Volume One, Issue Four

“It’s just… I’ve been doing this for years and years and years and I never get any better.”

“Maybe you’re meant for other things, dear.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s just what I want to hear. I should give up on my dream and do something totally different.”

“Well, you’ve always been good at music.”

“No! No, I am not going to be a performer.”

“What about composing?”

“Robert, no. You know how I am about my work. No one else would ever play it to my satisfaction.”

“That’s your problem, Angelina. You’re too picky. Everything with you has to be just so. You should relax.”

“No, I should not. Look, I’m a reasonably talented physicist. You’re a reasonably talented aeronautics engineer. We both know this is possible. We should be able to make it work.” She wound her hair into a bun and then let it fall back over her shoulders. “Personally, I blame you.”

“Me? Why?”

“You’re too laid back. You lack ambition.”

He raised a bushy eyebrow. “I can’t believe this. You think if I burned myself up working on this, gave myself an ulcer, worked for days on end consuming nothing but coffee until I collapsed, we’d have gotten farther than we have already?”

“Yes.”

“Look, if we were both like you, we’d both be dead. How many times have I taken you to the hospital after you’ve worked yourself into a state of nervous exhaustion? How many times have I tended to our finances while you’ve been buried in your equations?”

She hung her head.

“I know…”

“I know you know. And I know this means more than life itself to you… And I know I don’t push the envelope the way you want me to. I know if we were both like me, we wouldn’t have gotten even a quarter of the way as far as we already have.”

“Really?”

“Really. And I know that we’ll finish this. I know we’ve already brought mankind twenty years closer to time travel, and I know that in your lifetime you will see the first time-traveler take his-”

“His?”

“-Or her first trip. In our timeplane.”

She smiled faintly. “It’s so good that you’ve got so much faith in me.”

“It’s so good I’ve got someone to have faith in. Now come on, we’ve got to get going. I’d hate to think of the Mentalist Society welcoming 1994 to Texas without us.”

Title: Wedded Bliss
Word Count: 403
Encylopedia: Clute, John and Nicholls, Peter; The Encylopedia of Science Fiction; New York; St. Martin's Press; New York; 1993, update 1995
Entry: Da Cruz, Daniel