“How it saddens me to hear you say that.” The inventor pulled a lever on his machine, and the interconnected rings, which to this point had been content to revolve in a gradually slowing—what would eventually have come to a full stop—orbit began, as it were, to move with a new life. “I’d hoped we’d travel together.” He stared at her through the dark spectacles he’d pulled over his eyes, their obsidian surfaces reflecting back the growing luminance of the inner side of the rings. The hum of the engine and the terrible whooshing of the whirling wheels seemed to eat up his next words, but she, who knew them before he spoke, did not need to hear him say, “I guess I’ll go alone,” for he always left her, always went on alone; and she always was here, waiting for the great flash to return, for the rings to slow, for him to smile—oh how that smile killed her—and ask her to come with him.
Those shinning rings must always spin.
Tale Told 