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Star City Stories: Enter Sandman

By: StangStar06



Hi Folks, thanks to everyone who read last week's story. Thanks even more to those of you who commented on it whether positive or negative. Everyone has their own opinion and there's nothing that anyone can write that every single person will like. This story continues the weirdness I've been exploring of late so some of you purists who've been writing me letters telling me that some of the stories aren't LW probably won't think this one is either. The story does involve a wife having sex with someone other than her husband, so that makes it LW in my book. Thanks to the incredible Mikothebaby for editing this story even as she struggles to come to grips with the deadly and dangerous windows 8. And a special thanks to those of you who continue to come here every week and suffer through me stretching out my story-telling muscles. 

* * * * * *

I checked the coupling from the large cable and nodded my head. I smiled just a bit as I tightened the link that connected this cable to the grid of them below the metal surface of the floor. I skipped back across the metal floor and checked my instrument panel again. Everything was green.

"Okay guys, let's fire this bitch up," I yelled.

"Are we going to run it from the generator or the solar panels?" asked Dr. Ivan Deevy. Ivan used to be the head of theoretical science at MIT five years ago. Now he's one of my flunkies. A lot of things change when the fate of humanity is at stake.

My name is Dr. Denton Woods and I'm one of the smartest men on the planet. I can say that without sounding vain because it's true. The year is 2048 and the world has changed the way we look at everything. We have come together as a society and as a planet. There will probably be wars in a few years, but they won't be fought over land or religion or any of those stupid things that no longer matter.

The differences between us now are all far more serious. You see roughly ten years ago scientists discovered a previously unknown asteroid. An asteroid just like it stuck earth a little over a hundred thousand years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. This one is bigger and will probably destroy the planet. It's too big and moving too fast for us to send Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and the rest of those guys up there to drill a hole in it and save us. It has also been proven that we simply don't have any type of weapons, nuclear or other, that can destroy the massive planetoid. It's simply game over for the third rock from the sun.

The asteroid, known as Shiva 2100, will hit Earth sometime in early January, 2100 or late December of the year 2099. That gives us roughly 51 years to get the hell out of dodge. We want to leave at least a year early to assure that we're clear of the solar system before the cataclysmic event takes place. We have no idea of what will happen afterwards. Some have predicted that Shiva could hit the sun and severely damage it as well. If that happens, our entire solar system would be compromised, so the idea of trying to set up on a planet in our solar system wouldn't make much sense.

Early in our plans, we'd located several Earth-like planets. These planets were very close to Earth in terms of atmosphere, gravity and climate. One or several of them would be humanity's greatest and best chance to live on. The problems were immense, both in terms of capital, resources, technologies and brain power. We had to invent new science and new fields of study as we planned it. That was, of course, where I came in.

Several different ships and groups were planned. Each gigantic star faring ark would hopefully carry thousands of people. Another problem was that the time it would take us to reach the Earth-like planets would be measured in decades. That meant that most of the people who embarked on the journey would be very old or dead when we arrived.

My best estimate depending on the mode of propulsion used was that it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of fort seven to fifty years to arrive at our destination. I seriously doubted that I'd even be alive to see the ship depart. I'm thirty five now, fifty one years from now I'll be eighty six years old. Even If I did start the trip, I'd be long dead when we got to our destination.

The people who land the ship and organize and manage our society's transition to the new world will have been born in space.

The fact that the planet is going to be destroyed has brought about a totally new pecking order in terms of who can go. Money no longer means anything. With so little space on the ships there will be a lot of people left on earth to perish.

We've had to be extremely selective in deciding who can go and who can't. There are certain skill sets and occupations that are extremely valuable. We also want to insure as broad a range of genetic material as possible. We want every race and culture represented but we still only have room for so many people. With that in mind, there are a lot of people who will not be making the trip.

To be specific, we need teachers. They will have the awesome responsibility of training the next generation that will probably be born in space and take over the leadership of the mission while in transit. We don't however, need basketball players. An extra tall, extra heavy person, who requires more resources in terms of food, water and even oxygen, whose only skill is the ability to jump up and drop a ball through a hoop is something we simply don't have room for.

We don't need football players, golfers, hockey players, rappers, singers, baseball players, models, games show hosts, magicians, mimes or Kardashians either. No matter how much money they have or how great their skills are, they need not apply. What the hell does a Kardashian actually do anyway?

Almost overnight, society has changed. Last year there weren't any colleges in the US that had enough players to field a football team. There are math and science clubs popping up all over the planet. Every hot chick in the world suddenly wants a nerd on her arm, which again is where I come in.

In the old days, you had guys that were called theoretical physicists. They were the rock stars of science. They sat around all day and spun theories about what might be the cause of this or that. They could work for years on some hair brained hypothesis, while being funded by a large company or university. Those gentlemen often spent their entire lives just spinning interesting yet ultimately useless theories.

In our time, the top man on the totem pole is the practical physicist. He is the person who can take those theories from pure math and calculation to fruition. That, once again, is where I come in. Our group the AAAAE, the All American Alliance Against Extinction, usually known as the A4E, combines all of the resources of the entire American continent. It includes Canada, America and South America. We plan to build a fleet of four or five huge ships. Each ship will have the capacity to house over twenty thousand people. I know it sounds like a lot but when you consider that the population of our planet is over 7 billion people, that number is far less than a drop in the bucket.

We started the selection process of people who will even be allowed to work on the project five years ago. If you're not working on the projects, you probably won't be going. We've built our own city, Star city, in Texas where we're doing the research and development necessary to assemble the ships.

We get thousands of applications each week for individuals and families that want to come to Star city. Ninety nine point nine percent of them are turned away. A huge wall surrounds the city to prevent outsiders from getting in. It only goes to show you how desperate people are for their genes to survive. The ships won't be leaving for a little over fifty years, but people are dying to get in so their children have a chance to get on a ship.

"Run it from the generator Ivan," I reply. "The first thing we have to do is to prove that the theory works. Then we can make it more efficient."

Our main craft will each have multiple propulsion systems. We'll have a main chemical or solid fueled booster engine for quick maneuvers, but most of our travel will make use of a solar sail array. The ships will be built in space which will eliminate the need for huge booster rockets. My current project involves the shuttles. To conserve resources and so that we can collaborate while in space we needed to have some sort of transport vehicle that is capable of taking short hops either from ship to ship while in space or from a ship to a planet.

We have most of the problems with those worked out. One of the main issues we had was in landing the shuttles on a ship. For anyone who's seen Battlestar Galactica, the danger of landing on a ship is great. The engineer's designs for a landing platform required tons of concrete and steel. The weight of those landing platforms alone was almost twenty percent of the weight of the ships.

I came up with what I think will save us weight, structural stability and space. It will also lessen the amount of fuel we need and make our solar sails more efficient through the reduction in mass.

My idea was to give the shuttles a landing system that was separate from their main engines. We'd use magnetic repulsion to do it. The shuttles would have magnetic emitters on them. The floor of the landing bay would be a metal surface with a grid of charged cables under it that turned the entire floor into a huge electromagnet. The computer could make sure that the polarity of the magnetic floor was the opposite charge of the emitters. That way the shuttle and the deck would repel each other.

We'd built a huge mock up in a one third scale size. We had a drone with the emitters mounted under it. Today we'd fly the drone in and reverse thrust over the magnetic floor. Then we'd cushion the drone's landing by magnetic repulsion.

I watched as the drone took off from the other end of the airplane hangar we were using as a lab. It flew in smoothly and slowed as it got close to the mag floor. It came in for a landing and its pilot who was flying the drone from a control panel on the other end of the building, stopped its engines and turned on the emitters. The drone didn't actually touch down on the floor which was good and proved that the tech worked. But the drone careened across the floor and skidded into an i-beam.

"Shit!" I yelled loudly. "Harold, do you have any idea of how much those fucking things cost?"

His voice over the intercom was apologetic. "I'm sorry Dr. Woods," he said.

"Do you even remember what I told you to do?" I asked. "I clearly remember telling you that you needed to apply the reverse thrusters at the same time as the emitters, because if you don't, the inertia of your landing causes the ship to simply slide across the magnetic field like a God damned air hockey disc. Do you remember that Harold?"

"Yes Dr. Woods," he said apologetically.

"Why did I say it would happen, Harold?" I asked as if he was a school boy that I was lecturing to about forgetting a variable in an equation.

"Because the magnetic field has no friction," he said. "So the emitters will only support the ship above the floor, they won't give any type of braking or directional control."

"Get another drone, Harold," I said. "And remember these drones cost about eight thousand dollars apiece. Sooner or later we're going to start charging you for them."

A couple of tests later, I watched as the drone flew in, slowed itself down by reverse thrusting and then buoyed by the emitters rested softly on the metal floor. A cheer went up in the lab as months of working and building and testing finally bore fruit.

"Alright, you bunch of idiots. Great work," I said. "Every one of you, get the hell out of here. Take the rest of the day off. Tomorrow we'll demonstrate the concept and the emitters for the board and let the R&D guys take it from there. Next week, we'll be working on something else."

Everyone was happy and smiling. My success, was in fact, their success. Working for a team that solved problems and accomplished things resulted in far more perks and stability. I even left the lab myself that afternoon. I foresaw a chance to relax and pick out my next project from a list of literally hundreds I could choose from.

Star City had all kinds of transit systems including a high speed monorail and a very efficient subway system. I took the monorail and made the five mile distance from my lab to my home in under five minutes.

I opened the door to my luxurious mini mansion and stepped into my living room. The scene I found there filled me with shock. My giant brain, although used to tackling problems and concepts that would crash a supercomputer, was not prepared for the scene I found.

A large man with red hair and very pale skin, was slamming his dick in and out of my wife. She was pushing herself back against him. I did take the time to notice that he wasn't pushing himself into her vagina.

I'm probably five foot nine inches tall. I have brown hair and brown eyes. I might weigh one hundred and sixty pounds soaking weight and wearing steel toed shoes, but not an ounce more. The behemoth on top of Beth was at least six four and definitely over two hundred and twenty pounds.

As I stood there, barely breathing, neither of them noticed me. I don't think they would have if shock hadn't caused me to drop my keys on the ceramic tiles of the floor. It was a moment that will be etched forever in my mind. There was the jangling sound of my keys as they hit the tiles. A split second later, all hell broke loose as the guy looked my way and Beth looked over her shoulder and saw me.

There was also that "punched in the stomach" feeling as my brain finally caught up to the situation.

"Oh shit," said the guy.

"Honey, what are you doing home?" asked my beautiful, cheating whore of a wife. Her eyes were wide with shock.

Calmness took over me then. After all, my job was to solve problems. In order to do that, I'd learned over the years to document everything. I slowly pulled out my i-phone 85s and calmly took pictures of the two of them. I had no idea of what to do yet, so I just looked at them.

"Denton, you're not supposed to be home for hours," said Beth, nervously.

"I solved the problem with the magnetic repulsion emitters," I said. "I do things like that. I'm kind of smart about some things. But, I'm kind of stupid about others apparently."

"Please don't tell me your husband is some kind of scientist?" asked the guy. The look on his face had morphed from pure ecstasy to seriousness in less than a second. "Wait a minute. You called him Denton...Not Denton Woods?" he asked.

He suddenly got angry at Beth. "You stupid fucking whore," he spat. "I've been trying to get my family here for more than a year. Do you know what this means?"

"He'll understand," said Beth, whining. "He really will. I'll explain it all to him. It was only sex..."

"Then why did he take my picture?" asked the guy, who was looking around to find his clothes. I walked back through the still open door to my house and left them both trying to catch up to me.

* * * * * * 

Beth

I was trying so hard not to cry, but I was failing. As the tears started to fall, Robert looked down at me in disgust.

"That's not going to do us any good," he said. "What can I do to fix this? What does he like?"

"What do you mean?" I sobbed.

"Is he into drugs, booze, women...What's his vice?" he asked. "I know he likes women. I mean look at you. Shit, only a scientist, or maybe a top tech or engineer could have something like you. What the hell was I thinking?"

"Probably the same thing I was thinking," I said. "I wasn't thinking at all. I was stupid and bored and feeling lonely. My son is in an advanced school. He's seven years old and I can't help him do his homework because I don't fucking understand it. Most of the time, I feel totally useless. Do you know what I am? I'm a doll, or worse yet, I'm a trophy. Do you know what the worst part of all of this is?"

"Yeah," he snapped. "I do. I'm going to end up dead over this. I'm going to end up dead over some pussy that wasn't even that good. Worst of all I'll have failed my wife and my daughter...AGAIN."

"Why are you going to die?" I asked him, seriously.

"Shit you are stupid," he sneered. "Those fucking scientist are all prima donnas. They're like rock stars. You piss one of them off and you're kicked out of Star City. And Honey, the outside world is pure chaos. I should know, I've only been here for a few months and it's like heaven here. As soon as I got my seniority in, I was going to send for my wife and kid. Now I'll be out on my ass too."

"There's got to be something he likes," he said. "Think hard. What are the things he loves the most?"

"Denton isn't like that," I said. "He's a really nice guy. He cares about people. That's why he works so hard. The only things that mean anything to him are me and our son. I can't believe I've hurt him like this."

"Then why the hell did you do it?" he asked.

I sat down on the sofa. My mind was running in a hundred different directions at once. "Because I really do love him," I said. "In fact, I love him too much. Sometimes it's really hard for me to do what I need to do, because I love him so much. Sometimes I need to do something bad to create a little space between us, just so I can function."

"Wha..." he asked looking at me as if I was crazy."Okay lady it's time for me to get out of here. Tell your hubby, there's no hard feelings on my part, please. And tell him I'm really sorry and it won't happen again."

After he left, I cried for a while and then went into our bedroom. From a box hidden deep in a desk drawer, I pulled out a small necklace. It was gold with diamonds all over it. In the old days it would have been worth a small fortune, but things like that don't matter anymore. Although I don't understand why, I drew strength from the small, crossed, uneven lines. At the same time I felt dirty beyond all reasoning for what I'd just done to a man who from the first time he ever set eyes on me, has only wanted to love me and make me happy.

* * * * * *

Dalton

"Hey Dalton, your brother has done it again," yelled the dispatcher to me as I came in. "Shit, I don't think they could get a hat on that head of his if they tried. There's just too much brain in it. Tell that bastard that we need flying cars. I'll bet he kicks that one in a week."

As I put all of my equipment on the table, he looked it over as if something was missing. Ernie was our supply clerk. He's a feisty old bastard but he's very good at his job.

"Where is it?" he asked shrewdly. "Don't tell me you lost the God damned thing..."

"It's right there in front of you Banks," I said.

"I don't see it," he spat.

"If you could see it, it wouldn't be much of an invisibility cloak would it?" I smirked.

"Do you know where it is?" he asked. I nodded. Well, would you be so fucking kind as to turn it off, so I can check it back in?"

I reached down on the desk next to him. I could feel the almost paper thin material of the cloak. I flipped it over and it became visible. Then I reached inside and turned it off. It then resembled a regular hooded coat without sleeves. "My brother invented the tech for these too," I said.

"No fucking kidding," he spat.

"It's carbon nanotubes micrografted to inverted picopolymers," I said.

"You have no idea what any of that shit even means do you?" he asked.

"Nope," I said. "But I know how to use it. My brother and his kid talk about that shit all the time."

"Isn't your nephew, like seven?" he asked. I just nodded.

"He's going to be even smarter than Denton. They're going to need him in space," I said.


Star City Stories: Enter Sandman



He just nodded.

I'm Dalton Woods. Denton is my twin brother. You could never tell it by looking at us. Although we share some facial features, we're nothing alike. My brother is smaller and has finer features. Throughout our lives, starting at a very young age, Denton studied and excelled academically. I excelled physically. As we grew up, we helped each other. Initially, he helped me with my homework and my assignments, while I helped him to be less inept socially.

I used to bring home girls for us to double date with. Den's not a bad guy, so once most of those girls got to know him, he did okay. They may have come over to our house in hopes of getting a chance at the athlete, but none of them ever left disappointed or felt like they'd been slighted after spending any time with my brother.

Then the world flipped its axis and most women no longer care how many pounds I can bench press. They're much more interested in IQ points nowadays. Society has always found the things, like strength, that seem to predict survivability, sexy. That's why men are hardwired towards women with narrow waists, wider hips and larger breasts. Something inside of us says this woman could carry and feed healthy infants.

But now, women simply don't care about how big your arms are or how fast you can run. No matter how strong you are or how fast you are, you can't lift or outrun that asteroid. It's intelligence and brainpower that will enable humanity to survive and women everywhere have quickly picked up on it.

One of the things that no one considered in our situation is mental instability. Humans have a sense of self preservation; well most of us do any way. 

But in a case similar to the baby boomers in the last century, who grew up knowing that because of nuclear weapons the world could end at any moment, the baby boomers had the highest rate of suicides and mental disorders of any generation before them.

Our situation is worse. With the baby boomers, the threat of annihilation was POSSIBLE. The threat from Shiva 2100 is DEFINITE. There is no doubt that the world as we know it, will end. We know exactly what will happen and exactly when. This has made people all over the world change the way they look at things. There's no sense of permanence. How must a teenager feel in our time? There's no need to salt away money for your retirement when there's a better chance of you dying than retiring to Florida. Kids, grandkids, what's the point of bringing any more life to a planet that probably won't be here.

People all over the planet have just developed a, "What the fuck" attitude. Anything and everything goes. Crime has quintupled and is only getting worse. The only rays of hope are in the places where the ships are being built. Most of or all of them are walled off to prevent them from being overrun by people who want to get in.

Even the rich are terrified, because being rich is simply not enough. Even being super-rich is not enough. One of the failed attempts at putting together a group to build a ship was done by a consortium of billionaires. It failed. Part of the reason it failed was that all of the billionaires involved wanted to be in charge and they also tried to hold onto money. Most of them gave incredible amounts of cash but they needed to hold enough in reserve to remain billionaires and when the project started to run low on funds they all blamed each other and pulled out.

Most of the successful projects are created by groups of countries and have almost unlimited funds. But even inside of these groups, the pressure and responsibility of trying to save the entire human species is staggering. Quite a few of the people involved can't take the pressure and crack up.

They fall into two groups, the external group is made up of people who go nuts and either become a danger to the project or others. The internal group is made of people, who simply can't cope and are either suicidal or dangerous because they preach or talk about how pointless it all is.

All of these poor misguided individuals are our responsibility. I'm a Sandman. It's my job to put these poor misguided souls out of their misery. Sometimes they actually ask for it. In many of the cases, the individual targeted, simply doesn't want to go on any more, yet they lack the courage to do away with themselves. They can go online and we handle it from there. Our job is not only to give the target a quick, pain free death, it's to make sure that people around them don't suffer.

What good would it do for scientist A to blow his fucking brains out after telling everyone he knows that the project won't succeed and we're all going to die? That could set off a chain reaction among his peers and coworkers and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the Sandmen are called in.

We don't just do scientists. We take care of anyone whose mental state is a danger to Star City. So even if you're as chipper as a fucking blue jay, if you've been convicted of too many crimes, you can get the sand.

Actually, my brother is responsible for getting me the job. I'm not exactly scientist material, but trust it to Denton to find a way to make me useful. I really don't mind my job. There are actually sometimes when I enjoy it. One man's definition of murder is the same as another's definition of surgical euthanasia for the betterment of society. So don't call me a murderer and I won't kill you.

As I left the office after turning in my stuff, I made my way to the garage. I smiled as soon as I saw it, but there was nothing unusual about that. Yep, I still drove myself everywhere. In my line of work, I can't afford to wait for the monorail or the subway and I sometimes need to make it to places that are off the tracks. I also don't need to have a taxi driver able to document or testify to my movements.

My car is a classic. It's a thirty five year old 2013 Shelby GT 500 Mustang. The car harkens back to a time when horsepower meant something. My baby can still keep up with those electronic pieces of shit they drive now. And I have a lot fewer problems. The only major problem I have is that I have to go to the few places around town that stock petroleum fuel for commercial construction machines. A few of them still use "gas," as we call it, too.

Denton keeps telling me that when he gets the chance he's going to convert my car's engine so it can run on synth fuel. He also claims that my car won't make that hellacious noise anymore either. Sometimes Denton is simply too smart for his own good. I've tried explaining to him that the hellacious noise is a part of her charm and my car is supposed to sound like that.

My car has all of the design cues from classic Mustangs from every era. The car looks like it's moving even when it's standing still. She just looks angry. Everything on the car is black. The body paint is glass black. There are two flat black racing stripes down the center that are highlighted with red pinstripes so they pop and stand out from the glossier black. The rims, brake calipers and even my rotors are black. All of my lights, markers, signals and indicators have black lenses as well.

As I start the car up, everyone in the parking lot looks my way. Some of them smile in appreciation. Others smile nervously in fear.

I barely chirp the tires as I rocket away. I really can't afford a long smoking peel out. These tires are impossible to find nowadays.

Some of the people in the parking lot, mostly the fearful ones, weren't all afraid of my car. Some of them recognized the fact that the last letter of my license plate is an "S" and what it means. Even the police stay away from the sandmen.

* * * * * *

Denton

I got back on the monorail and rode it around the city. As I looked out the windows at the gleaming spires and domes of Star City, I knew what projects were located in the different areas because I'd visited most of them from time to time. I saw where they were building the launch pad for the rockets we'd start launching in a few years.

I guess it would be more truthful to say that I saw them but I didn't see them. My mind worked feverishly, but it wasn't trying to solve any problems outside of my own personal ones right now. I thought the same word over and over again. "Why?"

"Why would Beth do that to me? She and our son Donnie were all that mattered to me. I mean, I know that every man says he loves his wife. But I LOVE Beth. She's always been the air that I breathe, the wind beneath my wings and all of that other corny bullshit. And I took it for granted that she felt the same way about me

When I'd walked into our home and saw her...saw them, it had nearly ripped the heart still beating from my chest. I'd been too shocked to think about what to do or how to handle it. Exactly what is the correct thing to do in that situation? I know what my brother would have done. He'd have killed the guy and probably Beth too. Dalton always thought there was something fishy about Beth. It's only been recently that he's backed off on her. It's been the past seven years. That isn't really recent. What changed his mind about her or at least got him to back off was Donnie's birth. And, of course, the fact that from birth Donnie looked like my clone. Hospitals now automatically do a DNA test and there was no doubt at all that Donnie is my son. I think that was enough to convince Dalton that my marriage was okay.

I wonder what my brother would say now? At any rate, I hadn't gone tearing in there and opened up a can of whoop ass on anyone. Even if it turned out not to be my ass that got whooped, what would it have proven? Is there some little known fact of science that says if you kick the other guy's ass, it opens up a pocket hole in the universe that takes us back in time to a point before she cheated on you so you could stop it from happening?

Or perhaps I should have just taken my clothes off, found a vacant hole and joined in. Or maybe it was supposed to be one of those sophisticated things where we, as adults, all sat down and drank fucking tea while sticking our little fingers out and calmly discussing what had happened.

And I hadn't done any of that, I'd just turned tail and walked out of there. The buzzing in my pocket let me know that someone was trying to call me. I was sure it wasn't the lab so I didn't bother to even look at it. I almost wished it had been the lab because then I'd have a reason to go there among the things I knew and understood, to hide.

Hoping against hope, I looked at the screen of my phone and saw that as I'd expected, it was Beth. Before I realized what I was doing, I answered the phone.

"I'm going to pick Donnie up, so I can spend some time with him," I said coldly. "That should give you plenty of time to pack your things and leave."

"Denton," she said, between sobs. "Where would I go? And why would I go anywhere? We need to talk, Honey."

"Beth, there's nothing to discuss," I told her. "This isn't medieval times. We don't need a church, if there was still such a thing to let us separate..." She had a sharp intake of air that should have told me something. "We don't need to see a judge to divorce..." there it was again, not as sharp as the first but still there. She couldn't hide anything from me; or so I thought.

I guess that meant or at least I drew from it that this wasn't something that she thought we needed to divorce over. The problem was that I wasn't sure that I agreed with her.

"I have to go, Beth," I said. "I just don't feel like talking right now."

As luck would have it, the monorail was in Dalton's neighborhood at that moment. As we pulled into the station that was only a few block from his apartment, I got off. My brother and I had always been very close, so perhaps that was where I'd intended to go anyway.

I walked up to his door and knocked on it. The screen on the door lit up and I got his "away from home" message. I started to leave him a message that I'd dropped by, when his face filled the screen. "Hey little brother," he said. He looked at me seriously then and asked, "What's wrong?"

"I'm okay," I said. "I just dropped by to..." Before I could finish, he'd remotely unlocked the door for me.

"I was on my way home anyway," he said. "I'll be there in five minutes. Wait for me."

I went in and sat down. I looked through all of Dalton's stuff. He had all kinds of mementos left over from childhood. He had pictures and trophies from when he used to play football. If the NFL hadn't folded, he'd probably be playing for a living now.

Sometimes it surprised even me that the two of us were twins. We were like opposite sides of the same coin. As I stared at a picture of us in our late teens, the door opened and there he was. Dalton was as big as a fucking house and smiling like a Cheshire cat until he saw the look on my face. Then his face got very serious in less than a second.

"Denton what's wrong?" he asked. I'd never been able to hide anything from him so it came out.

"That fucking bitch," he sneered. "Denton, throw that whore out of town. The only reason she's here is because she's married to you. Throw her out. Let her try living in a regular city for a while. Let her see what it's like to come home every day to a place that's been robbed because with the world ending, nobody gives a fuck any more. Let her live in a place where a woman who looks like her gets raped often. Usually, just because some loser out there just decides that he may as well fuck her because laws don't matter anymore."

"I'm not doing any of that," I said. "Actually, I don't know what I'm going to do." He looked at me as if I'd just laid an egg.

"So who was the guy?" he asked. "Was it someone you know?"

I pulled out my phone and showed him the picture. "Big guy," he said. "You were probably right not to jump on him." As he looked at the picture, he pressed a couple of icons on my screen. He handed me my phone back and we talked about other things until I had to go and pick Donnie up from school.

Dalton drove me and I accepted the ride. I loved being in his car, but I could never own anything like that. That car was brutal. Everything on it was manual, even the gear shifter and transmission. And the car rode like a race car. You could feel every dip and bump in the road. What I loved most about the car was the way that it pressed you back in the seat every time he hit the gas.

He dropped me off at Donnie's school and waved at us he drove off. Donnie had been waiting for me outside of the school.

I didn't even have to ask him why he'd been outside already.

"They were doing numbers," he said. "So the teacher let me leave early."

"Donnie, you need as much math as you can get," I said.

"Dad, we're seven," he said. "I'm in the second grade. I don't go to classes with my homeroom class. They're learning numbers and basic adding and subtracting. They don't even know about division and multiplication yet. That's not math it's just numbers. I'm in AP calculus. What would I do with them?"

"Don't get cocky, Donnie," I warned. "You can always learn something new. When you assume that you know everything, you don't learn anymore and when you stop learning, you may as well be dead."

"Was that Uncle Dalton?" he asked. I nodded my head. "We should have ridden home in his car. There are so many things I want to talk to him about."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Is the rumor true?" he asked. "Is Uncle Dalton really a Sandman? That has to be the coolest job ever."

"Well son, I doubt it," I said. "No one really knows exactly who the Sandmen are."

The rest of the trip home we talked as usual about a lot of different subjects. We talked about math and physics and why girls were so icky. We talked about the asteroid and the ship and how solar sails actually functioned, but also about why there weren't any sports anymore.

One of the things I loved about talking with my son was that he shared my curiosity about everything. There was also the fact that he understood most of what I talked about. That was rare even among adults. I really felt like I could be myself around him and not simply because he was my son.

The thirty minutes or so that I spent walking and talking with Donnie made me completely forget about the problem I had waiting for me at home. The good times ended though as soon as I saw her standing there in the doorway. It's funny to see how one of the most beautiful women on the planet can look like a whipped dog when guilt changes her features.

* * * * * *

Dalton

As soon as I drove away from my brother, I pulled out my phone. When my brother had shown me the photo of the man his cheating wife had screwed in his living room, I'd quickly e-mailed the photo to myself. Although my phone wasn't as advanced as my brother's iPhone 85S, it had some very specialized software that made my job simpler.

One of those software apps allowed me to submit photos to the facial recognition software that we had on the main computer at Sandman headquarters.

I uploaded the photo and within seconds had his I. D. His name was Robert Lynch and he worked in construction. After waiting for a few moments more, I even knew where he was. The computer tapped into security cameras all over Star City. Less than ten minutes ago, a camera outside of a bar on the southwest end of the main strip had captured him.

I was there in less than six minutes. He was leaning against the bar talking in a really loud voice about how stupid women are. I walked right up to the bar and bumped into him.

"Hey, watch it buddy," he said indignantly. Then he went back to his rant.

I ordered a beer and took a sip. Then I started.

"Wow," I said loudly. "I had no idea this was a gay bar."

Every head in the place snapped around and looked at me.

"What are you talking about?" he asked me loudly.

"Well, you're sitting here complaining about women. It sounds like you'd rather uhm...hang out with men." The guys at the table near the bar all backed up and moved their drinks.

"Not that there's anything wrong with being gay," I said. "You guys are okay in my book. You're just like everyone else."

"I'm not gay," he screamed.

"Oh, you're still in the closet?" I asked.

"I'm not gay," he screamed. "I like pussy."

"You've got a what?" I asked. "A pussy? That means you're not gay you're a trans..." before the word left my mouth, he balled up his fist and launched it at my jaw.

I easily caught the fist and punched him in the gut as hard as I could. He folded over my fist and I drew it back and punched him again in the same spot. This time, instead of just blowing out air, he emptied the contents of his stomach. I straightened him up and punched him right on the mouth. His head snapped backwards and he dropped like a rock.

The entire bar went silent. The security man ran over. He took one look at me and then told one of the other guys to call the police.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a badge. Unlike the ones carried by the police, my badge was jet black. The man with the phone dropped it onto a table. The other security man started to back away. I pulled out my phone and used it to scan the bar.

"I have all of your faces on the video I just shot," I said. "If anyone of you says a single thing to anyone about what just happened..." I let my words trail off.

I headed for the door, pausing as I got there. "You should know that I'm too lazy to try to figure out who the one that spoke was. So, every one of you would get a visit."

* * * * * *

Interlude

For a moment so long after the tall muscular man had left the bar that it seemed to stretch for hours, no one said a word. Most of the bar's patrons were afraid to say anything in fear that the man would return. Some of the men inwardly cursed their luck. For them, this was the first time that they'd ever been to this bar and it would for sure be the last.




Star City Stories: Enter Sandman



The regulars looked at each other in abject fear. They knew each other somewhat and were already analyzing their fellows to try to determine which of them might say something. As they looked down at the huge man on the floor who was just then only beginning to stir, the bartender spoke up.

"None of you bastards had better say anything," he spat. "I have a wife and kids and the Sandmen don't play. They don't bluff and they don't lie. I'm not dying in my sleep over that pile of shit." He indicated the man on the floor.

"Say anything about what?" asked one of the regulars.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said another, turning to finish his beer.

The man on the floor moved into a sitting position. He rubbed his sore mouth and jaw. His bottom lip was already beginning to swell.

"Didth oo gyz thee were dat guy wen? Thum body call duh copth. Ahm putting hith ath in jail!" he mumbled through his swollen lips. He spat out a tooth and looked around.

"Thumbody Thay Thumpthing, dammit?" he said angrily.

"About what buddy?" asked a guy calmly drinking his beer.

"Yeah?" said another. "You came in here complaining about women and then started smacking your head into the wall and knocked yourself out. It was kind of funny."

"That didth not happen," screamed the man on the floor loudly. "I was attackth."

"By who?" asked the bartender. "...My concrete wall? Son, some of us just can't handle alcohol. Know your limits. Now go home and sleep it off. The bar is closed for you."

Robert Lynch got up off of the floor. His head hurt. His mouth hurt. Shit, his entire body hurt. This wasn't his fucking day. It had all gone south when...when he'd hooked up with that blond woman. Maybe this wasn't a coincidence. He knew that scientists were powerful. They had all kinds of influence.

Blondie had been sure that her husband wasn't going to do anything, but maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe her husband had sent that gorilla to do what he didn't have the balls to do himself.

Maybe the little guy was going to send an army of thugs to take Robert out, or maybe this was it. Robert needed to know. Was this guy a warning that Robert should get the hell out of town, or was this all of it? He really needed to know where he stood.

* * * * * *

Beth

When I heard the warning chimes of the front door opening, I jumped up and ran to the doorway. My son, Donnie, walked in still engaged in one of those endless conversations with his father. Donnie was a very gifted little boy and the world would need him as much as it now needed his father. I had my own theory about why they'd been born but I had yet to share it with anyone.

I looked at them before they noticed me. They were so similar that no one could have mistaken them for anything other than father and son. Despite my mission; perhaps in spite of my mission, I loved Denton Woods. I loved him so deeply that I sometimes felt like I couldn't breathe. That was never supposed to happen. I didn't sign up to fall in love with Denton Woods. In fact, I'd tried my ass off to prevent it.

But as he looked at me with those deep, soulful eyes, his pain became my pain. Denton wasn't a six foot, 200 lb., muscular hunk of man with rock hard abs. He was a five foot-nine inch, average looking guy. But Denton had another type of power. He could literally figure out anything. He had a brain that was more powerful than all of Hercules' muscles combined. But that wasn't it either. What I fell in love with was his capacity for compassion.

Denton, more than any other person on the planet, made me feel special and important. For the entire time that I'd known him, he'd always put me first. When we first became friends, he was too shy to ask me out. I had to keep arranging to run into him "accidentally." Even after the third or fourth such accident, when I suggested that our meetings must be fated, he didn't get it. He actually jumped back from me and assured me that he wasn't stalking me or trying to manufacture the meetings.

"Denton, I never suggested that you had," I told him. "Why would you even think that I would think that?"

His answer told me the kind of man he was. "Look at you," he said quietly. "Your hair is the color of spun gold. Your eyes are as blue as the sky. Your mouth, with those pouty lips was made to be kissed. Your body almost defies description. I'm probably supposed to be a great scientist, but even I'm at a loss to come up with an equation or a theory for how they got all of those curves to come together into one body. You're simply too beautiful to exist." I was speechless.

"Me, on the other hand," he continued. "I'm nothing to look at. Ten years ago, before they discovered Shiva, you'd probably have laughed at me just for walking past you. For over ten thousand years, human beings have been hard wired to be attracted to members of the opposite sex with the best genes and the traits that indicate survival. Women want a giant of a man with huge arms and a big chest. Secondarily, they want good looks, about fifty overly white teeth and a huge bank account. But today, the tables are all turned upside down. All kinds of women that look like supermodels are going after Engineers and Physicists. Some of my colleagues are just arranging to meet hot women, but I swear to you I'm not doing that. I'd never do that." He was very sincere. He was pleading with me to believe something that I already knew was true, because I was the one manufacturing the meetings.

"So you wouldn't go out of your way to arrange a date with me?" I asked, batting my eyes and smiling.

"You're so beautiful that almost any guy would," he said sadly. "But I guess I'm not just any guy. Don't get me wrong, I understand it. I can see the benefits from both sides. The women, like everyone else nowadays, are afraid. We all want to live. We want to have healthy children and we want them to live. We also want to live our lives in at least relative comfort, with security and safety, while at the same time being free to do whatever we want. And these days, to have those things it means being involved with one of the projects for getting humanity off of the planet. Maybe those women are just using what they have to get what they want. They've always been able to throw their beauty at men and turn their heads. They're just throwing it at a different type of man." I smiled when he said that.

"And the guys," he continued. "Hell, I don't blame them at all. For all of their lives, these guys have been belittled and humiliated or even made fun of because they're smart. They've had to stand by and watch hulking behemoths who think a slide rule is when you don't go down the slide until the guy before you gets off, so you don't crash into him. This is their time to shine and have all of the things that they've been denied for most of their lives. This is the true version of, "Revenge of the Nerds."

"Aren't you one of the nerds?" I asked.

"Not really," I said. "I've never had to be jealous of guys who had women. I'm also not nervous around women because I've had women for most of my life."

I was shocked but then he didn't seem to be as nervous around me as I'd expected.

"My twin is an ex-football player," he said. "We're really close and he'd always bring home a bunch of girls, so I ended up with way more than my share. We've always taken care of each other."

"So why aren't you married?" I asked.

"I have a hang up," he said shyly. My blood went cold then. I hadn't been told about any hang ups or kinks. I hoped it was only a mild one like bondage or needing to wear a costume or something like that.

"What's your hang up?" I asked.

"Aren't we getting a little personal?" he asked. As soon as he said that, I knew it was probably something I wasn't going to like. But I also knew that for the success of my mission, the good of humanity and my immortal soul, I needed to not only find out whatever it was, but to put up with it and pretend to like it.

"Sorry," I said. "I just like hearing you talk."

"That's nice to hear," he said. "I always thought that I rambled on and on about obscure scientific concepts that no one is interested in except for other eggheads." He stood up then and waved goodbye to me. I was frustrated and fascinated all at the same time.

Back in the present, as I looked at my husband, I felt as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I'd been such a God damned fool. After that initial eye contact, he never even looked at me again. As much as I tried to make eye contact with him to try to read him, he never even glanced in my direction. For the past eight years, this man had literally worshipped me and now he wouldn't even look at me. The worst part of all was that there was no way I could explain to him that I'd done what I'd done for him, for us. I no longer cared about my fucking mission. I had over the past eight years come to love that man as much or more than he loved me. I wanted more than anything else to figure out a way to tell him the truth. But I was so afraid of losing him that it made me catatonic.

I needed a way to distance myself from Denton and the way he made me feel. So I'd stupidly tried to pretend to be someone else. I just wanted a different perspective. I'd picked up that nameless idiot on the spur of the moment and I don't even know why. I'd been told by my superiors that they were afraid that I was losing my emotional distance from the subject. They were afraid that I might do something that I'd already done a long time ago. In short, I was told that I should go out and screw another guy to make sure I didn't fall for Denton. Actually, I was supposed to do it regularly, for just that reason. Somewhere down the line, I'd stopped doing it and as they'd surmised, I'd fallen for him.

The truth was that I'd stopped sleeping with other men only a few weeks into the relationship with Denton. Why I'd done it today was beyond me. Maybe it was because I'd recognized a face in the supermarket and suspected that they had a person following me to assure that I was adhering to the protocols. I guess I was going to take the idiot back to our house and just send him on his way. I'd done that a few times when I thought I was being watched. But this bastard wouldn't leave without getting a piece. So I'd figured that I could just give him some and get rid of him. Since I wasn't on the pill, there was no way I was letting him in my vagina; that was Denton's alone. I just wanted it over and quickly, but then disaster had struck.

Now, I was in jeopardy of failing in my sacred mission. But even more importantly, I was in danger of losing my husband.

I decided to attack, instead of waiting and defending. I just walked up to him and put my arms around him. He moved away from me as if my touch burned him and I saw that I'd hurt him even more than I ever suspected. I really can't say that, because if he'd ever done to me what he thinks I did to him, I'd have been crushed too. That is one of the problems with love. It leaves you vulnerable.

He'd moved away from me as if I was smeared with shit and he was wearing a new white suit. I also didn't like the look on his face.

"We'll talk after he's in bed," he said.

"Den, I'm so sorry," I said. "I swear to you it'll never happen again. It shouldn't have happened this time. I didn't enjoy it. I just didn't have a choice."

"I guess that's something," he said. "I was expecting to hear you tell me that it was only sex and it didn't mean anything. Or maybe you'd tell me that it was because you were lonely because I was always working. But realistically, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later."

We'd kept our voices low so Donnie wouldn't hear us. But a wave of anger so severe that I started to sweat went through me. I yanked Denton into the kitchen away from Donnie.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" I hissed. "Explain that! Why was it bound to happen? Are you insinuating that I'm a whore or something?"

"Nothing of the kind," he said. I glared at him.

"Then...?" I began.

"Beth, look at you," he said. "And look at me. Sooner or later you were obviously going to get tired of me or bored with me. I'm just surprised that it took eight years for it to happen." He pulled his hand away from me and went back into the living room with Donnie. I stood there, still feeling my fingers where they'd gripped his wrist and I cried my eyes out. Even after all of this time, the man who was probably most responsible for saving a huge chunk of humanity doubted that he was good enough for me.

I thought back to the beginning again. Over the next few weeks after our first conversation, I'd made sure that I didn't run into Denton quite as often. And I made doubly sure that if we did end up in the same place, that I was always the one who got there first. I also positioned myself so that he would run into me or come into a place that I was already at and never the other way around.

What frustrated me then a lot was that sometimes I'd make arrangements to go to a certain place like a restaurant or a market and Denton and I would both be there and he wouldn't come over to talk to me. Sometimes, he didn't even notice that I was there. It finally occurred to me that Denton wasn't actually pursuing me. I was playing this game of seduction alone. He truly wasn't involved and had no clue that we were supposed to end up together.

I needed a different tactic. I had a friend who was dating one of the guys that Denton had building some sort of machine or something. I spoke to her and got her to invite Denton to a barbecue along with some of the other guys that they worked with. I showed up and spent most of the morning fending off advances from a bunch of guys that looked like half of the cast of King of the Nerds. There were even a few Nerdesses trying to flirt with me when they saw that all of the male nerds had failed.

I was getting to the point where if one more nerd had walked up and made some vague reference to Star Trek or the Big Bang Theory and then told me what he did for a living, I was going to scream, when Denton walked in. He smiled shyly at me across the room and I bolted for him.

"You look like you're pretty popular," he said. "I told you that you're ridiculously beautiful."

"Denton, I've been wondering about this for weeks," I said. He looked at me curiously.

"Remember you told me that you had some kind of hang up?" I asked. "What is it?"

"Are we getting that personal again already?" he smiled. I just nodded.

"Love," he said.

"What?" I asked. "That's it? I was expecting something bizarre like being whipped with a cat o nine tails while being suspended over a vat of flaming spiders while wearing nipple clamps smeared with crunchy peanut butter."

"Ooh, that sounds like fun," said a guy who'd just wandered over to join our conversation. "You're Dr. Denton Woods aren't you?" he asked, gushing at talking to us. He held out his hand and I gave him the iciest glare I could. "I've read all of you papers and I'm...he stopped talking for a second and looked at both of us. "...I'm gone," he said, realizing that his company was unwanted.

I pushed Denton over into a corner. "How the hell is love a hang up? Everyone wants that?"

He pointed out a short fat man and his statuesque girlfriend. "That's Dr. George Summerville. He's brilliant in terms of designing propulsion systems for spacecraft. He and I are working on the Ionic drive system for the ship. I don't want to get too heavily into the specs and concepts because it would bore you to tears, but until George met Marga two years ago, he was a forty three year old virgin. Marga was in the Miss Universe pageant three years ago. She was engaged to some actor or something before George. Do you really think the two of them are in love?"

"Why couldn't they be?" I asked. "They seem happy."

"She's happy not to be living in a fifth floor walk-up in what's left of Los Angeles," he said. "She loves the fact that she lives like a fucking princess and lies around on her ass all day. So if you call that love, maybe she does love George."

"Well, what does it hurt? He seems to be happy," I told him. "So it isn't hurting him any."

"Oh, he is happy," he told me. "George doesn't love her either. I've had dinner with them a couple of times. George doesn't even know her middle name. He just loves pussy. Now that he's getting some, George is going hog wild. He's already cheating on her. It wouldn't surprise me if he dumps her off soon in favor of someone younger and built even more extremely. Or maybe this time he'll go after someone more beautiful." He looked at me curiously.

"No one wants to be alone," I said. "You can't blame them. They're just using what they have to get what they want."

"I'm not blaming them," he smiled. "I just don't want to join them."

"You're confusing the shit out of me," I said irritably. I really was frustrated. This wasn't going nearly as easily as it was supposed to. "I thought you said that you were hung up on love?" He just smiled and nodded.

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit, right?" I said. Then he looked at me in confusion.

"If you want love then why are you alone?" I asked. "It doesn't seem to make sense."

"Because I want real love," he said. "I don't want to get stuck with some woman who doesn't care a fig about me. Why do I need to end up with a stranger just because she was born with two giant squeezable melons on her chest and a nice smile? I'd much rather be with a short, fat woman with bad teeth, who loves me so much that every time she sees me she lights up. I want someone who knows all of my faults and failings and loves me anyway. I need a woman who laughs when I burn up the kitchen trying to make a light saber and who kisses me even when I am wearing my Spock ears and it's not Halloween and we're not at a costume party."

I'm not really sure, but I think that was the moment that I fell ass over tea kettle for him. "Good luck finding that!" I said sarcastically. "Let's get something to eat." I was trying to change the subject but deep down inside, I was thinking that I really could be that girl. And on an even deeper level, I wanted to be that girl.

During dinner, Donnie chattered excitedly about a variety of subjects. Denton answered all of his questions and shared his excitement. I did tell Donnie to drink his milk. He told me that he wanted soda instead and that he should actually be drinking soda because its chemical composition was totally synthetic and since there would probably be no live animals on the ships he should be getting used to it.

He looked back at me expecting an answer based on logic and sound reasoning. "Drink your milk anyway," I said.

"But why?" he whined, sounding like any other seven year old.

"Because I'm your mother and I said so," I quipped. I did notice Denton crack a smile at that.

After dinner the two of them played video games until it was time for Donnie to go to bed. Denton followed him to his room as usual. I touched him lightly on his shoulder and told him that he should start a fire so we could be comfortable while we talked and I'd tuck Donnie in because I hadn't spent much time with him since they got home.

He nodded and went off to start the fire.

Donnie had gotten himself into his Starfleet uniform PJs all by himself. He was growing up so quickly I could barely follow him. I laughed as I noticed that he had the pants on backwards and the fly was in the back. Perhaps he hadn't outgrown his mother just yet.

"Mom is Uncle Dalton really a Sandman?" he asked.

"I have no idea," I said. "Why?"

"I think I want to be a Sandman," he said. I was shocked.

"I thought you wanted to be a scientist like your father," I said.

"That's probably my second choice," he said.




Star City Stories: Enter Sandman



"But why would you want to be a Sandman?" I asked. He looked at me and shivered.

"I'd rather be one than have one of those motherfuckers come after me," he said seriously.

"Donnie," I said in shock. "We don't use language like that. Where did you hear that term?"

"From Mr. Bookman," he said. "He's the janitor at school. I heard him and his assistant JJ Evans talking about it. They're afraid of the Sandmen and they're both big giant black guys. Everyone is afraid of the Sandmen, Mom. What would you do if the Sandmen were coming after you?"

"What should I do?" I asked.

"There's nothing you can do," he said. "If those mother fu...Sorry mom...guys are after you, they're going to get you. You may as well just wait for them to come. It's a wrap."

I just shook my head. "Say your prayers, little one. Don't forget my son, to include every one. I tuck you in warm within to keep you free from sin..." I began.

"Til the Sandman comes," he said sleepily. I shook my head again.

"Mom," he said. "I changed my mind. If I was a scientist I could invent something to beat the Sandmen. That's what I need to do. I need to make something you can keep on your bed or in your pillow to keep those...them from doing anything." I nodded. 

"What should you do until then?" I asked.

"Sleep with one eye open," he said. "...Gripping your pillow tight."

"After a while, we'd just have a bunch of guys who just waited around for the Sandmen and did battle with them. They'd just get ready all day long and once night fell they'd go to war with the Sandmen. Exit light. Enter night," he said sleepily. He was so sleepy he could barely keep his eyes open.

"I'll stay here with you, Donnie," I said. "I'll watch over you while you sleep. Your father and I would never let anyone, Sandmen or otherwise, hurt you. Take my hand. We're off to never-never land."

Less than five minutes later he was asleep. I needed to talk to his teacher about the janitors at the school. But there was a bigger problem. Perhaps Donnie had simply outgrown that school. He had so much time to wander around the building and listen to crap from the janitors because he was so far ahead of his class in most subjects that they didn't know what to do with him.

As I walked out of Donnie's room, I ran into my husband.

"You really do need to stop that now," he said gently.

"Shit, I don't know how he found out what your brother does for a living. I never told him," I said. "But everyone is a little bit afraid of the Sandmen."

"They shouldn't be," said Denton, shaking his head. "Most people have the wrong idea. The Sandmen aren't assassins. They only assist people who already want to die. You have to ask for their service. They've never killed anyone who didn't want it."

"That you know of," I said.

"Anyway that isn't what I was talking about," he said. "He's getting too old for fairy tales and prayers."

"But not too old for Star Trek PJs?" I asked.

"Star Trek is based on science and the exploration of human potential," he said. "Those are concepts that will get us off of this dying planet and expand his mind. Religion is pure hokum and will only hold us back and lead to a false sense of hope. A bunch of people kneeling and scraping and praying to a god that may or may not exist is not going to save us. We need to save ourselves and religion is no help with that."

We went into our living room and sat down on the couch.

"So how long before you leave?" he asked. I looked at him strangely.

"How soon before you have them kick me out?" I asked. He looked back at me with an expression on his face that mirrored my confusion.

"I assumed that you'd want to be with your lover," he said. "I will, of course, keep Donnie with me."

"I don't have a lover, imbecile, unless you're talking about yourself. And I do want to be with you since I love you with all of my heart. And why would Donnie stay with you?" I asked.

"Come on, Beth," he said. "We both know that Donnie is...special. He needs to be around people and things that will enhance the development of his mind and his skills."

"I could do that," I said.

"Not as easily as I could," he said. "What would you do, let him help you cook? All I'd have to do is start taking him to work with me."

"I don't want him growing up to be a God damned science nerd," I said.

"What do you want him to be then," he asked.

"Denton, we know and socialize with a lot of scientists, we don't have a choice. Haven't you noticed that there's something wrong with almost every one of them. I don't want my baby to be like that. I want him to be like you. You're the smartest one of the bunch, but you're also a complete person. You put people first. You're...Denton you're the one that's special."

"Yeah," he said sarcastically. "I'm so special that the woman I love most needs to cheat on me." I started crying then and he just grabbed me and held me while I cried.

"What do you want Beth?" he asked.

"Denton, more than anything else, I want us to forget that this happened. It was an aberration, just like in your experiments. In this case, it was a repayment of an old debt from before we were together. It's over and done with. It will never happen again and I just wish we could forget it and move on. I love only you Denton. You have to understand that. Denton, I would die before I'd ever hurt you. What do you want Denton? Do you want me gone? Because if you do, you don't have to send the Sandmen after me. Just tell me that you don't love me and I'll disappear. Maybe you should send them though, because I wouldn't want to live without you."

"Beth I can't send the Sandmen anywhere," he sighed. "I don't control them."

I just looked at him hoping that my love for him shone through.

"Okay," he said. "It's going to take me some time to get over this, but I'll try." My heart was so full it nearly burst. I jumped on him and he pushed me back.

"Beth, I told you it was going to take some time," he said. "We're going to need to rebuild trust. That's going to take a while. We're going to need to rebuild our intimacy and even then, I'm probably going to be seeing visions of you bent over and him..." he stopped and shook his head. "It's going to take some time. We might need counseling."

I woke up angry the next morning. Denton was gone. He was probably already at work in that lab of his. Donnie was already dressed and playing his video game. The remnants of his breakfast were on the kitchen table.

I watched him and smiled. In the new morning, every trace of his fear was forgotten. No thoughts of Sandmen hindered his performance in the game. Exit night, enter light. Life goes on with the coming of the dawn.

My smile faded as I considered his future. Would he be like his father? The larger projects seemed to continue, the smaller and moderate ones went belly up on an almost daily basis. Each day, more and more responsibility fell on my husband's shoulders.

He bore, literally the weight of the world and until now he'd done it with a smile on his face and joy in his heart. He was a symbol of hope for more people than I can count. He oversaw more projects than anyone knew. Besides his scientific knowledge, he had the gift of seeing the big picture. He could truly look through the endless number of proposals that came in from both major and minor scientists and think tanks. He could see instantly which ones were useful and which were vanity or simply pointless.

He was able to do this as if there was no pressure on him at all because Denton isn't like the rest of us. Denton is fearless. Denton isn't afraid of the asteroid. He isn't afraid of dying in 51 years. Denton is only afraid of dying now. He always tells me that if the project is successful and we save humanity, it would all have been for nothing if he'd wasted the lifetime that he and I have to share.

Denton lives in the moment. Unlike my handlers, Denton isn't worried about life after death. Denton has often told me that Heaven isn't too far away. He sees it every time he looks in my eyes. His version of Heaven is being married to me and doing his science.

For a long time, I've been trapped between a rock and a hard place. I've been trying to find the middle ground in a war that has yet to be declared. Yesterday, I made a terrible mistake while trying to play both sides against the middle. It almost cost me everything. That forced me to pick a side and I have. I choose Denton.

Today, I intend to tender my resignation to those who put me in this position and get back to the business of inspiring my husband. I need to give him back that glow of confidence in his eyes that dimmed so greatly yesterday, when he saw me with that man.

I'm sure that there will be threats and counter threats, but in the end they'll have to let me go. I'm only one woman and they have too much at stake to risk it all over me. I mean very little to them, but to Denton...?

To Denton I'm everything. He showed me that yesterday. Denton is a proud man. But he put his pride aside for me. He may be the most powerful scientist in the world. He could easily have sent me away and already have two or three younger, prettier women in my place now. But he kept me, even after what I'd done because he loves me.

Right now it's all eating him alive, because he doubts whether or not I love him. He shouldn't though. Because I might have made a mistake, but from now on, it's he and I against the world. I'll stand with him against life, against death, against God if necessary. Til death do us part.

Donnie gets up and grabs his book bag when he hears the school bus blow its horn outside. "Bye Mommy," he says as he hugs me.

I prepare myself for my final meeting.

An hour later, just as I'm about to leave, the doorbell rings. I'm not expecting anyone so it comes as a surprise. When I get to the door the surprise turns to horror.

Looking through the peephole, I can see that it's the guy from yesterday.

"What do you want?" I asked him through the door.

"We need to talk," he yelled. "Can I come in?"

"Hell no!" I scream back to him.

"It's really important," he yells. "It'll only take a few minutes."

"Wait there on the porch," I yell back.

I grab my purse and coat and go out through the door, locking it behind me.

As I look at him, I almost laugh. I'd noticed that his words seemed to be slurred and I can see the reason for it now. His lips are comically swollen and his jaw appears to be swollen as well. Talking is obviously painful.

"You look good," he says with some degree of difficulty.

"There's no need for pleasantries. Get to the point," I said.

"Yesterday a guy in a bar beat the shit out of me for no reason," he said. "Is there a chance that your husband...?"

"Not at all," I said. "Denton isn't that kind of person. I already told you."

"What did he do to you?" he asked.

"Something I probably don't deserve," I said.

"What?" he asked. "I don't see a mark on you."

"He forgave me," I said.

"What a fucking wimp," he sneered. "I'd have severely beaten your ass."

"You mean like you claim he had done to you?" I spat. "I think that's the difference between you and him. He knows that beating on me or you won't make him feel any better. And he loves me too much to ever hurt me. So unfortunately, he got all of the pain for my stupidity. I'll never put him through that again. Now if you're done, I have somewhere to be."

Like Denton, I prefer the monorail. I take the train deep into the city. For some reason this time my trip seems different. Maybe it's a mental thing. The added pressure of what I intend to do is probably making me edgy.

I walked into a store that looks just like every other store on the block. I walk right past the man behind the counter and through a door marked employees only.

Behind the door was a storage room that looked like any other storage room in any other store. Shelves with common products lined the walls. A mop and a mop bucket full of dirty water sat in the corner.

I placed my hand against the wall on what looked like any other tile. As soon as my hand touched the tile it was scanned and a hidden section of the wall opened. I pushed against the wall and it swung free on well-oiled hinges.

Beyond the hidden door, everything changed. The room beyond the door looked like any other church. Richly appointed icons and decorations covered every surface of every wall. Two small rows of leather covered pews stretched from the dais at the front of the room to the back wall. It was a very small church but a very luxuriously outfitted one. I wondered again how it was possible for them to have smuggled all of this into Star City.

Then I remembered that although the church had fallen out of favor, it had never been outlawed. The war was still undeclared.

"How are you doing my child?" he asked, stepping out from a hidden alcove.

"Father, we must talk," I said. "I can no longer do this." His eyes looked at me and narrowed into slits and then he relaxed and the pleasant expression took over his facial features again.

"You are troubled, nothing more," he said. "The pressure of your precarious position and all of the sacrifices you've made in the Lord's name weigh on you. You are merely ti..."

"That's not fucking it!" I screamed. My shrill, angry voice echoed through the room and two men who looked like guards popped out of the same alcove the priest had come from.

"You blaspheme," he said, with a shocked look on his face. "You used profanity in the house of the Lord."

"I'm done!" I said loudly. "I can't do this anymore. I won't do it."

"But sister, you must," he said. "Do you know how difficult it was to get you into this position? Do you know how much your training cost us?"

"And you've recouped it several times over with the information I've brought you and the aid I've rendered in getting some of your people into this city," I spat back. He looked at me warily.

"What do you mean, "YOUR people?" he asked. "Don't you mean, "OUR people, sister? Are you having another one of your little episodes? I remember the last one was about 7 years ago after you bore a child for your target. You wanted to quit then too. Why don't you take a few days off? Why not tell your target that you have a sick relative? We could even arrange to have a letter written and mailed to your house. You could spend the time back at the convent. You haven't been there in a very long time. Perhaps a few weeks of prayer, reflection and meditation would suffice to bring you back to normal, my child. I will also pray for you myself."

"Instead of praying for me, why don't you just go and shit in your hat, Father," I said equally calmly. "There's nothing wrong with me. I am normal. I've just realized that I love my husband and my child, more than I love YOUR cause. I am a Christian, Father. I believe in God and I try my best to do only good. The problem is that some of the things that the Church makes me do are NOT good. Yesterday, I had sex with a man that I'm not married to. I saw your spy following me in the market to watch what I did or didn't do..."

"Sister, you may not understand all of the things we have you do, but trust me, they are necessary. You were put in the position you are in for the most grave of reasons. It is imperative that you remain steadfast to our cause or all is lost. Sometimes we must do a little evil to do a greater good. Your current situation is a perfect illustration of that. We've directed that you have sex with other men to prevent you from falling in love with the monster we assigned you to. Apparently it wasn't enough. Perhaps we should have had you do it more often, because you seem to have succumbed to the man's charms anyway and..."

"Father, if you ever call my husband a monster again, I'll slap the shit out of you, here in your own Church. I'm telling you I don't want to be a part of this anymore. God's love is pure. The church doesn't seem to be. Adultery is a sin, so why have you forced me to do it? What good does it do my soul to break the commandments?"

"Sister this isn't about saving your soul," he hissed. "It's about saving the Church."

"Well perhaps the Church doesn't need to be saved," I hissed right back. "If the Church stoops to breaking the commandments just to continue, what good is it? When did the Church rise above the faithful?"

"Sister, you need a break," he said in a low voice.

"Father, I'm done," I said back. "I quit. I just want to live out my life with my husband and my son."

"A husband that you wouldn't have met if it wasn't for us," he sneered. "A child that you wouldn't have without the husband that we provided. You owe your family and your life to us."

"And because of that, I won't bring all of your little intrigues tumbling down around you," I said. "But I will no longer aid you or report to you ever again."

"In that case, Sister," he said. "You need to be very careful. If I were you I would probably just try to disappear. Your husband may not be as forgiving when an anonymous article that mentions you and your dubious background appears on the internet."

"Then we are at an impass, Father," I said. "Because as you seem to be hinting, when that article appears, I'll probably lose my family, but I'll tell my husband every single thing I know about your Church. Every meeting place, every nun that has married or associated with a scientist. I'll tell them your goals and the entire God damned plan. I'll ignite a war between the Church and Science that will make the persecution of scientists during the renaissance seem tame. And Father this time there will be no Galileos. This time Science will win." His face contorted.

"Look at the world around you Father, even now it crumbles. Crime is rampant, humanity turns inward and becomes more beastly due to its fear. There are only a few places left on the planet where order still reigns and everyone is trying to get into them. Those places are the cities where groups of scientists work to get humanity off of our doomed planet. When we discovered Shiva, people all over the world looked for something to save them. Millions of them turned to the church. The Church told them it wouldn't happen. You told them that God wouldn't allow his creation to be destroyed, but day after day that rock draws ever closer to earth."

"Without Science, we wouldn't have even known that it was out there. After a while the Hail Mary's and prayers could no longer soothe the public, so what did they do in their rage? They tore down all of the churches and synagogues and every other religious institution they found. They threw them away in favor of something more concrete. So now you hide like cockroaches around the fringes of society. Father, you can't afford a war with me. My husband would bring your church down around you and crush it into rubble."

"You called him a monster, and you might be right. But for now the monster is docile and resting. In that state, the monster is not your enemy. He doesn't even notice the cockroaches. But if you awaken the monster...especially if you arouse his ire by threatening something that he loves and Father, make no mistake about it, my husband loves me...that monster will have your ass for lunch."

"But Sister..." he sputtered.

"Don't call me that again," I said. "I told you already, I quit. My name is Beth Woods. And if it all comes down to it, I'll go to hell with my husband."

"The hand of God shall strike you down," he hissed. "And it will save us all. It won't be your scientists. They will fail. You'll see, bitch!"

"Father, have you ever considered that maybe God has already shown his hand in saving us?" I asked. "Maybe it was God who gave us, my husband and my son to lead us off of this doomed rock. Maybe God sent Denton Woods like he sent Moses. I guess you don't want that to be true do you? Because if that was the case, then you'd be fighting against God yourself wouldn't you?"




Star City Stories: Enter Sandman



With those last words as my parting shot, I got up and left. I felt better than I had in years. Something inside of me told me that I'd made the right decision.

What I didn't know was that I'd been followed from the time I left my house.

* * * * * *

Dalton

I couldn't believe that whore. First, she'd cheated on my brother. He'd caught her red handed fucking that loser in his house. The same fucking house that my nephew lived in. At least the bastard could have taken her to his own place or a motel. But this was simply too much. When I'd spoken to Denton on the phone this morning and he'd told me that he loved her and was trying to work this out, I'd almost thrown up in my fucking cereal.

She cheated on him and he was giving her another chance? I just didn't understand why. Denton could have any woman he wanted. Sure Beth was pretty and even after giving birth she was built like a fucking anime sex goddess, but she could be replaced. 

And how does the whore repay him. First, she has the same bastard she cheated on him the previous day with back to the house. Then she goes off to some storefront sleaze den. I'd followed her into the one room store where she'd disappeared, only to reappear about a half hour later. Something weird was going on there. When she showed up again, walking out of thin air, because I was standing off to the side just outside of the store and there's no way she was in that broom closet for all of that time, she had one of those, "I've just been fucked," smiles on her face.

I knew what I had to do. Denton wasn't going to like it, but I had to save my brother from himself. There was simply no way I could let either that bitch, or her lover, continue to live and humiliate my brother.

I went home to get some sleep since I'd definitely be working that night. As I lay there in my bed sleep, wouldn't come. It was more than just the light shining in through the windows. Over the years of often working through the night, I've trained my body to sleep whenever I need to. There were things that I was missing here.

The reason I couldn't sleep was that something just didn't add up. When I finally drifted off, I was still no closer to the answers I sought.

Four hours later, just as darkness began to settle over Star City, My Mustang's growl announced my presence as I pulled into my spot behind headquarters.

I went inside the building and shuffled a bunch of papers and shook my head, just as I'd have done if I was going out on assignment.

As I stepped in front of the screened in area to get my supplies, Ernie looked at me and smiled. "A weird one huh?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I just can't figure this one out. The bastard has everything to live for. Why the fuck would he want to die? He's relatively young and it's not like he's a God damned scientist. He works construction, so it's not like he's under a lot of pressure."

"Dalton, haven't you learned yet," asked Ernie. "For some people just the thought that the world is going to end fucks them up in the head. You said he's young, right? Well maybe he's still going to be around when Shiva hits. He's in construction so he's not even guaranteed a spot on a ship. Then again it could be something else entirely. His wife could have left him. He could have just been diagnosed with cancer or something like that. He may just be fucking crazy. At least he had the presence of mind to request a Sandman. Would you rather have him go out and do shitty construction on a component of a ship that your nephew may live on someday?"

"Well, when you put it that way," I said. "But it's just weird because I know the guy."

"Ooh that is kind of fucked up," he said. "But it's not the most fucked up thing I've ever heard." Ernie had a million God damned stories. I always listened to him so in this case not listening might have set off an alarm bell.

"Okay, old man what is the weirdest one you've heard of?" I asked.

"Remember, old Lincoln McGillicuddy?" I nodded. He was one of the first generation of Sandmen. Those guys had to go out with very little tech when the rules weren't as clearly established as they are now.

"Link got an assignment to assist a woman. The woman didn't want to live anymore because the guilt of cheating on her husband was too much for her. She knew that he was going to find out about it and when he did her marriage would be over. She just didn't think she could face the pain in his eyes and she also knew that as much as he loved her, he'd never forgive her. So she called for a Sandman. Link got the case through random draw. That was the case that drove Link over the edge," he said.

"I don't get it," I said. "I've taken out three or four cheating wives. It's just the times. That fucking asteroid and our whole way of life changing makes people desperate and..." Ernie held up his hand.

"Dalton, the woman was Link's wife," he said. "You let me know when YOU get one like that."

I walked away from the screen shaking my head, with Ernie's laughter coming from behind me.

This was going to be almost as bad. Shit, I never really liked Beth, but she made my brother so fucking happy, that I'd put my opinion aside. She was also the mother of my nephew; for that alone, I'd have to make her death quick, painless and pleasurable. As far as her lover's death; his wouldn't be nearly as easy on him. But it would be a lot more fun for me.

I drove across town and got out in front of a shitty apartment building. Looking at the building I could tell that it was once nice. The problem, as with most things, was that the occupants simply didn't give a fuck.

I guess the fact that the world would be ending and the earth destroyed sometime within your lifetime, probably made cutting your fucking lawn seem pointless; but damn.

I pulled the cloak around myself, while once again praising my brother's brains and ingenuity. As I stepped out of the shadows around the building, the soft rubber soles of my shoes made my footfalls as silent as the grave.

There were several people in front of the building but none of them saw me as I walked right past them. There was a guy who appeared to be in the later stages of alcoholism drinking a bottle of liquor that was wrapped in a paper bag. From his clothes and shoes he looked to be some kind of minor league paper pusher. He'd never live to see the end of the planet at the rate he was drinking.

There were three or four men standing around talking about baseball from the old days. I stood right beside them and listened to the conversation. I wished that I could have joined in. They were talking about one of my favorite teams, the 2012 Detroit Tigers. They made it all the way to the World Series and choked. But they were still a great team.

As I went inside the building, a couple of them noticed that the door opened and closed for no reason. Most people who notice things like that chalk it up to a software glitch.

As soon as I stepped into the building's lobby, the mood and atmosphere changed. Graying yellow paint and general disarray mirrored the neglect from the outside of the building. A large man was yelling at a small woman cowering on the floor in front of him.

He raised his hand and she shrank back in fear. She mumbled something under her breath.

"What did you say bitch?" he demanded.

"I said that someday, someone will hit you like you hit me," she said defiantly. That seemed like an invitation to me so I stepped silently between them and even as anger filled his eyes over what she'd said. I punched him straight in the face as hard as I could. Then, as a follow up, I snap kicked him in the balls. He doubled up and vomited on the floor because the pain was so intense. I noticed a small smile on the woman's face as she went to check on him.

"Witch," he sobbed. "They told me there were witches in your family. Stay away from me. Have it your way. You can leave. Just leave me alone and don't hurt me anymore."

I silently ran up the stairs to the third floor. I didn't trust the elevator in this building. I found the apartment that I was looking for and pulled out my phone. An app on my phone scanned the lock, took the identification numbers down and accessed the company's website to get the master access code. It also overrode the chimes that announced that the door had been unlocked. I eased the door open while looking through the widening gap between the door and the frame to make sure there was no one in the room.

The room was empty. Lynch was obviously in another room. I locked the door behind me and went to find him.

Under the cover of my cloak, I put on my oxygen mask. As I searched from room to room I finally found him. He was out by the balcony. He had a baseball bat and an antique gun on a table beside him.

I stepped over near him and snatched the gun off the table silently and threw it over the balcony's banister into the muck and filth of the alley below. He was looking in the other direction and hadn't even seen it go. He turned his head back and noticed that the gun was gone. Alarm registered on his face. He looked around to see if it had simply slipped off of the table. Then I picked up the bat. Since he couldn't see me, it appeared to be floating above the table in front of him. His eyes saw it but he didn't want to believe it.

I swung the bat with all of my might, catching him in his stomach. I could have killed him by just crushing his skull with it but that wasn't my goal. I didn't want to give this asshole an easy death. I wanted him to suffer the way my brother had and would.

My blow to his stomach had probably ruptured some of his internal organs. As he heaved, I noticed a trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth. If he got to the hospital they could probably still save him. All he'd have to do is call 911.

He had collapsed onto the floor of the balcony. I needed answers so I pulled the hood of the cloak off of my head.

His eyes got so big I thought he was going to have a heart attack as he looked at my disembodied head floating above him.

"You...you're a..." he gasped.

"Sandman," I finished for him.

"But I didn't...I don't want to die," he sputtered.

"And maybe you won't," I said.

"So this doesn't have anything to do with that bitch from yesterday?" he said. "She was telling me the truth."

"She was telling you the truth," I said. "The problem is that her husband is my brother. So while he may believe in all of that forgive and forget shit, it is not a part of the way I operate. Still, there's a small chance that you might walk out of here alive."

"I'll do anything," he whined. "Aren't you supposed to give me the sand? They say that the sand makes it so you have pleasant dreams and you don't feel any pain. I could use some of that right now."

"Answers first, sand second," I said. "First thing I need to know is how long has your affair with my sister been going on? How long have you been fucking that whore?"

He laughed and spat up some blood. There was more blood coming up now, I'd need to be quick.

"There's no affair," he said. "I met her in the market yesterday. She's beautiful, who wouldn't try to talk to her? At first, she didn't pay me any fucking attention. Then as I watched her, I noticed that there was someone else watching her but from a distance. He was taking notes or something. I wasn't sure that she saw him, but suddenly she started flirting back with me. Then she asked me to leave the market with her. I'm no fool. If she was offering it, I was going to take it. When we got back to her place, she tried to get out of it. So I just sat down on the couch and told her I'd just stay there and explain it to her husband when he got home. So to get rid of me she gave me a piece of ass."

"It was fucking awful. You know how they say there's no such thing as bad sex? Well they're wrong. There I was about to stick my meat into the hottest piece of ass I've ever had and she just made it awful. She wouldn't suck my dick. She wouldn't kiss me. She was the first woman I've ever met who turned down the chance to get her pussy eaten. She just bent over and said go ahead and do it."

"After I got it inside of her, I heard something. It pumped my ego up. I thought she was moaning or something. I asked her if she wanted to switch positions. She just told me to get it over with. Then I started to figure things out. She didn't want to do missionary or any other thing where she'd have to look at me. Finally I noticed that it wasn't moaning she was doing, she was praying. You know like those old Christians used to do?"

"Praying?" I asked. He just nodded.

"And she was crying too. That does a lot for a guy's ego you know. Like fucking me was so bad it brought tears to her eyes. It was as if it was the worst thing she'd ever done. My dick was wilting like a balloon with all of the air let out of it, but it was too late. He came in, right then. All that did was made me feel even worse. I was ready for a reaction. I'm a pretty big guy and he's a little guy. I might've even let him hit me a couple of times. But he just got that look on his face like his whole world had just died and..."

"Our whole world just might," I said.

"Yeah I know," he said. "I honestly didn't have a clue of who he was until...well, until it was too late. Then you showed up at the bar and beat the shit out of me. I was confused and all of those assholes at the bar claimed that I'd gone crazy and beat my own ass...Oh boy, are you sure you don't have any of that sand?"

I pulled my breather back on and reached into the pouch at my waist. I'd intended to just let him die in agony. Hell, I was going to give him the most painful poison I had, but I had a change of heart.

Before he could say anything, I threw a small bit of glittering sand in his face. It dissipated and like alcohol it evaporated without leaving any residue. The sand took away all of his pain and at the same time, it left him high as a kite and pliable.

He would follow my directions to the letter. I couldn't save him anymore. One of the strictest laws of the Sandmen is that once someone has seen us, they have to die. So while I couldn't save him, I could do the next best thing. I had him write out a suicide note explaining why he'd called for a Sandman. His last wish, expressed in the note was that his wife and child be brought to Star City. I knew that the higher ups would look at that. The sacrifice of a dead worker was powerful karma. They wouldn't want that working against the project.

I gave him one more blast of sand and had him hold onto the note. The note also explained how he originally gotten tired of waiting for a Sandman so he'd tried to take his own life with his baseball bat.

Ten minutes later, after making sure that no traces of my presence were left, I walked down the stairs. The woman from before was walking out of a shitty apartment with a big smile on her face clutching two worn out suitcases. Her jeans were so tight I could almost read the label of her panties as her ass bounced from side to side. She'd gone from cowering like a mouse to walking like a vibrant and confident woman in only a few moments.

I couldn't resist. I reached out and grabbed her tight ass as I went by her. She shrieked and then turned around in every direction.

"Whoever you are, you'd better not try that again," she said warily. "I'm a powerful witch."

I got behind her and grabbed her ass with both hands this time. She melted and just let me do it. She apparently liked it. She was still standing there waiting for me to do it again when I left the building. Too bad she couldn't see me. It might have been fun.

I checked and found out that my brother was working late in his lab. I stopped by his house and got in the same way I'd let myself into Lynch's apartment. I looked around for Beth because I needed even more answers now. I finally found her. She was writing a very long note to Donnie. There was one on the desk next to it addressed to Denton. She had a picture of herself and Denton on the bed with her and she kissed it and then from nowhere pulled out a very wicked looking knife. She held the knife up to her own throat and I launched myself across the room. I caught her hand just in time but she still ended up cutting herself in the center of her throat. Blood came from the shallow cut but it wasn't very deep and it hadn't penetrated nearly enough to be life threatening.

She looked around herself in every direction. Then pulled out a cross necklace.

"Lord, I know that fucking priest has probably told you that I've gone crazy and if loving my husband more than this bullshit they make me do means I am, then so be it. But let me die to put an end to my participation in all of this. I've already hurt the man I love far more than I can stand and I won't do this anymore. Lord, I'm...Oh Shit!" she screamed as my head appeared out of nowhere.

"Dalton...that was you wasn't it?" she screamed. "It was you who shifted my knife, not God."

I dropped the entire cloak on the floor and shook my head. Fuck the rules. This woman as nutty as she was; clearly loved my brother. She might even love him more than I did. She'd been willing to die to avoid causing Denton any more pain. There was no fucking way I could let her die.

"Beth, I need you to tell me the whole story from the beginning," I told her. "But no matter what happens, I'm on your side. We can get through this. We can make this work. But if I have to drug you, I'm not going to let you die. At first I thought that Denton was just being a wimp for forgiving you but this is one of those Transformers things isn't it?" she looked at me crazily.

"You know, more than meets the eye?" I said.

She wiped her tears away and looked at me. "You really are a Sandman aren't you?" I nodded. "You know, your nephew is scared shitless of you guys."

"Everyone is," I said. "And for good reason. Now tell me this story."

"Not just yet," she smiled. "There's someone else who deserves to know just as much."

An hour later the three of us, Beth, Denton and I gathered in Denton's office outside of his lab. One of Denton's endless array of assistant's, a pretty botanist with an incredible ass, was taking my nephew on a tour of the facility.

"I grew up in a very poor village in Brazil," said Beth, beginning her story.

From a very early age I, like most of the people in my family, was involved with the church. Sixteen years ago, when I was fifteen years old, I went to the local convent to begin the process of becoming a nun. A short time later, after the discovery of Shiva, the church was in an uproar. It was right after the crowds broke into and sacked the Vatican. They beat and hung several of the Cardinals and stole a lot of the valuable icons of the church."

It seemed in the new age, that religion had failed us. The people had turned to religion in the face of a crisis, the way the church had always wanted us to do, and the church had let them down. The Pope and the remaining Cardinals, as well as most of the high ranking officials from most of the world's religions were in hiding.

I, along with several hundred other nuns from around the world, was taken to a hidden facility. I was told that the fate of the Church may very well rest in our hands. My diet was changed. My education became grueling. I was also forced to endure daily workouts that would kill an animal. At the same time, I was pampered and fattened like a lamb before the slaughter.

They did everything necessary to ensure my beauty. I was lucky. I came from a family of curvy women. So I needed no breast implants. Everything on my body is natural, as you know very well, Denton.

The next thing they did was to drill into us over and over that in the service of the Church, we might have to do battle with its enemies. We didn't have to do physical battles, but mental ones. We were playing a role, it was almost like acting. We'd each be assigned a target and it was our job to insinuate ourselves as deeply into their lives as possible. But all the while it was our job to pass on information and assist fellow Christians in integrating into the projects that would leave the planet.