The shearing sound of iron, sharpening iron... It’s the worst, most unnerving noise in the world to me. Although, it wasn’t always that way since blacksmithing was the craft of my house.

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How important my craft was, I never fully understood until later. I always believed that the water makers and food growers were the most respected of the guilds.

I guess it only makes sense given the events of the last 117 years. The gnashing sounds of metal still sends a chill up my spine even if only in my dreams. To me, it’s ten times more menacing than fingernails on a chalkboard… or so I’ve read, since I’ve never actually seen a chalkboard.

I’ve seen 5 generations of children and then grandchildren and even great-great-great grandchildren. My family, at least what’s left of it, is the only thing that gave me joy in my life.

There are only 9 of us left out of a total of 52 births. I know the exact number since I’ve been keeping track of them… and I loved them all. It’s only right that someone remember their names. Their memory is my legacy, my blessing and my curse… which I’ll explain later.

Although only 2 made it to the age of the culling, the rest lived content in their service to the 3rd Order. Novus Ordo Seclorum. At least that’s what I like to believe since I never saw any of them after they were summoned to their service. At the age of 33 all are called to the trials.

These trials are a series of tests to measure your value to the Order and to our community …and in what capacity you may be called to serve. We’ve always had the honor of serving the Order. My service as a blacksmith kept me from taking the pilgrimage to the holy city. All who are called to serve and pass the trials are sent on the pilgrimage… except for me and a handful of other artisans who were integral to the operation of our village.

Out of the hundreds summoned to the service each year, only 2 are ever initiated into the order itself. The initiate is endowed with the Neural Lace.

It’s the divine bridge to understanding the order of everything… to understand the great architect’s plan for us all. Only purified initiates into the 3rd Order are granted access to the hall of knowledge as a protector and prophet with the gift of immortality in the Neural Lace.

I was so proud the day my great grandson son Virgil took his place among the prophets, a guardian of the sacred texts. No words can describe the richness in pride of a father for his son’s accomplishments… even a great great grandfather!

It has always been our family’s duty to protect the legacy of the founders. One in every three generations of our house has been selected to walk the path of the prophets as members of the Order for as long as anyone can remember.

It would have been my fate to walk the path too, but my brother was chosen to lead the family in our duty instead of me. I’m not angry or jealous… I understand that the path is only for the pure of flesh. I’ve made my peace with it long ago.

My genetic code made it impossible to interface with the Lace in all the ways necessary to be fully linked.
I was told as a little boy that it was the result of the genetic tampering of the food supply during the great time of excess.

The love of money, power and greed was the addiction of the overseers of the nation states. They were easily corrupted and damned us all to 100 generations of infertility and disease. Of course they lived out their years believing that they did great things and enriched the wealth of their houses… the genetic defects only began appearing after the 4 generation that followed.

Nothing could have prepared any of them for the chaos that would soon follow. That’s one of the reasons that there are so few of us left.

I met Hera at the temple during my brother’s initiation into the order. Her hair was of obsidian, fine and tied back in a little orange bow. She was only a few rows ahead of me at the ceremony. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bow as it was the only thing I could focus on against the black of her midnight hair.

We were both only 13 when we met the first time. I remember wishing and waiting for her to turn around in the crowd. I may have even whistled in a failed attempt to get her attention.

There was something about the boldness of her orange bow that intrigued me. Orange was one of the forbidden colors in our village. It was only a color worn by the grand mistress of the temple to signify the highest level of purity one could hope to achieve.

At the end of ceremony, Hera turned around and looked directly into my eyes as if she was replying to my thoughts engaged in a silent conversation.

She was as radiant as the sun. I could not look away, I’ve never had that happen before. I had always been a bit timid around pretty girls and she was prettier than any girl I had ever seen.

Our only verbal exchange was a cordial hello where I fumbled as I asked her name. I don’t even remember if I told her mine. That was the first and only time we met until 8 years ago, just before…

It’s hard for me to tell you why or even talk about it… that’s most likely the reason that the sound of iron grinding iron affects me so.

That’s where she haunts me even now… in my dreams. It’s funny how details fade as time passes. I can no longer remember what she looked like. But I remember how she smelled, her laugh and how invincible I felt in her presence.

Most everything in my life had changed since we met. More importantly, the world changed!

In the world before many scholars interpreting the lessons of countless novels would have called it “fate” or “destiny”. Neither of which I believe in anymore after what happened. Our meeting was totally by chance.

But that’s a story for another time, I guess I should probably explain to you why I’m writing this all down.

First… I understand that by the time you ready this, I’ll almost certainly be gone. There, I wrote it. It is one thing to say it, but quite another to commit it to paper. Words spoken into the air are alive one moment and gone the next.

Words committed to paper, even if erased, remain among the shadow. Over the years I’ve learned that it’s the same with the human heart. The only way to truly erase a memory is to ensure that it never happened!

It’s not that I’m afraid of death really, it’s just that the certainty of death feels like a lie. A grand lie that was designed to keep me fixated on the one thing that is of constant, inescapable permanence.

While man’s eyes have always been focused on finding immortality… the others executed their plan behind the scenes. Death was their instrument of distraction, and they have spent centuries perfecting it.

An “us against them” diversion with addictive properties. It’s easier to lay blame on an outside force of nature or even another person instead of taking responsibility for our actions and the patterns that we choose to live in. The “others” know this… it’s how they designed the world and even how they wrote it into our DNA.

Like rats in a maze, we’re kept searching for the cheese by subconsciously deciding to round the wrong corners. We go left even though we know the cheese is to the right.

Finding the cheese is the pseudo goal. Actually reaching the end of our journey would mean certain death… maybe not a physical death, but a death of the spirit… a death of purpose.

It takes a tremendous event, an unignorably profound awakening to release us from the prison of our own fleshy mammalian mind.

I often wonder what the “cheese” even is or who created it? Why do we have the instinctual drive to chase it?

It’s so comfortable to remain on the quest, facing tribulation after tribulation. We’ve convinced ourselves that there is honor in being a pawn – the underdog – the rat in search of redemption. We believe that we are the only one on the quest, the star of our own fictional story, destined for a greatness that will never come.

Of course, I can say this, because that’s been the story all of my life that I’ll share with you now…

Next Episode: Hidden... Something I Was Never Supposed to Learn

Read Episode 1 Here: Post-Apocalyptic World: (Prologue) Are You a Prepper?

"Post-Apocalyptic World" aka P.A.W. is an original pseudo-dystopian novel adapted for Steemit that employs factual and current events to tell the story of the world to come. Over the next several episodes you will not only discover the lost wisdom of civilizations turned to ash, but also a deeper understanding of the human condition and what it's going to take to survive the beginning of the end... which has already begun.

In the coming years, a scourge of economic collapses and the genetically-modified reality of life will force the population into severe chaos. Your only chance of survival may lie in the secret messages contained within the coming episodes.

Follow @survivalist.com to get the full multi-episode thriller (your manual) to survive in the coming Post-Apocalyptic World.