(May 18th, 2000)

The new year of 2000 had come and gone without remark, full of the usual laughter, dancing, and drunken cheering that always led them into a brand new January. The millennium bug didn't wipe them all out as the media had feared, computer systems went unaffected, the world didn't end at the stroke of midnight and life continued to pass by as it always had.

But life on Howard's farm was somehow different.

The first week of January, Bill collapsed unexpectedly whilst working and Kit, Maggie, and Lena -- And Matt too - frantically raced him to the hospital, fearing the worst. "Just a stroke," the doctor...