Even though it was October, Sunday was a warm and sunny day. Under a crystal blue sky, tourists from all over the country wandered the Washington Mall, visiting the various monuments there. One of the most popular, still, stood below the Vietnam Memorial, closer to the Potomac.

In front of it, on this afternoon, stood a trio of people, a man and two women, who were frequent visitors there, and in their company were four small children, two boys--one a toddler--and two girls. The man, tall and well-dressed, and the taller of the two women were completely gray, but still appeared to be in excellent physical shape. The other woman, tiny, still had considerable black in her hair. They were smiling as the three older children gazed up wide-eyed at the series of life-sized bronze statues.

The nearest one, a nude woman, showed her with her knees bent in a half-crouch, looking back to her left, her arms slightly out and her fingers extended. Her mouth almost formed an "O." The artist had rendered it perfectly; although bronze, she looked ready to jump down from her pedestal and run away. At the base was a simple logo: "Jillian Goldstein." Beside her, a fragile-looking girl sat on another pedestal, her face a study in soft innocence. Her label read, "Nadine Paulson." There were others, as well, and behind them nude women and women in shorts and T-shirts, along with men in camouflage, marched forward with rifles at the ready. Above all this, on a higher pedestal than the rest, stood one more: a slim woman, very dignified even though she was nude, her hands clasped behind her back, looking down at the rest.

"Wow, Grandma," one of the little girls said. "Is that really you?"

"Of course it is, silly," the older boy said. "Don't you know Grandma won the War? That she used to be the President?"

The three-year old girl stuck her lip out. "The President," she said stiffly, "is Auntie Eileen."

"She's the President now," the boy countered. "Before that it was Auntie Stephanie, and Uncle Harry before her. Grandma was President before Uncle Harry." He waved a hand airily. "You'll learn all that when you get into school. Right now you don't know anything!"

"Don't tease Kathleen, Richard," Melanie chastised gently. "She's still young, that's all. And I didn't 'win the War' all by myself. I had lots of help."

"Kids always tease siblings," Dave commented. "Human nature. "And these have all grown up as brothers and sisters."

"They sure are growing up in a different world that the one we grew up in," Joan said. "One that's a hell of a lot better."

"These kids," Melanie noted, "are going to grow up thinking it's their family right to run the country!"

"I'm going to be President someday," five-year-old Angie said, nodding her head vigorously. "You wait and see."

Melanie laid a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe you will, sweetheart. Maybe you will." A voice from behind them called to them; the three adults turned almost as one.

"Hi, Jill," Melanie said as a sleek and lovely dark-haired woman about thirty years old approached.

The woman came up and embraced her. "I always know where to find you, Mother," she said. "Always here."

Melanie smiled. "Here," she said, "is the record of my life."

Jill shook her head. "You should encourage her to get a hobby, Daddy," she said.

Dave laughed. "No chance of that!"

"No," Melanie said. "I'm much too busy. I just come out here to think things through."

"Right. Advisor to everyone about everything."

"As long as I can help," she replied, "I'll help."

"You are now," Jill said. "It's so good of you to keep Kathleen for me. Jeff is just too distracted."

"I can't blame him." She gave Jill a stern look. "I still think this is a bad idea," she said, and hardly for the first time. "I would've worried about you before, you know that. But you shouldn't be doing this now, not now that you have a three-year old daughter."

Jill sighed. "It's now or never, Mother," she said. "I feel I'm at the peak of my abilities, right now. I don't disagree, ten years from now would be better. But I wouldn't be as good. You understand?"

"You know," Melanie answered, "that I do. I just think the Preserve is a place for unattached women, not those with husbands and young daughters."

"I won't argue." She gazed at the older woman, her eyes intense. "But I have to do this. I have to. Maybe it's in my blood, I don't know. All I know is, I have to do my time in the Preserve."

"Six months is a long time. The survival rate for women in the Preserve over six months is only thirty percent."

Jill smiled. "And what was it when you were there, Mother? Two percent? One? And you lasted ten years!" She glanced at her watch. "I need to go," she said. "My plane leaves in about two hours."

Melanie stepped forward and embraced her. "Remember," she said, "everything I taught you. Remember and come back to us!"

"I am surely going to try to!" She turned to Kathleen and knelt in front of her. The little girl jumped into her arms. "Love you, honey," she said. "You listen to Grandma, now. Mommie will be back in a few months." She held the girl at arm's length. "And if I don't come back," she went on, "you remember what I told you, Daddy's going to need your help. Okay?"

Kathleen's face was very serious. "Yes, Mommie." There were hugs all around, for Jill's sister Nadine's two children as well, and Joan's tiny grandson Taylor. Then, after a final embrace from her mother, Jill was gone.

"She'll be back, Melanie," Joan said as they watched her walk to a waiting car. "I can feel it, I know it."

Melanie nodded. "That's what Mindy says, too, and she's never wrong." She sighed. "Won't stop me from worrying, though."

"Nor me," Dave agreed. He shook his head and looked up at the statues again. "When we created this world," he went on, "I don't think we considered the idea of our own children in the Preserve or in the Arena."

"Would we have done it differently if we had?" Melanie asked. "People have to be free to make their own decisions. Our children no less than anyone else."

"Even if we had to face one of our own volunteering for the TV shows?" Joan asked.

"That would be hard," Melanie agreed. "Really hard. But it could happen." She glanced at the two little girls. "It's always a possibility. There are parents--and grandparents--who face it. And accept it."

"Yes," Joan agreed. "There are."

"And it all works," Melanie pressed on. "Population growth is still down, and that's definitely a good thing. The data from the Steiner Institute says we aren't damaging the genetic makeup of the population now. We've had decades of peace and prosperity. We've never had to restore taxes. There are no negatives, none." Realizing she was citing facts the other two already knew quite well, she fell silent and looked up at the statues again. "Well," she said, "I suppose we should go and see Jeff. I doubt if Jill is wrong when she said he's 'distracted.' I imagine he's a wreck."

"He sure was the last time we saw him," Dave agreed. "He is not happy about this."

"He will be, when Jill comes home. He'll be all bursting with pride. Mark my words."

"I am quite sure you're right."

"Maybe we should buy him a gift to cheer him up," Joan proposed.

"Might not be a bad idea, Joan," Melanie agreed abstractly. She continued to gaze at the statues, a faraway look in her eyes. The moment stretched on.

Dave touched her arm. "We should go," he said gently. "The Preserve is not what it was like when you--and they--were there. Jill's going to come back to us."

"She knows that, Dave," Joan said. "That's not what she's thinking."

He glanced at the elfin woman. "No?"

"No," Joan said with a little smile. "She's remembering how it was. I do, at times. That battle I was in, you remember? I never expected to survive it, I just knew I was going to get a bayonet any minute. And I never felt so alive in my life." She patted Dave's arm. "Melanie," she went on, "is wishing she could go back for a while too..."

Melanie turned to her and smiled. "You know me too well, Joan. Too well."

She turned away then. None of them noticed the way the three older children had been intently listening to this exchange. They wouldn't have imagined that they were old enough to understand; they themselves, with all their experience, did not really know how primal, how deep, and how basic the desires they were talking about were.

They were not aware that they were, once again, sowing the seeds of the future.