That actually makes sense, I don't know why I didn't think of that. Good call.

Fair enough. Your world, your rules.

Volkswagen being a specific brand with a specific history, I assumed that history would be more or less the same (having no reason to think otherwise). Perhaps in a much bigger story, world building would show that only the name is the same.

As for the spiders, I thought the chittering amongst themselves evoked language, and the capturing of the cart (not itself edible) to prevent their prey from leaving, implied some measure of higher order intelligence. I suppose there could have been horses the spiders wanted, but there was no mention of them.

All that aside, I still enjoyed it.

Did you just marry Shelob?

So this world has the Volkswagen brand, which means it has, or had, Nazis. And it had intelligent spiders the size of cars. Sheesh, what a terrifying place to live!

Edit: also, nicely done.

I stopped, my flashlight lingering over piles, mountains, of off-white fabric. It was slightly yellowish and looked almost dirty, until the light hit is just right. Then the material took on a glittering opalescent sheen that dazzled and mystified. I had never seen anything quite like it.

"Dare ga--"

I nearly jumped out of my skin, the beam of my flashlight leaping wildly. It seemed, for just a moment, to show a forest of long, thin shadows, some massive shape of hungry death poised at the center. But in the next moment, heart racing and panic seizing my breath, I frantically searched the walls and ceilings to find nothing but stone and cobwebs behind the massives mounds of loosely-rumpled textiles.

"Who's there!?" I squeaked, terrified.

"Only me, a seamstress," came the reply, from behind one of the piles.

A soft voice, gentle, soothing. A woman's voice, slightly smokey, faintly meek, with only a mild accent. I shone my light in the direction I thought it came from, and saw a face peering around a corner, one delicate hand on the wall, unheeding of the cobwebs that stuck to her fingers. My fear slowly ebbed, as I realized it was a person.

"Who... who are you?" I asked, still trembling, trying to get a hold of myself.

"I'm--well, you can call me Jorogumo," she said, turning her face to avoid the glare of the flashlight in the dim cavern. "Who are you?"

I realized I was shining the light right at her eyes, probably blinding her. I shined it towards her legs instead, letting the corona softly illuminate her body and face. She leaned out from behind the corner, no longer assaulted by the glare, and I saw she was dressed in a gown of the same strange, off-white fabric that lay in heaps and piles around the cave. The edges of her gown were frayed, as if cut with dull sheers, too tough to slice smoothly. The fabric itself was remarkably unblemished, a single piece clinging to and accentuating her slender frame, ever so slightly elastic. Where the light hit her dress, it shimmered in colors that flowed across her form with every tiny movement.

"I'm Ricky," I answered, still jittery, but awestruck at the sight of this seamstress in her finery.

"Hello, Ricky," Jorogumo replied, smiling shyly.

She tucked her hair behind her ear bashfully, looking at the ground. She was pretty, in an odd sort of way. Large dark eyes, angular cheeks, a unique pattern of beauty marks across her forehead, like a half dozen bindi arcing in a crown across her brow. A tight, nearly lipless smile, her satiny skin glowing in the light, a hint of rosy pink across her cheeks as she blushed under scrutiny. Something in her eyes, in her smile...

I only realized I was staring when she interrupted me.

"What are you doing here, Ricky?" she asked, voice soft and inviting.

I blushed, ashamed and yet unable to look away.

"I was, um, exploring the property my girlfriend's dad left her. We're thinking, you know, deciding, between moving here and selling it."

A shadow moved, slowly, along the wall. I flicked the light, and something the size of my hand darted into a cleft in the rocks, hidden behind the cobwebs. I shuddered.

Jorogumo didn't seem to notice. She slinked forward a few steps, then leaned against the corner she had been hiding behind. I shone the light back her way, shadows dancing madly around her until they revealed her figure posed against the webs. She was thin, nearly to the point of being scrawny, but had hourglass curves that stretched the fabric of her dress in ways that captured the eye, not to mention the imagination. The liquid sheen of the fabric she wore was almost hypnotic.

"What is that?" I asked, fascinated.

"Spider silk," she said, casually running her fingers down her dress, over curves and clefts which captured my full attention.

"I didn't... know you could... make stuff... from spider silk," I said, struggling to get the words out.

She straightened from the corner she was leaning against, and rested her hand on a mound of the fabric nearest her. She seemed almost pensive, for a moment.

"Normally, you can't. Spiders don't produce it on schedule, and have too much control over the qualities of the silk to produce a consistent texture. You'd have to spend a lifetime mixing and matching and separating the various qualities of silk, to make a single skein of usable thread," she explained.

She didn't seem to notice the shadows which clung to her, or the shapes that scuttled through the darkness. I felt a chill vying for my attention, combating the naked arousal I felt looking at her feminine shape moving under the shimmering material of her gown. I flicked the flashlight around the cave, nearly capturing the things that moved in the darkness with us. Nearly, but not quite.

"And so... you found a way... What, so you breed special spiders down here, or something?" I guessed.

She nodded, pinning me in place with those big, beautiful eyes.

"Yes. A very... special spider. A very... hungry spider," she agreed, creeping closer.

I shivered, suddenly realizing that no one else knew exactly where I was. The flashlight wobbled in my hand, and the shadows of Jorogumo revealed the shape of a lady with needs. Shadows of long, thin legs, the shape of an hourglass figure. She watched me from those shadows with a constellation of big, shining eyes, yearning for what I could offer her.

"To make such fabrics, in such amounts... it would take an awfully... big... spider..." I comprehended, tasting sour metallic fear.

The shadows moved closer. Jorogumo smiled, a dangerous sort of pretty, a hunter in her lair. When I turned to run, the webs I found myself caught in shimmered opalescent in the light of the flashlight. A fabric alien and wonderful, like the piles heaped around the cavern: softer than cotton, tougher than steel.

Struggling, straining, I was helpless. I screamed, thrashed, whimpered. Finally, defeated, I wept as I felt the first deft caresses of the seamstress of the cave.

To an extent, I agree. That's why I choose to sort by new, and only bother with prompts that I feel like. Most of my stories don't get seen, and that's ok because that's not why I'm doing this.

Edit: I think my biggest complaint sorting by new is with the innumerable repeats/reposts of the same few prompts. So it's not a silver bullet solution, obviously.

You find someone else's shadowbox in a thrift store, full of ribbons, medals, and devices. While it has no name, you realize that whoever earned these must have had one hell of a service record. They should be comfortably retired or receiving full VA benefits, at the very least. So why did they feel the need to pawn their awarded honors?

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it; I had fun writing it.

(cont)

"Did it ever occur to you to wonder where the Army of Darkness recruits from?" he asked, still facing out over the mountains.

"We, um... No, sir. We learned in school that you summon some... demons, or something, and bind them to dragon eggs to make your Drakenguarde guys. Soldiers. Sir," I answered, still making my peace with death.

He huffed a tired laugh, and rocked his weight to one leg restlessly. It occurred to me that his armor must be enchanted for comfort; otherwise, the weight of it would be hell on his feet. Here he was, having been blasted by an uppity underling for ten minutes, wearing dread plate armor that looked to have the mass of a small car. Yet he moved like he was wearing nothing more burdensome than a bathrobe, and the weight on his shoulders was the mantle of leadership, not the mass of metal.

"No, Anne. You're smart; that's partly why I chose you. Think. Where do I really get my recruits?"

He was asking me to think. He wasn't asking me to plead for my life, to beg for mercy at the hands of evil incarnate. I risked pushing myself to my feet; in doing so, I discovered my sweatshirt, briefly forgotten, clenched in terrified fists. Still jittery with adrenaline, I shook it, pulled it on, fanned my damp hair out behind me.

Me. He had recruited me. Just two weeks ago, in fact--and it hasn't occurred to me to check, to see if I was a missing person. My parents had died years ago, and I didn't have any siblings. My aunt had passed away last year. No one was likely to miss me. No one probably had missed me.

And the same week I had posted about feeling lonely, on a message board about depression, the dark lord Malevilar had had me kidnapped.

"Those villages," I gasped. "Oh fuck, the suicides. The-the-those, um, the kids, the extremists, who ran off to join you!"

So many reported lost, or missing. Suspected magical suicides, where no body was ever discovered. Radicals and rebels, who abandoned their families, disappeared into the mountains.

"All of them, and more. Yes."

He turned, facing me. Something haunted, hounded, lurked behind his eyes.

"In history class, you learned that I rose from the calamity left in the wake of the Ghoti Genocide. That I was a rogue mage, or maybe a junior officer, who stumbled on some sort of superweapon." He clenched one armored fist, and sparks danced around the metal. "You probably learned that I went on to slaughter whole kingdoms, before the Alliance was able to contain me, right?"

I nodded, not sure what to say, not sure what to think. I dig my fingers into my hair, as if to hold my blown mind in my skull. The word flabbergasted floated briefly to the surface of my consciousness, before sinking once more into subconscious depths below.

"But none of that is true... is it," I whispered.

"Well, the Ghoti Genocide part is," he admitted, heartbroken by the memory. "I was sixteen, a student thaumaturgist, when it happened. My parents... were killed by my uncle, who was a member of the New Sicarii. He nearly killed me as well, but I escaped... mostly."

He gestured to the armor, the armor he wore like a second skin, that no one ever saw him without. The armor keeping him alive.

"After I stabilized myself, I gathered other survivors. Other outcasts. I gathered the hopeless and the helpless, and raised a flag they could rally under. Since then, I have spent everything, anything I could beg or borrow, steal or summon, to making sure nothing like that ever happens again. The world was... is... full of rage, of the desperate, the disenfranchised; they needed something to hate. They needed something to fear."

"Oh fuck," I whispered.

He looked at me, from under his brow. For a moment he seemed sinister; then he lifted his head, and the shadow of the dark lord lifted with it. I pulled my fingers from my tangled hair, covering my mouth and trying not to interrupt him again. My melting brain could leak from my running mouth later; I had to hear this.

"I picked you, because you needed something, and because you knew what it meant to have nothing. I picked magic cards, because it was something that anyone could use. I can pick my heroes, select them specifically for peak drama, to maximize the hate and fear that people feel for me instead of each other. I can be the enemy the people need, give home and purpose to the outcasts. And if a few plucky adventurers is the sacrifice the world needs to make peace with that arrangement, so be it."

He stepped closer, raising hands as if in supplication. In each palm, a card appeared--gilt edges, silver letters, emerald and sapphire dragons embossed on the back. They were all his; every weapon the heroes wielded, every card, forged by his dark power.

"With weapons such as these, even a child can lead them," he intoned, the power of the dark lord echoing in his voice. "And the child will do so. The world is better with villains in it, because the people cling to childish notions such as heroes. The world is better with 'stupid card games', because the alternative is knives and fire, dead parents, brother killing brother. The world is better with our silly dramas and sinister broadcasts, because that is what the world needs. We are the villains, and we will save them all."

The cards floated over his raised hands, waiting for me to take them, waiting for me to grasp. They were part of a game I hadn't comprehended; a game I had, in my ignorance, dismissed. A game that had changed the rules of the world, because the rulers of the world were forced to play it. A game with impossible stakes, a game worth betting everything on. A game he was now inviting me to be a part of.

I stepped forward, and felt the push of his power against my skin. My hands tingled as I took one of the cards, and I finally understood.

"And... action!" shouted the director.

The dark lord Malevilar, seated on his throne of dragon bones, blasted yet another churlish adventurer who dared oppose him without wielding the true magic of the Dragon Deck. He was mighty; he was unstoppable. Only the chosen heroes could stand against him, and even then, they would require the support whole of the world and its magic, united, to stand a chance against the powers of darkness.

At the dark lord's side stood his newest lieutenant, proud in her role as the right hand to the master of disaster. I caught the cue as the camera panned my way, zooming in on me. With a diabolical cackle, I clutched at imaginary throats with the clawed gauntlet of my new armor.

"They stand no chance against you, divided and unprepared as they are!"

He nodded, and flames coated his armored fists as he rose. Standing, he towered over the room, wrapped in power and terror. With grave tones, he proclaimed his impending victory.

"Send me your pathetic armies, send me your wizards and soldiers!" he threatened. "None can stand before me! And when I rip the last Dragon Card from the hands of the last Dragon Priest, I will be invincible!"

"Magnificent, my dark lord!" Villi-Anne cried hammily, as I chewed the scenery for all I was worth.

Childish, yes. Silly, even. But now, knowing why, knowing it mattered? Now, I meant every word.

"...can't stop me, little heroes! The power of your cards is as nothing to my undefeatable Dragon Army! Once I have defeated the last Dragon Priest, the world is mine, and a thousand years of darkness shall be my reign!"

He gloated, his array of magically-charged Dracomancy cards orbiting him like a crown of dark stars.

Off to my right, a huge flashing pattern of green lights came on. A cue, I realized, one which conveniently drew my attention away from the climax of the dark lord's speech, just as scripted. I half-turned, involuntarily, before I had even realized what it was.

"Villi-Anne! Am I boring you?" he snapped, turning on me.

His script meant he wasn't supposed to notice the bank of flashing lights, so he didn't. He just turned his attention to me, a tertiary character in his 'empire of evil'. I felt the weight of his amplified presence for the first time, staring up at him, and I hesitated.

His question was my cue, but I still shivered. He was designed to be frightening. From his sinister armor, to the scraping claws of his enchanted gauntlet; from his harmonically amplified voice, to the glow that came from somewhere inside his helmet like phantom flames where his eyes should be. The throne room, the castle... all meticulously workshopped, designed and redesigned, engineered for maximum affect.

"Villi-Anne!" he barked, subwoofers cranked until my bones rattled with the repeated prompt.

Shit, I thought, startled out of my reverie.

"N-no, my Lord!" I responded, internally wincing from the unscripted stutter. I hunched over, flexing the clawed card-gauntlet menacingly, as my script described. "I was just thinking what delicious torments the heroes are in for, Master, once we've defeated them!"

The dread lord Malevilar, ruler of the Really Badlands, King of Evil and Master of Misdeeds, leaned closer. His breath hissed warningly, like a rattlesnake's tail, as he loomed.

"Once 'we've' defeated them?" he repeated, gauntleted fist creaking with barely restrained rage.

I knew it was part of the script, yet I couldn't help but shrink for real. He was terrifying. Part of me wondered what he would be like if he was genuinely enraged. That same part of me wondered if I could tell the difference, before it was too late.

"Aaaand, cut!" came the shout, just as I gulped.

Interrupted while drying my hair, I grabbed my sweatpants and sports bra from my luggage, tugged them on. I hadn't even finished unpacking, and didn't know where my sweatshirt was. I decided whoever it was would just have to put up with my muffin top. My sweatpants stuck to my still-wet skin, but I ignored it, and went to answer the door.

"Hey, Anne. Got a moment?" the dark lord asked, as he tried and failed to wrangle chronic helmet-hair into some semblance of presentable.

Filming over, we were mostly done for the day. I had gone for a shower, having jumped at the opportunity to peel off my work armor. Meanwhile the dark lord had--as usual--made his rounds to check in with his core team. I hadn't expected him to check in on me; I was still new. This was our first face-to-face, off camera.

"Um! Shit. I-I-I mean, yeah. Yes sir, sorry sir," I stammered, backing away so the dark lord could storm in as he pleased.

He didn't, though. He stood in the doorway, waiting until I looked his way. For a moment I stared, confused, as he searched my face.

"It's not an order, Anne."

It was... disarming, in a way I wasn't prepared for. His voice was strong, but his tone was gentle, unhurried. It was disorienting, and felt out of character.

Then it hit me. This wasn't the dark lord Malevilar. This was... well, shit. Whoever he was when he wasn't being the dark lord, I guess. A man, a person. I didn't even know my boss's name.

Wincing inside, I gestured for him to come in.

"Yeah, no, sorry. Please, excuse the mess." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as he passed me, trying to reorient myself.

He nodded and stepped into the room, his armor scraping the door frame. I closed the door behind him, then realized I didn't know what to do with my hands while my boss, the most dangerous man on the planet, watched me drip on the floor.

He set his great horned helmet on a table, and looked around. The suite was cluttered--old furniture, new books, most of my luggage, and a computer. The table I had designated as my workbench was entirely buried in scripts, pieces of my armor, and a portfolio of palette options and accessories I had been given by his image consultants, a few options already highlighted. Two doorways--one leading to a bedroom with an unmade bed, one to a bathroom wet with steam--stood open on one wall. Condensation from my shower frosted the windows on another.

He absorbed it all, methodically. His gaze held no judgment, no recrimination. I was surprised to notice that, for all his massive size, he was careful and concise with his movements, even turning his head in measured increments. He also had surprisingly kind eyes, and he turned them on me.

I realized I had been staring at him, and flushed crimson. He was considerate enough to pretend not to notice it, and he walked towards the window instead. His back to me, I had the opportunity to gather myself.

"I wanted to check on you, see how you're settling in," he said.

He waved his hand, and something in his armor flashed. The moisture that obscured the view dried in an instant, revealing the snow-capped peaks of the Drake Mountains around us. He leaned on the window sill, taking in the view, a reason to let us talk without me feeling stared at or judged. A casual exercise in unexpected civility, from a man whose entire reputation was being a monster.

"If you need more time to prepare mentally, I can come back later, or we can make an appointment," he offered.

Once again, I had been so busy thinking that I had missed my cue. I hid my face in my hands, feeling my wet hair stick to my cheeks. With an effort of will that was surprisingly difficult, I forced myself to straighten up, claw my hair back out of my face, and respond.

"No, sorry. I'm just... it's not what I expected, sir," I managed.

He chuckled, nodding out the window. I could see his face, reflected in the glass, as he scoured the mountainsides with his eyes.

"You're not the first to feel that way," he agreed. "What was it you expected?"

I darted into my bedroom for my towel, and started drying my hair as I answered.

"Most of us grew up knowing you as a monster. No offense, sir."

"None taken," he laughed, boyishly pleased.

"Well, um. I didn't exactly audition for this role. I was selected--kidnapped, really--pulled out of my chemical engineering degree for this. I mean, I get it, you can't exactly advertise that the dark lord needs minions, but I was expecting... I don't know, exactly. Evil stuff. Spikes, spiderwebs. Torture chambers and a harem of enslaved elves, maybe. Not... uh, this. Not, um, karaoke nights. Definitely not a staff canteen with a Michelin star."

He smirked, but held his laugh. I realized he was thoroughly pleased with himself, and for some reason that made me angry, a little. The anger made me bold, and I rambled on.

"What's the point, even? I mean, sure, take over the world. Everyone knows the threat of the dark lord is why we dump, what, a quarter of the GDP?, into heroes, magic items, healing research, crap like that. No one likes having to enlist into the Armies of Light, having to fight your summoned dragon monsters, but we get why we have to do it. You threaten everything, and when we can't stop you, whole cities just... just vanish."

In the reflection, I saw the smile disappear from his face, but he didn't look angry. If anything, he looked... resigned. Hair mostly dry, I threw my towel into the bedroom, and started searching my luggage for my sweatshirt. I yanked hard at whatever my hands found, still mad, and pulled out fistfuls of clothes.

"And... and," I continued, unable to stop myself, "And you have all this power. Even with all our military spending, all the heroes and stuff, you could probably wipe out half the world if you wanted to. But you... I don't know. You're fixated on this 'Ultimate Dark Dragon Deck' thing, despite having an army large enough to invade the entire Alliance. You could beat everyone in a single day with saturation bombing from your Fell Drakes; or unleash a bioterror plague with the Dracolich Necromancers, but instead... I don't even..."

I found my sweatshirt, squeezing it ferociously, unable to even process that I should put it on. I was in full vent mode. I needed to say it, to scream it.

"But no, you've got everyone convinced that the world's only hope is some... some tween! Some dork you've got calling himself a 'dragon priest'--whatever that means--with a special summon spell that you made, getting enough of a deck of magic cards together to... to play some stupid game at you!"

My shriek echoed in the suite, and he shifted at the window. Some small part of me, call it my survival instinct, suddenly twanged inside, reminding me that I had just screamed at the most dangerous man in history. The most dangerous man, standing not twenty feet away, in my small suite in his castle; while I sat on the floor with nothing but a scrunched up sweatshirt to defend myself, if he decided he was offended enough to rebuke his new minion.

"Um. Sir," I amended, squeaking the word.

He sighed, but he did not turn. His gauntlets scraped at the windowsill as he moved his hands--hands that could kill me a thousand ways, while I could do literally nothing to stop him. I realized I was shaking.

"Anne... I apologize," he said, finally.

I felt nauseous. So this is how I die, I thought. Shooting off at the mouth, blowing a gasket at the dark lord, while sitting on the floor in my underwear.

"Why would you... Nevermind; doesn't matter. I'm done here, so talk faster or get more interesting."

Nothing wrong with that. I liked it.

Pick a point. In spacetime, I mean; let's keep politics out of this.

This point in spacetime, is it nearby? Is it somewhere you can see, perhaps? A familiar place, a person you know? Or is it on the far end of infinity, where naught but thought can ever reach it, forever outside of our frame of reference as a Type 0 civilization?

Regardless, I want you to imagine for just a moment the line between you and the point you've picked. A line exactly 1 length long, no matter how long such a length is. The distance between you and your pretty big-titty goth girlfriend is exactly as useful as the line between us and the edge of the universe, or the line between you and the next nearest person who's into your exact collection of specific fetishes, you dirty pervert.

Think of that line. Like a string, suspended taught across reality between two points.

Now, I want you to think of the effort it would take to cross exactly half of that distance. Did you imagine walking across a room, perhaps? Or firing a rocket across the solar system? Perhaps you imagined time instead, halfway between now and then. Or a process, halfway between grinding up innocent chipmunks for their bone marrow and arriving at the final product of nutritionally complete cheese doodles. Stop imagining weird things, you freak; this is a thought exercise about the indescribable infinite, not some sick woodland creature genocide.

Now, think of that halfway point. What's half? Is it a distance? A wait? A weight? A measure of success? What if you can't reach it with the tools you have available? What if just half of your destination is still a goal beyond your reach? Can you find the halfway point without assistance?

Divide it again, then. Half of half; a quarter. Is that a more attainable goal? Half of half the way to the ends of the observable universe, a mere quarter of the infinite? Half of half the way to asking your crush to prom, a mere quarter of the impossible? Draw a demarcation at the point in space at which one quarter of your point is made, achieved, realized. Is that a goal worth achieving in and of itself?

What about half of that--an eighth? Is one eighth of infinity a potentially viable goal? Could you zip over by Tuesday, putter around a bit before heading back for tea and biscuits? Is an eighth of eternity something worth waiting for, considering the costs of waiting?

Divide it again. And again. Now we're at one thirty-secondths of the line you have arbitrarily picked. Can you do 1/32nds of your goals? Can you have 1/32nds of a baby, 1/32nds of learning a language? What does it even mean to ask your crush to prom by a mere 1/32nds' worth? Have we subdivided the possible too much?

Nonsense.

Half, and half again. Sixty fourths and one-twenty-eighths. Much more achievable, yes? You can achieve 1/128 of getting into shape, or 1/128 of getting hired at NASA, right? That's... what, a few dozen situps? Finishing algebra with a passing grade? How do you define 1/128th of the way to accomplishing your goal, reaching the end of your line?

How fast do you have to go to reach 1/256th of escape velocity? How hard do you have to hit, to win 1/512th of a boxing heavyweight championship? What's 1/1028th of using technological augmentation to survive until the heat death of the universe? How many bananas in your rectum is 1/2056ths of the way to setting an unbreakable world record that, frankly, no one else wants to attempt?

My point is, we narrative-thinking primates draw lines that can be broken down as much as we may desire, but which aren't useful or even realistic as goalposts. We pretend to think in fractions to justify our lack of goal accomplishment, when really we should be practicing releasing the expectations of specific and potentially self-destructive goals in the first place. 1/5012ths of a goal is as meaningless as stochastic noise, and just as useful to our psyche. Learning that I'm 1/10,024th of the way to living forever is just as useful as learning that I'm 1/20058ths of the way to turning myself into chipmunk bone marrow soup.

'Do or do not; there is no try.' It's the battlecry of the dichotomists, who hate the thought of nuance and draw their lines directly between possibilities, with no subdivisions permitted. But the idea of binary achievement between nuanced states, a simple 1/0, is exactly how the human brain comprehends incomplete achievement. I ate half the world-record burrito in a single sitting; I gave my children 1/16th of a bath. It means nothing.

Our world, our goals, our spacetime; they're entirely indescribable, except in meaningless and arbitrary subdivisions of achievement. A hundredth of a sandwich; a tenth of the way to success. We can't achieve most of our goals--the lines we draw from where we are to where we want to be--without dividing them in ways that make no sense outside of a single and silly frame of reference.

Perhaps I am describing the indescribable. Perhaps I am 1/2 insane, making 1/4 of a valid argument while relying on 1/8th of a logical fallacy. Perhaps the world really is just fractions, and whole numbers is a delusion we have decided upon, to demarcate accomplishments we will never attain.

Or perhaps there is an attainable halfway point, between ourselves and the person we will one day become. And perhaps you are halfway down the road of destiny, looking for the next quarter or eighth or sixteenth of the way, trying to achieve the one-ness you long for. Perhaps no matter how far you go, how much you divide your journey, you will always be one length away from eternity, and one accomplishment away from immortality.

Whatever the case, I'll see you halfway to the indescribable. It's a maddening line, and we travel in fractions, but if we just keep working at it, perhaps one day we will get there. I'm nearly half certain, even though I'm only 1/0th of the way there.

Thank you. I really appreciate the feedback, that's good stuff.

To be honest, I don't know how they would have actually spoken, how their cadence and scansion would sound translated to modern english--it's been a few decades since I read anything like the Canterbury Tales, or other stuff from that literary era. I was mostly hoping flowery eloquence would stand in for historical accuracy. If anyone feels like britpicking for middle english, I'll happily make appropriate changes.

As for the show-don't-tell: That's a good point. I think the problem I have is that I was raised in a place where that sort of rhetoric is common; if it is not specifically called out and examined, it would pass unremarked by too many. People around me see it as too 'normal' for them to notice the showing, so I'm now in the habit of heavy-handed telling--yelling, even--when dealing with various -isms. You're correct, it negatively affects my writing style. I'll edit it.

One counterpoint, though: Robin Hood does not have control over the situation. He thinks he does, and it is that which proves to be the tragic flaw which doomed him and the people he cares about. The betrayal had already happened; the baron's armies attacked the livery of Robin's company on sight. The Merry Men were never leaving London alive.

> "The madness of slavery is over, the time of liberty has been granted, English necks are free from the yoke." Gerald of Wales, ~1216

The barons gathered the same evening John had been routed by mecenaries, their own armies yet to arrive. But they had come, these brave men righteous and true--or so Robert had been told of them. When he arrived at the royal court and saw them, however, he found fat merchants and petty aristocrats arguing over whether to invite the French to invade.

"We'll not cede an acre to those continental aliens! We only need their steel; their boots can stay home!" shouted one.

"You, who sail a French ship and ride many French mistresses, now say they're unwelcome? You talk of aliens, yet you've got a floating bedroom full of them!" came a snide rebuttal.

"Louis can be bargained with; he's a fit man for hard times as these! We all know John will return, and he'll rain iron upon us, if we have no royal shelter!" insisted a man who trembled at the thought.

Robert listened carefully, marking each man in his mind. The jingoist; the racist; the coward. Tall, fat, frail, fit; he marked them, thirty in total. He tried to weigh them, but found each wanting. Uncharitably, he thought they'd weigh more accurately as pork than as politicians.

"Gentlemen," he interrupted.

Here and there, a head turned. But the conversation did not abate, and even those faces turned away after a glance.

With an ease borne of long battle and a grace borne of long hardship, he rose from the abandoned throne of England where he had been lounging.

"Gentlemen, a word," he said again, his voice powerful.

This time there was more attention, but still not enough.

There were no arms permitted in the royal hall, by order of the Merry Men who occupied it, but Robert had little need of steel when wood could suffice. He kicked a stool up with one long leg, catching it as it somersaulted, and flung it across the table. It clattered alarmingly, barely missing a man at the far end. A silence descended.

Thirty angry faces stared hard at the Hero of Nottingham, but he had captured his audience.

"I am aware that there are many considerations to be made for the return of John and his armies. First, however, we feed and clothe the good folk of England who have suffered, under his rule and the long absence of his brother Richard."

He leaned forward to rest his hands on the table, hands hardened with callouses from wielding bow and sword in service of the land while these men wielded pens and forks in service of the coffer. He was an imposing man, a kind killer and a noble brigand, and each man in his presence knew him to be capable of a great and righteous wrath.

"We start with the people; those were my terms. Then, once we have ensured the wellness of the populace, once I have been paid my pittance, I will take my company and go. You can take as much time as you like after, to bicker about who gets what measure and profit."

"What are you, Arthur reborn, then?" scoffed a great fat baron, whose fief included much of the land about London itself. "What lands do you hold, that gives you vote and voice?"

"None, sir. Only the holding of the blades and the pikes surrounding this hall," Robert warned. "Would you throw me out, knowing the doorman might take offense?"

They looked amongst themselves, those thirty. Robert narrowed eyes as his instincts shouted. They were not looks of concern, but of conspiracy.

"I think your contract is over, mercenary," said one.

In the silence, they heard outside a commotion. Marching, shouting, a call to arms. The armies of the barons, arriving at last.

"Perfidy! We are betrayed! To me, men!" Robert shouted, pushing himself away from the table, searching for a weapon. "John Lyttle, to me! I've need of your axe!"

No rebel, no Merry Man of the company who served Robin of the Wood, did appear. The shouting outside grew quiet, a peppering of arrows against wood and stone proclaiming why. The door to the royal court remained sealed, and if blood trickled under it, none could tell whose.

Robert's hands found a rod for the curtains, stout and heavy. It would have to suffice. He put his back to the wall, and thirty men drew their hidden knives against him.

There in the halls of power, where once reigned the pettiest tyrant of English lore, did Robin of the Wood do his last righteous battle. Four men he killed bravely, and one later died of his wounds; twenty and five survived, when they had knocked him to the ground and pierced him with their daggers.

Not a whole day had passed from the routing of the wicked John--that King who should have stayed Prince--and the bleeding of the last true hero of England.

Marian, virtuous and true, was taken and sold; Lyttle John and the other men of the company, even those who surrendered, were all branded traitors for their services. They were hung on gallows and mounted on pikes, living and dead, officially denounced. Speaking their names was declared a crime akin to blasphemy, and their families were shunned.

Knowing they dared not admit such men as themselves could be defeated by a lowly villain, the conspiracy of barons decided that the five fallen among them had never arrived at all. Their remains were fed to pigs and pits and fires, as nameless members of the Merry Men, their confederates forsaking decency as well as truth. Twenty and five were the barons recorded; twenty and five were the names listed as great men who thwarted a greater foe.

The barons had their rebellion, their glory, and England.

And the people, as usual, had nothing... nothing but stories. Stories of a man who had once tried to help, who had once stood up to injustice. Stories of a man labeled foe, for daring to be a hero. Stories, legends, myths, even: tales of the man called Robin Hood.

I've heard it said, while reading about asthma and apneas, that the most frightening possible experience is being unable to breathe and not knowing why. And as an adult, I can't imagine anything more terrifying than finding myself unable to help my loved ones, terrified and helpless, never knowing what hurt them or whether they'll be ok.

I had to rewrite it with the daughter as the focus, because writing it from the perspective of the mother was too terrifying for me to process correctly, and it initially came out as gibberish.

"Who was it?" her mother asked, still busy with dinner.

"I'm not sure," Roxi answered, confused. "Someone doing a late Halloween prank, I guess?"

She made her way back to the kitchen, where she had been working on her homework at the bar.

Her mother was chopping vegetables, by the sink. Roxi stretched over the cool countertop, not eager to return to her essay. It was hot for November, warm enough for shorts, and she was on the verge of melting.

"What kind of prank? Like, a TikTok?" her mother guessed.

"Yeah maybe," Roxi shrugged, her arm sticking to the counter she was laying half across. "Nothing I recognize. Something about chemicals."

She yawned, fighting the urge to close her laptop. It wasn't like she had been making any progress on her essay, but she had promised her parents she'd at least try. Almost being held back a grade once was humiliating enough; having to have that talk with your parents was gut-wrenching.

Her mother stopped chopping, and turned to look at Roxi over her shoulder.

"Something chemical?" she pressed. "Did they give you anything?"

Roxi shook her head, suddenly very sleepy. It was so warm, and she was so tired. She coughed, and her vision swam.

"Roxi? Roxi, honey?" she heard her mother, but she was suddenly calling from somewhere far away. "Roxi!?"

Roxi fell, gasping, into oblivion.

There were noises from outside, she realized. People were yelling.

She coughed, and it was like being kicked in the chest. She coughed again, dizzy, sick. She tasted something nasty, and her head hurt. When she moved, her skin felt like it was on fire.

Roxi fought for breath, gasping, choking. She wheezed wetly, fighting to get enough air. Fighting unconsciousness, she forced herself up. It was like waxing her whole body at once; her skin felt like it was tearing. But she couldn't breathe enough to scream.

She had somehow been moved to the couch. Disoriented, Roxi stumbled around to find the door. Yanking it open, she stood gasping in the doorway, leaning hard against the wall.

Outside was chaos. People ran, screaming, choking, coughing, hacking. Men ran, carrying their children on their shoulders. People were wearing masks, cloths, rolled up shirts over their mouths and noses. Children, closer to ground level, were gaping like fish, struggling more than the adults. Roxi panted weakly, watching a toddler being dragged by the hand by his mother, saw when he went limp. His mother reached down to scoop him up but fell beside him, coughing and gasping.

So many people were moving, but she didn't immediately understand where, or why. Cars were stuck, traffic standing still, and people were abandoning their cars, climbing on top of them. The ones moving, mostly moved in one direction. Uphill, she realized.

She coughed again, wetly, and spit out blood. Blearily, having trouble concentrating, she turned and unsteadily made her way back to the kitchen. She wanted to join them, wanted someone to show her where she could go to breathe. But there was something important she was forgetting. She just had to remember what it was.

She broke into coughing again, spitting blood and doubled over with the pain of it, before she found it: her mother, sprawled out on the floor in the living room. Roxi tried to bend down to help her, but she tasted a lungful of the horrible air, and realized why everyone was moving uphill. She couldn't breathe at all, nearer to the ground.

With shaking hands, she exhaled as she brushed the hair away from her mother's face. Her mother's white face, her blue lips, her black tongue. Bloodshot eyes stared unseeing. Roxi's mom had spent too long helping her, lifting her, carrying her to the couch. Her mother had unwittingly killed herself, saving Roxi.

She lurched, dizzy, and almost fell. Her mom was... no. She couldn't... mustn't think about it. She thought about her dad, her sister instead.

"Phone," she slurred, staggering. "Daddy."

A light flashed nearby. Her oxygen deprived brain thought it recognized it. Coughing, gasping, she climbed onto the coffee table, grabbed the ceiling fan for support.

"Aleshsa," she tried, then wiped the blood from her mouth. "Alexa. Call dad."

She gagged, retching, as the light flashed obediently.

"Calling: Dad."

It rang. Rang again. Her fingers hurt, holding the fan blades, but she could almost get a breath that didn't splash inside her. The call went to voicemail.

Al-" she started, then coughed hard, spraying blood on the wall. She blurted it, afraid she would lose the ability to talk. "Alexa call dad."

Ringing. Ringing. Voicemail.

"Alexa, ca-" she said, voice breaking as she fought not to cry.

She was dizzy. She was off balance. Her fingers slipped, and she fell. Flailing, she tumbled. Into the bad air, into the gas.

She landed hard, what little breath she had knocked from her. She tried not to gasp, tried not to, tried so hard to fight her way back up to her feet before she took that breath... but her body betrayed her. She collapsed, helpless, and she breathed.

Her lungs and her eyes opened at the same time. It burned, it stank, it hurt. It broke her heart. Facing her, almost kissing her, her mother's corpse lay beside her.

Unable even to cough anymore, her lungs a twisted knot pouring blood into her chest, Roxi reached out and touched her mother's hair. Her final breath was a gurgling wrench of pain, boiling messily inside of her. Roxi's vision darkened, and in that final moment, she thought she saw her mother's body smile, thought she felt her mother's cold arms wrap around her and pull her close.

The last good thing in the world went out of her, there in the gas, but at least she wouldn't be alone.

• Inspired by true events.

"She's the one," I announced, my words cutting through the nervous susurration. "She's what I've been waiting for."

My daughter. My rival. My legacy. For the first time in decades, I am thrilled and terrified. I looked down into the small face of the toddler who defied me, her steamed carrots miraculously untouched.

"Eat your vegetables," I insisted, again, a thousand eyes and ears now focused on this domestic drama.

The Voice compels. The Voice commands. The Voice is undeniable. For nearly fifty years the Voice has held the world in thrall. No mortal, no machine can resist an order spoken by the Voice. It is irrefutable and impossible to deny. And yet...

"Ucky," the child replied, and she pushed her plate onto the floor. She pointed at her mother's plate, and spoke with her own tiny Voice.

"Schikkin'," the little girl ordered. Her mother, helplessly obedient, immediately tore a piece of meat from the breast of fowl that was her own dinner. She turned to hand the morsel to the demanding child.

"Don't give it to her," I contradicted, fascinated.

My concubine's hand shook, trembled. Her fingers turned pale with the tension, conflicting compulsions tearing at mind and muscle and bone. The bite of poultry wobbled and danced in her shaking fingers, betraying the war that raged within the woman that held it.

"Schikkin', Mommy!" insisted Voice the Younger, screeching, little hands reaching. "SCHIKKIN'!"

The toddler kicked fruitlessly, tantrum building, and something in her mother's hand broke under the strain. Chicken dropped to the floor, eliciting a shriek from the thwarted child. Her mother's hand seized involuntarily, horrifically, and unfiltered agony washed over the woman's face as she writhed and fell. As her child continued to howl, my concubine cradled her ruined hand to her chest and screamed into the floor.

Chaos ensued, and the Great Hall filled with panic. The Bat Kol strode forward from their positions around the room, spears in hand, looking for some intruder to attack. My Metatron, sword and eyes ablaze, gears whirring with lethal purpose, rose like an angry fireball from its place near the great doors. Four hundred concubines shouted and cried in fear, startled and confused. Plates and cups, entire tables, were knocked to the floor as the harem panicked.

"Stop," I commanded.

Five hundred and eleven people froze in place, silent, afraid to even breathe. Only one person, one very little person, dared to complain. She did so loudly, but over her vehement and indecorous protests, I commanded all who heard. As always, those who heard, obeyed.

"Relax. Breathe. Right the tables; resume dinner as best you can. Share amongst yourselves equitably, to compensate those whose dinner was ruined. We will have extra at breakfast tomorrow, in case anyone goes hungry."

Hundreds of deep, shuddering breaths filled the Great Hall. Twenty women worked together to right the various tables that were overturned. A dozen more went around the room, collecting small amounts donated from every plate, scraps scrounged from the great serving trays, filled offerings for their sisters whose meals now lay scattered and ruined. There were nervous jitters, shaking hands, but none could defy the Voice.

Except one.

I rose. My attendants rose with me, always following. I made my way over to the concubine whose daughter had defied me, looking around to see the effect her fit might be having on the others. My daughter screamed her tantrum, unheeding of anything around her. It was simultaneously the most obnoxious and the most wonderful sound I'd heard, in at least the last thirty years. Since the day the old world had ended, probably.

"Stop crying," I tried, fruitlessly.

Her screeching hit a new and even more awful pitch, as she redoubled her efforts to bend the world to her little will. Ah well, it was worth a shot, I shrugged the thought away.

"Please," her mother whispered from the floor, terrified and in terrible pain. "Don't hurt her."

I knelt, gently stroked her hair, her cheek.

"Be not afraid," I commanded, softly. "Feel no pain. I won't ever, ever harm our child. Or you. I swear it."

She sagged as the tension of torment vanished. Releasing the deathgrip on her shattered hand, her delicate fingers dislocated and bent in awful, unnatural ways, she stared at it. She was still gasping raggedly from the horrific experience, and no wonder. Her hand looked torturously painful, twisted and mangled by her own tendons. I could hardly imagine what it must have felt like. But now, she had been commanded by the Voice and so felt nothing.

Still, she looked up at me on the verge of tears. I suspected that these tears were from uncertainty, and the anguish of embarrassment. After all, literally everyone she knew had just watched this entire scene unfold. If the Voice didn't intervene, she'd be hearing whispers and catching looks for months.

"Go to the doctors. I will speak to your sisters. Then I will come to you, and I will bring our daughter," I promised her. "You have done well, and I am proud of you, my love."

Slowly, unsteadily, my concubine--I couldn't even remember her name, I realized guiltily--rose. She made her way towards the door, unwilling to look around in case she caught the eye of some jealous or judgmental sister. Our daughter wailed on unceasingly, unmindful of her suffering mother, uncaring of all else but the object of her fixation.

Until her father--the de facto ruler of the survivors of humanity, and the bearer of the Voice which had ruled men and beast and machine alike since the bombs fell--turned to her.

"Daddy schikkin'! Schikkin Daddy NOW!" she strained out, face red with rage, hands beating against the baby chair for punctuation.

With an awed grin, I offer the little monster the rest of the chicken from her mother's abandoned plate. She screamed defiance once more, still furious in the grip of unbridled infantile emotions, and snatched at her prize. She tried putting it in her mouth, tried squeezing it, tried seething noisily at it, waiting impatiently for it to metamorphose into the strips of hand-shredded meat she expected it to become.

Enthralled by this tiny tyrant, I begin to tear strips of meat for her, keeping her sullen attention occupied. I didn't dare let her strike upon the strategy of commanding others around her. With a toss of my head, I gestured to an attendant.

"Prepare a garden. Only the deaf may work there. Her mother may move there if she chooses, but no one else may enter without approval. This girl must be taught, and raised, and protected, and... and above all, cherished."

My attendant rushed off, her robes flapping around her long legs as she ran to obey. Another took her place at my side. The rest of the Hall went back to their meal, though the whispers I heard carried venom. I suspected the whispers I didn't hear were worse. I would have to speak, to command, lest bitterness lead to tragedy. I tried to ponder on what might be the correct thing to say.

Meanwhile, the future queen of the world munched sulkily on seasoned meat, one ragged strip clutched greedily in each greasy fist. I found my own attention captured, my focus ensnared. My little girl. It was so hard to worry about the many, when I was so captivated by the one.

"My daughter must never be entirely reliant on the Voice, lest she be helpless without it," I mused aloud. "As was I, the moment my daughter told me 'No'."

When your poem puts the reader in the same state of mind as the works of master sculptors and award-winning authors, I'd say you grasped it very well. Your poem was excellently done.

I like this. Well done.

It puts me in mind of a bit from a story I read years ago:

"A great artist—a master—and that is what Auguste Rodin was—can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done to her." ~Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

Edit: The sculpture in question is The Old Courtesan.

He arrived, just as he had threatened. There was a reason--well, 19 reasons, specifically--he was willing to kill her.

She arrived, just as she had promised. There was a dozen reasons--well, one reason, honestly--she wasn't going to kill him.

"You really came," she said, amused. "I almost thought this was a diversion."

"I came," he agreed, angry. "I almost wish it was."

He unslung his weapon from among the rolled furs on his back: great, blood-stained, the chipped edge still mortally dangerous. He flexed his hands, rolled his shoulders, and hefted the mighty axe.

She mirrored him, unsheathing her own: delicate, gleaming, the razor-fine estoc reflecting what little sunlight could be seen through the smoke-filled skies. She didn't even adjust her gloves, merely stood like a shining sentinel and raised her blade in salute.

"For crimes against the Empire and her people, for the murder of our holy emissaries under banner of peace, I stand in judgment against you, Edulf." She whipped her sword across the ashes, scoring the earth. "This day is your penance."

He huffed, drawing back his weapon, and roared defiance.

"Crimes!? You came to us! You came under banner of peace! We killed your missionaries because we caught them licking the blood of our children from their knives! Our only crime was letting some escape!"

She shrugged, dismissively. Her armor rattled with the motion, and dazzled with a hundred points of faint sunlight.

"Our God demands tribute. It is the Law," she recited. "Your children were... a tribute of opportunity. But you will be taken alive to be made an example of, for sake of others who would blaspheme. The Law demands it."

She smirked, and behind the helmet, beneath the aura of smug righteousness, he saw her. He recognized her voice.

"You... you were among them." His breathing grew heavy, his eyes bloodshot, as rage boiled within.

"Edulf, you disgusting villain: I led them." Her voice grew cold, her gaze icy, and the Heatless Fire of God blazed from the Empereal Crest on her breast.

"For the blood! For the dead!" he screamed, feeling the murder frenzy twisting in his guts. He charged, berzerker.

She smiled as he howled, knowing exactly whose blood he meant. Sometimes, being a hero of the Empire was fun.

Yes. It's the bootstrap paradox, aka a causal loop.

She only exists because she went back in time, and that's why in the first part Dox and her mother have the 'in joke' of saying they love themselves, instead of each other--because they are each other, as much as they are both themselves.

Which leads to the question: if Dox is her own mother, and her mother was her own mother, and mother's mother, grandmother, so on and so forth... then where did the 'original' Dox come from? From what ancestor does her genetic material trace?

Another paradox to ponder: Since she slept with the man who would become her own father, but when they slept together he wasn't her father yet, is it actually incest?

"T-minus forty seconds," the mission controller counted. Dox released her mother from their tight embrace, the two of them holding themselves as much as each other. Her mother assisted her in sealing the canister, then she strapped herself in.

"We're doing the right thing," her mother said, voice breaking against the tears. "I just wish it didn't have to be me."

Dox put her hand against the window. Their hands met against the glass, mirrored one another, one final gesture. Mother, daughter: they were only whole together; broken, apart. The machine whined to life, the temporal rift tearing open, washing the room in an unnatural glow.

"Me too, mom. I love me," she answered, choking tears.

Her mother sobbed, laughed.

"You vain bitch," her mother said, voice cracking with a bittersweet smile. "I love me, too."

Dox gagged, frantically clawing at the straps of her helmet, at the controls of the canister keypad. Air. She needed fresh air. The air in the canister tasted stale and foul, bitter and carbolic. She tapped the controls, then banged furiously, until the canister finally opened. She gasped, coughed, gasped again, relishing the stale stink of the hot, muggy lab she had arrived in.

In a frenetic rush, Dox tore herself free of the straps and buckles, ripping the safety helmet from her chronosuit. Long, sweaty hair scythed through the darkness, throwing a glittering blade of sweaty droplets into the night as she threw her head back. She felt cooked, and trapped, and buzzing with a peculiar manic energy that she attributed to the time travel. She dropped the helmet, unzipped the chronosuit, steam rolling from her skin as she bared herself to the past.

Also there in the laboratory, still working long after everyone else had left for the evening, sat the soon-to-be-famous Herbert Wells. Grad student, former physics dropout, current engineering TA. He blinked--slowly, stupidly--at the three meter capsule which had just materialized. In his hands was a cup; on the floor immediately below this cup, was most of the tea he had just finished making, forgotten.

Staring at Dox as she stepped out of the time travel canister and peeled off her chronosuit, as the attractive woman from elsewhen stripped to the skin before him, the young man could perhaps be forgiven for forgetting his tea.

"Dox," he grinned, lopsided and roguish. "You keep telling me to fuck off, but you know I'm going to keep asking. There's got to be a story behind a name like that."

She pinched him, then nibbled his neck to distract him.

"Fuck off, Herbert."

He squirmed, then submitted. They sighed together, breathing each other.

The pair lay in bed, wrapped around one another, languid and lewd. The scent of sex hung heavy in the room. On the floor were their clothes, discarded hurriedly, as they often were. On each wall, there were corkboards and whiteboards, decorated with the arcane mathematics of time travel, as they often were.

Herbert Wells was the man who was going to invent time travel. The answer had fallen into his lap, fait accompli; now he just had to reverse engineer the question. He had to figure out how, someday, he would send himself the love of his life.

Dox had clearly proven it was possible, by arriving. All Herbert had to do was figure out how to get from the now to the then, or perhaps from the then to the now. To reach the moment he could send her back to him. For months, they had worked on little else. His previous life as an anonymous engineering student was over.

Of course, the canister had initially been confiscated by very nervous men with very important titles and other men with very heavy weapons. But it turned out that the canister, and its control system, was programmed entirely in Herbert's own proprietary coding language that he had, until recently, been in the process of quietly inventing as part of his thesis. That, and the confusing but insistent testimony of Dox, was enough to sway at least a few important opinions on the nature of the impossible. Realizing the potential implications, the university--and eventually the government--had decided to shower him with grant money, assistants, lab space.

They wanted for nothing. They worked at their leisure. Herbert and Dox were perhaps the two most important people on the planet. They were permitted everything but to leave. Being scientists, they only blinked owlishly at the bars of their gilded cage, shrugged, then went right back to working like bees and screwing like rats.

After all, Szilard and Oppenheimer, Seaborg and Fuchs had spent the whole of the Manhattan Project in a similar situatuon. And from their own de facto prison, those great minds had changed the world forever. Besides, it was nice to have someone sent around to do the laundry for them.

"Dox?" he said, mildly surprised at his own boldness.

"Mmm?" she purred.

"I love you," he admitted.

I can't do this, he realized. It's beyond me.

They lay in bed, and he listened to Dox softly snore in the dark. For weeks they had stalled, making no progress. He had gone back, checked his work, checked again.

Mass traveling backwards in time acted as antimatter. Time travel wasn't enough. He also had to solve for containment, for conversion, prevent annihilation long enough for matter to arrive and begin moving concurrent with local time. It was a problem orders of magnitude more complex than simply describing the function of chronal displacement. They spent months tearing apart the canister Dox had arrived in, scouring it for secrets, but results eluded them. The answers didn't match the questions.

The answers were right there. They already knew the result. Therefore, they--he--had to be asking the wrong questions. The right questions haunted his dreams, tantalizing, dancing just out of reach.

He thought he heard Dox whisper something, there in the dark, in the quiet of their bed.

"Hm?" he tried, afraid of waking her.

To his surprise, she rolled over. With a tenderness he didn't understand, a need he couldn't comprehend, a sorrow he couldn't soothe, she climbed on top of him. They fit together, felt right together, and always had. But this time, her closeness felt less like love, and more like goodbye.

"Dox? What's--what are you doing?" he asked, baffled.

"I'm giving you an answer, while I steal your work and leave you," she explained.

Her movements were rushed, hands shaking, even as her face was a careful mask. She deliberately forced herself to continue stacking papers, all their work together, into a briefcase. Tears stained only a few of the pages.

"A-an answer?"

"You asked my name, remember? Back before you got me pregnant."

"You're... pregnant!?" he managed, voice strained to breaking.

"Her name is--will be--Paradox. Paradox Wells," she explained, touching her stomach. "In the future, I'll nickname her Dox. She will be the very first time traveler."

Stunned, he couldn't think. Couldn't process. All he could manage was a weak protest.

"You can't... I mean, they won't let you leave," he said.

Dox paused, stole one last heartsick look at him, and then snapped her briefcase closed.

"They already did. My mother told me how she escaped," she sighed. "Goodbye, Herbert."

He stared, horrified. His coffee cup slipped from limp fingers, thumping against the carpet, spilling at his feet. Dr. Herbert Wells sputtered, impotent and indignant, at the love of his life, unable or unwilling to stop her as she softly brushed her hand across his cheek. She leaned forward, kissed him tenderly, and slipped through the bars of their gilded cage.

Broken love. Shattered life. The ruins of a man's heart lay scattered around the lab. A tattered man worked obsessively in the wreckage of a disassembled containment canister.

It would take years. Decades, maybe. A thousand years, even. However long it took, he would finish. He would master time. He would find her. He would have his answers. He would win her back.

He would unravel time itself, he would find the woman he loved. He would find his daughter. He would stop her. He would violate causality, unravel paradox. He would move heaven and earth, shake the very foundations of reality.

His hands shook, his fingers ached, his eyes burned. She had broken more than just his heart. But she had been, then. And she would be again, soon. He just had to figure out how to reach her.