The problem with the man, he had decided, was that the man's teeth were far too white. Whiter than his lab coat. Not even the white that you would find in a teeth whitening commercial, nor even in a bleach commercial. No, when the man smiled, his teeth looked like pristine blank paper. Like spaces unused.

"Mr. Clerke?" the paper-teeth man said.

Clerke put down the magazine he had been pretending to read. "Yes?"

The paper-teeth man smiled and exposed those holes in the world. "Excellent," he said, briskly making a check mark with the stylus on the tablet he held. "Thank you so much for waiting. I'm Dr. Dowland, and I am so glad to meet you. Right this way, if you please."

Dr. Dowland showed him past the small nurses' station and into a series of faceless corridors. As he spoke, Clerke couldn't help but notice that no matter how many turns they took further into the facility, the corridors looked the same. The same black and white alternating titles, like a sliver of a chessboard. The same framed painting on the wall: bored and abstract boats in a harbor. How will I ever find my way out again? he thought.

"I'm sure they explained how Project Thamyris works, yes?"

Clerke nodded, then added when he realized that Dowland, walking ahead of him, would not see, "As much as I needed to know, I guess."

He could hear the paper-teeth. Hear the nothing of them even though he could not see them. Dowland said, "Yes, the two most important things to remember are one: that the procedure is very short, and two: the procedure is practically painless. Here we are."

They were in a room not unlike any doctor's examination room, albeit one that had a chair. It was like a dentist's chair or an optometrist's chair but with nothing in the way of arms that would swivel in to provide service. There was just the device hanging from the ceiling above the chair. It would come down, then it would go back up again, just like the video.

"Please have a seat," Dowland instructed, paper-teeth all at attention. Once seated, he handed Clerke the tablet and the stylus and tapped a space on the screen. "There," Dowland pointed, "are the bids that we've received and accepted on your behalf. I don't mind telling you that you're one of the best we've had in the project in some time. You should be proud."

Clerke looked at the figures on the screen. I should be proud, Clerke thought. And then thought it again for good measure.

"Once the procedure is complete, the payments will be electronically delivered to your accounts per our agreement," Dowland said, like an automaton. Like a speech rehearsed specifically not to sound rehearsed, echoing through an uncanny valley. "And of course, there are royalty payments should anything directly related to your extractions be put to use. They will be delivered automatically as well, should the time arise." Pause. A rehearsed to be unrehearsed pause. "If you have no questions, please sign on the space."

Clerke did so. I should be proud, he thought.

Dowland smiled again, then began to lower the machine. "Relax, Mr. Clerke. It will all be over in just a moment."

When Clerke walked in the front door of his apartment, he put his hat on the top of the rack, then removed his coat and hung it up as well. He put his briefcase down by the front door and loosened his tie.

Directly adjacent to the foyer, his wife was sitting at the kitchen table, reading glasses perched on her nose. She did not look up as he approached. She was reading through one of her books. "How did it go at the dentist?" she asked.

Clerke stopped, one hand on the icebox handle. "Dentist?"

"You said you were going to the dentist tonight. Everything all right with your teeth, then?"

Clerke resumed, poured himself a glass of milk. "Teeth?" Something about teeth. "Yes. My teeth are fine." He stood in the kitchen and drank half the glass. He placed on the table, then placed his hand over his wife's belly. "How is he?" Clerke asked.

"Restless," she said, not looking up. "Always restless."

Clerke nodded, "Is Liana in bed?"

His wife nodded. He kissed the back of her head, then walked down the short hall into Liana's bedroom. Her bed was up on posts, to give her more room to play. A ladder led up to the bed and to a place to sit beside the bed. She blinked at him slowly. The city's lights blinked at him through the blinds. Sleepy. "Hi Daddy."

"Hi honey," he said, smiling. "All ready for bed?"

"Uh-huh," she said, "I was waiting for my story."

His smile faltered a little. "Your story?"

"You know, daddy," she said, "our story. Last night the hero had reached the tower. What happens next? Did he find the princess?"

Clerke's brow furrowed a bit. "He..." He looked about a bit. "We'll talk about the hero's story some more...another night. Daddy's very tired. Why don't we...read through a regular fairy tale tonight?"

She gave a low awww, but was too tired to put up much fight.

He plucked a book from the shelf under the bed and climbed the ladder, then sat in his place. He opened the book and thought distractedly, as he flipped through to find the right story, that at some point in the past this had felt like being in a cockpit. What a funny thing to have thought, he thought.

He smiled at his daughter and put a hand on her forehead. "I should be proud," he said. Then he cleared his throat, and read her a fairy tale. A regular one.

I watched them pull the shuttle down. Despite what anyone else could tell you, and despite how hard we all fought following that, we all knew it was over. That was the moment in which all was lost.

No one, not the worst predictor of doom, could have imagined how things would go wrong. And even if anyone had, which to my knowledge no one could claim, no one could have said it would happen so fast.

Even now, the cataclysm was so swift, we've barely established all the details. The first wave of engineered insects was released in Iowa, supposedly under controlled conditions and after all testing had showed the improved locusts to be amenable, docile, and less hungry for crops. For all the good the testing and controls did. In the defense of the researchers involved, I suppose, they couldn't have expected this. They never expected for everything to have the absolute opposite effect, nor did they expect the problem to jump species. Or else the locusts themselves changed and evolved so quickly that they were unrecognizable as locusts. The original researchers were still debating this point when we lost all contact with them.

Regardless, the net effect was to have an ever-increasing horde of varied types of insects that overwhelmed everything they encountered. By overwhelmed, of course, I mean devoured. At first it was just vegetation--all vegetation. All the crops went first. Then the leaves on the trees, then the bark, then eventually the trees themselves.

About the time the vegetation worldwide began to go, the insects began to change and become more vicious. Stinging and biting deaths became more prevalent, seeming to come quicker each time. With each generation, which again, increased in speed as time progressed, they became more lethal to animal life.

The people who had no secure shelter went first, along with the majority of the animals. The first reports came back that the insects were developing a taste for metal and glass. Around this time it was decided to try and bring the shuttle out for a last ditch attempt to get someone off world. The vehicle was covered before it lifted off and then continued to be swarmed, even as it lifted off. We thought we had managed to get ahead of the curve when the insects that covered the shuttle did not begin to eat it. Those changes must not have made it to our portion of the world yet. But the time it took to get the shuttle into its place to launch, crawling along at one mile per hour--that was agony. We watched the teams in their environmental suits spraying down the hordes of insects with all manner of poisons, desperate to keep the craft as clear as possible for as long as possible.

It even took off successfully. Even with that extreme rate of ascent, those that were not already on the craft or shaken loose were able to catch it, grab hold, and stay on. So many held fast that they actually weighed it down enough to change its trajectory. Instead of shooting straight up and out, the shuttle curved, and eventually lost power in one of its thrusters, sending it careening into the Atlantic.

It was shortly thereafter that the metal and glass devouring variety, or strain, or whatever you would want to call it--arrived. They had picked up concrete along the way somewhere, apparently. They would envelope whole buildings and, within hours, you would see the entire mass start to shift, then give way. Presumably any people inside had been long been consumed.

It was then we fled our last above ground building into the locked down underground shelters. We had to walk outside, in the equivalent of a deep diving suit, to the entrance of the airlock. It was thirty feet from the hangar doors to the shelter doors, and I barely made it. I could feel them piling on. I could feel them trying with all their considerable might to kill me. One set of mandibles worked at the joint of my suit at the right elbow to the point where I was certain it would break through. But it didn't. I was in the airlock and next I knew they were spraying me down with insecticide, which was even then losing its potency. The creature which had tried so hard to gnaw off my arm I had to stamp to death myself. Even coated with poison it writhed on its back, trying to right itself and continue its assault.

The last team to enter the shelter never made it. We watched in their helmet cameras as something large and monstrous loomed up out of the swarm and then, seemingly, slapped them down. This did not kill the team members--these new creatures seemed to serve no purpose other than to pin the humans down until the others could make it through their protective suits. We in the shelter listened helplessly as our colleagues were ripped apart on the surface.

It was impressive how they moved from eating vegetation to flesh to inanimate objects. Just as one food supply was extinguished, they would adapt and eat something else. The theory is that, with the planet's surface barren as it is now, they have developed photosynthesis. They don't seem to eat each other--at least not while alive. An entire type has sprung up to consume the dead, with another living off of the others' waste products. This new ecosystem changes so rapidly it's hard to have any serious study. But it's enough to say that they not only destroyed the ecosystem of the planet Earth as we know it, they then replaced it. They became it.

Somewhere in here we passed desperation and began to slip into panic. It was admirable how long we managed to hold ourselves together as we watched the surface of the earth lost. There seemed to be some thought that we would have time to come up with a solution, hidden beneath the surface as we were--but we could not even be spared that luxury.

A new form of burrowing insect had burst through into one of our supply closets and laid eggs in it. We found it in time, luckily, and burned it and its progeny, then sealed the breach. It would only be a matter of time before others would follow. Many others. Anything would be better than waiting here to die. Something had to be done.

We had decided to tunnel to the ocean. There didn't seem to be anywhere else to go. We were here at the Cape, we were close enough to the water, and we simply had to do something. The team was busy trying to adapt the burrower that had been used to hastily expand our shelter--it had been kept on hand in case we needed to create more room, I believe.

However, one of the team down here was able to use one of the utility tunnels to get out to the Indian River. Still in his suit, we were able to hear both his report and the ocean around him. Over the speaker came what seemed to be the unmistakable sound of whalesong. The room cheered. We hugged each other and fought back tears. We were going to make it.

Then his voice came through, repeating himself because he hadn't been heard. "Those aren't whales," he said simply. "Those aren't whales."

I was there when the girl and her house fell out of the sky. The Wicked Witch of the East was crushed instantly. We all saw it--we all wanted to rejoice, but were afraid. After all, perhaps this was some trick. Perhaps this was some new sorceress that had come to usurp the Witch and take her place. We did not know what to expect.

Still, while most of us held back for fear, three of us moved forward to inspect the house, or to greet whatever they found inside. With them was Locasta, the Good Witch of the North.

The only passenger of the house was already outside, however. I saw her myself, even from my vantage point. She seemed to be a girl, definitely too tall to be one of us. She was dressed in plain clothes that looked as though they had possessed color once, but now had faded to a grey that was not unlike her own skin.

She turned to face the welcoming party, and it was then we saw her face. Her eyes had gone light blue as though they were sightless; her head once crowned with dark hair now had splotches missing like a diseased animal. Her lips had drawn back away from her teeth, and those teeth were sunk deep into one of the legs of the Witch, which she had apparently ripped free from under the house.

In that moment, when her eyes found the welcoming party, the silver shoe covering that foot fell free and hit the road. It was such a small, simple sound--and yet the world around us had grown so quiet, it was more like the crack of doom.

The girl--the thing--whatever it was--tossed aside the Witch's lower leg and grabbed poor Locasta. Before the Good Witch could do anything to protect herself, the girl had torn out her throat.

What were we to do? We just watched this thing kill one Witch with a house and kill another with her teeth. We were naive then--we thought we were witnessing an invasion by a newer, even more powerful Witch than we had ever seen before.

In short, chaos broke out. Most of us ran, scattering like crows. Some of the men tried to help Locasta, for she was much loved among us. They managed to wrestle the girl away from Locasta's body. For all the good it did. Many of them sustained bites from the girl. Only later would we learn what that meant. Some stepped forward to see to Locasta, but there was nothing we could do. We held no magic. No one in Oz was to ever die--such was the enchantment we all knew and indeed, no one could remember the last death we had seen. But this girl had brought something stronger than magic--how could we fight it?

When Locasta came back to life and attacked one of her saviors, somehow I knew. Something in me knew that all was lost. Two Witches had fallen within minutes, therefore our only hope was the Wizard. I and two others fled.

However, one of my friends was among those bitten by the girl, a wound on his neck. He seemed fine at first, then he grew steadily weaker until we were carrying him. We had not even reached the Munchkin River when he grew silent and his head lolled against mine.

Something in me was screaming. Screaming danger. And I let go of my friend just as he came back--just as Locasta had done. And he bit the Munchkin still holding him up on the other side. I ran--and apparently I ran fast enough for the thing that had been my friend did not follow.

I eventually made it here to the Emerald City, trying to warn the Wizard and the others here, but by the time I could finally make them listen to me, the first of them were outside the gates. And each day, there's more. Things that once were talking animals, were Munchkins--we have even seen some of them bearing ragged clothes of purple, yellow, and red. This would explain why the Wizard's messages to the other Countries around Oz have gone unanswered.

I hold out hope that the Wizard will come up with a plan to save us--I have lost track of how long we've been barricaded here in the City. He must have something in mind--I understand he's been calling for a tremendous amount of green silk. More and more each day. He's building something, no doubt some wonder that will save us all. I'm sure of it.

There was a man sitting in his room the next time Greg woke up.

"Hello," the man said.

Greg blinked twice, slowly. He was not completely himself. He wouldn't be for some time. "Hello," he said. "And who are you supposed to be?"

The man wore nothing that might make anyone mistake him for a doctor or nurse of any sort. In fact, if there was anything he could be mistaken for, it was perhaps a father from a sitcom. He wore roundish glasses over an equally round face with its well-trimmed beard. There was a button down shirt, neatly pressed, underneath a sweater vest. Perhaps it was because he seemed so perfectly normal that Greg did not feel alarmed that an intruder was in his hospital room. Greg's head lolled to one side to peer at the clock. In his hospital room--at half-past three in the morning.

The man crossed one leg over his knee. "I'm sorry we had to meet like this. I heard about your condition just this afternoon. I had to travel a bit to get here. And, well, you've been sleeping since I arrived. So...that's good."

Greg nodded. That seemed sensible. Even in his hazy, mildly drugged state. Especially in that state.

"Ah, but you asked who I am," the man said. "I'm Roger Turner. And as you might have figured out, I'm not a doctor."

"What condition?" Greg asked. That word seemed to come to him as something of concern. Seldom was "condition" the term if all was well. He wondered what else could possibly happen to him this week.

"Condition, situation," Roger rattled off. "I'm talking about what happened to you recently. You died."

Greg nodded. That much he knew. "On the operating table. Gone for three minutes. So they tell me."

Roger nodded. "Yes. And that's not exactly what I came to talk to you about." He took off his glasses and spent a good solid minute cleaning them on his vest before returning them to his face. "It's what came after."

Greg's mind, foggy as it was, wasn't processing this as well as he might have hoped. "They used the paddles. Those..." there was a name for those paddles, but it wasn't coming to him. "...you know, those paddles. Like they do on television."

But Roger was shaking his head. "Not after you came back. What happened while you were gone. While you were dead."

Greg said nothing. He wished he could find someplace else in the room to focus on besides Roger Turner, sitcom dad. Roger Turner was being decidedly unfunny at the present moment.

"It's all right," Roger said. "Tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened," Greg said, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Now," Roger said, "do you mean that in the way I think we both know you should?"

Greg finally managed to drop his gaze. To his white sheet covered stomach. And his legs. "Nothing. There was nothing."

Roger leaned forward. "Nothing at all?"

"No, it--" Greg felt his throat was very dry. He reached for the pitcher of water to his right and Roger was there to help him.

"It's okay," Roger said, pouring some water into a plastic cup and then helping Greg to drink it. "It's okay. Look, you're tired. I can come back--"

Greg reached out and gripped Roger's sleeve before he knew he was making the movement. "There was less than nothing," he said hoarsely. "There wasn't even nothing. If there had been nothing, I would...I would have been able to see it or something. But--"

"You weren't there," Roger finished for him.

"No," Greg said, settling back. "I wasn't there. In fact, there was less and less of me not there as the seconds went past. Only..."

"There were no seconds. Because you weren't there," Roger said. He patted Greg on the shoulder. "It's all right."

Roger picked up his chair and brought it to sit beside the bed. Once settled, he crossed his leg at the knee again. "I was an electrician before. I made a stupid mistake and wound up where you are now. Having been brought back from dying. And there was the same thing waiting for me on the other side. The fact...that there is no other side.

"Everything that they talk about...light, tunnel, rising sensation...none of it was there."

"So there's something...different about you and I, then," Greg offered.

Roger shook his head, "No, I'm afraid there isn't. I explored every single avenue I could come up with. And that led me to others. Like us. Even people who said that yes, they had seen the tunnel. And the light. When you get them alone, and they know you've been where they have--or haven't, as they case may be. They'll admit. Nothing there."

Roger stood up and cleaned his glasses again. "I even thought perhaps I was simply a bad Christian. After all, what is the most basic definition of Hell? It's the total absence of God. Being deprived of God. And since we are supposed to be made in His image, that would mean my entire Self was gone as well." He chuckled. "Then I talked to two priests and an archbishop."

The look on Greg's face could easily have been taken for dismay. Roger shook his head, "I'm sorry. I know it's not funny. But it doesn't pay to do much else other than laugh, honestly."

Roger sat back down again. "Some of the doctors here know. And when they have someone who goes and comes back, they call me. There are others like me, around the country. We're here to...well, let you know...that you shouldn't let it eat you up. Like we did." He shrugged a little. "You probably will anyway. It's a hard thing to come to grips with, that there's nothing else. In fact--honestly, I've talked with more than a few atheists who have had to struggle with it as well. Even though they knew with their rational minds there was nothing, somewhere, on some level, they knew just as strongly that they had to be wrong."

Greg sat, taking it all in. He wasn't sure how to feel: saddened? Relieved that he hadn't had some kind of dying nightmare on the table?

Roger reached into his pocket and placed a business card on the side table next to the pitcher of water. "I need to get going. It's a two hour drive back and there's work tomorrow. Here's my card. And I'm writing down a newsgroup on the back. You probably know how to access those things over the Internet--I had to get my son to set it up for me."

Greg looked up at this. "Does he know?"

Roger stopped writing and looked over at him over the top of his glasses. "No, of course not. I wouldn't burden him with this. Bring him up his whole life in the church and turn around and tell him I was mistaken? What sort of person would that make him into? What sort of person would that make me?"

Greg nodded. In his half-drugged, weary state, that made a semblance of sense.

"The newsgroup is for us. People like us. Just so we can stay in touch with others who have been through what we have." Roger put his pen away. "Feel free to use it. Feel free to call me. We have to stick together."

Roger made to leave. Greg had one other thing on his mind, though. "What if they ask?"

"Ask what happened?"

Greg nodded.

"Tell them nothing happened. Tell them you saw the tunnel. Tell them whatever you like. You can even tell them the truth but..." Roger put his hand on the door. "They won't believe you." Roger looked up and smiled. "That's why my wife left me. She couldn't believe. So trust me. I know." Roger nodded to the card. "Don't lose that."

Greg nodded again. "Thank you," he said.

Roger smiled once more and then left the room.

Greg reached over and found the button for his morphine. He didn't need it. But it seemed simpler just to sleep for the time being. He hit the button.

Just as he was about tlean back and relax and let go, he reached over and grabbed the card. He tucked it between both hands.

Maybe when he awoke it would be gone. And maybe this and the nothing beyond him would both be a dream.

Greg closed his eyes.

The little girl's name was Kay. She was eight years old and some son of a bitch had killed her dog. And that wasn't the worst of it.

The son of a bitch in question had injected Peter--what must have been an adorable beagle in his life--with a hypertrophism serum that we've been tracking with our counterparts in the Asian Arcane Task Force. Our friends in Tokyo tell me that the name of the serum translates literally into English as "God Food."

Once injected, the poor beast grows to roughly five times its normal size. This is not what kills the animal. The dog's body is built to be roughly the size that it is. The size that God made it, a religous person would say. However, increased to a much larger size, the dog's bones cannot withstand its new size and weight and thus, the dog fractures itself with devastating results the moment it tries to do anything. If it manages to stay still during the transformation--which is highly unlikely--it will break itself where it sits.

When Kay found Peter on the front lawn after coming home from school, Peter had luckily only suffered for an hour or so before his body finally gave in to the massive trauma his growth had brought on. Kay is utterly devastated and has no idea why this has happened to her dog. If only someone had come home ahead of her, they could have kept her away. Instead, she found Peter forty-five minutes into his ordeal, and the dog's reaction to her, trying desperately to wag its tail and moaning to her plaintively for help--convinced her that the strange enormous creature on her lawn was indeed Peter, changed in a way she couldn't understand.

Still, none of that is the worst part. The worst part is that this is the eighth such act of animal cruelty in the last month, and the bastard is working his way down the west coast. So far there's no leads, nothing to indicate how he's picking his targets. They're not even all dogs. A zoo elephant was injected in San Diego two weeks back, and they still haven't figured out how this bastard pulled that one off without being seen.

I'm convinced--and the psych guys in the unit agree--that eventually he's going to try this on a human here. In Osaka, I understand that whoever had the God Food there hid a needle in the seat of a public bus. There wasn't much that got into the man's system, but it was enough to send him growing into the ceiling and then breaking against it, all between stops. His growth crushed five people and a young girl was impaled on a piece of bone jutting from a compound fracture.

We have no leads. And I've warned my superiors that unless we get a break on this, it's only a matter of time. My personal nightmare involves the sick bastard doing the bus needle trick on a commercial plane flight. I'm just grateful it won't work if snuck into the food or water supply. I only hope he doesn't get any more creative than he already has been. Of course, that's never how it works out.

It is utter madness to believe that anyone will ever read this. Or if they do, that what they read is what I wrote down. In this time when books are rewritten without ever leaving their shelves, nothing can be trusted. Perhaps even my own memories have been altered without my knowledge...how would I know? Therefore, my hypothetical, unlikely reader, bear the uncertainty of all this in mind. We live in a world ruled and defined by utter madness now. We do what we can. I do not expect to survive what waits me tomorrow, but writing this down will hopefully help me accept my fate.

What I do know is this:

There was a religious icon known as the Turin Shroud. In 1997 there was a fire at its previous resting place, the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. A fireman was able to save the relic by removing it from its case. What no one knew until much later was that a small section of the priceless artifact had been removed during the time immediately after the fire.

I say the artifact was priceless because it had been purported for centuries to bear the image of Jesus Christ, and was supposed to be the shroud he had been wrapped in for burial before his resurrection.

In 1988, the Vatican allowed for analysis of the shroud. The Carbon 14 dating showed that it had been created around the first century A.D. And microscopic analysis of what was supposed to be remnants of Christ's blood showed that they were indeed blood. None of this proved that the person whose image had somehow been transferred to the cloth was Jesus', but they certainly didn't disprove it. The believers, though, were convinced.

Convinced enough to commit arson nine years later as a distraction to steal sections of the fabric containing blood samples. And then to work at cloning their savior.

This process took over a decade. And even then, it took years for the child they had created to come to maturity enough to discuss his nature. Was he divine? Was he human? Was he both?

In the hands of these dangerous extremists, the young boy's mind was filled with the worst portions of their twisted dogma: intolerance and hatred. The stories told about how this all began to go wrong are varied, but the version I have heard most often is simple: could there be any surprise that after a lesson at the hands of one of his teachers, when the young clone was tired of being disciplined, he did what the real Christ had refused to do, when tempted by Satan. He called on an angel to defend him. The angel reduced the teacher to human slag and then expressed puzzlement that Jesus was there in the room on Earth when in reality he was in Heaven at his Father's hand.

After thus learning his true nature—that he was a clone and not the actual Jesus—this young man decided that since he could not be the Christ, he would simply have to follow doctrine--which he had been taught was literal--and be his opposite.

The extremists, who saw their bringing about the onset of the End Times as serving God's will, decided to help their new messiah, who, being both man and God in one, had access to God's limitless power. And then they made more duplicates of him.

Many more.

And once they had sped their own development to a certain age, they were able to, somehow, tap into their heritage.

Because, you see, God's love is supposed to be infinite.

And so is his power.

So no matter how many Anti-Christs they built in their labs, at the direction of their savior, they could tap into as much power as they wanted. Infinity cannot be divided.

The first things these troops, these "Shock Messiahs," did, was to storm Hell. From this position, they could appear pretty much anywhere on the planet at will, for all lands lie above the underworld.

Why they felt the need to do this instead of just crushing us all, I have no idea. Their leader, this prime clone, thinks he's fulfilling his role in the Grand Plan, at least that's what I hear. The details of his reasons...that's really a question for our tactical theologians. I'm merely a pawn in all this.

The souls the clone controls are all unwilling. I have heard stories about what he does to them for his amusement and it chills me to the core. The dead have no peace, even in death.

Tomorrow we make a push to try and retake Hell. An act of absolute folly, to be certain, but there's nothing left but folly to do. Any angels that have come to our side have been struck down, and the Throne has been silent throughout this whole ordeal. There's nothing but us left now, and I'll be charging in under Belial's banner. With my family lost in the pits of Hell in the clutches of the mad sliver of a god, there's nothing left to do but go and burn with them. I don't know if that's God's will or not, but it's my will. And in a world of utter madness that will have to suffice.

The giant cog floated in the sky, just as it had all of Michl's life. A dark shape, it was plainly visible on cloudless days. It hung in place, motionless as far as he could tell--it was as though tremendous invisible steel cables held it there.

He supposed it could move slightly. He wondered about this, in fact. Seeing as how it was several thousand feet above the ground, it was impossible to say for certain if wind and the elements ever disturbed it.

He had tried to use what mathematics he knew to try and judge the object's size. A village elder had taught him some basic equations and a given him a crude tool the man had called an aer that would help him judge distance. He was sure his numbers were the roughest of guesstimations, but he put the object at somewhere between three and four furlongs across.

It had fascinated Michl all his short life. His mother told him that even as an infant, he seemed to watch the cog hang there, though the elders told her that was impossible--children didn't see across distances like that when they were that young. And now, after work in the fields was done, he would stand and stare, the wind blowing back through his coppery blond hair.

What was it?

He was the only one, though. Even his best friend, Rog, lost interest when girls ceased to frighten them. "I see you," Rog would tell him, "eyeing that giant hole there in the center of it. I hates to tell you, but you're not big enough. There's holes plenty enough here on the ground that would welcome you in and are just the right size. Prettier, too. And sweeter. But that's one you'll never get to, Mich. Give it up."

But he couldn't. He simply couldn't.

The man who speared the water tigers told him that it was the only piece left of a floating factory that his grandfather had worked in.

His wife, sitting on the shore skinning the speared tigers, had said he was full of shite. The piece had fallen there and no further two generations before the man's grandfather "had poked his head out his mother's scrumpt." It was from a machine the giants used to move about the stars, she said, and because had failed them and fallen away, the machine and their massive corpses were stuck there beyond the sky.

The village elder who had given him the aer said that thousands of years ago, man had tried to build a tower that would enable them to meet the Maker in the sky. Some versions of the legend said that the Maker had cast down the tower and stricken the men with the weak seed so that they could not procreate at the scale they once did, and thus not have the numbers needed to build another such massive structure. Others said that the cog was part of a device the Maker had simply thrown down onto them, destroying the tower where it stood and all the men involved.

Michl was only fifteen summers, but even he had the sense that in one of these legends there might be a grain of truth which could lead him to the knowledge he sought.

He took every chance he could to get to the area directly beneath the cog, to see if there was some way of ascending to it. There was nothing. No grand ruins, just the Blasts, where the vegetation and rocks worked together to make the ground unfarmable if not impassable.

He was wondering if it was a fool's errand, trying to find out anything but what had already been told him. Perhaps, he thought, he should make up his own legend--one good enough to believe--and then convince himself of it so he could perhaps take Rog's advice. He could then begin the slow, tedious process of plowing a girl to bring her to good seed. The village always needed more men born, but some men never succeeded in bringing a girl to bad seed, much less good. And they tried their whole lives.

Michl felt himself growing no younger.

One day, while tending the fields, he took his spade and shoved it into the ground, then walked over to the water bucket to slake his thirst. When he turned around to look at the spade, the wooden handle sticking straight up, something in his mind clicked. Almost like a cog's teeth finding the right purchase and beginning to turn.

If there had been a tower, he thought, beneath where the cog stood, it couldn't have been thin like the handle. It would have needed a base of some sort to let it stand upright. An immensely wide base, if the legends were true and they were trying to build straight up and out of the sky to reach the Maker.

He would have to widen his search.

He drank down another cupful of water and left the fields, heedless of his mother's calls, and ran nearly all the way to the area beneath the cog. He had tramped through the area directly beneath it to know when he had reached the outskirts of it, even without looking up. Shirt sticking to his back, breath coming in rasps, he began to search up and outwards from the perimeter of his usual area. He climbed up small copses, fought his way through undergrowth, and within hours had accumulated a small trove of cuts and bruises for his troubles.

When night came, he abandoned his search and caught sleep in the lower branches of a petrified tree.

The next day greeted him with rain, which was welcome enough at the beginning, but as it made the ground even more treacherous to traverse, he was soon cursing under his breath at each time the mud and vegetation conspired to rid him of his moccasins.

He was about ready to call it off and come back another time with more supplies, maybe a tarp, and better shoes, when he walked right into something hard and flat which came within a hair's breadth of smacking into his manhood. He cleared away the dead growth covering it until he could clearly and unmistakably make out what was hidden beneath.

It was a chair. It looked even more ancient than the tree that had served as his bed the night previous, but it was manmade all the same. And it was a chair. When he cleared it off enough to sit sideways, he realized that directly in front of this was a table, in much the same state of disrepair.

He sat there and looked up. Before him, though still out of reach, was the cog.

He wasn't sure why, but this had to mean something. This couldn't have been a place just for the ancients to sit and eat popwiches while admiring the view of the cog.

Michl cleared the area out so that he could swing his legs under the table and did so, the result being that his head was nearly torn from his neck by the force at which he found himself propelled upwards.

A platform had torn itself free from the muck and growth and supported the table, chair and Michl as they soared towards the cog at a blinding rate of speed. He gripped the sides of the table and gritted his teeth, his hair flying around him as he braced for what he was sure would be a very sudden and very fatal stop.

It was actually nothing of the sort. Though the platform came to an abrupt stop, it was as though they had never started moving in the first place. The entirety of the flying machine snapped into place quietly and calmly, the lack of sudden stop almost as devastating to Michl as a crash would have been.

He sat, still gripping the table and panting. He very quickly realized that the cog was hollow. Roof above him, floor below him...and a wide open space that appeared to stretch the extent of the cog's vast size.

The man's voice should have startled him, but didn't.

"Michl, excellent, you're finally here."

Michl looked up to see a very dark man standing before him. Which was odd to think of him as dark since he was the palest man the boy had ever seen. It was just that everything about his clothes and demeanor seemed dark.

"It's sort of like stepping off a moving escalator there at the end, isn't it?"

Michl frowned and got up from the table. "What's an es-clator?"

The man laughed and shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Forgive me. I always forget my audience. I'm so glad you've arrived. Now I can get started."

"Are you...the Maker?" Michl asked him his mouth suddenly seeming very dry.

"'The Maker?'" the man asked. "That's the word they're using below for 'God,' is it? How cute. No, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm not God in the least."

The man began to walk into the interior of the cog, and Michl could do nothing but follow. The platform fell silently away behind him, but he could not do anything about that now. He had to know more.

Michl shook his head. Whatever he had expected, in the wildest dreams where he reached the cog, it was not to encounter a man who made little, if any, sense. "Did you make this, though? The cog?"

"Cog? Ah yes, that makes sense. I always think of it as a gear. Tomayto, tomahto." He waved those words, whatever they were, away. "No. There's very little one can make, to be truthful. One finds a bit here, a piece there, and makes do the best they can. I think it was once a decorative piece on a space elevator that sat here long before your ancestors blew their balls to shit with atomic warfare."

Michl shook his head again. All of these words meant nothing. The cog was an ornament that had probably never turned? This made no sense. "But what are you here for? And why were you waiting for me? Who are you?"

The man came to a stop in an area with a hole you could walk over but still see through. Michl realized what it was and did not dare look down. "What am I here for? Ah, but we could spend hours philosophizing about that, couldn't we, my young friend? You serve a purpose, you fulfill a need, but it's a need that I have set upon you. I am unique in that I have no purpose. I fulfill no need. I was quite upset about this for a while, but decided to simply create my own purpose and need.

"This is here because when they all come looking for me, I wanted something in the last place anyone would think to look: a backwater world dying for lack of good old hard-working sperm. Who would put anything important there?

"I was waiting for you because I needed someone I knew I could count on.

"And as for who I am...why, that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

The man smiled and gave a bow. "Now, I must away. Wait here. You'll know what to do when the time comes."

"You're leaving?" Michl said, looking about. Perhaps the not-hole was another platform that moved. But the man wasn't standing anywhere near to where he could make use of it. "How are you leaving?"

The man smiled. "When you know what all of this is, you don't need doors." And with that, he appeared to step between everything that was there, and everything that was not there at all. He appeared to be stepping away, for lack of a better word.

"Wait!" Michl called. "What are you going to make with it?"

"The gear?" The man smiled. A strange, unnatural half-smile. "My dear boy, who ever said I was going to make anything with it?"

And with that, the man finished his step and was gone.

Michl looked around the seeming emptiness of the inside of the cog. He wrapped his arms around himself, feeling suddenly very good. He asked, "How do I get down?"

But, of course, he already knew the answer.

The man didn't look like what Charlie expected. Then again, of course, what exactly was a "thought assassin" supposed to look like? It's not an occupation that lends itself to being visually obvious.

The man's hair was long, jet black, tied back behind him in a ponytail. He wore a black coat with a purple quilted lining that was so dark to be almost black itself. The black leather gloves were off and sitting on the diner booth's table.

"You understand, I hope," the man said, "that once done, this cannot be undone. What we're discussing here...is a bell you cannot unring."

Charlie simply nodded.

"Very well. What do you want me to remove?" the man asked. "Tell me so I'll know what I'm looking for when I go inside." He sipped from his coffee. "I warn you: don't leave off details because they might be embarrassing or because you think I might be repulsed or shocked. If I were to remove the wrong memories because of information you neglected to provide me, well..." He shrugged and put his coffee down.

Charlie took that as his cue. "My wife," he began. "She was in love before she met me. The man's name was Jacob, and they were college sweethearts. They were...very close. Soulmates, she said. And they had...planned on getting married." He stopped. This was harder than he thought.

"Go on," the man urged.

"The plan was for them to finish graduate school and then get married. She finished. He never did. He...died crossing the street when a sixteen year old kid blew past a red light and struck him dead on. Silly, stupid accident.

"She moved on with her life. Eventually, she met me and we went out for a long time, and married. I don't doubt that she loves me, but...she's never gotten over him. I saw...well, I..."

"Leave out nothing," the man stated again.

"I saw her computer...she had left it on one night with a website up. It was a message board for people that were dealing with...well, feelings for people they had lost which were interfering with the lives they had now. She posted how she loved the man she married, but she still missed Jacob and how she still, after all this time, could only take one day at a time."

The man waited, and when Charlie didn't offer anything else, he said, "And what do you want me to do with Jacob?"

Charlie rubbed at his eyes for a moment, uncertain of whether or not he could go through with it. But he knew he had to. "Make him go away. I want her to forget him. Forget they were ever together. She'd be...I think she'd be much happier if she just didn't remember him."

The man nodded and finished his coffee. "Pass me the money under the table," he said in a low voice.

Charlie brought the envelope from his pocket and handed it forward, under the relative secrecy of the formica tabletop. He felt the man's hand take it from him. "It's not..."

"A lot of money?" the man asked. "No, I suppose it isn't. I don't do this for the money, actually. I'm an artist." And then he made to stand up. "It will be done within the next three days."

"Wait, don't you...need a picture of him or something?" Charlie asked.

The man didn't stop. Next he was standing by the booth. "Not in the least. A love like that will make him stand out in her head like a beacon. You'll receive the proof the job is done within the week."

And the man walked out without a look back. Charlie left money on the table and went home.

He spent the next three days in a kind of fidgety agony. He kept looking for some Great Change to occur in Beth, but nothing manifested itself. She still had the same smile and the same ongoing sadness that he could see slouching about behind it.

It was on the fourth day, however, that something did show itself.

He came home from work that day and called about the house for Beth, but she was nowhere to be found. Finally, he found her in the guest wing of the house, in the bathroom. She was sitting on the commode with one of the blue towels draped over her head. She was sobbing.

When he asked her what was wrong, she couldn't tell him. This was a change: before it was always the fact that she wouldn't tell him: but here, he knew that she simply couldn't. She told him she just felt extremely sad and didn't know why. He did his best to comfort her and finally she went to bed early.

The next two days when he came home, he found her in bed, asleep. She had found some old prescription medicine, back when she had a terrible time sleeping--years back--and started herself back on them. She would wake in time to come down and eat something, then she would give him a half-hearted hug or some other token of affection and return to the bedroom. And take another dose.

On the third day, he came home to find the mail on the kitchen table. And a manila padded envelope that had been torn open. The contents were missing, and an examination of the outside showed no address or writing of any kind.

Going up to the bedroom, he heard the music.

He followed the music to the upstairs den and found Beth sitting on the floor in front of the stereo system there. She had the CD player on and was listening, enraptured.

She didn't even notice he was there until he was halfway into the room. When she turned, tears were streaming down her face. Still, inexplicably, she was smiling. The joy she was radiating was to an extent that he found very disquieting. "Oh, Charles, this is...what is this? I found it in the mailbox. The envelope didn't say anything, the disc doesn't say anything, and there's just the one track on here. But, oh, listen to it!"

And he did. It was a piano piece, albeit capably composed and played, and that was all. Slow moving and exhibiting some of the same happy and sad together characteristics that Beth was now.

When Beth turned back to the CD player and watched it start the track again--she had set the disc to automatically repeat--he remembered. Not the fact that the disc was the proof the man had said to expect. That he successfully leapfrogged over.

I don't do this for the money, actually. I'm an artist.

Beth ejected the disc and put it back into its non-descript jewel case. "I think it's wonderful. You know the songs that just...fit with you? When you hear them the first time they're a favorite...and you don't even know why?"

He realized that was the longest string of words she had spoken to him in months. "I...think I've felt that once or twice."

She smiled again, though the tears were still streaming. "I want to take this with me to my study. Listen to it there." And she walked past him to the door.

"Beth," he called after her, and she did stop. But she did not turn around.

"I just want you to know...everything I've ever done," he said, "is because I love you. You know that, right?"

She looked back over her shoulder--still with that sad smile, though more distant now somehow--and then she turned away.

Cults. The world has been plagued with cults since all the gods arrived.

Minor gods to be sure--certainly nothing like the big G God of the Judeo-Christian tradition--gods of the harvest, of the sky, of the hunt, and so on. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Unlike, however, the aforementioned big G God, these gods, regardless of how minor they might be, do deliver on their promises.

Let me give you an example. In the Pacific, a self-proclaimed goddess of the ocean destroyed all the Japanese whalers that dared leave port. This happened to the glee of Greenpeace, until she sank them where they sat with all hands aboard. This goddess, with her unpronounceable name, didn't need their help and resented them for the imposition.

These gods arrived after being cast out of wherever it was they came from. No one knows for certain...the few statements they have made on record are like riddles with no discernible answers. They simply had to leave...immediately.

They arrived all at once and began to find homes here among us--taking up residence wherever their own particular specialty would lead them. And, like many of us, they found themselves migrating to cities. Plenty of souls there, most of them in dire need of something, anything, to believe in.

One particular instance that springs to mind is an alleyway in the middle of Manhattan. It is the particular residence of a self-proclaimed god of both waste and bounty. This god's name is Chxraditt, and he, according to his single priest, takes many forms...though none have ever been seen by anyone but his single clergyman. A former Catholic priest, this man now calls himself Father Robinia.

Robinia is a wiry, thin man with pale, yellow skin and sunken eyes. On his person at all times is a butcher knife, tucked into his belt. He uses this to carve the offering for those who cannot easily take of it themselves. He gave up his priestly blacks for a blue workman's coverall. He is probably the most psychotic man I've ever had the misfortune of meeting.

I believe it's time for full disclosure. I was, for the briefest of periods, an acolyte of Robinia's. Once a month, the faithful, those devoted to Chxraditt, come to his alleyway and are provided with their communion. It is through this miracle that they know it's simply not Robinia pulling a running joke on them.

When I first arrived, I had not seen the miracle for myself. In fact, I was hoping to be a part of the miracle, for I had learned of the ceremony and of the god who dwelt in the alleyway and I wanted to belong to him. The circumstances for how one becomes so far gone that one can be drawn to such a thing are of no consequence, but I fear some of you may be, on some level, nodding your heads as you read this. Some of us simply want to be led. Some of us simply need to be.

So it was that I sat down to write down The Gospel of Chxraditt, which Robinia claimed was being fed to him by the god himself. I had no reason to doubt this. From time to time, followers of the god would arrive with offerings of food or money, which they would place by the refrigerator box that Robinia now called home, there at the mouth of the alleyway. They would never disturb the priest if he was dictating to me, but they would spare a glance of admiration for me. Jealousy? Perhaps. I was doing the work of a god, after all, while they were--what? Going back to a cubicle? A desk? A phone?

When the night came for the next manifestation of the god, for the miracle to be made known to the faithful, I stood by Robinia's side as the mouth of the alleyway filled with people. There must have been fifty of us there when the clouds parted and the full moon was revealed, signaling the time of the service. All sorts of people were there: homeless men; men who had come from some office job, still in ties; a college student in glasses bearing a backpack; two women dressed in nurses' garb; and so on.

Robinia began to speak.

"Faithful," he said to the small congregation, "we gather here in the temple of our god and ask for his blessing, for his communion, for his presence among us. There is nothing wasted in the eyes of the faithful. Where others see refuse, the god sees bounty. Wonderful, rich bounty. For the faithful, there is always a place set at the table of Chxraditt. And always, there is a feast at hand."

"A feast at hand," we all responded softly.

"Speak his name, children," Robinia urged gently. "All you need do is call upon him and he will come among us."

And we did. All of his saying his name...first in unison, then the voices breaking up in different rhythms, different pitches. A cacophony of intonations of the god's name, until the din devolved into something that sounded like the chittering of insects...nothing human at all.

At that point, something in the darkness of the alley stirred. Stirred, and began to move.

Some of the faithful had seen this phenomenon before. I was a new acolyte and thus had never seen how the god manifested itself. So I braced myself for what might appear.

Whatever I had imagined, it paled in comparison to what shambled forth: an apparent golem, comprised entirely of discarded food. Rivers of wretched pasta streamed from its shoulders down its arms to its half-eaten sausage fingers. A maggot-ridden steak swam in its chest alongside pie crusts, pallid beans and at least two apple cores. All of this undulated as it walked, making slick sounds as its rancid legs moved together, beneath the nearly white broccoli stalk that formed its parody of a sexual organ.

"Behold," Robinia said as the thing was revealed in full. "The god sees only plenty. Only a feast. Only ever a feast for the faithful."

"A feast for the faithful," the congregation responded.

"Now," the priest said, "eat. For that is his body."

And then, we all felt it. All of us. A hunger that sapped every inch of our being. That made us feel weak, weak to the point of nausea. Any idea that we could be repulsed by the creature before us...

No.

No, I won't lie to you. There was no compulsion. There was no will other than our own that called us forward to partake of the god's surrogate flesh. I barely held myself back, per Robinia's instructions--the clergy always eats last in the house of Chxraditt, I was told, for there's never any rush as there is always plenty. As a result, I could watch as the throng of people did everything they could not to rush up to the god of leavings to eat their fill.

I watched as they reached in and took hold of bits of the god's offering to them. It didn't matter what it was--all was edible in the sight of the god--so whether it was fresh or foul, they ate. I watched a man in a tie extract from the neck of the creature an overcooked kabob, which he turned away to consume at his leisure. The nurses worked free a grey cantaloupe, which they broke and shared between each other. Some chewed their communion free directly from the creature. The college student, in his state of ecstasy, pulled a dead cat from the depths of the thing's bowels, and then, I am grateful to say, did his business with it behind a dumpster.

I stood and watched, filled with the spirit of the moment, of the glory of the god, and watched as its representative here on earth was ingested by the faithful. It was only after a minute or two that I saw that my initial impression...had been wrong. I had thought the god's avatar to be animated rubbish, but no, there was a foundation to its existence. As the surface layer of refuse was eaten away, I saw beneath something that I wish I could say was enough to break me free of the grip of the spiritual fervor I felt.

It was part of a man's arm. The golem was a man, covered in the offering of the god of waste and bounty. The skin was a waxy grey in the moonlight, and when part of the face was revealed, the eyes were cold, and dead, and staring forward in horror. The acolytes of Chxraditt become his servants and their final service is to step forward bearing his feast. Somehow I knew this--though I cannot tell you how. Just as I cannot tell you how I knew that though dead, he was being given full awareness of the orgy of consumption taking place around him. Another testament to the god's power, no doubt.

And no, as I said: this was not what broke me from the spell and made me understand that I wanted no part of this. No further part, at least. It was not what made me realize I did not wish to be part of this communion service and send my elbow streaking into Robinia's face when I felt his knife's blade at my throat. Truth be told, it was when the man's nose shattered under my blow that I truly woke up and found myself able to run. I ran from the alleyway, from the island, and far from any semblance of that god or its followers, to safety...or at least as much safety as any of us have these days.

No, it was the look of ecstasy on the faces of the congregation as they began to tear off bits of the dead acolyte with their teeth that made me move. And the look of frozen undead horror and awareness on his face--the look that was a portrait of man who would give his soul to be able to scream.

"Nothing wasted," I remember Robinia said as he went to cut my throat, before I stopped him. In my dreams, sometimes, I don't succeed. He manages to open me right there, and I sit up in bed covered in a hot sweat. "Nothing wasted at all," his voice says. It's only when I could swear he's in the room with me that I scream aloud. And that doesn't happen. Not too often at least.

Halfway down the hallway, the regular overhead lights were replaced by the annoying, bathing orange glow. Gen. Lincoln passed through the third checkpoint and finally was admitted to the area outside the holding cell.

Two soldiers on either side of the door, in full hazmat gear. That didn't count all of the various technicians who were watching, recording, transcribing everything that occurred in the next room.

To call it a room was not to do the holding cell justice. It looked like a reappropriated bank vault with the metal door to match. It had managed to hold every "powered" individual they had imprisoned within, until there was no more usuable information to be extracted from them. Once interrogation was complete, there was only autopsy.

Orange light here as well. Everywhere the orange light. They made the general and everything else they touched look like a scene from a diseased Halloween.

One of the technicians came up to the general, handed him a clipboard. He flipped through the pages, frowning all the while. "Nothing?"

"Nothing, sir."

The general looked up from the clipboard. "It says here you took off one of his feet yesterday?"

"That's right, sir. And other things. With no anesthesia." The technician continued, as though this had to be justified, "One last push to try and get information. We asked him questions while we moved his ribs around and he watched. It worked in the past. Not with this one, though. He just…watched."

"No," the general agreed. "That doesn't work with this one."

The technician eyed the door for a moment. "He's secure, sir. We've paralyzed his body temporarily—for your protection, of course—but kept him lucid. That will only last a couple of hours. Plenty of time for you to complete a final interrogation. Even if he did have powers at this point, he couldn't access them more than likely."

The general nodded. "All right," he said, nodding to the soliders, "let's get this over with."

The door began to rattle a bit as the various mechanisms allowed it to finally swing free. The process took a full minute until the opening was wide enough to allow passage. They went in: one soldier, the technician, the general, and the other soldier. In that order.

The captive was hanging in a metal and fabric cocoon in the middle of the room. Once, one of the filthy things had been able to manipulate the rack they had strapped him to for a medical procedure. He had suddenly been on his feet, the rack behind him and encircling his limbs as a sort of crude exoskeleton. They had lost fifteen men before they were able to put that little bastard down.

That was before they had made so much progress. That was before the orange lights. But still…there was no such thing as too much caution. So here inside the holding cell, the lights were so intense as to almost be painful to look at it. The eyes took a long time adjusting.

Once the general's did, though, he could see the captive's eyes. They were closed. Apart from the way that the body was badly deformed from the pieces they had removed in a futile attempt to get him to talk, he looked almost…peaceful.

"Daniel," the general called out. "Daniel, can you hear me?"

The eyes flickered open. "Yes. Yes, I can." The eyes found the general. "And may I ask who you are?"

"General James Lincoln. I head up the project."

Daniel…actually smiled. "Ah, yes…the project to deal with…my kind.."

The general wished there was a place to sit, but of course, there was nothing in the room that wasn't absolutely necessary. For everyone's protection. The vault door began to work its way shut behind them.

The general nodded. "Yes. Your kind. Let's talk about that for a second. You claim them, and yet we don't have a single report of you actually using any powers. At all."

Daniel's smile didn't fade. "That's right…maybe I'm not even powered. Maybe I'm just…a joe shmoe sympathizer."

The general chuckled despite himself, "Son, I've seen plenty of sympathizers in my day. They've been willing to hide you, feed you, educate you…but undergo torture and not give up any goods on you? I'm afraid I can't buy that one."

Daniel looked up a little and chuckled. "Yes, well, I suppose if you're here that must mean your men are tired of trying to get me to talk. I'm a liability. I'm going to be silenced. You're the last name on the dance card…the idea being that, since I'm going to die anyway, there's no reason not to give up any goods." Daniel smiled and looked directly at the general. "Tell me I'm wrong in my assessment."

The general didn't bat an eye. "You're not wrong. I'm here to talk to you one last time and then my men will kill you."

Daniel nodded, "Well, we understand each other." He gave a little cough and smiled. "I should make you understand why I'm here, at the very least." He coughed again and said simply, "Middleton."

The general shook his head, "Oh please don't trot out that tired story. I hope I didn't fly all the way over and come down here just for that."

"Massacres never grow old, general. They're never old news."

"All of you in one place like that," the general protested, "God knows what you bastards were planning—"

"Planning?" Daniel said, and his tone never changed, so even, so controlled. "We were planning to have lives. Send children to school, own homes, have our own community where we could keep ourselves to ourselves and not be bothered."

"An entire town full of powered individuals, any of whom could have been the equivalent of a walking rogue nuclear weapon, and we were supposed to just stay away?" The general paced. If he could not sit, at least he could pace. "Did you know in Arkansas we had a boy of six who wiped out an entire afterschool daycare center because he started giving off a toxin very close to sarin gas? Six years old. Thank God he wasn't immune to the effects of his own poison. Imagine if he had wandered off down the street, lethal clouds in his wake?"

"Imagine if you could drop him on Baghdad," Daniel countered.

The general coughed in astonishment. "Good Lord, man, we barely understand how any of your abilities work, much less how to use them as weapons. I'm primarily concerned with our survival as a species."

Daniel cocked his head to one side. "Even if it means the death of mine."

"Regrettable," the general said, nodding as he resumed pacing. "But I'll trade the few numbers of your lives for the lives of all normal Americans." He looked at the captive a moment longer, "But regardless of all that, you're too young to have been at Middleton."

"I was three," Daniel said. "It's not me I'm speaking of, though, no."

"Mother? Father?" The general asked.

"My wife."

The general stopped pacing. "You were married at three years old?"

Daniel smiled, "No…there was a woman with us at one point. She knew things. My wife wasn't born at the time. But had her pregnant mother not been herded into the tennis courts with the others and gunned down, we would have been married. I might have had a different life. I might never have led my people in open rebellion against you. So, in a way, you created a bigger problem than you felt you had solved."

The general chuckled, "I'm not sure I can believe that, son."

Daniel kept on smiling. "I'm sure you can't. That's the problem with you humans. On the whole, you don't think about the consequences of your actions. The long term consequences, I mean. You rely on everything to be antibacterial, which means that the suppressed bacteria will simply become more and more deadly in response.

"And so with us. You keep trying to wipe us out, to prevent us from rising up and taking our place in the evolutionary scheme of things, and so with each generation we simply grow more powerful and, of course, more angry."

The general sighed. "This audience is over." He turned to the soldiers, "Open the door."

Daniel continued. "Let me give you an example," he said. "You wanted to know my power. Here it is. Guards, your firing pins are now gone."

The soldiers looked at one another, as though Daniel must be kidding.

Daniel's attention went to the technician. "You seemed to enjoy having me laid open so you could play with my internal organs. I don't even need to open you."

The technician jerked backwards as though he had been punched in the stomach. He dropped the clipboard and his hands flew to his chest, his eyes wide in panic.

"Kind of hard to breathe with your lungs down there, isn't it?" Daniel said all this with the same amount of calm. "And the heart isn't meant to be over there, I know. But you won't feel it for much--"

The technician coughed up a wad of bloody matter and slumped backwards into the wall.

"—longer," Daniel finished. The soldiers had checked their rifles to find them useless and gone for their sidearms, only to find them now missing. "Lost something?" he asked them. "Here, let me get those for you." And with that, two muffled crashing noises occurred. The tops of both soldier's heads exploded outwards, the red spray looking dark and wrong in the Halloween lights.

Daniel smiled, "Well, that's the first time friendly fire has ever looked like that."

"The dampeners," the general finally found his voice. "This isn't possible."

"Your orange party lights. Well, yes, my generation finds them merely irritating. We can think around them."

The building seemed to shake on its very foundations.

"What are you doing?" the general asked. Behind them, the vault door began to open. Reinforcements were coming. They were only a minute away.

"Where is this base?" Daniel asked.

"What are you doing?" the general asked again.

Daniel coughed. "Teleportation. That's my power. I can teleport small things or I can teleport very large things very long distances. Right now I'm working on moving this base and everything around it for a hundred miles. We're going to visit the Sun, actually."

"There's a city seventy-five miles from here," the general said, another jolt from the building making his legs shake. Or was it the building doing that?

"Good," Daniel said, "then the message will come through loud and clear."

"Please," the general said. "Please…I…"

"…have children. I know," Daniel said. "So do I, actually. And mine will know yours very soon, general. Very soon. I promise you that."

Daniel then said one last thing, but the words were lost as the building felt like it had been struck violently, and the air seemed to rush from the room.