who make this place run. The community here is larger than I expected. Quite a few people run this place and keep it running. I saw a sign on the walls that read, "Survivors of WSUV". I asked them what that meant, and this used to be a University, a place where students came to learn every day. Now it is these people's life line. Without it they wouldn't be here. The place has some pretty ingenious technology going on. They’ve got a large series of capacitors and solar panels in one of the parking lots that keep their electricity going year round. Along with that there are some wind turbines harnessing the endless wind energy that seems to be pretty rampant in the area. In doing this they’ve successfully disconnected themselves from the useless infrastructure that used to carry electricity to them.
Our Hilltop mission was a success, the people here are alive, well, smart, and capable of surviving in this pretty isolated world. I feel bad because they want my help, but all I can give them is my collection of galactic data, which may or may not be helpful depending on the blueprints they can follow, and limited resources might be their downfall. Nevertheless, there is bound of be some information that is useful to them.
Alfred is grateful for this group of people as they are giving him a new home here. He can move out of isolation; the group is going to help him repurpose his life and take advantage of his mechanical skills and the ideas bouncing around in his head. He kept telling me about all of his inventions that he has poured endless hours over in his alone time. And he sure has had enough of that. The hilltop community gave me access to the cached internet that they still have, and now I can finally call this Earth Mission a success. Once all of my data is transferred and backed up I call my ship over to my location. I bid farewell to these humans who have quite an intense history and survival story, and now have a long road ahead of them. I share my data of our current galactic internet backup and then I wait until nightfall. I have other missions to get back to. As much as I would love to hear these people’s stories, my job is a timely one, and I have to jet back to HQ. I leave once the sun sets because it's the fastest way for me to get accurately aligned with the stars. And I'm on to the next archaeological mystery.
