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with her at the end. Three years later, she’s still in my thoughts. My thesis is complete, and I’ve taken a professorship here at the University, adjunct to the Macro Quantum Mechanics Department and the History Department both. Yeah, I changed majors again.
    Dr. Elk’s senior project was the basis for my thesis in technological morality. It came at a heavy cost, 200 million and one lives.
    We are rebuilding Dr. Elk’s universe. We are helping the survivors, and I am directing the effort, making certain we do not play god again. Making certain we do not use entire universes as laboratories.
    I wonder if someone farther ahead is watching us. I wonder if we are playing out some scenario to test someone’s pet theory. I hope they’re watching closely and they learn something from us. Something from our mistakes.

DOCTOR MIGHTY & THE CASE OF ENNUI
    D octor Mighty noticed the malaise right around the time he captured Auntie Arctic in her lair in the back room freezer at a local Giant Eagle. Actually it was the fifth straight time he’d captured her in a Giant Eagle. Every time she escaped from the Institute, her first stop was the freezer of grocery store, never a Kroger, never a Big Bear, always a Giant Eagle. First it was the one in Plymouth. Then it was the one on Grant downtown. Then in Crestview.
    “Doctor Mighty! You’ve cunningly tracked me down to my lair!” Ms. Arctic cackled. “Get him, boys!” A fine sheen of ice crystals covered her skin, and he could see the blue veins in her neck as she screamed. She was a young aunt, trim in her tight, blue leotard and matching cape. Her dark hair framed her sharp, pale face. If she had been a woman he’d met at a party or in the produce section during his off-hours, he might have been tempted to ask her out or at least talk to her. Alas, he mused, she wanted her henchmen to kill him, and that wasn’t a good basis for any relationship.
    F and C didn’t have superpowers, so Doctor Mighty had to carefully adjust the strength of his punches as he laid them low. They bounced across the non-skid surface of the freezer and thwacked into a pile of frozen lima beans and corn: succotash with a side of henchman. Ms. Arctic he dispatched with his hair drier. He’d figured that out a few months earlier, when Ms. Arctic had nearly speared him with a giant icicle, and only in desperation did his hand fall upon the bathroom appliance. If he’d latch onto his electric shaver, he’d have been dead.
    “No!” screamed Ms. Arctic, as she shriveled up and fell to the ground. “You’ve foiled my plans to freeze all of Ohio . . . again!” Sweat burst out on her forehead, and she struggled to breathe.
    Mighty didn’t even bother to retort with witty banter. What did it matter when they would go through the whole maneuver again in six months? Hot enough for you? Evil fades before the warmth of justice, villain! My hair drier of law will feather your bangs of evil! It was good form, he knew, but it all seemed so lame.
    He dragged her to the Mightimobile and drove her to the Institute for the Criminally Insane.
    “Thanks, Doctor Mighty!” cried Doctor Gestalt.
    “Do you think you can keep an eye on her this time?” Mighty asked.
    “Uh, sorry. We’ll try. She’s slippery. Like, um, ice.” Even the layperson wanted to get in on the witty banter. Mighty could have reported him to the Guild, but he chose to ignore the illegal witticism.
    “This is five times so far this year. Can’t you use a . . . a . . . heat lamp or something in her cell?”
    “That would be painful for her.”
    Doctor Mighty threw up his hands and drove back to his lair, the abandoned hospital in Mechlinberg. There he crashed on an old gurney instead of programming the crime computer. The computer watched for anomalies in the price of butter, disappearances of key scientists, their daughters, or their current top-secret projects, and fluctuations in the listing prices of local supervillian lairs. The