Greg seemed to love his wife more when she was gone.

I saw the enemy reflected in the still shallows staring back at me with unexpected mercy.

He recalled the first time he saw her—dancing alone with a freedom and beauty that took his breath away—and refused to think of her just before her death, drained and stagnant.

The push and pull of where our future was heading made Chris' guts churn wondering whether humanity would enjoy a time of peace and prosperity integrating technology and humanitarian principles or a new Dark Ages full of feudalism and primitive thought.

"Think about the big stars of a hundred years ago, like Bessie Love or William Hanes, and you'll know just how fleeting fame is and in the end how unimportant its pursuit turns out to be," said the old man sitting next to me on the bus who looked vaguely familiar, perhaps a faded film icon of his own long-gone era. 

Every once in awhile the veil would slip enough for Evelyne to see the world for what it truly was.

The fall of empire was in its springtime.