To Cover Yer Neck

Some are born to move the world
To live their fantasy
But most of us just dream about
The things we'd like to be...

Sadder still to watch it die
Than never to have known it

For you, the blind who once could see
The Bell Tolls for Thee

He's got a force field
And a flexible plan
He's got a date with fate
in a black sedan
Plays fast forward just as long as he can...

February 24, 2001 4:04 pm EST

Michael heaved, then heaved a sigh of relief. A 10 Kilogram bomb landed with a ground pounding thud. Had anything been beneath it, it would have been crushed or decimated, depending on what it was made of. Michael checked the next target and did the computations necessary to navigate to its location. Theoretically, he could have the entire sequence programmed into a GPS, but where was the challenge in that? He applied the proper amount of impulse and he was off. His shopping cart strained under the mass of a large sack of whole-grain flour. Next on his list was the brown sugar. A 5 kilogram bag would suffice. He only needed 4Kg. for his recipe, even a batch this large, but the remainder would serve as his "treats" after a real meal. He hadn't had a chocolate... well, anything, since the new year, slash century, slash millennium. And it showed, or more accurately, didn't show. He had lost some weight, and more volume since the new year.

And from these massive batches of bread he made, many in the office were doing better than they were. Rusty had lost two belt holes worth of dimension, Claudette was so tall that it wouldn't show one way or the other, but she claimed she'd used it for carbohydrate packing, which dropped 20 seconds off her 5K time. Dan wouldn't touch the stuff, since it contained ingredients that had once grown on a plant, but he did ask for a loaf to slice up and as armor at a Society for Creative Anachronism event. He claimed that it would absorb a sword stroke, but probably wouldn't stop a crossbow bolt. Michael had been tempted to test the theory with Dan holding it up in front of himself.

The energy contained in this recipe was also helping Michael concentrate on the two largest blips on his radar screen... the ongoing talks on total nuclear disarmament, and the arrival of Marena. One was being delayed as much as the other. She was supposed to have been in town for Valentine's Day, but Former president Clinton's talks with his new friend, Castro had been going so well that she couldn't justify breaking away. She was there as a facilitator, having, as a Mexican economics attache, worked closely with both the US and Cuba. Now, for the first time, both. She had whispered to him in Secure Mode that the embargo on Cuba would probably be lifted by summer.

Michael lifted enough sugar to make the end of the embargo worthwhile and plopped it onto the flour bag. He had chosen to use dark brown sugar this time. The added molasses made the bag noticeably denser than the light brown. More like a fiber-laden coffee cake than a bread, and the extra molasses in the sugar added mass and viscosity that held it together in slices, and would probably stop a bullet if it had to.

She promised to be in town at the end of the month. Michael scanned his calendar for the week. Today was the 24th, a Saturday. His 30-hour day schedule had him meeting with a "ways and means" committee under the Security Council on Monday, the 26th. The meeting would include several "sub-consultants" who were experts in the technical details of missiles, warheads, subs and satellite "devices". In a perfect world, or at least more perfect, he wouldn't even need to be there. If the sides, or really, parties involved had wanted to do this, they could have hammered out the technical details alone. Part of the problems was, strangely enough, that there were no "sides". It had been established that, as Sting had foreseen in his Dream of the Blue Turtles, that the Russians DID love their children too.

If it had been just Us and Them, it would have been easier. But having so many countries, many who hated each other in pairs, with nuclear weapon capability, specifically missile capability, made it much more complex. It was like a giant game of Risk, with at least 10 players, and permutations of "who targets whom" permutated with abandon. It gave you the spins just trying to collate it all.

So Michael had worked up an index, a scorecard of sorts. It strongly resembled a football pool, but worked more like the Torino Scale that was devised to assess Asteroid Strike Potential. He worked it up with someone who was "young enough to know better." It was one of the first "fresh ideas" that she had brought to Rivendell as a Co-op... so he named it after her. "Willa" swore that if he ever called her by that name in public, she'd cap him! He was sure that she could cap with the masters. He was also sure why she went by "Adrienne". The Gavon-Shaunheim Index had helped split the schedule of negotiations into the relevant-only groups, pairs really.

Gavon-Shaunheim Index The T4E Scale for Nuclear Threat Classification US Russia Islamic CIS China India Pakistan NATO Israel Islamic Bomb Terrorists US 0                   Russia 10 0                 Islamic CIS 8 7 0               China 10 10 7 0             India 3 5 7 9 0           Pakistan 2 5 5 5 10 0         NATO 10 10 10 10 3 3 0       Israel 2 6 10 6 3 5 7 0     Islamic Bomb 7 6 1 3 5 2 5 10 0   Terrorists 5 6 2 1 3 2 5 7 2 2 Legend                     Low Hazard Moderate Hazard Higher Hazard The numbers were normalized from a complex but believable hash of factors, including: Threat What are the realistic chances of the two “teams” actually nuking each other? Exchange What is the total Megatonnage exchanged? This is usually calculated or estimated from the total known arsenals of both sides. Balancing is handled by the next factor. Evenness In an exchange, what is the balance of power in the exchange? In a US vs. NATO, this number is high, in China vs. Pakistan, this number is low. Difference is absolute, not relative. There is no polarity. Extent If they did, how much territory would be involved? And who would be between them? Israel vs. Islamic bomb would score lower than Israel vs. China. Factors in mostly regarding atmospheric distribution of radioactivity. Efficacy If they did, how many people would be killed and/or wounded. The and/or made the calculations easier, since “nuclear war wounds” are far more draining on the body than a mere bullet wound.

Since Adrienne was often present in many of the meetings as Michael's assistant, he came up with a more pronounceable nickname for the scale. He named it after the 5 factors, 1 "T" and 4 "E's"... the T4E scale. It also kept him from smirking when he said it, knowing she was usually sitting right behind him. He knew from the security measures that she was not armed, but she could always garrote him with her stockings.

Oh, cripes! The end of the month was only in 4 days, not the 7 he thought, having dropped the "except February" rule. He still hadn't orchestrated how he was going to pop the question to Marena. He wanted it to be special, romantic, but his schedule only promised a rush job. He'd have to figure that out quickly, so he could get her set up for the ostensible plan for the evening. It would take him a day just to clean up after his bread-making fest while watching Sunday news shows. He wondered if Marena would like this recipe, and if he'd be allowed to devastate the kitchen after they were married... if they were married. It was still too soon to be sure. He noticed a nice pack of flavored coffees. Adrienne advice had helped. He learned that Marena, being in South America often, was indeed a coffee drinker, and liked her coffee just about any way you could make it. He wondered if she were that way about the other thing. Oh, and she didn't smoke. He grabbed the coffee pack as a token of his love. He also grabbed an 8-liter bottle of canola oil with the Fast-Pour spout. He doubted he'd ever need to pour that fast.

He marveled for a moment at where he was, relative to the world he lived in. There was enough oil, flour, sugar, fruit and soap in this warehouse store to feed much of a central African country. If one could have airlifted this whole building, it would have been adequate disaster relief for those cyclones last year... any of them.

It also reminded him of one of his Economic Laws, "Everything is a Laffer Curve" which paraphrased said that the answer was always in the middle. In this case, if left unchecked by trade laws, this store could grow to encompass all commerce, by crushing all local competition. He called it the "Oak & Maple Law." Without a second body to stop them, the entire commercial sector of the US and probably the world would boil down to about 3 companies. Today, the odds would favor WalMart-Microsoft-Exxon as the unholy trinity. He chuckled that both Microsoft and Exxon would use the "razors are free" rule, where they charged you for the blades...forever. It was easy to imagine Exxon giving away free cars that ran only on a special, expensive blend of Exxon fuel. Same with Microsoft giving away free computers, but charging for access to the software. Walmart would still take cash for things.

On the other hand, it would be easy to imagine "state issued transport", state-sanctioned software and Walmart still charging for things. The world had seen that done, and it didn't last. He doubted that the other end would last, if it ever really happened. The answer was always in the middle. There had to be a balance between Oaks and Maples... and the balance was kept by hatchet, axe and saw. He tried to imagine a tree with an axe... heh heh, er, wait a minute...

Trees don't carry axes, people do. The equalizing factor was a third party. He had never noticed that, in all of his years of listening to Rush's The Trees. That was an epiphany, and helped illustrate his point about keeping things balanced in the middle.

Then he saw something that upset his balance. Dried cherries. He admitted it... he was a cherry addict. His soda had it, and if it didn't, he'd add it. His "cordial" drink was a cherry tasting port wine in diet soda, and his wines all had a cherry ambience. This was his secret ingredient. The recipe called for raisins, but he preferred cherries over raisins. He grabbed a 5-pound bag, of which 2 were slated for the bread. He grabbed a 24-pack of his soda cans and headed for the checkout. He'd be through the checkout in 15, he'd have this stuff packed into the hatch, though he'd have to put the seat backs down. He would put on some driving music and conjure up how he was going to ask Marena to marry him, to share his mission, not supersede it. For a few minutes, he had considered not marrying her. He wanted very badly to make this dream work, and he wondered how he could be a good husband and save the world at the same time. But he knew himself too well. If he could live his life without the love of a woman, he would have. He had done alright, but after meeting and getting to know Marena, it would have been impossible. Nothing was going to keep him from her, and vice versa. Their schedules were going to be very incompatible, for a while, but they were prepared for that. They hoped.

It would be an enjoyable cruise home. The sun would be low, but at his back. He'd be home by 5, if traffic was light. As he popped down the back seats and loaded his dough-boy supplies into the car, he noticed the gallon of oil from his bike's oil change, nested between the front seat back and the back seat. he had forgotten to drop it off at the oil change place next to the office. Well, he'd be there in 30 hours, so he could do it then. The weather was warm enough that he could have ridden the bike, but not to haul this cargo. It was another proof of global warming, like the starving polar bears. This one, he didn't mind so much. When Bevin's was out of the shop, they could cruise out, maybe next weekend. Ooops, not next weekend, He'd have company, though she would look good on his cruiser... the back, that is. He wondered if Marena would make him sell his bike, especially after Kendall's wreck last year. 'Over his dead body,' was his first thought, but then he remembered some of the cartel members she'd faced down in negotiations. She was probably too well connected for him to survive that challenge. One step at a time.

Michael popped in some Rush songs suitable to be driving music and wailed out of the parking lot. As he did the high-G turn on the on ramp, his supplies slid to one side. He went a few degrees too far so he could snap the car back the other way and center his load. It reminded him of riding with Bevin in his minivan. he hated the sliding, which was part of the reason he bought a bike. He wondered if Marena would want them to get a minivan. He had been driving a StarGlider for so long, it seemed odd to imagine himself in anything else. Of course, it wasn't this StarGlider. It was cheaper to buy another one on eBay and strip parts than to try to get someone to change yer radiator. He popped open the sunroof and turned on the heat to keep the temperature at an acceptable level. And he floored it.

Without being too obnoxious, he gently weaved his way through traffic at about 7 over the nominal, which was actually about 5 over the speed limit. "Computer, get Email!" The computer didn't respond. He flipped down the heads-up visor to see a screen which was on, but had no input. Rats... he must have bumped the cable when the goodies slid, and dropped the power on his computer. Bevin had a slick system, but some things, like mounting hardware were precarious, at best. Oh well, the stereo still worked, and he wasn't expecting any mail. Marena wouldn't be on tonight and Adrienne wouldn't get on till 8ish. She hung out online a lot more since her brush with Michael last month. She spent time she would have wasted on the net, socializing while being socially conscious. he could also yak with her and pick her brain for new ideas. He was nearing the "drop-off" in traffic where most people who were going to get off, had. From there, Michael owned the road, and his UN License plate worked better than any radar/laser detector, though he still had one, on.

At the last city exit for 5 miles, he poured on the coal. His 2.6 liters wasn't as fast in the long run, but was great for maneuvering in this kind of traffic. He wondered what, if anything, he would replace it with. He recalled a commercial where a car was racing a bullet. Maybe he was grown up enough for a German sedan. Just then, a black sedan, like the one in the commercial whipped past him. It had the European plates, and was intimidating people out of the leftmost lane as they approached from behind, flashing their lights. 'This guy knows how to drive!' he thought, and eased his turbo up to smoothly fly in formation with him. They proceeded about half a mile when the sedan apparently took his foot off the gas and coasted down to about 79, which was way too slow for traffic, or Michael.

"Ok, he wants me to lead... must have seen the Diplomatic License. Out of towners...' Michael didn't mind leading. He pressed on the turbo and smoothly passed the guy on the left, about 3 miles per hour faster. just fast enough to get around without issuing a challenge. As he passed, he noticed that the passenger window was down, and a passenger nodded respectfully. the guy had short black hair, and a 4 week old beard. He could have been German or Russian or Arabic, but judging from the black turtleneck, leather jacket, somewhat like Michael's and the 50 degree breeze, they must have been German, like the car. This would have been a pleasant late spring drive for them. As he ticked past them and was about to pass the front of the car, Michael's detector registered 'laser'. He momentarily eased his foot off, but it was a weak signal, but then, a streak of red slashing across his windshield, then glinting on his glasses spiked his adrenaline. It had happened once before at a gun shop in Florida. A red streak on the wall had turned him around reflexively to see a guy wielding an AR-15, harmlessly. Michael whipped his head to the left, and seeing laser light on him, stomped the brakes as his side window exploded into the car. He careened backward and whipped right, hoping it was a random act of unkindness, but when the black sedan came over after him, to pin him into the right edge, he once again leaned on the brakes and swept in behind them. His cargo spilled all over the back seat. They peeled right and out braked him. Their ABS system was newer and way better than his, but he had nimbleness on his side.

He dropped it into fourth and gave the turbo all there was, thanking Bevin for the extra 7 PSI boost. The driver eyed him as he floored it, but Michael had just a touch of an acceleration advantage, and pulled away for about 5 seconds until they matched speed and began closing. If he could stay on their left, he'd a shot at making it to an exit, and thus to a public place. If he were straight ahead of them, the shooter would have to lean out, so they would try to get around him on his left. He made a note to not let that happen, at any cost.

He recognized the weapon... a Beretta 93R. He'd seen it used on him in several Half-Life Team Fortress mods. One pull, three bullets, ten bursts per clip, and a laser just for style. He had actually owned its little sister when he was in his survivalist phase, but he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it. If he'd had this terrorist weapon, could have hit the narrow side.

He grabbed his cell phone and thumbed 911. He yelled 'Mayday' and his situation, but had to drop the phone to steer through the traffic. They were closing even as he was accelerating his last couple miles per hour before his fuel chip limited him, at just over 120. They were still gaining. He couldn't out brake them, he couldn't outrun them, there was nowhere to go for 4 miles, which was 2 minutes. He looked at his phone for help, but it didn't matter. There was nothing the police could do, in time. The news copter couldn't even get here by then.

This joust would be over in 2 minutes one way or the other. If he could make it to the exit, he could cut through traffic into a large gas station, where he might have enough public eye to save him. He didn't want to kill anyone crossing the road, but he doubted that these guys were being very careful. They were both doing 50 mph over the surrounding traffic. It was keeping them at bay. He had to hold them off for 90 seconds more. Michael realized that drastic measures were necessary.

He punched into the 24-pack cardboard and ripped out a can of soda, almost a pound of pressurized liquid. He'd played chicken tossing empties at his buddies with rental cars at the Cape, even getting one guy to back off when he showed a full can, but this was not a game of chicken. He shook the can vigorously for a second, then lobbed it out and up of the missing window. The sedan easily dodged it, since it had to go up to get into their path. Michael did an instant ballistics calculation, and unlatched the pop-up glass sunroof, then he palm punched it, like Dr. Soren did to l'Ursa. It rose up enough to release the front hooks, and feeling the drag, raced backwards at the guy on his 'six'. They had begun swerving when it hit, edge-on near the bottom of the windshield. It bounced off as it shattered, leaving a lot of spidering, but not enough to shatter their windshield. Michael began tossing shaken pop cans up, letting the wind slow them down, in the hope of taking out the windshield completely.

With yet another minute to any possible exit, he remembered the curve. He'd have to slow down to 90 mph to make it, but then so would they. He recalled all of the stupid James Bond chase scenes. He could use a bullet shield or maybe an oil slick right now. Then he recalled his recycling oil. As he approached the curve to the right, he whipped the cap off and set it up on the back of the sunroof opening. As he hoped, the wind blew it back and it tumbled off his spoiler, and a reasonable slick formed just as he braked and pulled and banked into the turn.

Michael caught a glimpse of the sedan fishtailing and scraping against the dividing wall, but they recovered. As he straightened out, he saw, with mixed feelings, an open road... two miles of it to the exit. He was flat out again and they would be on him in 15 seconds, where he would be a sitting duck. With fear and hope, he had a desperate plan. He noticed that "Red Barchetta" was on, and the hero was in a slightly different predicament. There was no one-lane bridge for Michael. In his 15 seconds of breathing room, he leaned the seat back as far as he could and still glimpse the road. His stomach muscles weren't strong enough to crunch his head up, so he grabbed the brown sugar bag and made a headrest. He hefted the 25 pound sack of flour to where it flopped over the back of the sunroof hole, but not far enough to get blown off. He quickly grabbed his Swiss army knife from his leather bike jacket pocket, and made a slit in the flour bag.

The wind was blowing a reasonable tail of whole grain powder, but the sedan was aerodynamic enough that it was barely an annoyance as it flowed over the hood and windshield. With one last mile left to the exit, he wished it was raining, so that the flour would form a paste, but it wasn't. They were still right on him, trying to get either right behind him, or on his left side. Michael was weaving like a NASCAR driver leading under a white flag when he saw a streak of laser through the white fog, and his rear window exploded, and the shards were blown back into the face of the pursuers, whose shooter had ducked back into the car for safety from the spray of glass. Michael realized he had about 10 seconds until the exit. He grabbed a loose can of WD-40 he carried for frozen locks and began spraying it out the flow of the back window. he had hoped it would mix with he flour and stick to the glass, but not enough. He saw the laser come out of the window and he hunkered down and weaved the car first right a twitch, then snapped it back left. At that instant, a red streak whipped left on his windshield, leaving two clean, spidered holes as it went. Michael's head was sent forward by what felt like a sledgehammer wrapped in a sandbag just as he had begun to slash the car unexpectedly to the right.

His attackers let their foot off the gas to gloat at their kill since he had slumped over quickly, and was about to hit the guardrail between the exit and the e-way.

Michael fought the tunnel vision caused by the leaden pain in left rear of his skull. His exit was just 3 seconds ahead and he was on the power dive to a hope of safety. His hope lay in the chance that the attackers wouldn't venture onto the surface streets where they could be trapped in traffic. As he began to see over the hill, his heart sickened. The light was yellow and traffic was backed up. He had nowhere to go down there, since he would be crushed between the stopped cars. Without an airbag, he'd never know which innocent person he'd have set ablaze, and the sedan with the latest airbags, might even be able to stop and watch him burn.

Instead, he veered as hard left as he could without sliding, because if he slid, he'd be wrapped around the guardrail. He scraped the front right fender and blew the passenger-side mirror off. He glanced back to see what the sedan had done. It had been braking for the exit, and was back on his tail, gaining. He now had another 2 miles until the next exit. There was no way he was going to make it that far. He revised his desperate plan into something even more desperate. If it failed, he was dead. He reached down and pulled the canola oil beside him and uncapped the FastPour spout. With five seconds to go, he reached down to the left of his steering wheel and pulled the cover of his auto fuses off. In the streaming sunlight, he confirmed what he thought he'd remembered from his multiple hours of "special modifications" on his and Kendall's StarGlider, before he upgraded to the new 3000 GT. He counted down to the 6th fuse on the left and yanked it out. As his predators pulled up behind him in the left lane, and then some, he stopped weaving and stared at them through the rear-view mirror, trying to see who they might be. In what may have been his last thought, he cried, "This is stupid!" Who would want him dead? Maybe someone was sitting in the wings of Russia, China, Europe, or even the US, awaiting his turn for the finger on the Big Red Button, and wanted the button to be there when he got there. But Michael was barely able to keep the disarmament pressure on. The United Nations was doing most of it. If he were killed, someone else take his place, eventually.

Of course, by then, Michael would have joined the ranks of Lincoln, Lennon and Martin Luther King, as a martyr of the fledgling "Farewell to Arms" movement, the F2A. But Michael was no king, and was not about to bid farewell. As the bobbing laser on the dash disappeared, he grabbed the canola and frisbeed it out the back window. The mythical centrifugal force spiraled healthy, cholesterol free oil onto the windshield of the tailgater. The flour began to stick, and the wipers were making a middle-eastern bread dough, and forced the driver to pull himself with both hands close to the steering wheel to stick his head out the window. The shooter also, deprived of visibility, got on his knees and hung out the window to get his last 3-round burst off.

Michael stomped on the brakes, and the brake lights, missing fuse #6, failed to come on. The sedan hit him at 25 mph. Within 3 milliseconds, the finest airbags in Europe had fired, tossing the shooter back against the door jamb, snapping his spine and tumbling him out of the car at the remaining 90 miles per hour. The driver had been crashing into the steering wheel when the explosive life saving force of the airbag cracked the whip of his neck. As it hooked in the crotch of the door and rearview mirror, it flicked his head off like a kid with a stick does to dandelion heads.

The icy pain that Michael had been feeling was broadened with the impact, but the brown sugar cradled his head and neck enough to absorb the impact. He thought about continuing to flee, but wasn't sure that the car was not about to explode. He rolled a hundred yards and stopped the car on the left side. He staggered out, and considered waiting for the police, but wondered if they might have had accomplices as back up. Instead, the gamer in him scanned the oncoming traffic on the other side of the highway, lunged over the dividing wall, and plunged safely into the ditch on the other side, barely.

He slithered down the embankment, into a parking lot he half recognized. It was a shopping mall he had visited with a decent gaming store. He slipped into rear entrance near the restrooms and ducked into the women's room. He took the first open stall and latched the door, hoping his small feet wouldn't raise suspicion. He sat on the crapper, and breathed into his hands. The adrenaline, fear and exertion had taken their toll. He whipped around and began to heave into the porcelain pool. He dry heaved for about 30 seconds when he noticed a red smoke ring in the water. Then another. He wiped his left cheek and saw blood on his hand. he felt the headache on his left side, and his hand slid across his wet hair. He ran out of the stall and reached for a wad of paper towels. A crazy idea hit him on the way, and he reached into his pocket for a thankfully-received pair of quarters. He hurriedly dispensed a maxipad and slapped it onto his wound. He ducked back into the stall and checked for any other blood or damage. He knew he had some minor cuts from flying glass, but unlike his car, was in pretty good shape. As he checked the back of his neck, he felt something sharp in the collar dodger he wore. He stretched the tube of fleece out in back and carefully felt the edged object. He carefully clasped it and pulled it out.

The fluorescent light reflected off the nickel coating, and the splayed lead of a silver tipped hollow-point 9mm bullet still had nodules of melted brown sugar embedded in it.

He could vaguely hear sirens up on the highway. Very soon, they would be down here looking for him. By rights, he should call 911 and report in, but something in his paranoia suggested he wait. He grabbed his cell phone from it's jacket pocket and dialed another number instead. Thankfully, Kendall answered. "Hu-llo?"

"Greetings, listen... remember that store you got the Linux version of Quake 3? How quickly could you get here if you had to, in the black car?" Bevin could tell from the way Michael wasn't speaking up that something was up.

"9 minutes. Why?"

"Meet me at the back door in precisely 10 minutes." They both checked their watches. "And bring your baby, and all she can eat. And a towel. Soloth is after me..."

It took Bevin several seconds to remember his own story, told to Michael over a pool table decades ago. He had nearly forgotten. Soloth was an imaginary Imperial Admiral who wanted 'The Four Musketeers' dead, in the worst way. The freighter's Captain had just received an urgent, open-channel distress call from his Astrogator. "Uh, roger. Be there in 9 and 45." Michael killed the connection. Bevin ran downstairs. Merideth was nearly at the basement door when he came flying back up, faster than he ever had since his latest bike dump.

"Take the kids to the church, now." Merideth knew there was a youth service, but they had seldom gone. He already had his Hein-Garrick bike jacket on, and something was stuck under his left. Without a kiss, he bolted out into the garage. The fired up revving of an over-powered car filled her ears. The black streak hit the road, caromed right and was gone.

"KIDZ! In the van... NOW!" She growled the last word to make Lena Horne proud.

Precisely 8 minutes later, Michael was walking down the mall with a mean, mean stride, on his cell phone. He had to tuck it into the hood that was hiding the maxipad. There was a lot of blood, but it was all under his jacket, so no one noticed. He had 30 seconds till he got to the store he mentioned to Kendall. He dialed 911. "This is Michael Gavon. I was attacked by a gunman and driver in a black German sedan with foreign plates. I think they died in a crash. My car is a hundred yards in front of their wreckage. it was self defense. My lawyer will be contacting you ay-sap." He killed the connection, snapped the phone in half on the edge of a fountain cornice, dropped the remains into a trash bin, walked 5 seconds into the software store, where he was recognized by the guys at the counter. Without much fanfare, he walked right into the back of the store, paused for about 3 seconds at the door, and shoved the door open. In the 5 seconds it took to cross the sidewalk, a black car, definitely not a sedan, pulled up beside him. He yanked the door open, dropped into Bevin's 3000 GT, and said, "Chewy, get us outa here!" Taking the cue, and noting the role-play reversal, the black car was gone.

Bevin drove without speaking, knowing that Michael would speak when he needed to. Instead, Michael carefully reached over and into Bevin's jacket and draw Bevin's Baby... an AMT.45 Longslide. Knowing Bevin's style well enough, he pulled the slide and chambered the first round.

Michael spoke. "Did I ever mention I hated my commute?"

Bevin listened to the story while driving around for half an hour without incident or any indication that they were being followed. Michael had paged his lawyer from Bevin's phone. When he called, Michael gave him rather specific instructions, and vice versa. One piece of advice was to seek medical attention immediately.

The doctor marvelled at how lucky he had been to take a 9mm slug in the head and live to whine about it. She also told him, that if it hadn't been for the brown sugar, he'd either be dead, or less dead than he wanted to be. If it had hit him any harder, the cuncussion alone would have hampered his left-brain activity for a while. She didn't recognize his mumbled reference to becoming Dionysus, but Bevin did.

For a change, Bevin watched as the doctors patched Michael up. They had to scrub pretty hard to get all of the melted sugar out of his skin. Instead of stitches, they used metal staples, which would stay in for about a week. Michael tried to sweet talk the admin from reporting the gunshot wound to the police, which was SOP. He tried to play the diplomatic jurisdiction card, but it didn't seem to phase her. Either she didnt' know or care who he was. Neither did she know or care what a stink this would cause in the media, with a UN diplomat attacked on a New York parkway.

"Oh, my..." Michael exclaimed. "If Marena hears this on the news before I can contact her..."

"Yer dead." Bevin finished for him.

Michael reached for Bevin's phone, but thought for just a bit. "How paranoid are we?"

"I would assume pretty damn high until we get determine the state of the enemy."

"Is your phone bugged?"

"Yes. By the attackers? Maybe. If they know that you call me, then sure it is."

"I'll have to try Email." Michael wondered if she would check her email before she might see the news. He didn't know precicely where she was, but he could find out. But it wouldn't help him contact her if she were out of cell range, a condition that was pretty likely where she was.

"Uh, I wouldn't do that either. If this is someone big, they would easily watch your EMail. And Chatter is right out."

"My EMail... maybe. But I have an idea."

"The Ghost in the Machine?"

"It's old and dumb, but it still works, and I haven't used it since..."

"...you attracted someone's attention."

"Evidently. But who?" It still gnawed at him.

"I'd run out of gas before I ran out of choices. You take down the nuclear umbrella, and there are ALL kinds of people who will be out of work, bored or diappointed. And then, there are the groups who would just get itchy if you said that out loud."

"Militias?"

"Militia's, terrorists, spies, intergovernmental organizations. And you mentioned the anti-nuke forces who might want to martyr you for quicker results. Maybe this was a 'fake hit'.

"If they were trying to NOT kill me, they didn't do a very good job. If it wasn't for the ersatz sandbag, you'd be getting your black suit cleaned. You've played Half Life... who would use a gun like the Beratta 93R?"Michael didn't know alot about guns. Bevin did, but not about terrorists guns, but he had read a lot of books, like Clancy, Hunter, Marchinko, even the guy who wrote 'Sniper'. He might have a clue.

"Hmmm, it's an Italian gun, but the car was German. Probably not the Mob..."

"I'd like to think that The Mob didn't have their fingers in the nuclear weapons world."

"Could have been Russian Mafia. They would loose a lot of cash selling to Osama bin Laden, or that new guy. But here's my guess. Either it was chosen to give InterPol a good idea who it was as a statement, or it was chosen to give someone a false idea who it was."

"Great!"

"We have an idea who it wasn't, if that helps."

"Depends." Michael had no idea if knowing who it wasn't would make him feel better. He couldn't stop rubbing the electric iciness of the staples.

"If it were US military, or any other large military, they'd have popped you with a nice sniper shot. If it were militia, they'd have perforated your car, and you with massive automatic weapon hail, just as a show of force. If it were US Government, but not the military, you'd have commited suicide."

"Oh stop that!" He'd heard Bevin talk like that before. Bevin was looking over his glasses at him. "You're serious?"

"Mmm-HMMM!"

"Okay, then let me say this, and you never forget it. IF I ever commit suicide, I swear on my stack of Rush CD's that I will NOT shoot myself. That way..."

"...if you 'do', then I'll know it wasn't suicide. Got it."

"I've got to send EMail from somewhere soon or Marena will suicide me."

"Where to?" Bevin asked, knowing that both his and Michael's place were out of the question. Michael checked the time. It was nearly 8:00. He gave him a cross-street to drop him off. Michael handed the baby back to her daddy. "Keep it." He whipped off the carrying rig and handed it to him. It fit nicely under Michael's leather jacket. As they neared the drop zone, Michael gave Bevin a warning.

"I don't know who it was. Right now, I would trust no one. If they don't know you picked me up, you should be safe, but I would watch everyone with a paranoid eye. I know I will be." Bevin nodded, not knowing, but at least understanding. His folks hadn't seen the kids in a while.

They got to Michael's target intersection and stopped at the light. As the cross streets light turned, Bevin quoted a Babylon 5 episode they both knew, and knew what it meant... "Watch yer back, Michael." Michael nodded and opened the door. As his left foot cleared the door, Bevin stepped on the gas, and Michael's hand held the door as it went, closing as it vanished. He walked several steps down the sidewalk until he could no longer see the wraith or hear the thrum of his 10 cylinders. Then he turned around, went back 12 blocks, and knocked on a door he'd only heard about. Adrienne opened the door. "Can I trust you?" he asked, dead serious.

"Sure," She answered, as if he'd asked, 'can you hold my Date-a-Book?'

He stepped in and closed the door behind him. "I need your computer."

"Um, OK." She took him to her bedroom where heer black cherry iFruit sat next to her bed. He grabbed a chair and hit the Net without saying another word. "What's up?" She could tell something was up. She moved in behind him hoping to get a glimpse of where he was surfing to in such a hurry. 'bevin.omni-science.com' she mumbled. Just then, she noticed the staples in his hair, glinting in the near dark. "Omigod..." she breathed in through her hands. "What happened?!" As Bevin's Net Server responded, he reached into his inner jacket pocket, held his fist out to her. She placed her hand under his and he dropped the contents into her palm. She had never felt anything so dense. It took her a little while to recognize the twisted metal. "Are you serious? This did that? You should be dead!" He calmly laid the longslide on her bed.

"Apparently, someone shares your opinion. If I don't get a message to Marena before she hears about this, I will be."

"Are they after her, too?" She assumed he knew who it was. Michael paused for just a second.. he hadn't thought of that. Was Marena a target too? He doubted that "the powers that be" knew that he and she were involved, but if the powers were powerful enough, they could. That didn't help. He typed with even more resolve.

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"So what are you doing here?" It was a very plain Web form he was filling out.

"Remember that EMail you got from Yoda? And Darth Maul?"

"Yeah, the ones you sent?"

"How did you know it was me?"

"I dunno, I just knew." She had quite a bit of intuition, but it was pretty obvious it was him.

"Like you did about that survey?"

"No, wait... how did you know about that? OH MY GOD! You sent that to me? I thought it was from on of my portal sites. When I submitted the form, it said that I scored as "sweet angel - 66.6%, little devil - 33.4%"

"Yeah, too bad about Number 13..."

She remembered the quiz. "Things You'd Never Do." When she answered 'Sure, Why not', she didn't dream that her form was going to Michael's server. She slapped him on the back of the head. Fortunately, it was on the right side, not the left. "Ooops! Sorry."

"I deserved it." Though he didn't tell her how much that really added to the migraine he had on the other side, now. "It was worth it, though." He especially liked her answer to 'Sleep with a guy twice your age.' If memory served, she had marked that one 'A) Like now?'

"How did you do that!?" She knew he was a wizard, like that street magician.

"The same way I'm doing this." he press the Submit button. Light milliseconds away, the form bounced from Bevin's Net Server to another somewhere else, to another somewhere else. And finally, to Marena's mail server. Now all she had to do was read it, before it was too late. He went to a site that he had hidden deep within Rivendell's server. Pressed an unlabeled button which brought up an unlabelled map. Somewhere out there, a GPS satellite whispered a request, and a response was whispered back, like the prayers of a digital angel.

A short, but noticeable few seconds later, a red dot glowed in South America. "Feliz Navidad, mi ami." he whispered, referring to the new cell phone he'd bought her for Christmas. He had made fun of himself for his 'practical gift', but she didn't know just how practical it was. He clicked on the dot, and a grape cluster of circles overlapped each other, but not the dot. Her phone was not in range of a cell, so he couldn't call. He read the LAT/LONG field, and refreshed the screen for about a minute. They didn't move, which meant she wasn't. He'd have to wait until she hit the Net or got into range. He hated waiting, but really had no where to wait.

Without turning around, he asked. "Can I crash here tonight?"

Her nerves shot a static charge, and ignited a surge of adrenaline, which faded like thunder. "You mean, like, on the couch, right?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I have a splitting headache tonight."

"Sure." She couldn't help but add a silent 'as if'.

Early Monday afternoon, Adrienne's cell phone rang. She handed it to Michael. "It's your lawyer." Michael put the phone to his ear, but caught the antenna on his 'stitches.'

"Michael, the police have taken your proxy statement and will not be filing any charges. But they also have no leads into the identity of the attackers. Are you sure no one has threatened you?"

"Yes, but Marena will probably kill me if she finds out about this before I can reach her. Her phone is out of range. I hope she checks her email before she sees it on the news." 'Damn, Iridium!' he thought. "How's my house?"

"The security firm says it checks out. Dogs gave it a clean bill of health. Your limo and escort will pick you up tomorrow at your scheduled time." They were still careful not to speak too much detail, just in case.

"I would feel better if I knew who it was. I don't want to be a limo rider for long. I like driving."

"The NYPD is contacting the FBI and Interpol. There is a bit of a jurisdiction issue, since you have UN Diplomatic status. But so far, they can't identify the bodies because they are charred beyond recognition. Hit-men don't keep very good dental records."

"So they've found that they were professionals? Not just some disgruntled citizens fo the world?"

"Most citizens can't get the Beretta 93R sub machine pistol. Fewer can get it into this country."

"Undetected..." Michael added.

"Right. Anyway, the press wants to talk to you, and the best advice I have,based on some calls to anti-terror forces I know, is that you should go public to show that you are alive, well and not deterred by the attack."

"What if I am?"

"Then your mission is over, and they've won."

"Whomever they are... I see your point."

"Oh, one more thing. I don't know how this plays in, but I'll ask you and you can consider it. It's about the cell calls you made to 911."

"Yeah?" He thought he was going to be asked for news broadcast rights.

"Well, apparently, there's no record of your call being received." Michael slumped a little. He was sure he had made the connection to 911. He heard the dispatcher's voice. Didn't he? He had been a little busy at the time. He shrugged off his apparent incompetence and dialed his voice mail. He had one message. It was a death threat.

"Oh! You are so dead if you don't call me in 20 minutes at my cell phone number! Why aren't you answering your phone!?" He checked the time stamp. It was at about 12:03, his time. Apparently, Marena had just seen the news. He dialed her number from Adrienne's cell phone, still a little paranoid about who might be tracing him. As the phone rang, he wondered, too late, what her Caller ID might say. He also reaslized that he didn't remember seeing the attacker's car burst into flames.

Wednesday afternoon, Michael had been sitting at home, on edge. Despite the constant, nagging headache in his left side, he mustered his rational side to fight the urge to panic when a black German sedan pulled into his driveway. As the large chap opened the front door, his butterflies were more of relief than panic. Even glimpsing the hand on the Glock inside his open jacket didn't fluster him enough as he waited for who was coming in next. Suddenly, bursting throught the front door was Marena. She threw herself at him, and they hugged as if they had thought they would have never seen each other again. Which was how she felt.

He had wanted to meet her at the airport, but his "security consultants" didn't want to risk taking him there, and then both of them back. They still really didn't know who they were dealing with. Therefore, predicting them was impossible. He was safer here than anywhere. Now they were.

The posse left them alone, sort of. With an obvious presence nearby, and considerable presence nowhere near as obvious, the UN had beefed up security in response to his attack, even though no claim or threat had been made. There was something that just didn't spin well if a messenger of peace is threatened or killed in his home country. If they couldn't protect one of their own, how could they protect the peace of the world?

After she had held him for nearly two minutes, she grabbed his head and kissed him through her tears of desperate relief. She had lost him 10,000 times between her first seeing the news reports and now. Even seeing him speaking to reporters in front of the UN building didn't ease her fear. It was too easy to imagine a bullet from nowhere taking him out on camera. And with some of the public outrage and attention being whipped up, his cause of nuclear disarmament was gaining more support, making him a juicier target. And with most experts concluding the attack to have been by "pro-nuclear" factions, the public had equated the willingness to pull the trigger, with the willingness to push the button. Protests had erupted in support of Michael and his cause... their cause. Who ever had tried to silence him, had failed, making him a living martyr.

She kissed him with all of her mouth, heart and soul, and her tears helped wash away the pain she had felt for days now. His pain was easing some also, but her nails digging into his stitches had crossed that fine line between pleasure and pain. He gently pried her hands from his head.

"Don't you ever do that again..." she threatened him.

"Oh, I guess I'll have to cancel the car bombing next week then."

"That's not funny!"

"I know, but I'm new to this death threat thing. Although, technically, there was no threat, just action. Obviously, the UN wasn't behind it." He'd made a joke about his opinion of UN action, but she didn't even hear it. "Here, sit down, let's relax and enjoy being together, instead of dwelling on... something else." He didn't want to say what the opposite of 'being together'.

They plopped onto the couch, and she snuggled up onto his chest, and he wrapped his arm over her. After a little while of talking about some of the changes that the attack had brought, and examining his miraculously small head wound, they finally settled down into talking about mundane things like uniting economies and eliminating weapons. He wanted to save their more intimate talk for their dinner tonight. She was in town till Sunday morning. He had a couple days to be with her, to feel her presence and to test her waters.

This was the first time he was in the same country with her since he and Adrienne had talked about their potential marriage. He had planned on spending tonight and tomorrow learning how much about her he didn't know yet. And then learn what there was to learn. Adrienne had been right, and he wanted to make it up to himself.

He also wanted to give her the two days to make this sick, terrible feeling in his gut go away. She certainly could, but he didn't want her to know it was there. She'd have to make it go away without knowing what it was, or that it was even there. He figured that two days with her would be enough.

Within an hour, the world had vanished, and it was just her and him. He had offered his token of love... a variety pack of coffee, though not the same pack, which was gone with his StarGlider. The closest they came to dwelling on 'the incident' was when she asked him what kind of car he was going to replace his old StarGlider with. He took that golden opportunity of learning her opinion of his motorcycle.

He watched her talk, move, gesture, sip, and all of the many things that he wanted to see her do, forever. As each minute passed, he knew more and more that he could love this woman everyday, for the rest of their lives. Every five minutes or so,he would move in close to her as she talked and would place a quiet little kiss on her cheek. Any chance he got, he would twiddle her hair. There was no better feeling in his entire world than her snuggled up to him. It made him forget the nagging pain in his head, and in his gut, for a while.

If she got up to depreciate his gift of coffee, he would watch her walk away, and as soon as the door would close, the battle for his future that raged in his mind would rekindle. He wanted nothing more than to be alone with her in peace and solitude, except of course, for saving the world as a whole. He would beat himself back by reminding himself that a hectic, frazzling life of his mission, her mission and their intermissions together would be infinitely better than a single focus... without her. He wanted to talk it out with her, to get her feelings on the topic, and to hear her soothe his anxiety as his love and life collided.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" she asked, catching him by surprise.

"The future?"

"THE future, or our future?" He noticed that that was almost exactly what he said to Adrienne.

"THE future... AND our future." He had deftly framed his life's dilemma in the form of a structured query language term. After all, 'there was no problem which cannot be solved by judicious application of a database', he quoted himself in lucid silence.

"Well, I'm glad you said that, because I want to talk to you about that." She was coming closer to him, but was stopping. She wasn't joining him back on the couch. He felt a strange, ominous limbo as he sat up. "But I don't want to talk about it on an empty stomach. Can we go to dinner now?" He checked his watch. They had reservations, courtesy of his imperial guard, but they were a bit ahead of schedule. He caught himself doing the thing he hated... planning his life to the minutes. Michael had fared well as a "polychron", with many simultaneous, multithreaded schedules, and side projects beside. He had managed to balance focus and daydreaming to a great end result. He refused to let some terrorist ruin that part of his life, or his goon squad either.

"Sure, let's eat." They slipped into their formal-as-they-get attire. Without giving it a second thought, she walked past him in just her bra and panties. It wasn't the first time they'd seen each others' delicates, but it was the first time that they were so familiar, as if they had been married for a couple years now. Michael's love-drenched flesh wanted to reach out and hold her, but knew that if she had something on her mind AND was hungry, her resistance would only fluster him, so instead, he resisted. He also wrote himself a "raincheck".

They willfully forgot that they were prisoners of security under pressure, and instead, enjoyed the treatment as if they had merely hired a luxurious limo. They entered the restaurant, one that Michael had never been to. That was 'their' idea. He scanned the patrons for who might be a threat, or a security plant. One of the bodyguards mentioned that Michael might be able to spot their people, if he tried, but if he did, to not make contact with them, to keep their cover. Michael figured he'd spotted 2, maybe 3, totally oblivious to the lie he had been told.

They sat and ate, and even drank, since they had a UN designated driver. They played little games of "would you rather" or "what would you like to do, just once." Michael derived that question from two entirely different sources. One was a very old Barbra Streisand song that he grew up on, and the other was on of Bevin's phrases about 'trying anything once, and if it didn't kill me...' According to Kendall's test, Michael was free to speak at the UN again, or get married. Maybe even both.

They talked about what they liked and didn't like, wanted to go, wanted to do, and wanted never to do. They had very different dreams, but at least they both had dreams. Michael's dream could now be boiled down to two... love this woman forever, and make her planet safe from itself. The warm softness of the peachy misted champagne eased his knowledge of the conflict of those dreams... like the crashing of the waves in her poem.

"I loved your poem, I really did." He had read it every couple hours while she was gone, at least until the incident. "Tell me what prompted you to write it." He was using every chance to hear her voice. Most of what she had said to him was written word. He loved her voice. Rosalita on his chatter just didn't quite do the job.

"I was frustrated. I had been with a council full of corrupt dickheads of state trying to preserve their ways of life that were keeping them enslaved to their own poverty, and quibbling over their 'sovereignty', which is really just their way of keeping outsiders from bribing someone besides them. And I had this dark epiphany... they will never unite their economies until they have to, and then it will be too late. Suddenly, my mission of galloping all over South and Central America looked pretty futile. The realities of life crashed onto me, and I could see that tomorrow another would crash, and another... I felt like a surfer who couldn't swim." All that talk of sea water made her thirsty. She paused to sip her water.

"You express that very well in the poem. I don't think I breathed the entire time I read it."

"Thank you... it's funny you should say that, because, I don't either. I hold my breath to keep from drowning. But then I read your poem. You talked about the breeze and the mist of the crashing waves. And I could breathe again. I actually felt released and rested after I read your poem. I cried, for the first time in a long time, I was back in control. Michael... your imagery of being buoyed up by you, saved me. You gave me the strength to go on."

He was quietly blushing. He was a computer geek, a code warrior and structured query writer and she was reveling in his poetry. And in a poem that he composed in the time it took to type it.

"Do you have the strength for dessert?" Suddenly, he wanted to be home, or at least on the way home. He had plans that he hadn't yet worked out, and the ring hidden in his pocket was calling to him, like Tolkien's One Ring.

"Almost always." She wanted to savor the time with him, and to have enough sugar in her blood to keep her awake for as long as possible.

On the drive home, he decided to test the waters a little, knowing that he was sure of the overall outcome, but needed some details worked out, without coming out and asking. "So what is your plan for the next half year?"

"Pretty much the usual. Bouncing from here to there, and getting up here as much as possible."

"Would you have time for a vacation? With me?"

"I can make time, if I have a couple months notice. Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere, but why not someplace with chaotic waves, but open seas?"

"As long as they don't speak Spanish or Portuguese."

"They don't speak Spanish in Hawaii, do they?"

"I might..." He thought he had an idea what she meant, but wasn't really interested in going there.

"When could you get 2 weeks in row?"

"I'll have to look, but between now and September, I should be able to do it easily. The trick will be matching your schedule."

"I don't have much going on that I know of after June, and August is a complete blank. Congress is gone, UN leaves New York fleeing the heat. It might be a good time to go to where it's only 85. Would you like to pencil that in?"

She thought he was up to something, but let him continue, not wanting to disturb his flow. "Sure, why not?"

They arrived back home just before midnight. They had talked about anything and everything that related to each other. Michael knew what he wanted to know, and she knew he knew. She waited patiently.

She almost immediately started throwing parts of her ensemble off. She had him unzip her dress and walked up the stairs to her suitcase, barely holding her hem high enough to keep from tripping. After Michael poured half a can of carbonated caffiene down to help ease the haunting in his belly, he decided to go check his email while he waited for her to slip into something more comfortable. He had just settled down into his chair when a voice called from on high, "So who's going to sleep on the couch tonight?" She was making fun of him. One of the first nights here, he slept on the couch. The second night, she fell asleep on him on the couch, and he slipped out, tucked her in and went upstairs. Since then, neither of them got sentenced to the couch. He looked at the login screen. It didn't take him long to decide what to do next. "Tomorrow never dies", he alluded, and left the silent sentinel.

He crawled out of his formal wear. He feigned modesty and chilliness, but was really slipping the Ring back into his drawer without her noticing. He quickly climbed into sleepy clothes, cutoff sweat pants and a really large Rush T-shirt with elbow length sleeves. No silk shorts, no tiger stripe G-Strings, no leather, no nothing. "How do you want me?"

"You know what I want..." He did. It was precisely the same thing he wanted, tonight. He rolled into bed, and before he was even settled in, she was on the move. She came up behind him and snuggled into his back and butt as he curled up with his knee pillow. She wrapped her arms around him and silently said a prayer of thanks for being able to do this one more time. She had nearly lost him, and she would never forget it, and she would treasure every moment with him, even if they were both asleep. And one more time, she snuggled up to him with pure love and intimacy. 'Please God,' she prayed to Him only, 'just one more time.'

In the dismal gray of the morning, Michael vauguely awoke. He was facing the edge of the bed as he did when he slept alone. He rolled slightly, testing the countour of the waterbed. This wasn't a dream. Not wanting to waste a moment together, he shifted and rolled into her, mirroring her position from those 7 short hours ago. For over an hour, he didn't sleep, but he wasn't awake either. He was in that Lotus Land between the Dreaming and the Living. This was his ultimate state of contentment. Now that she was here.

Ever so gently, his CD player came on. The music slowly built until he was able to recognize Gloria's Destiny. It wasn't the disk that was in last night. Someone had changed it. After a couple lines, he knew why.

"Destiny, has once again surprised me Oh Destiny must want you here beside me Quietly, like the sunrise with it's splendor Unexpectedly, with a passion strong and tender...

If had to walk away from you i know that it would be no use..."

Michael didn't believe in destiny, per se. He sided with The Professor in chooing free will, but he knew that some things were not purely free will. He did not choose to have that bullet die in the sugar. He'd gotten lucky. There was some random intereaction which left only a ghost of a chance. That ghost was what had been haunting his stomach since he bought the ring. But that ghost was also held at bay by the warmth, and frankly, the curviness that was nestled into his haunted belly.

The next song stuck Michael hard in that cobwebbed darkness inside of himself.

"To be completely honest it scares me imagine
what life would be without you
So for this very reason, I ask you to forgive me
For what I'm putting us through

Although, there's so many things against us
I decided... I'm not giving you up."

Again, his ears were opened to a line he'd heard another dozen times. 'We'll find a way...' He'd long heard the truism, 'where there's a will, there's a way.' He didn't believe that. He'd seen many times that sheer will had failed. But, on the other had, he did deeply believe it's converse. So much so, that he copyrighted it as one of his Proverbs. "Where there is NOT a will, there is NOT a way."

He took stock of his responsibilities, his duties, his projects, his hobbies, his missions. Were any of them more important than a happy marriage to this gem of a woman? Yes. Eliminating nuclear warheads was more important than a happy marriage. But it wasn't a choice he had to make. He could do both. Would the mission suffer because he was married? Maybe just a fraction, but that was giving a very optimistic spin on the latest events. Worst case, because maybe Michael had to be home for his anniversary, he'd postpone a meeting with the Emir of Taznukinstan, but that would add days to a timeline that no one in their right mind was giving odds on.

But would his marriage suffer because he was working toward an impossible dream? Yes, of course. What career could he have where that would not be the case. Pizza delivery? No, not even that. He could get a job bolting seats to a car and see his wife every day, same bat time, same bat channel. Even farmers don't get to see their spouses every second of every day. And most farmers didn't get to do this... He wriggled just enough to get her slightly awake to move against him. For being such a sex maniac at heart, he sure was enjoying this pure snuggling.

If he had a perfect marriage, it would eventually be interrupted by someone using a nuclear weapon. Mankind was that predictable. And then, many more marriages would be ruined. It was a sacrifice he'd be willing to make... a less-than-ideal marriage, for a world worthy of the decent marriage he would have. Did he want to end nuclear war AND be married to Marena? Yes. Abso-fraggin-lutely. Then all he had to do, was to choose to. Once that choice was made, his will would be free to love her, and find a way to be together.

The music of "Steal your heart and set it free" came on. It's upbeat tempo and Spanish guitar could have been music from a beach in Cancun. He realized that Marena had done what Gloria said. She had stolen his heart and set it free. He wished he'd stashed the ring in the side of the bed. "I wish we could do this every morning," he spoke as softly as possible.

"Mmm-hmmm" was all she said, and she wiggled just little more.

"We won't, you know."

"Mmm-hmmm." He wondered a little if she were really awake, or if she were dreaming. He tried a little test.

"We could if we lived on the beach in Cancun."

"No Spanish." She was awake, barely.

"I thought that rules for for our honeymoon."

"Vacation," she sweetly corrected him. Suddenly, she was much more awake. She twisted around without losing a square millimeter of contact with him. She seemed to love the feel of their bodies touching as much as he did. Maybe more, and she just wasn't telling.

At first, she glared into his eyes for a hint that he was joking with her. He was smiling warmly, but not from humor. He looked just plain happy. "I've been listening to this music... very closely. And I've been thinking very deeply about what she is saying... she's talking about us, you know." He had just barely gotten the word 'us' out, when she laid her left hand over his lips, silently begging him 'don't speak'. Michael noticed that the next song was on, " A Heart that never seems to learn." That wasn't the song he was referring to. She peered deep into his eyes. The freedom and joy of the chains that would never bind him was showing in his eyes. She knew that maybe, for once in his life, his heart had learned.

Without taking her hand from his mouth until the last second, she bolted out of the bedroom. He heard her gasp slightly as she sat on a toilet seat that was never warm enough. Maybe he could devise a polymer that would absorb radioactivity and stay warm, for say, 2.9 billion years. Then he heard the sound of running water, and teeth being brushed. He realized the state he was in, and decide to prepare for a potentially romantic moment. He reached to a dark nook of his bed where he found three foil-wrapped emergency rations. They'd been there for a while, but were still fresh enough. He jammed them under his pillow and crinkled the metal foil open, on all three. He then hastily stuff all three chickles of 'ice gum' into his mouth. The dentifrice embedded in them cleaned his teeth and killed a biohazard or two million. He heard her bang her toothbrush on the sink. He spat the wad into an expediently placed towel. He made a mental note to get Schweppes to make a Mint Cola... with flouride, maybe even call it "Dragon's Breath."

She hustled back into bed and clung to him for warmth. This chilly room was a shock for someone who had spent the last month in a tropical rain forest. She coiled back into him, and had placed her hand back on his lips, as if for continuity. Then lifted them, letting him know she was ready to hear him.

"You fill my soul, like the stars fill the sky..." He was quoting Gloria, but he was also quoting himself, in front of the UN. The stars fill the sky in such a way that the closer you look the more there are. She let him go on. "To be completely honest it scares me to imagine, what life would be without you..." He skipped the next line. She skipped to the next song.

"We'll find a way to be together... no matter what it takes, wherever... if it means having you for only a moment, a moment just might be enough..." She meant 'a moment at a time', but didn't want to break this moment.

"There's so many things against us..." Gloria help him reveal every fear he had, so sweetly.

"I'm not giving you up." Gloria helped her state her resolve in overcoming all that they knew they had against them.

Michael didn't know any quote from Gloria that would help his next words, but he took a moment to quote from the new track on his soundtrack. "I believe... there's a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love... and make it last." She gazed at him with more love than he had ever seen. "Marena, will you marry me?"

"Oh, my God... Yes!" She pulled him down onto her mouth, but needed very little effort. She kissed him so deeply and with such release that he felt the change in her... that change welled up over him also. He dug under her through the waterbed mattress and held her as close as he could possibly get to her... almost. She dug her leg under him and wrapped herself around him as close as she could get, almost. They pressed together in a moment they would never feel the same way again. She pulled him back just enough to let them see each others' tears. In a moment when words could get in the way, Michael chose them very wisely. "I am my beloved's..."

"...and he is mine." They finished together, with him saying 'she'.

They both knew that they would never have a more perfect moment. Within minutes, but without rush, Marena felt an exquisite pain that filled her with such joy, because she had done what she had wanted for so long. Her prayer had been answered. She had kept her promise.