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I left to save?” She said this in rapid fashion, turning back in fury to the bed. “ What is this mysterious 'rip' and why should it be prevented? You a re a tale-teller, a deceiver.”
    “ I bring the rip in time.”
    Angie tried to think what that would entail. A rip in time? How could time be rent and if it were, what did it mean to reality?
    One of the asylum's automaton orderlies came to the locked door and from the other side called, “ Power will be restored in one hour. Power will be restored soon.”
    Angie ignored the machine outside her door and addressed the one on her bed. “ If time rips, w hat happens?” She could hardly believe she was asking such a question, but the box made her suspect it might know more than any machine of her day. It was sought after by apparitions. It was alive with some sort of artificial intelligence that was extreme l y rare in her known world of smoke and dung and asylums full of sane offenders to the state.
    “ A rip in time takes all this — all that you know--and makes it vanish. A rip in time throws off the axis of the planet and opens the heavens to the stars. It cause s the gears at the center of the earth to halt and turn backwards, spinning the globe clean once more.”
    “ And you have the power to make that happen?”
    “ Indeed. Unless you agree to sacrifice yourself upon the alter of time...and join me.”
    She hadn't any idea what it all really meant. Could she trust a machine? Had any machine ever asked this of a human being?
    She closed her eyes and thought about her short life and where it had led her. She had trained herself as a horse-woman, a trick rider for a while, thou gh the Bill Hickok Wild West show would not hire her. She had become a marksman with her revolver. Yet beyond those accomplishments, though they were not minor, she had done nothing of note. She had not married or settled down or started a family. She had not invented a new automaton or added to the store of knowledge that enhanced human life. She was really just a little cog in the great machine that was the earth, and if cast out, the machine wouldn't even notice, wouldn't slip a gear, wouldn't mourn her passing.
    “ Show me,” she said, coming to the bed to sit and take the weight off her bad leg. “ Show me what a rip in time means.”
    “ Not possible. Once started, it can't be stopped. It reverberates out like a mushroom cloud enveloping everything.”
    Angie sighed . What was she to believe and what should she do?
    “ What, then, would you have me do?”
    “ Lean closer, Angie. Take me to your breast. Embrace me.”
    The sparks inside the little box grew brighter and the whirring was mesmerizing. Angie wondered where the shape -shifters were when she needed them. Had she known she'd be asked to give herself this way, she would have surely handed over the evil box the first time it was requested. She leaned over the bed, taking up the box in both hands. The blankets slid from he r shoulders and the cold slipped into their place. She stared down into the sparkling chamber beneath the glass and for a moment it seemed to her the cogs and gears and chains were replaced by a miniature scene of a small city replete with lampposts and di r igibles and people hurrying through a snowy night. She held the box close to her chest and she shut her eyes, giving in to the disaster that was her life.
    When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the cold asylum. She stood on the street that looked i dentical to what she ’ d spied though the box glass. Men in top hats and long coats hurried by. Women in bustles and taffeta and velvet dresses strolled arm in arm with their lovers. Children dressed splendidly in hats and fine jumpers danced past between t h eir parents.
    She looked down and saw she still held the box in her hand. “ What happened? Where am I?”
    A smoky column whirled down the street toward her. She stepped back as it approached, but the whirlwind moved on past, nothing