= Joily's 25 dozen =
 
The small village of Joilys was getting bigger and bigger. Every few days a new Joily arrived, and by now there were more than two gross of them. After more than a week's break, another new Joily appeared out of nowhere in the welcoming pavilion, in front of a small table, where another Joily was waiting and passing the time by knitting.
"Oh, hello Joily!" said the Joily dressed in a long woolen knitted sweater with her hair tied back in a ponytail to the one dressed in a purple dress with her pink fuzzy bob. She set aside the knitting that was probably going to be another sweater.
"Hello?" the former replied in surprise. "Where am I? Shouldn't I be regenerated in the lab?"
"So Plum and Seth still haven't found the bug in the machine after all," Ponytail Joily commented bleakly to her alter ego. "Okay, to cut a long story short, the tele-regeneration machine must have some kind of bug, and is sending a copy of us here each time, and oddly, only us. How long has it been since you've used the tele-regenerator?"
"Oh," the new one reflected, "that was last Sunday, eleven days."
"Yep, with us too."
"But then why don't you tell Plum?"
"As if we could! This is ancient Greece! And nothing we do here seems to have any effect on the timeline you're from. We can only hope that Plum figures out the error on her own, or that the T-Reg is deactivated."
"At the moment, I don't see any... What, do you mean, I've landed in the past?!" it dawned on the fuzzy head.
"Bingo! Fortunately, the neighbors leave us alone for the moment, think we're some kind of demigoddesses. Mythology stuff probably, I don't know. They're just surprised that there aren't any men around and that we're as different from each other as one egg from another. But it's best if you go down that path and let One explain it to you, she's been here the longest and knows fluent Greek by now. By the way, I'm 69," she said with a wink, lifting a clay amulet that looked a bit like a yin-yang symbol if you didn't look too closely. "And you are," she reached into the small box in front of her, "300! Congratulations!" She handed her the pendant with her number on it.
 
The conversation with One was relatively one-sided, after letting Three Hundred explain what had happened to her in the last 11 days, she showed her around a bit. Since all the Joilys were basically the same person, there wasn't much to discuss. It was clear to Three Hundred that One knew best how to employ her, and that she had to go through the same career as the other Joilys, and so she stayed in the village for now, was assigned to Seventeen, and immediately helped create the hut that was being built precautionarily for the Numbers 312 to 324, until suddenly an alarm sounded: one of the Joilys in armor was hitting a board hanging from two ropes at the entrance to the village with a hammer.
 
"The centaurs!" gasped the Joily in warrior's gear. Emblazoned on her shield was the number 159. Three Hundred recognized similarities to her clan's style from the type of armor 159 wore, but those of her clan weren't as improvised and adapted to Greek conditions, and definitely not nearly as small.
"Ok, you, you, and you, go to the pastures and gather the shepherds, the rest know what to do!" ordered One.
 
"Come along!" said Seventeen to Three Hundred. In the hut for numbers 288 to 300, Three Hundred found her wardrobe, with armor like that of One-Fifty-Nine. "Hurry up," Seventeen commented, "these centaurs are fast as hell." Three Hundred pulled on the leather armor. It fit like a glove. A leather cap with the tusks of boars sewn on it, a more-than-joily long spike, and a large, round wooden shield, and her equipment was complete. Strange as it sounds, generations of warrior blood flowed in this miniature version of a Lamia, and Three Hundred felt like a full-fledged fighter even the first time she wore armor, however improvised. Her comrades probably did not feel any different.
 
A few kilometers from the village, at the narrowest point of the gorge, which was the only access to the Joily village, the construction of the defense system there was not yet completed, three hundred battle-ready Joilys gathered to ward off the danger. And there they came: two dozen massive centauresses, in gleaming plate armor, bearing swords and bows. Number One slithered forward, and trotting toward her was the leader of the centaurs. With much pathos, One delivered a monologue in Greek, which the centauress received unmoved.
 
Five minutes later, Three Hundred found herself in the same stomach as One and Seventeen and a dozen other Joilys.
"How three years of valuable experience is lost with me!" reasoned One. "At least the next clones can learn from my records!"
One of the other Joilys coughed.
"What?" asked One.
"I didn't know I wasn't supposed to take the manuscript with me."
One sighed, and wriggled into the corner of the stomach where digestion was at its strongest.
 
---
 
When Joily awoke from her being-digested-nap, her molecules connected with her mind, dressed in one of the purple dresses that were generated anew, no matter what she wore before - all other belongings she carried were lost forever each time - and she opened her eyes blinking, she found herself in a Mediterranean mountain landscape. Beneath her scales was the charred rubble of a small building, ahead of her lay a narrow slippery path leading down the valley.
Where did she end up now, she wondered. She had traveled to a more distant city specifically to be eaten, to investigate strange energy spikes that occurred every time she used the tele-transporter to Plum's lab - spikes that didn't occur with the other people. Seth thought it might have something to do with the routines Joindle had written to split back into Joily and Seth, as well as to prevent such a merging process in the future. The time spent together was very interesting for Joily, but unfortunately none of Seth's knowledge was transferred to her during the separation process.
 
The pred, which devoured her very slowly and with relish, and in whose stomach she dissolved to trigger the regeneration process for the trial run, was a really nice person. They talked for a while, and when Joily heard how much she had to bid up at the auction for the pleasure of eating her, she reflected that the time had probably come to demand a raise from Plum. The price she fetched could not be explained by food price inflation alone.
 
She carefully slipped out of the small pile of ashes, slithered down the path, and after a few minutes came to the remains of a small village that had also burned down. It could not have been long ago, because now and then the smell of charred wood still penetrated her nose. She examined some of the piles of debris, but found nothing of value to her. Here and there a 'Baa' could be heard from the bushes around the deserted area, which turned out to be that of sheep, which gradually gathered behind her and followed her as she continued along the path that descended from this plateau into a ravine.
She passed a few towns, which she just observed from a safe distance before moving on. Where had she ended up here, she wondered. The places looked neat and tidy, but there was no sign of electricity, no engine noise, nothing that indicated what she considered civilization. Even in the poorest, last corners of the Third World, nowadays all the people were dressed in machine-made second-hand clothes. But here, nowhere was there even a sign of plastic, let alone any other packaging waste. Was this some kind of cult?
 
As the evening dawned, she followed a small side path similar to the one that led to the abandoned village where she materialized. On a tree, in a script that Joily first thought was runes, but then recognized as Greek script, consisting only of straight lines to make it easier to carve, were carved the letters ΦΥΛΑΣΣΟΥ ΚΙΝΔΥΝΟΣ ΜΙΔΑΣ ΒΡΩΜΑ. There must have been the name of the village ahead, probably abandoned, because from here on the path was hardly used. After some distance it began to smell strange, and the sheep that had trotted after her until here became a little restless.
What now lay before her was a parody of the witch's house from Hansel and Gretel, a dwelling made entirely of food, and an old, fat man who was in turn dressed makeshiftly in edibles. The man just went around his house and touched some places where it no longer looked so appetizing, which then became fresh and palatable again, and scented deliciously. So this was the aroma that Joily had perceived.
 
When the man saw Joily, he was startled and made a dismissive gesture. When Joily nevertheless approached him, he began to speak Greek in a warning tone. Joily began to talk to him, trying to find out where she had landed in the classic "if I talk slowly enough, you will understand me" way that works so well with tourists. The man kept dodging her backwards until he reached the soil, which was not food. Barefoot, he stepped on a stone that turned into a patty, on which he slipped, and fell to the ground, which was already as soft as a roast beef from his contact.
Out of reflex, Joily took the man by the hand and helped him up.
"Eukharistô," the man said, and suddenly supreme astonishment was reflected in his face. Carefully, he touched her on the shoulder and jerked back again. He fell to his knees, bent down and put his arms on the ground in front of her and began to worship her.
"Well, this can be a fun trip," she thought, only now realizing that her dress was no longer made of cloth, but of paper-thin sliced beef jerky.