The disappointment was probably clear enough there on his face, too. At least, judging by the comforting pat on the shoulder he got from Millie, then, echoing the friendly patronage from Dolly. "No, darling, it didn't happen. Isn't going to happen. Whichever way you prefer to look at it. Because that's not the way the settings are fixed on this thing."
And she came around to face him, took both his hands in her own and shook them. Her wrinkled little monkey-face was shrivelled and grinning with a glee that was probably more outright Satanic than just unholy. Ben glated down at her a bit. Millie was exasperating. "And why?" he asked. Because there was always something, with Millie. And there was always a reason.
"Darling," she said, rolling her eyes, and patting his hands as if he was a rather dim but lovable child. "More than one reason, all of them good. For one thing, it takes an awful lot of memory and processing power and other things it would take me all day to explain to you, to give you even a highly restricted and demarcated access to anterior time periods. Let me express it plainly, my love: you'll be using up enough power and processing capacity with even a single trip into the past, to obliterate a small town and allow the disintegration throughout time of chrono-active particles. And that's to a pre-specified and narrowly defined historical era in the not too distant past, mind you. To give you unrestricted access to every era in recorded and unrecorded time, even as recently as ten minutes ago, would require me to detonate the odd sun and possibly bring about the end of the universe. And much as you are my favourite nephew, darling..." she says, with the sweetest little air of patronage.
"...still your only nephew, here," Ben reminded her, and she rolled her eyes at him.
YOU ARE READING
Erase You
RomanceMichael is a musician, Cambridge-educated but living in London. He's successful, attractive and has plenty to keep him busy and happy. So why can he still not get over his old college boyfriend, Ben? Fortunately his old Great-Aunt Millie, a notor...
