We are a lost people, driven from our homes. We have nothing except our myths. The myths remind us who we are and teach us about good and evil.

Only by becoming evil, can we destroy evil.

It was a rivalry that lasted for millennia.

These days, the friends laugh over the destruction they wrought. They occasionally admit to some regret, but proudly note the empire runs on schedule, and tea is always served at three.

She sat in a corner of darkness, showing her back to the world. When confronted, her words drove stakes through the hearts of every remaining friendship. She clung to her timeworn memories until they crumbled about her in indecipherable fragments.

For the rest of her life, if life you could call it, she would never forgive her roommate for drinking the last Miller Lite.

Lunch with Napoleon was a bust.  King George now saw the fun-sized Emperor was determined to have his Waterloo.

“Plan B,” George thought as he fitted the Crown Jewels into the contraption on his arm.  Sighting down it, he wondered if decapitating Napoleon with an energy weapon could really affect France’s entry into the American Revolutionary War, considering it concluded thirty years prior.

No matter.  Mad George was determined to regain the colonies.  If there was a chance it would disrupt history, he’d kill every last goddamn Frenchmen in the continuum.

Sometimes, he liked letting the prophyria do the thinking.

Ronald Reagan was the last American president born in a log cabin. His parents taught him self-reliance at an early age. He read the Fountainhead while he was still in the womb and was so inspired by Ayn Rand’s message of individualism that he was the attending physician at his own birth.

He kept Walter Mondale’s head mounted over his fireplace as a souvenir of the ’84 election.

She was at Processing, adding the monthly recycling to the family account, when the officer grasped Rayn’s shoulder.

“Come with me son.”

“What? No, there’s some mistake.  We’re under our credit limit!  We grow our own food, we hardly use the transit system- wait!”  But, even as she protested, she saw the look in her son’s eyes, and understood.  Suddenly the last months – the mysterious class absences, the inexplicable weight gain – made sense.

Possibly – depending on how much meat he’d eaten and how hard he labored at the government farms – Rayn might see his mother again.  The Republic wasn’t unreasonable.

Sophia forced her way down to the wharf. After six weeks at sea, she felt nauseous, unholy, drenched. Stepping into the teeming crowd was like her first baptism. Her sins were washed away by the dirt. Sophia was free.

Sophia dreamed not for herself, but for her children and grandchildren. She lived in their future, among the accepted, in a world where being descended from Americans was no longer a crime.

The Boston chapter of the Tea Party asked every newcomer to show identification. Too many liberal reporters had painted them in a bad light.

Sweet success. First the time machine, and now this. George may not be royalty in this century, but his divine right to rule was still recognized.

“And then I’ll have ten spicy tacos with another fifteen taquitos and a side of guac.”

“That will be one dollar sir.”

“This is incredible!”

His dollar was halfway to the register when he was thrown to the ground by a cataclysmic force.  Suddenly, the force directed itself outwards, and the walls and ceiling separated into dense gray powder, quickly carried away by the tremendous wind.  Around the perimeter where the building used to be, the mightiest of the Aesir stood looking inward.

Walking over to Loki, Odin grinned over the prostrate trickster.

“I can’t believe you fell for this!”

His ties always match his shirt and jacket.

He is the perfect gentleman.