the city, later to be called, Besten. Others made their way to the mountains and met up with other bands of self-exiled people. They took to herding goats, and sheep; and whatever other animals that were left alive, they could catch to domesticate.

The people took to catching and taming the Continent's greatest animal mutations: gigantic eagles that were as high as trees. These people learned to fly them and use them as beasts of burden. These agrarian peoples were called the Krolalins and the Virunese.

The time had come, in the O.S.G.I's, where all those people in cryogenics were awakened. They organized into groups of thousands then left to set up individual and distinct villages, towns and cities.

The Earth was becoming clean again. Air and water sparkled with freshness and the entire world returned to green.

The only people to stay in the O.S.G.I's were the scientists, carrying on with their work (in every field), as it was done in the Twentieth Century. With those that left and built cities, these cities adapted to a simpler way of life and craved not to progress much in their technology. They did not crave to progress very much in their technology. They did not want the responsibilities that went with having technology. They found that they were just as happy without it, and their attitudes were civilised enough to accept and give their blessings to those still utilising the ancient ways. By 2500 C.E., many of the O.S.G.I's were back to a comfortable size of around four hundred people. Some O.S.G.I's lost people so readily and quickly, that a few had become abandoned and forgotten.

All those who left the cities tried to track down some of their old comrades, heading in the direction of newly established settlements and subsequently joining with some of them.

The surface cities began to grow and the O.S.G.I's were beginning to be emptied, with only a few hundred older people remaining in some of them.

In those Omega cities, that were still densely populated, power struggles often took place. Some of these people who became the leaders, by force or otherwise, set up a form if thought that denied the life and events of the Twentieth Century. Some even went as far as stating that the Twentieth Century never happened, and so proclaimed themselves as Kings, Queens and other types of monarchials because they were descended from the intellectuals who "made the world" what it was. During this period, everyone that was a descendant of these people was given the title "BLUE" — from the old Proposition Blue code since they were from the Great Line of Knowledge.

There were men, in the BLUE, who disagreed with the idea that the Twentieth Century never happened, and long debates were engaged to discuss it.

These debates and periodic skirmishes were the original cause for the initial emigration from the cities. Similar events sparked moves in each of the Omega S.G.I's.

Reginald Jones was a BLUE who opposed the "never happened" dogma, and his life was, at several times, threatened.

Reginald was suppressed from speaking in the city parliament and seeing that he lacked any other option, he removed himself from politics and searched for a wife.

He wasn't successful, though, since his public image had made women avoid him, for fear of being ridiculed. As it had happened, many centuries and aeons ago, a man had been denied comfort for-want-of a fundamental principle way of thought. Reginald became lonely.

Then in 2542 C.E., Reginald found a baby boy abandoned in a genetics lab when he was going to work. Announcements were made for the parents to take the boy back but soon it was found that the two teenagers responsible for the child had run away from the OMEGA 4 EAST City.

They were never found and Reginald's need for companionship made him adopt the child and so he became responsible for him. He gave him the name of Hosea, who grew up to be a brilliant man and a great political leader in the OMEGA 4 EAST City.

Hosea became the most powerful man in the city's parliament, keeping tensions at bay, but allowing the people to think freely. He had allowed debates to continue, concerning the existence of the Twentieth Century and he had, himself, held to the belief that there was a civilisation that they had descended from. He had computer disks and video tapes, books and photographs all showing the life as it was in the ancient past. This was proof. It was proof that could never be used but Hosea was the kind of man that was eager to see what conclusions would be brought by his colleagues by just using logical reasoning.

A conclusion, of sorts, had been found. It was a forced conclusion and had occurred at a time the people of the city were looking for some real direction.

Hosea had been electrocuted at age of ninety-six, while he was trying to make improvements on solar-electric power sources. He was well known for this pursuit within his city.

Hosea's first son was named Cano and when he was young he exhibited a strange spiritual aura and it was an unanimous decision, by the city fathers, to have him trained at the Monastery of St. Tobias, outside the city.

In 2580 C.E., at eighteen years of age, Cano completed his studies of religious history, and other related topics, at the monastery. He became a spiritual healer and a leader, and he later changed his name to Canon Di'Vaticanus.

He was a well-liked man, at first, who seemed stable and secure considering that his mother, Hosea's first wife Anna, deserted both of them when Cano was only twelve.

She had travelled to BanGor where she had become the High Priestess of the Cults, since she was able to endure the rains, without allowing herself to fornicate. All her daughter-descendants replaced her as the High Priestess. Anna was an ecologist while at the OMEGA 4 East City and she had developed a counter-agent that let her and whomever else took the drug, capable of tolerating being caught in the rain without having instantly become sexually deranged.

In 2600 C.E., Hosea married his fourth wife (having lost both his second and third to early death). Her name was Ruth and she was regarded as the best in her field of Aging research. In fact, in the same year of their marriage, Ruth had made a break-through by perfecting a drug that retarded the ageing process.

The first human to test the drug was Hosea when he became mortally ill and with the taking of the drug he miraculously recovered.

The drug was primarily kept for those in the Line of Knowledge but Ruth had sold some to other people in the city for certain favours and services.

In 2601 C.E. Ruth bore Hosea's second son named Gavin. During the same period when Ruth was giving birth, Canon spoke out against the age retardant drug calling it "evil", and in late of the same year, Canon disappeared with a stock supply of the developed drug.

A few years later, Ruth was imprisoned by Hosea for infidelity and he took her formula away from her. When Gavin turned sixteen, he left the OMEGA 4 EAST City and travelled to the southernmost part of the continent where three huge highlands surrounded a lush valley that was the city of Pomperaque, in Lower Phoride. He made his home on the highest mountain and changed his name to the name of the mountain and became, for the city of Pomperaque, a great oracle. A seer and a prophet whose visions always came to pass. He never seemed to die or grow old; he never had a wife or children, abstaining from all sexual contact. He kept himself pure in mind and body, while he prayed to the one great Living God, to which the majority of Twentieth Century man prayed.