An unlikely explanation, a little exposition to cover the fact that I have no idea where to take this story.

-------------STORY

"Better than television, wouldn't you say?" Maddox said. Foot high, 3 dimensionsal reflections of Lydia, Mayata, and Arathon scurried acrossed a minaturized landscape. "The world in a box."

"Televison?" Lord Snaketooth warily cicled the briefcase.

"I hate to give any credit to my wife." Maddox expanded the plain view so that the landscape expanded to included a horizon across which a flying lizard soared. "But she got involved in three dimensional modeling and digital art. She started talking about how it should be possible to create television or movies in which the actors could actually be seen in three dimension, and the audience could manipulate storylines the way she manipulated her models."

"Movies?"

"Of course discovering the portal was just plain luck."

"I don't understand any of what you are saying. What is this thing?"

"It is your world in a box."

It was difficult to determine what Lord Snaketooth's expression was.

"Not just the world as you know, but the world as it is in different dimensions, in different times. With a few twists of the knobs, I can morph the fabric of time and space as if it were clay. I can sculpt it into any variation I want." This was hyperbole on his part, of course, but his lordship didn't need to know that. "This, Lord Snaketooth, is power beyond your dreams."

"Not beyond my dreams." His lordship's tongue flicked out of his mouth.

"Of course it has its limitations. Just because I can pull people from one time or environment into another doesn't mean that I can control completely what they do. And, just like clay, there is a limit to how much manipulation I can do. Too strong a morph, and the time mesh breaks and a black hole is created that sucks everything away. I lost a civilization on Mars that way. And it was too bad about the dinosaurs. I didn't now what I was doing then."

"But you do now? You have control."

"Of course." Maddox wouldn't admit to his lordship that there was any doubt of that, though, in truth, recent events had not occurred completely to plan. He had expected Lydia to be dead by now, for one thing, instead of being protected by the barbarians who should have destroyed her out of instinct. He was uncomfortable with the appearance of time generated clones as well...though Lord Snaketooth took credit for their appearance, Maddox had his doubts. They may have slipped through a tear in the time mesh and that needed to be fixed.

Unfortuanately Maddox didn't know how to fix the time mesh, despite what he said to Lord Snaketooth. On the other side of the portal, his wife unknowingly was supporting this world with her graphic program and even he was not sure how she was doing it. The portal was there, part of her software that Sandra had downloaded like any other graphics program from Mystique 3D Studio Art.

It was all very innocent at the beginning. Maddox had asked his wife to create a series of graphics for his latestt Mayata novel to sell Lydia on the idea of a comic version of the series. It seemed the least Sandra could do considering the hundreds of dollars she was spending on her hobby. And she enjoyed doing it...spending hours creating elaborate sets, peopling it, even designing waredrobes. With their wireless connection, she could easily transmit her results to the pdf he carried in his briefcase which he had planned to present to Lydia at some point. But, as his wife worked, Mayata and her world began appearing inside the briefcase. And when he discovered the portal, he found he could enter that world, and he could influence events there.

Up to a point.

But there there were some limits, however. The world inside his briefcase only appeared when his wife was actively working on a project. He had tried to initiate it himself, but he hadn't, as yet, been able to discover the sequence of controls she used, quite innocently, to launch the effect. And, while, he could move freely from this world to his own through the portal, he couldn't seem to discover a way to other worlds, though he sensed they must exist.

"Where did they go?" His lordship pushed him. "Bring them back. I want to see what is happening now."

Sandra must have closed the program. She was taking more breaks as her pregnancy advanced.

"You will have more when I choose to show you more." Maddox closed the briefcase. He had power Lord Snaketooth as long as his lordship didn't realize his power was only partial.

It was just as well his lordship couldn't see what was happening. He wouldn't have been pleased to find that his victims had successfully escaped again.

---------------------------STORY

Claymor, save me.

Message edited on: 05/28/2004 06:40