The sword hilt slipped from his hand as he staggered back. Leather-palmed gauntlets slick with blood, his own and that of dozens of men, could yet have gripped, had his hands the strength for it.

In the steaming corpse at his feet, the blade angled outward, once shining and ceremonial, now chipped and ruined by the armor and bone it had overcome. It had belonged to his father, to his grandfather, and to a king before that; when this was over, he thought, it would hang on his wall and never again leave his sight.

This was the last of...

You slide a cool hand across my chest, toying with the thick hair before following it downward.

"Treasure trail..." you whisper, your breath warm and moist against my ear, "... that's what we called it."

You move your hand downward, teasing, toying with me, making me wait for it. Your manner tells me that I have to say something, say the magic word before you complete your motion. You wait for me to speak, and I grow frantic with the nearness to your goal.

I guess, desperate in my hope that I'm saying the right thing. "What... what do you...

Well, I said I wanted it to be a quiet vacation. You can't get much quieter than this. Even if this atmosphere were thick enough to conduct sound waves, I'm the only sentient being on Mars.

Yep, nice and quiet. Finally.

What have I got, eight more? Ten, maybe?

No, eleven. Eleven protein-carbo bars and four liters of water. The fusion pack is good for another twenty-eight years, so if the waste recycle unit continues at ninety-eight percent efficiency...

That means I can keep re-eating my own feces and re-drinking my own urine for another twelve years.

I guess I...

I'd paid for the whole night, thinking that I might as well go for the whole enchilada.

Half an hour would have been $80-plus, the "plus" being a sliding scale based on what I wanted to do in the half-hour. An hour would have been $200-plus. She said the full hour cost more than two half-hours because the clients usually wanted to be more exotic if they have a whole hour to work with.

I paid $2000-plus for her to stay with me the whole night. All the hours she'd do nothing but sleep with me, she could have been...

In the harsh twilight, he knelt and dug.

In the bottom of the phoenix-grave, he spread the spores that would feed on and support the beginnings 0f all life.

In the sharp, glassy soil, he placed the seeds of a new planet.

In the unmeasured, empty space of an hour, he changed the course of the universe.

In the flat gray expanse of weathered silicates, three thousand potatoes rested.

In the dead methane-carbon dioxide atmosphere, the harsh actinic sun slanted down, undimmed by ozone.

In the cool, moist air of his time machine, he left the dawn of the world,...

"What is it you have to do again?"

Richard pointed at the screen. "You have to get the butterflies to land on that tree."

"Which one, the one on the left?"

"No," he said, "the other one, the little one."

His son crossed his arms. "Dad, this game is so lame! I don't see how you could have played this thing. The graphics suck!"

"Hey, this is 16-bit resolution! You should have seen some of the old 8-bit side-scrolling games. The graphics on them were even worse, but they were all we had. And do you hear those sound effects?"...

Snip. Snip.

Pause.

Snip snip snip.

He squinted into the test tube. The stems of heather floated in the solution of sodium dodecyl sulfate, suspended, waiting.

Laughing at him.

Gene closed his eyes. No, he thought, not now. Not after all this. Not when I'm so close.

Flashback to the grimy street where he was born, eleventh child to a drunk and a slattern. When he dared say that he would grow up to be a scientist one day, oh how the neighborhood toughs had loved it. Another reason to pound him, day after day. "Gene, Gene the gene-machine, work...

Silent minutes ticked by. Neither of them spoke.

The wind gusted and Eloise pulled her coat closed. Daphne closed her eyes and sighed.

"Do you have any cigarettes?" said Eloise.

Daphne shook her head.

The dress, the hats, the purse - such a pitiful display. Not even any shoes. Before the war, Mme. Rocharde would have been laughed out of Paris for such a thin broth as this.

Now, though, when even this little rag of a dress was eight weeks wages....

Their shift at the factory started soon, but the sisters spent a few more minutes looking in the...

"Will you just buy a newspaper?"

"I don't need a newspaper. I'm going to say 1985."

"No way, it can't be any later than 1973. Look at the can."

"I see the can, but -"

"Then you see the logo style. That's totally an early seventies steel can. Just buy a paper so we can figure out when we are."

"Look, the phone has a Southwestern Bell logo. That means it's AFTER the breakup of AT&T. Therefore, we are sometime in the mid-eighties."

"But soft drink companies had already switched to aluminum cans. How do you explain that?"

"I don't...

"But do you love me?"

Love? What is love? Love is a social construct. Love is an excuse to screw someone you think is hot. Love is a joke, a trap, an illusion. Love is what you wish for when you don't know how the world really works.

I see your skin and I think of you naked, wish for you to fall into my arms so I can possess you. Part of me wants you now, part of me wants you always.

There's only a limited extent to which these parts overlap.

Lust after you, to be sure. Like...