This is just a quick reply, but I'll be back later to dig in.
First of all,
thank you! Loving these comments and the give and take. Really wonderful.
Second, avia has it exactly right. In fact, I picked a burlap bag because it was as low-tech a container as I could imagine. Leave Tempus with a paper clip, a zipper, whatever, and you're just flirting with disaster.
Third, I said I could do it in one paragraph. Didn't quite make it. Also, what I thought would work, and be simpliest, had too much of a domino effect on everything that followed. So, I went with a variation of Paul's option two. And I really think it makes the piece much richer. You guys tell me, though.
I'll insert it into part 16, but also put it here:
Madge scanned their latest communiqué which came complete with apology and references to formerly unknown predators in the wilds of the Dakotas, which they were now cataloging for the data base. All signs pointed towards one of those predators solving the Tempus problem once and for all.
It was ironic; and wouldn’t Tempus love that? He was gone just when he was so desperately needed. And he wouldn't be around to see he had finally succeeded.
New stuff:
She looked over at the tea table and once more felt the pull towards the timestream. If she went back to just after she and Petal had left Tempus, smug and victorious outside his cave. Just one minute, one crucial minute, after she and Petal had returned through the portal, when she knew he was alive and well, his mocking laughter following through the trees, sounding in her ears even now. If she did that, she could solve this. Stop this.
Madge exhaled shakily. The temptation was nearly overwhelming. But she would be, in essence, raising the dead. Performing a resurrection. An act that was so unethical as to be nearly unspeakable. Unthinkable.
Only she was thinking it now. She could think of little else.
She had already broken several rules. Bent and twisted many of the vows she had made. All in the interest of protecting Utopia. This would be just one more.
Madge shifted uncomfortably, remembering her refusal to allow Andrus so much as a weapon when he guarded the portal. And her own wish to have one, as well. In the end, she hadn’t been able to threaten violence to save a peaceful society. To do what Superman never would.
So, how could she do that now? Even when the stakes where as high, the cost so enormous. How could she betray the most fundamental of ethics to protect the legacy of one whose ethics were unshakable?
She couldn’t. Even though she dearly wanted to.
End of new stuff.
Madge shifted uncomfortably, resisting the need to look back at monitors. The cabinet stood open just behind her. And she knew without looking the signals, the lifelines of her world, were fading.
Last thing. And this is for Chris.
What do you make of this, then?
Lois's pov WtWFO:
He hadn't wanted to go to that party. He'd had other ideas... She'd insisted.
And from part 15:
"What if I just warned you about attending a certain function? Just that. Just told you not to go. Told you to talk Lois out of going-"
"I’m doomed," Clark broke in. "If this warning involves talking Lois out of anything."
Just saying... food for thought.
Thank you, everyone. More later. Part 17 is in the works.
CC
