View Hi Resolution Version (5120 x 1920 pixels) "Memory is such an odd thing", the twenty-one year old Dorothy Cowan thought to herself, as she pulled on the entirely symbolic lever that the box had given her to pull on, so that she perhaps felt a little more grounded in some sort of reality. Even though reality was precisely what she was not grounded in. Well, at least not until she pulled that lever. The lever symbolised the equally metaphorical state of landing; of coming ashore. The rasping, raking noise that now filled the air indicated to her that outside of the box, at least, was now becoming real. They were touching down, making ground and so on and so forth. Well time to get on with the matter in hand. Out onto the matter underfoot. But yes, memory. She still remembered the coming moments, from when she was just seven years old. It had been a particularly traumatic point in time and she had really believed then that she was going to die. Of course, now, she knew differently. Or at least she hoped she did. She remembered all those days, months, maybe years, spent under the forced governance of her wicked stepmother. A witch, who was not from back East. The woman who had adopted her, or was that abducted her, from her hitherto peaceful childhood, in a quiet town, in the nineteen-fifties, somewhere in middle class America. The alien woman, who took her into another world. Quite literally to another world. All for the sake of a twisted and devious scheme that, like so many twisted and devious schemes before and after it, would simply prove to fizzle out; extinguished by the mighty wind that blows through history. It was a scheme, again like so many others, that was the devising of a honeypot. A trap to capture an angel, a god. A construction made of innocent people and terrible circumstances, to lure the said deity down to earth, and to steal its power. A foolish and futile venture, of course. This was a god in the form of a man, in a strange box. Or was that a box, around a strange man. Difficult to tell... or remember. Dorothy's mind span to contemplate the true nature of it. But what she did know is that, as she had found out, the man in the box was no longer that. Not in this reality at least, the reality that she now found herself in. Anyway, it was time to repeat history. Kind of. She grasped the pocket watch firmly in her hand, stroking it slightly with her thumb. The box, that was now around her, shuddered as it reached the shore of its destination reality. The destination was Le Palais de la Mauvais du Louve; France, planet Earth. Kind of. Things were, apparently, amiss within the space-time continuum. Names and places may have been subject to change. Dates, eventualities, periodic realities were sliding around and overlapping, like tectonic plates. The target date was September 11, 1773, on which, by coincidence, Benjamin Franklin's article "Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One" was first published. Or at least was first supposed to be published. Her target date, or so she hoped. Navigation, especially the chronological, seemed to be a somewhat fraught affair, even when space and time were in a more stable state. "I do hope it all works out", thought Dorothy Cowan, as the box rocked a little and finally settled to a state approximating rest. The very last thought to go through the twisted and devious mind of Rubi Sordida was not so much a thought, as a colour; a rich and vibrant blue.