Nick was working on his last invention. The lab in the basement of his house was full of every kind of building material, tools and machinery, all of them in disarray. Many boxes were spread throughout the floor here and there, too.

Then his brown eyes did meet the presents on the table: gifts for his two sons, already wrapped in a decorative paper, ready to be given for Christmas…only one day to go.

The man considered he had been very busy lately but fortunately he had proved very provident, too, by buying them more than one week in advance so to have them already hand packed for the holidays. Nick knew he wouldn't have enough free time during the following days so he didn't want to make the same mistake of the last year when almost forgot to buy something for his sons, saving himself just by entering a toy store on the way back home, four hours before deadline!

Almost ready to leave his work for tonight, he closed the utility cabinet and went for the switch near the stairs. Anyway, just before he could turn the lights off, he noticed— or so he believed— a sudden flash, then some movements, likely a figure at his back. "What the hell…? "

Nick turned to the right and saw something unexpected. A middle aged Afro- American was inside his own lab: a strange yellowish suit on, a big nose on a skinny face, greying…he would have cried out or backed off, but the surprise was simply so big that he almost wasn't able to speak!

"What…who…?" he baltered out "Are you a thief or zonked? There is nothing valuable in here…please go away and don't harm me, my family is upstairs…"

The newcomer smiled.

"I wouldn't harm you, be sure…I'd never damage myself, that is me in the past…"

"WHAT?" Nick exclaimed.

"I'm you, Dr. Nick Dayes. You…but twenty year from now in the future…"

"WHAT?" he came out again. Then Nick considered the face of that weird man…he really had something familiar, in fact: same height, same pupils, same skin, only the haircut was different and the age…"What on earth is going on? "Are you me?" his voice asked in the end.

"Are you mad or whatever…? -

"I'm not insane, Dr. Dayes, as you are not…" the man replied "We are the same!Actually, none of us will be mentally ill in the future…"

"So…why are you here?" he finally said, too much disconcerted to answer back, putting an hand on his hair the color of ink.

"I came back to the past to meet you here just today, because this is a very famous day…"

"What kind of day are you speaking about?"

"Tonight you completed the project of a component that will be important for a future invention which will be operative ten years from now…the time machine!"

"The time machine… ? " Nick considered. "My God, from bad to worse…"

"You don't believe me, I see, but all I'm telling you is true. Just let me explain…"

"Then explain it to me…"

"You are not a scientist working for a sort of time machine project or the like, I know…but you developed an essential component for factory machines that will prove very useful in the next years, perfect to be used for the body of a top secret project known as "time machine generator""

"Actually, I am working on a component that — I hope — will be saleable on the market, but it's nothing precious nor secret so far, surely not meant for time travel…Why is it so important?"

"Well then, it is not the component in itself that is important but the metal you decided to build it with that matters…"

"What do you mean?" Nick inquired.p>

"You chose to build such a component, the one on that table over there, in iron…and that's it, as the material you used turned out to be decisive and unexpectedly affected the way the time machine worked for the first time"

"What…?"

"You see, when that top secret device began functioning, things went in a such a way that the future the first time traveller visited was one specific future instead of another…"

"The Quantum theory about many universes?" he asked. Nick remembered he had just watched a documentary on TV last night.

"In a way…" he conceded "Suffice it to say that, had you used another metal to build it, the influence on the machine would have been very different…For example, if you had decided to use some titatium, well, things would have gone in another way"

"You sure?"

As soon as Nick pronounced his words, there was a flash in the lab and another figure appeared into the room. Both men looked at him with awe, as his appearance made clear soon that he was another Dr. Nick Dayes.

"Do not listen to him!His suggestions could change the future and that's unacceptable!Please, do not decide that way!"

As things were getting astonishing, still embarassed, but trying to play along, Nick brought forward "What if I build it in dural?" Nick asked.

And then, unexpectedly, there was a flash again in the lab whence a new figure emerged. Another copy of the future Dayes, but this one looked ladylike apparently.

"Both of them are wrong!" the newcomer exclaimed "Stop your research now or the dangerous effect caused by the component interference in time travel will be discovered later than science would have supposed to do, with unpredictable consequences…"

Nick didn't know what to think. Likely that one was mad, too…but probably all of them were mad, including himself. The present himself…

There are a few advantages to being a zombie that the living never take time to think about. Breathing, for one. I can hold my breath for hours underwater before the engineered virus that brings the dead back to a semblance of life, forces me to the surface. It's gotten me out of a few sticky situations when I've been caught in the crossfire.

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I'm one of the first of the undead. I look like a fresh kill, with relatively clean clothes and no gaping wounds. Fortunately, I was sporting a buzz cut when I died, so my hair doesn't have that wild maniac look to it. With a lot of time, effort and concentration, I can even tie my shoes. All the other zombies look just like Hollywood depicted them. It's one of the few things they got right.

In four years, I've picked-up a lot of useful information about the disease. The living believe that everybody has the virus, by now. It was definitely engineered on purpose, and spread through the global population for four or five years before it 'activated.'

Makes sense to me. When I went into the hospital for a severe viral brain infection, the first unverified reports of the recently departed coming back to life, attacking—and eating—the living, were barely even news. I don't know if it was the fact that my brain was infected with another, active virus, or that the massive doses of antiviral drugs they were using on me is the reason that I'm somewhere between the mindless undead, and the living. I probably died of a fever as the hospital fell to the undead, and by the time the local zombie population got around to eating my corpse, I had already converted. We only eat each other when we haven't fed for weeks.

I'm not nearly as bright as I was, of course. But I'm smart enough to duck into a side alley when the conveniently slow-moving squad of tasty soldiers leads my pack into a street with all exits blocked and flamethrowers stationed on all the rooftops. Zombie life is tough, sometimes. The living are getting a lot better at handling us.

And when I smell canned salmon, I have the willpower to walk the other way. It draws us like almost nothing else. The living smell like food, but canned salmon smells like ambrosia. The closest I ever came to being killed and eaten by other zombies is the time I found a whole stash, while scavenging. If I hadn't smeared it on the first one to break down the door, the rest would have torn me apart to get to it. I'm the only zombie I've ever seen that can open a can. The living have learned how we react to salmon, and they use it to draw us into a killing zone.

I can't talk, I just walk around moaning like the rest. But I can still read, pretty well. It takes me a long time, but I can also type. And I am typing this now to tell the world three important things.

First of all, it hurts to be a zombie. I find newspapers, sometimes, and I know that many of you think that your Aunt Millie is still herself somewhere in that shambling, moaning, dangerous thing that looks a little like her. She's not. Shoot her in the head like you would any other zombie. Your yapping about 'Undead Rights' and the existence of a soul just gives us a chance to locate your position better. Then we will come to kill you.

And that goes for me, too. I may be a little smarter, but I pause every few hours in writing this to go munch on the frozen limbs of three children—aged five to ten—that I strangled, and then dragged into a walk-in freezer that is run by the same back-up generator that runs the power for this computer. More about that story, later.

I am not your friend! I will kill you and eat you. If you see me coming at you, put a bullet in my brain if you can. The virus won't let me kill myself or intentionally walk into the line of fire, but sooner or later some sniper or one of your artillery rounds will kill me, again. And only then will this endless, unimaginable agony end.

Second, by pure dumb luck I discovered the 'Terrorists' who developed and spread this disease. They are all dead now, and except for the three children in the freezer, they have all been eaten by the zombies I brought here.

Third and most important, there is a cure. I will give you directions to a place where your scientists should be able to find it. You see, these people were immune to the virus. They made it, they cured it.

How do I know? Well, you smell like food to us. Salmon smells like ambrosia, but an uninfected human? I have no words at all to describe it. The virus drives us to try and infect as many of the uninfected, as possible. Perhaps in the early days of the reawakening, a few uninfected were still around. They wouldn't have lasted long. Every zombie for miles would kill themselves trying to get to them.

And everyone in this compound was uninfected. Not one of them reanimated. Not one.

I remember my name, but I won't tell you what it was, even though I may have saved the world and punished those who unleashed this horror upon it. Here's my story.

I am at my favorite coffee-shop – yeah, the one with the hybrid fish and human logo. The barista places my paper cup down, but the lid slides off and its contents spill across the counter. I grab a bunch of their environmentally friendly napkins and attempt to stop the small, black, caffeine river from flowing to the floor.

"Oh! The world hates me!" she says.

I smile, remembering someone whom the world really does hate.

I was a sophomore in high school, and I needed to put in X (or was it Y? ) hours of community service to get confirmed in my church. I did mine at the homeless shelter downtown. I exited the bus and went to the brownstone building. Sister Margaux ran the joint. She was sweet. She always dressed in a brown or black pants-suit, not the traditional scary, black habit. But she had a death stare that made Lindsay Lohan's machine-gun toting sister in Machete seem like Sally Field's Flying Nun. I, of course, dressed in a blue jumper, blue and white skirt and tall white socks — my Catholic school-girl uniform. I know!

I finished helping to serve dinner. It was meatloaf, peas and pearl onions, and soupy mashed potatoes with gravy. The carrot cake for dessert was pretty good, though.

I went over to Smelly Joe with my AP Calculus class homework. He always helped me. He grabbed a brown paper napkin and began to calculate. He never wrote in my notebook. I never asked him what he was figuring as he grew upset if I couldn't follow his math. After four or five lines of writing, he finished and double underlined his answer. My #2 pencil's tip broke.

"The world hates me," he said.

"Me, too," I confessed, "especially my parents!"

"No," he stated, "the world truly hates me."

"Doesn't everyone feel that way some times?"

"I'm sure. I'm not paranoid or schizophrenic. I know. I hurt the world, you see." Joe tossed a roll at creepy guy at the next table over. "Hey, take a hike!"

"Careful," I said, "the Sister will toss you for making trouble."

"He was staring at you." He paused. "Just looking out for you, Jessie. Me and a few other trustworthies."

Back then I naively had no clue as to his meaning. Of course, I know now, but thanks to Joe through no personal experience.

"So, how did you hurt the world?"

"It was during the War – sorry, make that WWII. There have been too many since. I was with the Manhattan Project. Remember it?"

"Yes." I sighed. I had AP History, too. "The A-bomb."

"Oppie did that! But we had other lines of investigation, too. Like mine.

"Atom is a misnomer. It's a complex union of various particles, held together by strong nuclear bonds. But it's a coalition with weak nuclear forces wanting to fly free. I worked on eliminating 'the bonds that tie'. A true Buck Rogers disintigrator. And it worked!

"But hurt the world."

"And fission didn't?" I asked.

"The universe started in a Big Bang, our Sun is a fusion furnace, and lightning is hotter than its surface. What I did was different. There was no explosion, not even a flash. There was just a void where matter used to exist. Then a sonic boom as air rushed in. See, it was a wound, a rift in the structure of the world. And I caused it."

"And now the world hates you?" I repeated.

"Of course, I didn't realize it right away. I did my research, even dated one one of the computer operators at Los Alamos — they were the girls who ran the adding machines.

"David is a good boy. He'll be home soon."

Ansonia's husband, Alex, ignored her unflappable confidence and paced to the window to peer through the shutters yet again. All he saw was the dark lawn in the moonlight and the woods waving in the wind beyond.

"Still, it's past eleven. He knows better." Ansonia continued, "Must be that new boy, Billy, that's keeping him out late."

Alex drawled, "I told you there was somethin' not right about that boy."

Ansonia scoffed. "They're just boys out together on Halloween. They're bound to get a little wild. As long as they're together, they'll be safe."

Alex tried to make a noise that sounded confident, then whispered to himself, "Shoulda stayed home."

Ansonia plopped onto the couch and held a pillow to her chest. "I heard that. He's got to get out, got to see his friends. I don't want him to be a shut-in. How's he ever gonna meet a girl like that?"

The thought of his son unsupervised with a girl made Alex uncomfortable. He remembered what he was like at seventeen and checked to see if he'd left the front door unlocked for the third time.

Alex heard it above the moaning howl of the wind. It was faint, distant. Ansonia didn't seem to notice, engrossed in a PBS show on faux finishing.

The shutters clattered and he pulled himself out of his worn leather recliner to peer once more out between the slats. Was there only one, or more?

Involuntarily, he found himself glancing at his rife above the mantle. Even if the boys were being good, there was trouble to be found in the woods between here and town if you weren't careful, like coyotes, wild boar, or even the Chupacabra Ansonia insisted she saw one night. He'd tried to teach David how to be careful and alert, but he didn't know how much Billy and that pack of boys that followed him would notice. Too many boys together always led to something that wasn't good.

The front light turned on, startling him.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad being the target of a god's eternal affection if that god weren't Loki, the lord of chaos, bad jokes, and angry drunken pissing matches. Dan Gelfing, son of nobody important, thought it would have been nice to win the undying devotion of say Venus or Thor or maybe even Apollo. But Loki? There wasn't a god or goddess or quasi demi-something-or-other the little rascal hadn't duped, tricked or screwed (literally in many cases) in the last three thousand years. Their collective, righteous anger hung like a fist above the little god, ready to pummel whatever he loved, aided or even showed the least bit of interest. Too bad, over the last seven years, that interest had been leveled on a UPS driver named Dan.

For instance, there was the time Dan won an all expense paid cruise to San Rafael courtesy of his patron, Loki — or so Loki claimed. The day Dan boarded his ship, the sea recoiled from the coast like a blanket pulled back from a bed. It seemed Psidon wouldn't have Loki's favorite riding his waves.

Neko The Foundling, ward of The Great Sorceress looks out over where there was once glistening marble in the piazza. It is encrusted by mould, moss, and algae the color of bile. The sanitary system is an open sewer. The stench of death and offal are the springtime perfumes.

Neko's ebony sword of unobtanium is beside her as it was when her tiny body was discovered by The Sorceress years ago. The sword has features that only Neko can incite. The sword, light and indestructible, will open up a claw like feature in the hilt upon close quarters combat. If any but Neko attempted to take the sword, it would instantly acquire a mass that was beyond the ability of that being to lift. The sword is hers, a gift from the gods.

Launching herself from a rooftop, spinning, Neko ricocheted off the building walls, and planted her landing. Her facial complexion, flushed from exertion, is a pleasant mixture of black, ginger and white with dark green eyes.

There were a few beings, having this pigmentation. It was believed they were the distantly related, possibly bastards of the deposed royal family assassinated in a coup.

"I'm a foundling. Where, who is my family? I must know, please." Neko would question incessantly, receiving only silence. No one dared speak loud of it, looking toward the sorceress's enclave.

The sorceress's once beautiful body, covered in art tattoos, was now a walking horror of color that ran from a decaying green mush to smeared black and blues. It reflected her being. She kept a close watch on Neko.

Neko was petite, agile, and fearless. Neko brooked no insult.

"Out of my way," he spit, "foundling."

"I have a name!"

"Neko the Foundling? That's a name?" the warrior scoffed.

She drew her sword. Faster than an eye could follow, a mid air leap, rolling to a ball, springing up after rebounding off a wall to gain speed, gave Neko the advantage. Her sword finished the rest of the discussion. This was noticed by a like colored serf.

Swinging from the vines in the nearby wood, Neko noticed movement in the bushes below. Flinging herself, using momentum to make herself into a spinning ball, Neko propelled her lithe body toward the movement. Her eyes shown brightly. Her smile was tight but wide.

"YOU, halt or die!" she demanded, landing silently, cat like.

The bush shook. From the other side a serf dropped something, bowing low quivering like a leaf, "please do not harm me I was picking berries. I saw you flying through the air. I was struck by your grace, Your Grace."

Neko gently slides her wakizashi from its scabbard. Two mons, gold fluttre-bys, reflected the sun, blinding the serf.

"I know you have no name, but what do You call yourself?" Neko demanded.

His hands rose slowly, to indicate no evil intent, blocking the glare of the swords mons.

"Lady Neko, I have no name. I am called Man-child. And that is all."

"Man-child come closer. I want to see your face."

Quaking, bowing, he approached.

"Stop. Look at me."

"I dare not. It is forbidden."

"I unforbid it. Eye to eye Man-child."

"If I am discovered I will die. I have been warned."

"I will never say anything. Now gaze at me and I will the same of you, NOW."

He looked up.

"Stand straight Man-child."

As commanded he rose to his full height which was a few centimeters taller than Neko.

She sat down and commanded the same of him. Her unsheathed black wakizashi is laid across her bare, well formed, calico, legs. She noticed him staring.

Neko laughed and tapped him with the sword.

He quickly brushed it away. His green eyes glaring at hers.

She stood instantly. She looked him over, took note, sword instantly mounted, back flipped, grabbed a vine and was gone. Before she disappeared he heard her say, "I will see you again."

"I knew it," she said to herself. "She's hiding something from me. The sorceress is afraid of something. I know I was found in a cove, this sword by my side. No one can use it but me. But He brushed it away."

Scaling the walls to her benefactor's quarters, Neko silently entered a passage way that lay behind the study. Therein, the sorceress was confiding to some troll that she used to do her dirty work.

"Kill Man-child. I saw them together on my screen. If she discovers her real name, and his we are doomed. They are both of the royal line. I kept her alive because she gives me the legitimacy to rule. The folk would never rise against me with her at my side. I had no idea about him. How did he stay hidden? I see all."

Neko's eyes narrowed, her teeth bared, her hands went to the hilt, and the claws emerged.

The troll died without a sound. The sorceress was next.

She sat in her chair waiting for Neko. "Yes, I knew it would come to this. I was hoping for a different ending, I am sorry dear Neko, but your time is up. I will rule without you."

"Before I die, tell me who I am. I must know."

"You're stalling. I will tell you that you are more than you can imagine. Your pigmentation and wakizashi affirm that. But my little Neko, you are standing on the exact spot you should be. In a few seconds you will be plunging to your death just like the rest of your family."

"You killed them?"

"Not all. Obviously. You exist."

"I've been searching for my history, my family, my Name. No one would say."

"As I commanded. Now say good-by dear Neko. I will miss… what?"

Tiapan venom dipped darts, fired in quick succession, pierced the body of the sorceress.

"This… I never …"

The calico youth, simi-automatic crossbow in hand, pulled Neko away from the trap door as it swung open.

I like to think I'm a good detective. I enjoy the work, sometimes, when I help solve a case. Most of it is boring drudgery, though, sorting through various case files and trying to correlate people and events.

That's how I found this guy, name of William Mentz. I was working a batch of unsolved muggings, hoping to find connections between them; M. O., fingerprints, time of day, you get the picture.

So I've got eighteen files spread out on my desk, and I'm looking through them to see what they had in common.

Ten of them had a victim in common. William Mentz. Four muggings over the last two years; two auto thefts; three auto break-ins; one armed home invasion. I immediately started looking for any relationships between these crimes or their perpetrators. There were none.

I called his number — disconnected. I went to talk to him on my lunch break.

He answered my knock; looked me up and down, and shook his head and turned away. "I guess it's time for me to move again, huh?"

I didn't know what he was talking about, and said so.

"You are a cop, aren't you?"

Wenvoe What's On, monthly magazine
Wenvoe Wales
March 27th; 2013

New Mystery Near Tinkinswood Cairn

Due to unprecedented floods and mudslides Thursday night, strange skeletons seem to have been torn out of the hills near the megaliths, being carried past shocked bystanders this morning. Onlookers had been pointing at the wreckage of homes floating downstream when metallic skeletons were noticed. Policewoman Clement pulled a total of three of the armatures ashore.

They appear to be human-like metal chassis, no more than three feet tall, obviously artificially made.

The metal components were sent directly to the Celtic Research Centre at University in Aberystwyth.

The disturbing discoveries were, of course, the only talk of the local pubs and kitchen tables – giving residents a much-needed break from the sorrow over the recent fire in Cardiff Square which destroyed four turn-of-the-last-century row-houses.

Miriam rushed up the path towards the monolith she knew was nestled at the top of Colby's Knob. Holding her sister's newborn close, she peaked into its blankets and saw the baby was sleeping peacefully.

"You'll be better off anywheres but here, my little love." Her gray-green skirt brushed along the dirt path as she grabbed onto the trunk of a small tree, pulling herself forward. "When I was a wee child, I saw my brother put a twig on the stone and watched it be gone away." She was talking to herself more than the baby she carried, but the girl cooed in her sleep anyway. "The Connells just can't feed one more mouth. If only you had been born a boy – we could have leased you out for farm-work."

Miriam stopped suddenly as she reached the crown of the hill. In the cloud-covered moonlight, she could see a dozen men circling the Vanishing Stone. The megaliths that supported the horizontal stone shot twelve feet into the air. The Vanishing Stone itself weighed in at 40 tons. She could hear the men chanting.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange Aeons even death may die.
Goat of a thousand young, come to us, we worship you."

Miriam drew a deep breath, holding it, hoping these devotees would not see her hiding in the midnight mist. She began to back down the path, forcing herself to find her footing. Suddenly the moon shot out from behind a cloud and the baby began to wake. Now she and the men stood face-to-face. By the time she had turned to run, the worshipers were upon her, pulling the baby from her arms and dragging the pair towards the flat hut-like stones, which were snuggled into a manmade hillside.

The small, crying bundle was tossed from man to man until it reached the arms of a town official. He held it over his head as though offering the baby to the stars.

"Behold! We call upon the messenger of doom to slash with grim delight this victim you hath chosen. May your great black shape rise from the brackish pits and vomit forth pestilence upon our enemies and good fortune upon thine faithful."

The official climbed a herring-bone stone embankment, placing the baby near the center of the crowning stone. All eyes watched as the ground beneath it began to illuminate and hum. The three standing stones were flashing now in synchronicity, faster and faster until the monolith was ablaze with continual light.

Suddenly the bundle was gone as well as the light. The darkness and the sound of crickets were all that remained. Than came brief shouts of victory from the men, and the quiet sobs of agony from the woman. The small band of men slowly left the site, leaving the monolith with its secrets.

But Miriam stayed behind a moment longer, her knees still too weak to hold up her body. And there, in the late night moonlight she saw what seemed to be three small children join hands by the stones and begin to dance with wild abandon. No, no, as she looked again, it became obvious were not children at all, but rather some species of fairy without wings. They danced, circling round and round, till they came to a huge boulder where a doorway suddenly appeared and they disappeared into the base of the mountain.

What appeared to be a small star exploded in the distance.