And So It Begins - Chapter Four

College Park, MD 2001

Jo ran a brush through her short cap of hair and tugged her sweater down. She looked a healthy thirty-something years old. Pretty good for her actual one hundred and eighty-five years of age, give or take a few months. She had a meeting with her team in about a half-hour, so there was still time for a cup of coffee and a few minutes to go over her notes.

Dr. Theophilus Wilder had died at the ripe old age of one hundred and eighty-two. There was a portrait of him, painted by Norman Rockwell that hung in the main hall of the Institute. The Network had left the Carlyle in the 1970’s and sold it to be turned into a museum, then purchased a row of townhouses in College Park, Maryland. One held her private home, and one was set up with offices for the Network, while the rest held classrooms, training facilities, and a few apartments for some of the instructors. A few years later, they purchased another block of properties and created housing for the trainees as well as more apartments for those that spent most of their time in travel for the Network.