I've  kinda cobbled this together from stray notes here and there, so please excuse any blatant plot device; it's an excerpt from a larger piece, but I've tried to make it continue from where Part One left off.  Sorta.

It had been a rough couple of months since I got here.  And the actual experience of getting here was only now beginning to form a cohesive shape in my mind.

There were no bright lights, whooshing sounds, time-tunnels, or bodily sensations. It didn't cause my surroundings to burn or melt in a spherical shape, my clothing to disappear, or even my nose to itch. They call it "pulling" you through; but that's not what it's like at all. I just caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye, and as I turned my head to see what it was, the frozen foods section at the grocery store just. . . simply, was not there anymore. The box of Carrie's Kitchen frozen Mango and Black Bean dinner was not in my hand.

Instead, I was now standing in the dimly lit center aisle of some kind of closely packed storage unit. I could sense -- feel? hear? -- movement under my feet, as if the whole unit were moving, like an elevator or a train. But no noise. no jolting. Until we stopped. I looked around, and had no idea at all what I was seeing. Dark shapes -- boxes? The coverings looked. . . fibrous, bulky. I had this notion that somehow I was still in the grocery store, but had stumbled in the back by accident or something -- even though I knew that wasn't true. I just had no mechanism for explaining to myself what had happened.

Only then the special effects started. All of them. Lights, intense pain behind my eyes, noise -- even some whooshing -- and suddenly I couldn't breathe. And oh, yeah -- just before I passed out, my shirt disintegrated. And then, gratefully, I passed out.

It took a while, but I'm getting used to the logs and updates. You can tune out what you don't want, select streams of information you are interested in, and there is no censorship in the adult logs (I was on the kids' logs at first, to get used to the whole system, and it is heavily censored in all areas). In one of the more informal meetings with Ruth Flint, the council member who is in charge of my "case," I made a comment about the logs being mind control.

"No more than the external sources of information you tell me people are addicted to in your century," she replied, somewhat tartly. "Your internet, iPod, radio, television, cell phones -- all external appliances that send the same information to your brain. We've just integrated and internalized all these sources."

I thought about that for a while, as she took the equivalent of a phone call, speaking to an image she could see (and which she let me see, too -- you can put your logs on "share" mode) and sending him files which he opened and leafed through (the information scrolls sideways, not vertically like on the web) as they spoke -- all of this taking place in audio and visual files that only they could see, if "privacy" mode was switched on. It certainly was useful. And once I got used to the concept of highlighting topics from the menu just by directing my eyes at an image, I was hooked, to be honest.

It meant that we all did not have to be present in the same room, or even city, when the "Interactions" (as they called the interviews) took place. I began to be able to control which images I wanted them to see, to illustrate what I was talking about, and how to block spontaneous thoughts. This was the most important skill in it all, as far as I could see; I understand why one of the more pompous psychiatrists was annoyed when I imagined him with an obese woman's body and dreadlocks while my vids were on "share."

"Tell us about the Middle Eastern Wars."

"Which ones?"

"All of them."

"Why can't you Google it?"

They knew what this meant, by now -- but I already knew the answer. Every time I tried to access information on the logs about the twenty-first century, nothing came up, in terms of news about people. Technology, yes: there was information about computers, air conditioning, stealth bombers -- but no content. No politics, history (other than the names of events -- World War One, Vietnam, etc.), religion, literature -- it was as if their history books had been depopulated. I tried the twentieth century. A lot -- up until about 1973, when the files started to decrease in number, and dwindled rapidly.

"You know the answer. Help us understand what precipitated such population growth, such energy consumption, such religious strife, such climate changes, such warfare."

"Gee, you make it sound like a real bummer. Catastrophic."

"It was. Tell us."

"Why is all this information unavailable? Who is censoring you?"

"No one. It isn't there."

Keep in mind that there were a variety of speakers talking to me, and we were all showing each other relevant images to illustrate what was being said, and you can begin to have an idea about what these interviews were like.

"Who wiped it all? How is that even possible? I don't believe it."

"Believe it."

I didn't. But I decided to humor them. The Farmers had put in an official request for my extradition, and a representative of the nearest Farm city, Far-7, was "present." His name was Buck Rogers.

"Well, let's just say that I do, for a while. Everything happened. . . because it could."

"What does that mean?" (This from the pompous doctor, now appropriately dressed.)

"Population growth -- happened because it could: more food production, better medicines, equals more people. Simple as that."

"But surely you were aware that such population growth-rates were unsustainable and highly dangerous."

"Dangerous? I don't see how."

But I did, really. I thought about Africa and India for a while, and although I was able to call up images of starving millions, I was aware that the real picture was worse than the images we were looking at. Malaria in Africa. AIDS. HIV. Too many people with too little access to proper health care, to clean water even, to a steady food supply, to education, to human rights.

"So is that what precipitated the warfare?"

"No."

But I thought about that, too. Ethnic cleansing. No -- I had to stop using the euphemism -- genocide. Eastern Europe. Rwanda. The Congo. The Second World War. Surely there was more to it than that? I suddenly saw Earth as a large ant colony, and I did not like that image at all.

We switched to the Middle East again. They were interested in the reasons behind the internecine struggles in that region, as well as foreign invasions of the various countries, and I wondered if this might have something to do with the "Incursions" they were always talking about.

"Why were there so many wars there?"

That was a tough one. "Because there always had been" was rather simplistic.

"Ok. One way to look at it might be this: because the three major religions all had their source in the region; because several of the countries were oil-producing; because the region held the gateway from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea; because a history of foreign intervention by Britain, by Russia, by America --"

"You mean, because there always had been?" this was Buck Rogers who spoke.

There was a collective chuckle. Except that I wasn't finding it so funny.

A question occurred to me that I hadn't been able to find any information on in the logs.

"What religion is prevalent now?"

Pause. The only vid I was getting was from the Farmer, Buck Rogers. It was of the inside of what looked like any church or temple, except there were no icons of any kind. Interesting.

"We do not observe any religious codes or acknowledge any form of extra-terrestrial deity." This was Ruth Flint speaking.

"Do you have a history of such observances?"

"There used to be a sect called the Musselman Empire. They worshiped the deity Al-lah. But that was in the early days, after the Incursions, and did not last long -- in the H-Pons cities, anyway. We congregate, sometimes, as a community, to share news and conversation; it's a way to interact without using the logs."

"But it has no religious or spiritual purpose?"

"No; we simply congregate because we want to do so," said Ruth, and Buck nodded -- apparently it was the same for the Farms, although it didn't quite jive with his image of what had looked like rows of pews, which wouldn't likely be a leftover from any "Musselman" or Muslim sect, since mosques had no seating at all -- not, at least, in my century. Ruth had made it sound like a coffee klatsch.

I had my doubts. Humankind always has a way of encouraging itself towards superstition. But we heard no more that day, as Ruth Flint was called away on an important council matter, and the meeting adjourned.