Plague

by Jason Colpitts

 ©Jason Colpitts

     For a fleeting moment through the raging storm, he could view the other side.  Dorian could see her, safe.  

     Violet tendrils exploded down Alteria’s cobblestone streets inside a paradox of his own design, a paradox which would wipe out everything in his existence.  Before the end, though, before the tendrils tore him apart too, atom by atom, Dorian smiled.

***

     Weeks before, Dorian stood in a town square.

     Two Puritan women walked by.  Their skirts were laden with a half-foot of mud.  Most of the men were working hard despite the rain to repair a church roof.  A few others trundled through with wheelbarrows.  Drenched, they were, a stalwart group, and tough as nails.  

     Hundreds dwelled in the area now.  They had reached a point of sufficiency.  That's why they were chosen.  The brood could be thinned, leaving a few dozen to carry on.  It had been considered a great gift from Dorian’s people to rid the masses of their misery.

     Dorian walked near to the end of town.  He noticed a male approaching from a winding cow path and took time to study him.  The older fellow carried two bales of hay, one on each shoulder.  He wheezed and then spit out black tobacco.  The man walked awkwardly, looked filthy, and had a mouthful of corroded teeth.  To him Dorian was psionically invisible.  Dorian had been there with the Pilgrims for a time, but their minds were too underdeveloped to notice him.  His will told them not to. 

     Dorian thought, reached out, and touched the human vermin.  The rotten-toothed man continued on.  He began coughing.  Dorian smiled in a way.  This plague would be called "Scarlet Fever", or "Yellow Fever", or some other nonsense.  In reality, this virus was far worse than Scarlet Fever.  It was something special Dorian concocted to flare within the population, shred cellular membranes, kill with agonizing speed, and then die off, leaving little trace for future generations to find.  Soon the poor wretch would be rid of his true ailment, the human condition. 

     It was simple.  Their existence was a sickness.  They were lesser life forms, and they needed his help.  He never questioned the gift before.

     Dorian paused.  He looked around.  Cold eyes were upon him.

     Did someone see me?  Impossible.  He dismissed the thought.

     Still, an eerie feeling enshrouded him.  Dorian was extremely powerful and should have feared nothing.  He had olive skin, sharp features, and would have been considered attractive, were he not a fearsome sight to behold — crouched low and hidden beneath a massive black cloak.  Studying the air and discovering nothing, Dorian turned under his heavy hood, rested his fingers upon the burgundy World Sphere, rotated softly clockwise, and vanished.

***

     Dorian entered the Magistrate's Chamber.  Their race lived tens of thousands of years beyond the worst of human history.  World Wars, Genocides, Ethnic Cleansing, and many other atrocities were distant concepts.  Here the world had been at peace.  A clean scent of honeysuckle filled the air.

    Dorian walked down a long, elegant hallway and into a wide room.  Gleaming white marble floors were veined with sparkling gold.  A large silver tree had been depicted on the far wall, upside-down, representing genetic purity. 

     Ten Magistrates sat behind a high bench.  Their demeanor was typical, expressionless, which Dorian saw straight through.  If they lived amongst the humans, they would have been drooling eager saliva and nervously clawing the cherrywood bench with nerve-racking anticipation.  Instead, they sat and waited.

     "Are you well, Dorian?"

     "I am well, Mistress," he addressed the oldest of the Magistrates.  Then he looked down the long bench and bowed to the others. "I am well, Magistrates."

     They all looked like him, tall, thin, hairless heads, and clean skin.  Their skin color varied.  Some were dark; others were light.  It didn't matter.  They were all genetically grown, enhanced, purified, and far superior to the other twenty-five million of his kindred.  But Dorian was different, specially designed to withstand the shearing forces of space-time.  He was unique, the only one of his kind, and the single selectee for this mission: Analyze the humans.  See who can be saved.

     "Has your latest mission been a success?" one the Magistrates, Carver, spoke out of turn. 

     The question was a hair fast and a dead giveaway.  The Mistress, Clara, smiled sweetly.  She blinked as if the light-skinned man had leapt over the bench and began strangling Dorian for answers.  Dorian too thought it odd, as if the man didn't trust his answer for some unknown reason.

     "Yes, Magistrate."

     "How did it feel, walking among the humans?" The Mistress re-led the questions.

     "Barbaric."  

     His nonchalant answer earned a light chuckle from around the room.

     "How is the Plagus extension?"

     "Functioning."

     "And how many did you save?" she continued.

     Dorian decided to oblige all the Magistrates with his answer. "I visited the shoreline village first, the one with a strong fishing and hunting history.  They worshipped a god called Thür.  Norsemen, they called themselves."

     "And they were cleansed?"

     "I implemented a worm, Mistress, a parasite of the intestines."

     "How many?"

     "In its longest run, 120,400,000 were saved, ma'am."

     A subtle breath of celebration rippled through the room.  Slight smiles burst upon their otherwise frozen faces.  Two even clapped gently!  Their prior efforts were far smaller, they wiped away a few dozen, then a few hundred, then a thousand.  But this?  Never had they trimmed so much fat from the dredges of their society’s past.

     "Well done," the Mistress applauded him.  She stepped forward. "Let us converge."

     Her eyes shut as she reached out with both hands.  He took them into his own and shared the fullness of his adventure over the past couple days.  Images rained before her as they walked through Dorian's memories.  Clara watched thousands growing sick.  Their grimy sweat soaked bodies writhed in pain and then finally...peace, blissful peace.

     "Well done, Dorian." She stepped away. "Your mission has been a success.  Be ready.  There will be more to come."

     Dorian bowed to show appreciation. 

     Open windows bordered the white marble room.  The land beyond was beautiful.  He looked past the row of Magistrates.  White sand beaches, turquoise water, pristine steel buildings, and his enhanced kindred — who walked to various assignments or relaxed in the distance — all graced Alteria. 

     He could have enjoyed it, if they were designed to have emotion.  Of course, they had feelings to a limited degree, but nothing extreme.  He half-smiled and turned away down the long hall.

     Mistress Clara watched him walk away, and then she blinked again.  Hiding her feelings from the others, she knew something was off.  This had been the fifth time Dorian held some of his memories back.  There were gaps.  It was strange.  Clara felt as though she would need to address it before his next mission, but there was no time. 

     A quiet gong rang out followed by the hurried steps of a young Enhanced.

     "Emotions, dear." The Mistress corrected the girl.

     "Yes, Mistress." The girl understood her superior’s threat.  Although she was young and quite beautiful, with a tall stature and ebony dark skin, she had been produced from a lesser mold.  Her type was simple, but easy to break down and become infected.  Emotions were part of overreaction, and overreactions were part of the infection.  To display them meant you were infected, and if you were then...

     Moving on and showing mercy for the insolence, the Mistress calmly asked, "What is your message?"

     The girl relaxed, steadied her breath, and explained, "One of the Clerics has found the...the..." She searched for the word. "...edge of a crystal."

     Now the whole room shifted, just a touch.  To the untrained eye, nobody reacted at all, but to Mistress Clara the minute gestures thundered - holding half a breath, either refusing to blink or blinking twice, and even the doubling of a heartbeat.  They were all uncomfortable, including Mistress Clara.  It was a tidal wave of imperceptible panic driven chaos.  They knew what it meant.  No one dared to ask.

     The naive girl continued, "A violet crystal surrounds all of Alteria, but it flickers intermittently."

     "Have they narrowed its roots?"

     "Yes, ma'am.  It stems mostly from within the Chrono-Research Center, to you, ma'am, and with a narrow tendril which stems all the way to early humankind, the early 21st century."

     It was the Mistress' turn to overreact, but Mistress Clara was a well-honed genetically enhanced Alterian.  Anyone else would have jumped out of their skin.  She would never stoop so low.

     "Are the Clerics sure?  Is the whole Science Creed certain?" she asked, devoid of emotion.

     "Yes, Mistress."

     "Then go to Dorian.  Tell him to rest, but also tell him there's another mission at hand.  For now, humankind can wait."

***

     Valorie opened a steel drawer.  A hundred small samples lay before her, categorically organized, labeled, and safely preserved.  She had spearheads, axes, farm tools, sword hilts, and even an ancient bone fish hook.  Six years of study and two doctoral dissertations finally convinced the museum to bring them here.  Valorie's eyes rolled around the fragments, relishing every tiny detail.  She felt like a person who was tussling in a million dollars upon the bed.

     A man named Henry stepped up with an urgent message.  He cleared his throat.

     "Hi, Henry, did you know that the Norse assigned Thor a day of his own?  Thür's-day?" Valorie rambled without looking up.

     "Val?" Henry cut in.

     "...And Odin has been originally pronounced as "Wodin".  In the spelling of the English Anglo-Saxons, Wodin's-day has been changed to Wednesday."

     "Val?!" Henry appreciated the history, but he needed to talk.

     "...And they also worshipped the Roman god, Mars, which in Norse has been pronounced "Twi".  "Twi's-day" later became Tuesday!  And Moon-day..." She stood abruptly, chattering on with a proud grin.

     "Val," Henry cut in, quickly changing his tone from irritated to respectful, "Val, they found what you were looking for.  Your team found it."

     Valorie nearly dropped the fishhook. "They found samples in the last cadaver!  The man they buried along the mountain cliffs?"

     "Yes," Henry teased her.

     "And?” Val squealed, "Don't keep me waiting!"

     "It might be an original strain of the parasite.  They have a frozen sample."

     Val screamed in excitement and covered her mouth. "Tell them to keep it on ice.  If it thaws, the cell membranes are designed... to break down." Val was so excited she forgot to cover herself.

     "Designed?" Henry took half a step forward with a skeptical glint in his eye.  She hid the crackpot idea for the whole dig, he knew it, but "designed"?

     "That's right, Henry, designed.  It's a machine, a living biologically designed mechanism.  It's a weapon."

     "Valorie, do you realize what you're saying?  There's no way the Norse had that kind of technology.  The college will never publish it.  You'll lose all your credibility."

     Val shot him a fiery glance.  Undeterred, she ordered, "Tell them to keep it on ice."

     Henry offered her a half-smile.  His advice wasn’t wanted. "Okay, Val, whatever you want," Henry acquiesced and then took his leave.

     After he turned the corner, Val shuddered.  Why has everything been so difficult?  Didn't he see the same samples she did?  The Black Plague, the Bubonic, it had all been so perfect, too perfect.  She needed more proof, and this was it.  She knew it.

     Valorie turned back to the samples.

     What would that mean? she wondered.

     She didn't develop her theory from these samples.  She did it through history.  Every time an offshoot society grew in strength, wham!  A virus hit, a bacterium, or a parasite.  She could almost predict it to the day.  It had been strategic, militaristic, and if the viruses were manufactured, then who had been the architect?

    Valorie shook her head.  She understood Henry's caution now.  The theory sounded crazy.  She sounded crazy.  The person would either have to be hundreds if not thousands of years old, or the culprits had been an organized cult.

    Her mind raced, How would they have infiltrated so many societies, so many cultures?  For what purpose?  So much death, so much pain - what a terrible group of people!  Could there have been someone throughout history so evil, so iniquitous?  What gives him the right?!!!

     Val grabbed her head.  A strange feeling overtook her as if someone had reached into her heart.  An image of her murdered father lying in his own blood slapped her in the face.  Desires for revenge ran rampant through her mind.  She quelled the thoughts.  They weren't right. 

     A tear dripped down the side of her face, and she cursed herself, Where did that come from? 

     She hadn't usually been this emotional.  Her mind flashed to all the victims of history.  The grandmothers, the old grandfathers, the children, brothers and sisters, close friends, they were all dead, that and future generations!

     Val fled.  Tears fell like two waterfalls on either side of her face.  Repeatedly, she wiped and wiped, but they wouldn't stop.  Pain, sorrow, and destruction were coursing through her veins.  Fleeing the archives didn't help.  Valorie burst past the public, the security, and the receptionists.  She ran and ran, leaving behind both the museum and a massive wake that she would never be able to fathom. 

     Unbeknownst to her, back among the Norse samples, and invisible to the human eye, Dorian had collapsed to the floor.

***

     Dorian strained.  He could barely move.  The museum was quiet, and the lights were off.  He stood unsteadily and stumbled backward toward the still open drawer.  As his left arm carelessly careened over the top, arrowheads and simple tools tumbled to the floor.  At nearly the speed of light, motion sensors alerted the security system, but even in his crippled state, Dorian recovered.  He uploaded a single command to dismiss his foolish disturbance as a mere rodent.

     Strange.  He felt like one now, a sewer rat.  His kind were beings of the furthest progression.  They were nearly gods to these people, highly advanced, puerile.  Biologically spliced with centuries of technology, his mind was an endless computer with a memory capacity that humbled terabytes of terabytes.  And yet, in all his years, and in all his missions, no one had taken over as she did.  He felt like vermin.

     It had been just a single touch into her mind, and he could not answer her question: What gave him the right?

     Dorian felt around for the World Sphere.  With shaking fingers, he furiously turned the burgundy storm winds beneath its surface — he knew not where.  The lab blew away, like he stood in the eye of Jupiter's red spot, and when the winds dissipated, he was centered in a battlefield.

     Knights in armor waged war all around.  Swords clashed.  Shields buckled.  Arrows whizzed by.  Catholics from Rome had journeyed to Jerusalem and now the most terrible battle of the time surged.  This was one of his many missions.  He breathed a sigh of relief and cursed himself.  Emotions like this shouldn't dominate him at all — panic, worry, or relief. 

     Had it been her?  Had she infected him? Dorian worried.

     He focused on the mission.  Time had always been a fickle thing.  The Science Clerics had to be sure of each surgical slice.  They couldn't either upset the course of events too much or alter the gene pool too radically.  The Lesser Alterians would thank them for the gift if they could.  Of course, they couldn't as they would die, disappear, when their ancestors were wiped away.

     Dorian walked through the battle, dodging spearheads and willing the warriors to step out of his path.  Unsteady, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched.  Analyzing the woods to the west, he spotted a blurry area.  To an Alterian the spot was unmistakable.  He sensed it in Salem as well.  The Magistrates were spying on him, and he knew why. 

     There was nothing he could do.  The ever-faithful Alterian continued his mission.  Far outside the sounds of clanking and screaming, Dorian approached a man on the ground.  The man had been unconscious among thousands of fallen knights.  Buzzards already circled this part of the field as did the wretched.  Individuals of little means scavenged for scraps, monies, or weapons to sell.

     Kneeling down, Dorian touched the man with a silver rod, newly made.  His memories flooded in, fear, racism, and hatred, but something else spread back.  Gangrene seeped into the man's wounds.  The infection would spread from him onto the hands of the poor and into their small scrapes and bruises.  The death toll wiped from the present, and from every future generation they could spawn, would be over 252,900,000.

     Dorian looked over the city.  Twilight was coming, and the sun was setting just behind the temple walls.  Solomon himself would have been proud.  The inner temple and its courtyard were just beautiful.  He had to imagine most of it as the Romans had destroyed the majority of the temple centuries ago.  Still, it was a sight to behold, mango colored clouds adorning the sky overhead.

     Dorian smiled.  He recharged as he basked in the sunlight.  The cloak converted energy as fuel and sustenance for him, like a fabric solar panel, but so much more.  It could alter almost any type of energy and use it however Dorian wished.  The cloak even transferred power to the World Sphere.  Thousands of shimmering ebony plates were woven together with the densest silk.  Within it, Dorian thought for hours.  He just sat and reflected until the stars twinkled overhead.

     Then, taking ahold of the World Sphere, he again began to turn.  Toward the distant future he would go, but not directly to the Magistrates.  He couldn't.  He now possessed an abysmal failure, the event at the museum archives.  He was supposed to kill the woman, to imbed a flu which would run its course for days and end in cardiac arrest, and he was to take her memories.  Now he couldn't face Mistress Clara, at least not in reference to that mission, so he turned the Sphere to a few weeks prior.

     He arrived on the green just after a noon sunbath.  The buildings outside the Magistrate's Chambers were exquisitely designed with long alabaster columns and high Grecian-style archways.  The tranquil lines and delicate form created a feeling of peace, and yet to Dorian it began to feel pointless.  The people outside appeared duller somehow, hollow.  Vacuous shells strolled along the green now.  Despite inferior genes to his own, their lives were perfect, and yet they cared not.  There had never been life here, no joy, no true art. 

     Dorian felt sad as he entered the building and strolled down the marble hallways.  Their lives should have had meaning.  They simply ingested a clear cube of jelly, much like he had done before, when he consumed a cube of his own and had been given the World Sphere.  Stored within the cubes were all the instructions for a life well-spent.  If they were assigned to architecture, the cube would rewrite you, build neural pathways, program extensive history on the topic, and even provide proper access coding and neural uplinks to the flying machines you would control.  Not only could you become an architect in minutes, you could finish the building that very afternoon.  It had been perfect.  It had been sublime.  It was now empty.  What was the point of such skill without a deep appreciation for the artistry?

     "Magistrates," he addressed them respectfully as he entered the inner chamber.

     "Are you well, Dorian?" Mistress Clara asked.

     "I am well, Mistress.  I am well, Magistrates."

     They each nodded in kind.

     "Has your latest mission been a success?"

     "Indeed, Mistress.  I visited the crusades against Jerusalem.  There I placed a strain of gangrene to wipe away all of the outlying towns."

     "How many were saved?" she asked.

     "6,000 were saved, ma'am," he lied.  Although it had been his job to thin the timeline of these creatures to the greatest extent possible, the Magistrates weren't ready to hear greater numbers yet, not until they heard of the report from olde Salem.

     The room celebrated in their usual non-celebratory way.  It had been difficult to manage the subterfuge, especially under the gaze of men and women so trained, but the worst was to come.  Mistress Clara had been the greatest challenge, and as they converged, Dorian had to keep the sharpest focus.  She could not know about the woman Valorie.

     Finally, Dorian was ready to retire.  He would have to absorb as much solar power as he could before engaging on another mission.  Powering the World Sphere required a lot, but he wanted to leave soon.  He needed to see the human woman again. 

     Before he left the chamber, he asked a single question, "Magistrates, if I may beg of your patience, how many are currently inhabitants of Alteria?"

     Mistress Clara blinked.  The question was a little off.  She thought that perhaps Dorian had been monitoring his own progress. "Over 70 billion, lesser Alterians than us, of course," she responded.

     Dorian nodded and quietly departed.  Two weeks from now the number would drain to 25 million.

     Thirty Magistrates turned their heads toward Clara.

     "He has reorganized the mission schedule." She was willing to open the discussion they were already pondering.

     "Should this be of concern?" Magistrate Carver asked, "Should I go after him?"

     "Perhaps," she answered, "perhaps we need to keep an eye on him.  What do you five think?" She turned her attention to the end of the table.  The five sitting on the far right were all quorum members for the Science Clerics.  They served as a nice go-between for the two Ministries.

     They convened together for a minute and reported, "We don't feel there is an immediate threat.  There has been no long-term alternation of the agenda.  The Jerusalem mission had been approved.  Success has been achieved.  The end results will be the same."

     "We should move forward then.  There are four more minor cuts to make before we attempt the Salem mission.  Arrange a meeting with Dorian.  He should stick to the mission parameters.  The World Sphere may isolate him from a paradox, but it won't protect us.  Caution is in order."

     Each of the Magistrates accepted her direction with a uniform, "Agreed."

***

     Four missions came and went.  After the Science Clerics firmly re-laid his mission parameters, Dorian tore apart the already weakened Hun army with malaria and forced their return to the Great Hungarian Plain.  Alexander the Great and a high percentage of the southern Greeks fell to Encephalitis.  A ring worm infestation thinned much of Africa.  Dengue fever too ravaged Central America and the port cities all along the Caribbean.

     A sickness permeated him too — emotion.  What gave him the right?

     He used the silver rod more and more.  It was long, sometimes taller than he was, and it had a sharp right angle at the top.  The Plagus wasn't the rod itself.  It was his program, the ability to create disease and other pathogens and also alter his physiology.  He could form whatever medium was needed for transmission, either a needle, tendrils, skin transmission, or even breath if necessary.  He didn't need the silver rod.  He chose it.  It allowed him to keep his distance, to not have to touch them, and to be emotionally free of the vermin.

     There was that word again, emotion.  Can I not be rid of it?  What did the woman do to me? he thought as he sat and watched her from the shadows.

     Dorian had to be careful.  Each location he visited; he carefully studied the far horizon.  Each time, the hunter had been there.  Their movements were careful, stealthy like a jungle cat, but it still took time to locate Dorian himself.  One thing had been certain.  This had been no casual observer.  Dorian knew he was being stalked.

     Of course, Dorian dutifully reported back each time.  The meetings lost their meaning at the same rate that Alteria lost population.  He didn't know why.  He felt fine about the discussions before.  Perhaps it had been his failure at the museum archives.  Perhaps it had been the time he spent thinking, either hours and hours alone by the Danube, by the Nile River Delta before Djoser built the first step-pyramid, or watching Qin Shi Huang outlay the first connective battlements for the Great Wall.  Perhaps it had been the time he spent watching her.

     She was beautiful.  He watched her hands gesturing as she gave speeches.  The woman had so much passion.  She traveled to other museums and colleges to give lectures, but mostly she spent time studying the parasite.  When lab tests failed her, she did research, delved into church records, procured every book she could on either the ancient Norse or characters of death, and even studied similar parasitic cases from across the United Kingdom.  She had been incorrigible. 

     Valorie conducted one test after another, and she sat and thought.  Long after the others had left, and the overhead lights were turned off, Valorie sat alone with a microscope and a desk lamp.

     She looked at the inner cellular wall again.  This was definitely no parasite.  The individual cells were microbiological machines, buried in the ice for a thousand years.  Each sample had been the same.  Technology, well-beyond what was possible even now, had been grafted into a living organism.  In fact, it was hard to see where the real began and the machine left off.

     She leaned back in her chair and ran both hands through her auburn hair.

     "I know you're there," she whispered out loud. "I can feel you, sometimes.  You've been watching me, haven't you?"

     Dorian shifted.  He studied her, but she never looked toward the corner.

     "Did we brush against each other?  I saw your eyes that night.  I saw kindness."

     Dorian was stunned.  She had visited the same sample for weeks now.  If she had her proof already, then why not report it?  Why not blow the whistle?  Then, it occurred to him.  She hadn't been looking for the technology.  She had been looking for him.

     Valorie stood up and shook her head.

     You're losing it, she mumbled to herself. 

     Gathering her belongings, she pulled on an orange fall jacket and shut off the desk lamp.

     "Kindness?" The word seeped across the room like fog on the ocean.

     Valorie jumped.  She spun around and saw a black cloaked man crouching on a desk in the far corner.  Grabbing a scalpel, her mind felt shocked with electric panic, but then she froze.  Rational thought returned.  Valorie stopped.  The man in the corner hadn't moved.  She looked at him, and he at her.  The man was a monstrous figure, muscled, and cloaked.  A heavy hood rested upon his head, and a dark red sphere sat in his right hand.

     "Kindness," he uttered the word again, "What do you mean?"  Dorian was devoid of emotion.

     Valorie on the other hand was fearless.  She took a step in his direction. "I haven't slept in three months.  I literally haven't fallen asleep once, and I haven't gotten sick.  I haven't even felt tired once.  My grey hair is gone.  All of my scars have vanished.  What did you do to me?"

     No human had ever touched an Alterian and lived, he thought.  Dorian answered, "We shared the Convergence.  We become one in mind and body."

     "I can't get your eyes out of my head.  You took my memories."

     Dorian admitted the truth, "You lost your father when you were very young.  He had been murdered."

     "And your name is Dorian, and you weren't sent to Converge," she added her own admission, "You were sent for another reason.  What is it?  Why aren't you proud of the "gift" you bear?"

     Dorian felt no need to answer.  "What does it mean to be human?" he asked, turning the tables on her.  He slowly stood.  His stance was one of judgment. "I have taken many memories.  I have seen your people’s hatred, your racisms, your prejudice.  I have seen your genocides, your ethnic cleansings, your wars, your intolerances.  I have dug my hands deep into your filthy greed, your competition, your envy, your grimy muddy jealousy."

     A sea of angry words frothed in Valorie's mouth.  She wanted to defend herself.  She wanted to deny it all.

     "You're right.  We are these things," Valorie truthfully agreed.

     "You puzzle me, Valorie."  Dorian was shocked by her honesty.

     Valorie jumped as he spoke, the words sounding more like an accusation than curiosity.  His eyes flared crimson red as he crossed the room without moving exactly.  He was just suddenly a foot away, penetrating her with his gaze, in utter darkness.

     As quickly as he crossed the room, Dorian thrust the cloak around them both.  Gripping furiously, he spun the World Sphere.  She felt dizzy, like the room was tumbling downward.  Then, as if a hurricane had suddenly taken ahold of it, the massive cloth billowed away.

     Valorie looked around.  They were standing in a prison cell late at night.  A lone man slept upon a stained cot.

     "Take your revenge.  He will not see you unless I wish."

     Her eyes jumped.  The man who killed her father, who spilled his blood for a few dollars, lay only a few feet away.  A sharp white reflection glinted off the scalpel.  Teardrops from a lifetime of pain suddenly streamed from her face.  Her heart had been stolen away because of this man.  Part of her wanted to race across the dim cell and plunge the scalpel into him.  The other part was surprised her feet were already moving.  With both hands she lifted the weapon high above like a knight on a crusade against the unrighteous, and with trembling fingers, she dropped the tiny blade.

     Valorie fell to the floor sobbing.

     Dorian watched her.  Pity spread across his face.

     "I can't do it.  I can't.  The man had been an AIDS fueled drug addict.  He's received his punishment."  She gained her breath.  "Why did you bring me here?  To convince yourself you were right?"

     Dorian was entranced.  Never did he think such wisdom could come from an inferior.  He marveled.  She barely noticed as he again lifted the cloak and turned the Sphere.

     When Val raised her head this time, Dorian stood afar off.  He was on the other side of a courtroom.  A younger Valorie stood beside her lawyer.  She was a frail thing, lanky and shaking.

     "Do you have anything to say to the accused?" the judge asked.

     Bone thin fingers gripped the lawyer's arm.  Young Valorie shivered before the crowd.  All eyes were on her as she offered a single response, barely audible.

     "I forgive you."

     It was all she said.  It was all she had to.

     "I came here after I took this memory from you." Dorian was speaking. "I did not believe a human, such as yourself, could offer such evolved forgiveness.  I am conflicted.  I bring a gift that I don't understand and offer another that I wish to."

     The older Valorie didn't have time to speak.  Dorian approached her and turned the World Sphere a third time.  Now they were standing together on a beach.  She looked across the familiar sand.  Waves broke along the shoreline.  They called it Lynn Beach, and it was gorgeous.  Kids made sandcastles, and people walked with ice cream.  Valorie doubled over as her eyes fixed upon the same little girl running into the breaking surge. 

     Valorie's face filled with yet more tears.  A stone’s throw away sat her father.

     "Take courage.  You may regain some of the time with him with which you robbed.  Do not tell him who you are." Dorian kindly motioned.

     Valorie wiped her face as she strolled over. 

     "Hello," she addressed her dad, controlling a tidal wave of bursting feelings, "I'm from overseas.  Can you tell me about this area?"

***

     Dorian watched the two for hours.  He had been proud of the way Valorie directed the conversation.  She never once gave her dad an inkling of who she was, even when little Val ran over to say hello.

     Dorian grazed the World Sphere, not enough to move through time, but enough to see the future.  He looked upon the same beach.  It was different, eroded in some places, built in others.  There were no people this time.  All of Alteria had shriveled to nothing.  There were no buildings.  There were no walkways.  There was no laughter.  There was no life, and it was his fault.

     "Thank you." Valorie walked over.  She smiled and asked, "Why did you do that for me?"

     "Kindness," he said.

     She sat next to him as he released the Sphere and joined her fully in the present.

     "You don’t see time like I see it.  You see mountains, still and unchanging.  I see that they are the caps of waves, and that waves made of stone move much more slowly."

     "You keep trying to prove something to me.  What is it?  That you are more advanced?  I'm already convinced."

     "No," Dorian said matter-of-factly. 

     "I see," she smirked, "You're trying to convince yourself."

     Dorian turned.

     What insight, he thought again. 

     Although he didn't want her to see, in reality, he grew more enchanted by the minute.  Of course, he held back.  He needed to.

     For another hour, they watched the waves break and the sun go down.  He basked in her appreciation of the ever-changing colors.  In the sky, pink cotton candy faded into tangerines.  Then later, the colors richened.  Blood orange gave birth to maroon velvets and crystal amethyst. 

    Valorie smiled.

    Dorian frowned.  He wished he could see life the way she did.  All he could focus on had been the violet crystal surrounding all of time.

      "What is an Alterian?" she asked. "Are you from another planet?"

      "No, Valorie.  We are you.  We have been known by many names: Humans, Augmented-Humans, the Augments, the Enhanced, and also the Alterians.  We are your future."

     Valorie paused.  A thunderhead of worry flashed in the distance.  She dared push further, "You are from the future?  You are humans?  Dorian, I'm confused.  If you are our future, what has been the point of designing a parasite?"

     "I take diseases that are already there, a pathogen, a bacterium, and enhance it to reap more reward."

     "What do you mean "reward"?  Are you responsible for all the death of humanity?"

     "Not all, many are your own, slaughtering your own kind, fighting, ethnic cleansing.  We are above those things.  I augment natural death.  The Spanish Flu had been a particular favorite of the Ministry."

     "The Spanish Flu killed twenty-five million people!  Were you responsible for it?”

     He nodded "yes" rapidly.

     She continued, "The Black Plague? Ebola? Triple E? the Avian Flu? Covid-19?"

     Dorian nearly laughed and humorously added, "They thought bats were behind that mastery!"

     "Why?!" Valorie was horrified. "Why would you unleash plagues upon your own kind?"

     Dorian worried.  He had to hurry.  The invisible hunter was back, nearby. "That is the nature of a gift.  Don’t you wish to be rid of the horrid atrocity, the stink of humanity.  Only Alterians are truly pure.  You must wish to be removed of your inferiority.  The disease I impart is not the plague!  It is only a means to an end!  It is your people who are the plague!!!" 

     Dorian grabbed her head, pumping information in.

     Visions of wars overwhelmed her.  She saw ethnic riots.  She saw revolutions against dictatorships and civil wars against brothers.  She saw rival Rwandan classes slaughtering each other with machetes.  She saw the blight overtake Vietnam as the Viet Cong swarmed the capital and as the Khmer Rouge murdered thousands in the Cambodian killing fields.  She saw competitive governments fighting for the economy whilst their people starved.

     Humans killed humans, either for money, or power, or land, always.  It was Valorie's turn to fall shaking onto the sand.

     "This is what you think of us," she muttered on her knees. "This is what you think."  She felt broken, repeating the phrase over and over.  She had no argument.  Then Valorie lifted her head, her tone changing. "This is what you think of us!"

     "Stop saying that!" Dorian feared what she was about to say.  He scanned the houses bordering the beach.  Where was the predator?

     "Your judgment is nothing but surface.  You haven't dug deep enough!  If this is what you think, how are you different?"

     He tried uselessly explaining, "Think of your family tree in reverse, upside down if you will.  There are a few clean and perfect roots at the very top.  My job is to prune away the unnecessary.  The tree digresses down hundreds of wild branches, tens of thousands of filthy twigs, and billions upon billions of leaves.  You are the leaves.  I carefully prune those twigs, scale back the tree, and clean the timeline.  You would refer to it as "trimming the fat"."

     Valorie wasn't buying it. "'Trimming the fat?!'  Is that what I am?  Useless fat to be seared off and discarded?”

     "It is a gift!  We wish to rid you of your terrible existence.  Is it not better to...?"

     "Murderer!" she cut him off. "What gives you the right?"  She asked the question again. "What gives you the right?  Do you define perfection?  How arrogant!"

     "We are gods by comparison!"

     "You aren't gods!" Valorie screamed in his face, "Have you forgotten what it is to be human?  Has technology stripped you of a conscience?  What are you?  Nothing more than an upgrade?  You're not superior.  I pity you.  Is the past to be thrown away like an outdated cell phone?  Does it mean nothing?  What of the Enhanceds?  What of the Augments?  Did they deserve to die as well? 

     "You aren't saviors; you're murderers!  You are ethnic cleansing us!  You are genocide!  You are war, death, destruction, pain, and killing!  Alterians are the worst of us all!  You have the whole of history to learn from and have done nothing with it!  You disgust me!!!"

     Dorian recoiled.

     He was ashamed.

     Valorie was right.

     What gave him the right?

     How could an inferior be so elevated?

     Dorian closed his eyes and looked down.  When he looked up at her, he had managed a feat no Alterian would ever imagine.  He had a lone tear travelling down his face.

     "I'm sorry," he said. "Thank you.  I have been wrong.  You...you are the most beautiful person I've ever met."

     For all her rage, it was Valorie’s turn to be stunned.  She too felt oddly drawn to him.  What did it take for a being like him to dredge up the humility?  He was such a child, an innocent to the ants he stepped on.  To him this process had been nothing more than spraying antibacterial cleansers.  She felt terrible.  Her words were so harsh.

     "Then it is my turn," she said with just as much conviction, "Let me give you a gift!" Overcome by a torrent of rage and hurt and worry, Valorie suddenly grabbed him and kissed him.  She poured every drop of emotion she could into her lips, and Dorian fell into her.

     Passing by worlds of new understanding, Dorian flew into the deepest truth.  Humans were full of passion.  The wars were followed by families clustered together for strength.  He saw strength during the bad times and joy during the good.  He saw smiles and laughter.  He saw satisfaction and fulfillment.  He even saw the disease he imparted muster within them a core strength to carry on.  Millions soldiered toward a future of hope.  They had faith and love, wisdom and mercy, forgiveness and justice.  And despite all their shortcomings, they had potential. 

     Her parents once danced before the Eiffel Tower.  They sang.  They cheered.  He saw Valerie's mother guiding her young daughter, encouraging her to be better.  He saw Valorie's dad holding her for hours upon his lap as she cried.  The Hepatitis which killed her mother hadn’t been meant for her.  She had been a nurse and got stuck by the wrong needle.  Dorian knew he invented that strain, though.  Suddenly the silver tree, the sacred symbol of purity, was stripped naked of everything good.

     Dorian's world shattered.  He couldn't handle it.  He was responsible.  He pushed the thoughts from his mind and Valorie from off his grip.

     "Traitor!" a mechanical voice yelled.

     Dorian turned.  The hunter was there.  In a moment of weakness, he had let his guard down.

     Valorie screamed.  Dorian pushed her behind him.

     "Infected," the soldier accused. 

     Preparing for the hunter's forward advance, Dorian dug his legs deep into the beach.  Rocks and sand tumbled away from the soldier's kinetic acceleration shield as if they were thrown downhill.  No physical attack short of a crashing jet would penetrate it.  This battle would rage with energies.

     "In the name of all that is pure, I rid you for your newfound sickness!"

     The soldier was massive.  Covered in mechanical white armor, the Alterian was outfitted within both the kinetic shield and living weapon even Dorian could not match.  Smart armor surrounded him too.  Plates of pure tungsten rotated around him with a mind of their own.  No ordinary energy weapon would penetrate them.  Dorian prepared for the worst.  Try, he would.

     The soldier raised both arms and fired a blast of pure laser energy.  Dorian spun his cloak, but it was no match for this level of an onslaught.  It crumbled in places.  Suddenly, Dorian realized that energy can be converted to sound.  Thinking quickly, he deconstructed the light ray, changed it, and reflected back a sound wave louder than a crashing meteor.  The soldier stumbled back. 

     Regrouping, he met Dorian with another altered energy, weak nuclear force.  Dorian felt his very atoms accelerate.  They spun faster and faster, threatening to turn his body into a nuclear bomb.  Orbiting electrons lost control like a race car flying off the track, crashing and burning.  He began to glow red. 

     As the flesh burned from off his face, Dorian struggled to think.  Atomic energy could be released too.  He reached deep within, took ahold of the atomic power, and released waves of violent radiation. 

     The soldier screamed and reflected whatever came to mind, fire, friction, other plasmas, strong nuclear force.  He even fired "bullets" composed of subatomic singularities.  Some blasts Dorian reflected.  Some he threw off the atmosphere. Others he hurled into the magnetosphere.  People for hundreds of miles around marveled at the artificial aurora borealis.  Rainbows covered the North Eastern sky.  All along their path, earthquakes tore streets apart and demolished buildings.  The very air crackled with static.  The onslaught continued, ranging from the New England beach all the way into Canada, electricity, kinetic, gravity, vacuum pressure.

     Eventually, Dorian collapsed.  He had been burned and boiled, electrocuted and crushed.  He couldn't defeat such a villain.  The soldier stepped over Dorian, now fallen to the ground and gasping for air.  Abruptly, Dorian realized he had a weapon far greater than any this soldier could possess, the human condition.

     They were not diseased.  They were not inferior.  They were passionate fighters for everything which was right.  And the Alterians were just what Valorie had said, arrogant.  He also had the World Sphere...

     Dorian lay with his face in the dirt.  As the soldier stepped over him, he made his greatest mistake.  To ensure Dorian’s death, the soldier leaned forward, reached through all of his shielding and shifting plates, and depressed his helmet.  Dorian could barely turn his head.  As the plates pulled away, he looked upon the face of Magistrate Carver.  Dorian was stunned.

     The Magistrate could have killed him easily, standing from afar, but arrogance permeated the whole of his being.  He wanted Dorian to see his face.

     "You suffer the plague, traitor," the Magistrate whispered in his ear. "You must be destroyed."

     To his surprise, Dorian grabbed Carver's arm.  Looking pitifully into his eyes, Dorian converged for a second, and said, "No, Magistrate.  It is you who are the plague!  Your ancestors were Scandinavian.  Your grandparents, a hundred times removed, were Sven and Agneta..."

     Abruptly, Carver screamed.  He contorted.  Particles of a strange crystal surrounded him, fragments of a paradox.  The pieces were violet in color and they encircled him like a chaotic tornado kaleidoscope.  The soldier tried pushing the particles of space time away in vain.  He looked up at Dorian in utter fear, shrunk to near nothingness, and vanished.

***

     For days, Dorian lay upon a crag.  His body shook and lurched, not from the battle, but out of emotional pain.  He neither desired the World Sphere, nor Alteria.  Hollow bones from the dead crushed dryly in his ears and from their shadowy graves empty eye sockets glared fire.  He tried ridding himself of the weight.  Yet the burden clung to him like the stink which clothed the bodies of the multitudes he had murdered. 

     He had to face her, one last time.

     This time Valorie didn't jump.  She could almost feel a tingle in the air as he arrived.  A week had passed since Dorian left the beach.  She didn't know why.  He never said a word.  He was just gone.  She sat alone in an armchair and read quietly with a single lamp.  Dim lights seemed to comfort her.  Dorian was reminded of the desk light on their second encounter.  He wanted to smile.  He couldn't.

     "I can never be with you," he said, the semi-biological skin hanging from off his face.

     Pensively, she waited.

     "I have incurred a debt I can never repay.  It is I who killed your mother," he admitted. "She suffered and died from a strain of mine."

     Valorie dropped her book, eyes suddenly watering.

     "The man who killed your father plunged when he discovered he had AIDS.  Only then did he turn to heroin.  Only then did he grow so desperate.  Your father's death was not his fault.  It was mine."

     Tears dripped off her chin.  Her face was red, and her eyes were shaking.  She covered her face with both hands and sobbed.

     Dorian's bottom lip quivered uncontrollably.  He continued unabated, voice cracking, "And no, my dear Valorie, I was not sent to Converge with you, or to study you, or learn from you, or to ask my questions.  I was sent to kill you, and I almost did!  So, you see, my beloved, it is not I who am superior.  I am what you say, arrogance, filth, murderer!!  It is I who am unworthy!!!"

     With that Dorian, unable to look upon her eyes and before she could utter a word, gripped the World Sphere and, near to the point of shattering it, turned.

***

     He slipped away.  Falling through the grey stream of time, Dorian cried bitterly.  He fell to the ground in an ancient forest, frustrated and enraged. 

     Were he to stand in front of the Magistrate's Chamber now, he would have burned them all.  Instead, he had traveled backward.  A full Norse moon shone overhead as a funeral commenced in the distance.  Dorian waited and watched.  After proud words were said, the family took their leave.  He approached the open grave.  This time, Dorian didn't bother to conceal himself.  He marched straight to the grave diggers, cloak flailing in the wind.

     "You!  Boy!" he addressed the younger of the two, "Your name is Sven.  In ten years’ time you will meet a girl named Agneta.  Remember that name, because if you touch her, I will destroy you.  I will plague all of your family for all of time!  They will all of them die in their wretched skin, should you EVER TOUCH HER!!  I am destruction!  I am Plague!  I am Death!"

     Hollow eyes of molten red stared from beneath the black cloak, singed and still smoking from the radioactive decay.  The silver staff burst into existence from his hands along with its sharp blade atop.  Thrusting it into the ground, Dorian launched lightening from all around and screamed, "GOOOO!!!"

     Both boys ran until their legs collapsed.  Both soiled and wet themselves.  Both wept like little girls.  Neither would speak for months.  When they did, no one believed a word.  After ten years, Agneta was the one who smiled first, and before a glimmer of it could even fade, Sven had already taken to flight in an all-out panic.  And now Magistrate Carver could never have been born.

     As the two little boys stumbled over each other to flee, Dorian nearly smirked, almost.  With a single arm, he reached into the shallow grave.  Hoisting the three-hundred-pound beast of a man up onto his shoulder, Dorian turned toward the fjord.  Moonlight capped the Norwegian Sea.  High in the distance, overlooking frozen seawater, were the Scandinavian Mountains.  Every step was arduous.  Mile by mile, he carried the parasite infested body over to the mountains and up.  High on the side, he buried the man under a hundred feet of ice knowing full well the parasite was his own design, and it would wait for Valorie to find.

     The gesture gave him peace to a degree.  He knew it ensured time with Valorie, time which had already come and gone.  The violet crystal grew upon all the earth.  Dorian knew now what it meant.  He had created it.

     He turned the World Sphere.  Dorian stepped gently into the Magistrate's Chamber.  Only two remained.  Despite his soft gait, both turned, Clara and Carver.

     "Hello, Dorian," Mistress Clara greeted him, "Was your mission a success?"

     "No, Mistress."

     "My goodness, Dorian, why not?" she inquired.

     "Because I no longer agree with it.  I have found that the humans were never what we thought."

     Their eyes widened.

     "I regret all my missions," he continued. "Humans are worthy of their own future.  They have the right to make it as they wish.  We will never again interfere."

     "Sacrilege," Magistrate Carver firmly responded, "I have been watching you for some time, Dorian.  We know what path you've been walking.  It is then my duty to inform you that you must end."

     Reaching out to the top of his desk, Magistrate Carver picked up a small clear cube.  He ingested it without hurry or emotion.  Whirring machines surrounded him.  He was lifted high into the air by hundreds of tiny devices, all programmed to build a single yet deadly exoskeleton.  Carver was rewritten before their eyes.  White plates interlinked, atomic engines burgeoned into place, and groupings of energy conversion matrices were given birth.  The plates spun around him with lightning speed as Magistrate Carver dropped to the ground.

     "You are at your weakest when you are with her, the human woman."

     He said no more.  Pressing a button on the arm of the suit, Magistrate Carver stepped into the past with a brilliant flash of light.  

     DDorian said nothing.  He just watched.  Instantly thereafter, Carver careened back.  From the same portal, Carver fell right back into the Magistrate's Chamber, seizing painfully under a ton of crushing violet glass shards.  For a moment, Carver existed in both places.  He was both born and not born.  He both interfered and disappeared.  And he shrunk equally in every possible time period as his existence had been ripped away.  By the time it was finished, the whole of his universe was encapsulated in a tiny violet shard upon the floor.

     "What's this?" Mistress Clara noticed the crystal.  She bent over and ran her fingers straight through it, unawares that it was a fragment of space time.  She tried again and again could not physically touch it.

     "It's an active paradox.  You can't pick it up," Dorian explained, "He's gone."

     "Who's gone?" She replied with a funny look.

     She wasn't protected like he was.  Mistress Clara didn't remember Carver any more than Valorie recalled the fight on the beach.  To them, he was never there at all.

     "It doesn't matter," Dorian said plainly.

     He walked over to the window.  Alteria was empty.  No one walked the beaches.  No one strolled the forests.  No one sat under the glorious sunsets.  There was only quiet.

     "What have we done?  I hate it.  Life once teamed here.  You could not see it, the Magistrates themselves dropping from thirty, to ten, to five, to two.  I have seen Alteria dissolved from 70 billion to only two single persons," Dorian spoke as he stared outside.

     "Dorian, what do you mean?  There has always been just the two of us.  We have eliminated the inferior past...wait...Dorian, what did you mean you "hate"?  Have you become infected?  Are you suffering from the human condition?"

     Am I suffering?  Yes. Dorian thought. From the human condition?  Abruptly, Dorian grabbed her by the throat.  He yanked her face up to his own, stared her down, and growled, "Absolutely!"

     Without letting her go, Dorian rotated the World Sphere a final time.

     Clara pushed away from him, but then suddenly realized she was no longer in the Magistrate's Chamber.  She was in a lab.  It looked familiar, being full of rows of single pane glass monitors and tiny whirring creation machines.  This was her lab, a long time ago.

     Another Dorian was encapsulated in an incubation nodule.  Machines flew about like bees upon their hive.  He was fully grown, however unborn, and still under production.  His eyes were shut, and he wore no clothes. 

     The older cloaked Dorian walked over.  Clara watched.  He reached inside the nodule and took a hold of his younger self by the shoulder.  Pressing the World Sphere into his chest, Dorian looked sadly at Clara.

     "I am giving a gift to myself, and in turn, all Alterians," the aged Dorian explained, "Once every iota of our existence has been removed, Alteria will thrive again.  70 billion inhabitants will roam the clean streets and pathways once more.

     "Doom will follow you if you repeat the same mistakes, so I have decided to give you all the most wonderful gift.  It's a plague, a most extraordinary disease.  I'm giving you the plague of a conscience.  This Dorian will know what I know.  He will have all of my memories.  He will have learned what I learned, and it will spread to everyone he touches, the terrible horrible pathogen of...emotion."

     The final word exploded in her ears.

     "You can't.  Dorian, you'll infect us all.  If you alter your birth, you'll create a paradox.  We cannot exist."

     "Haven't you figured it out yet?" He went on. "Haven't you seen the violet crystal surrounding Alteria?  We are already in a paradox.  We have been all along!  All the dead are dead only to us.  Their fate too is wrapped within my paradox.  You and I will be ripped from existence.  My disease, my plagues, my pathogens, my parasites, and all my death will be torn away with us.  Let the humans grow on their own.  This Dorian will teach the new Alterians why it is necessary that we don't interfere."

     "You'll tear the universe apart!” Clara berated him. “You'll shred time itself!  Can it bear a paradox that large?  And what of you?!  You will be immune, but how will he recall these things?  Memories from a timeline which never happened?  It's a paradox in itself.  What will protect him?"

     Dorian smiled and glanced down.  Only a single finger remained on the World Sphere.

     "You're giving it to him?!!"

     Suddenly, she realized how dire her situation was.  Clara abandoned all reason, trading sanity for rage.  She dove across the room, fingers outstretched.  Dorian cocked his head to the side, mysteriously smiled, and pulled his finger off the Sphere.

     Instantly, both of them began to vanish.

     The lab sat alone.

     Burgundy light glowed softly in the arms of a new host.

***

     Children clamored all around the museum display, shoving each other to see.  Most of them had gleeful expressions, laughing, joking, and poking playfully.

     "Who do you guys think this is?" Valorie asked with enthusiasm.  She pointed at a life-like replica of a tall and very creepy man in a cloak.  She assisted a regular tour guide.  Of course, the teenage girl gladly stood aside for the museum curator.

     "Is it a monk?" One of the kids guessed.

     "Wow!  Good guess!" Valorie answered. "He's not a monk.  Would you be surprised to find out he is Death!" 

     Valorie made a shocked face.  All the children giggled.

     "That's right.  He represents death.  Many cultures have stories which describe this spooky character, the Norse, the Greeks, and many others.  They thought he carried all kinds of plagues.  He isn't real, of course.  They lived at a very dark time, called the Dark Ages."

     "I think he comes from the Violet Crystal," one of the little girls reasoned.

     Valorie stood.  Gazing out of the large glass windows, Valorie looked at it for a second.  The strange violet crystal stretched diagonally across the sky.  It had always been there, and no one quite understood it.

     "Nobody knows," she answered, intentionally mysterious, "Maybe!  Maybe he's watching us right now!  He certainly is a spooky character, isn't he?"

     The kids agreed, nodding their heads, as scared as can be.  Valorie beamed and winked at the young tour guide, giving her permission to move on.  After the kids were led off, Valorie turned back to the window.  Glass panels ran from the ceiling to the floor, and they still weren't long enough.

     "What do you think it is?" A man approached from behind.

     The violet crystal shard had been an enigma to all.  It rested along the horizon no matter what.  Nobody could either drive to it, fly to it, or sail to it, ever.  You could neither triangulate it by coordinated airplanes, nor even truly agree upon its location.  It defied all logic and physics.  The monstrosity had just been there, ever out of reach.

     "No one knows," she admitted without turning around, "I've always been drawn to it.  Some say it's another universe.  Others say it's either a hole in space, or a wormhole, or something else.  What do you think?"

     Valorie turned around and was immediately struck.  The man was so handsome, Greek maybe, with olive skin.  He was tall, good looking, proudly donning a shaved head, and he wore a well-fitted suit.

     "It's a paradox," he said.

     Val smiled and then frowned.  She wasn't sure if he was either uttering a truism or speaking metaphorically.

     He added, "It's a reminder of the way things shouldn't be." His voice carried so much weight.  He changed topics. "The character you spoke of – Death.  He appears in literature all across battlefields and disease, wielding a silver scythe.   The origin is perhaps from the Norse Valkyrie, or maybe the Greek god Thanatos.  Who knows?  None of them were real gods.  He is nothing but a legend, an echo of what once has been.  I had a dream of him when I was born.  I dreamed he came to me and gave me a great gift."

     "Who are you?" Valorie asked, intrigued.

     He touched Valorie's arm.  At first, she wanted to pull away.  He was a stranger after all, but a curious sensation flooded into her.  She nearly fainted in place, woozy.  The new Dorian caught her.  Valorie was just beautiful.  Sunlight crowned her head, turning her auburn hair into brilliant gold.

     "Why do I remember you?" she asked weakly. "I have memories.  We were in love."

     Dorian raised a finger to his lips.

     "Shh..." he said and winked, "It was just a dream.  Would it be alright if I met your parents?”