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in every hovel and hamlet. Monstrous bombs and small, they detonated together, synchronized to take out man and all his works in an instant. Only a few survived — those in aeroplanes and those in submarines. Those underground mining or excavating. Those in the three ships in space that had been sent out to do scientific experiments. Her own ancestors were supposed to have been miners, earthwork diggers, the Ignorant Ones.
    The child apparition claimed that theory was balderdash. There had been no bombs. There had been just this small annoying beast of a machine that spoke riddles and was haunted by spirits who clamored to take possession of it. How this diminutive man-made object would bring about total annihilation was an unknowable p u zzle Angie feared she would never decipher. She would like to control the box, make it bend to her will, cause it to send a shape-shifter to the sleeping devil man one night to take his head on a platter, but she knew that was a fantasy of revenge she wou l d never get to indulge.
    The winter came, bearing down on Hot Spring with an unprecedented glacial storm. Blue lightening zapped through the snowfall, triggering automatons all over town to shut down where they stood. The power from the steam plant ceased, throwing the valley into darkness. Even the dirigibles landed and the fast rail halted, overtaken by mountainous snow and fields of treacherous ice. In her room Angie shivered beneath three woolen blankets, the cold seeping with icy fingers past the boar d shutters over the outside of the barred window. The asylum's cells were quiet. The whole town was muffled with snowfall. An occasional horse rider clapped past on the street, but otherwise Angie might be on the desert moon.
    It was in the depths of that f rigid night that the mattress beneath Angie's ribs began to hum and she knew the box had woken. She pulled herself from the bed, holding the blankets around her shoulders with one hand, and lifted the mattress to look.
    “ What do you want?” she asked in a p laintive tone. All her hopes had been shattered because of the otherworldly box. Her freedom had been snatched from her. She was marked a Magick, an accusation that would follow her all her days even if she managed to convince the doctors to let her go. S h e was destitute, the court having taken the last of her savings to pay for her asylum stay. Thanks to the superstitious sheriff and the crazy little whirring box, her life had been circumscribed by a small cell, the barred window, and little hope to chang e it all.
    “ What do you want ?” she hissed.
    Tiny sparks flew off the gears inside the box and the whirring noise increased. A voice that had never been human said, “ Would you sacrifice yourself for your world?”
    Angie nearly dropped the box from her hand. For the first time it felt profane and evil; it felt like an abyss yawning, luring her into its dark depths. “ What do you mean?” she whispered.
    “ Those who came to take me from you, why do you think they wanted me?”
    “ They want your power?”
    A ratcheting gear spu n faster, the noise increasing. “ You think it's about power? How dim can you be?”
    Angie let go of fear to embrace her anger. She had never liked it when men spoke to her as if she were an inferior sex. She had never let those above her station treat her wi th scorn. She would not let a simple mechanism insult her this way. She threw the box onto the mattress so that it tumbled against the wall. She turned her back, tightening the blankets around her throat. She stared into the near darkness, trembling and f u rious. She was not dim! She was not an inferior intelligence. How dare a machine call her names.
    “ Angie?”
    She refused to answer in repayment for all the days she had addressed the box with question and it had ignored her.
    “ Angie, there is a rip coming. If you go with me, you can prevent it. That is the truth.”
    “ Why would I prevent it, what do I care, who have