“Are you crazy? If they trace you, you’ll get toggled. You know that, right?”

Katron looked up from his screen and sighed. “First, there is no way they can trace me. What do you think the odds are that they’ll be monitoring the right node out of trillions during the ten milliseconds I’ll be linked? It’s a statistical impossibility.”

“I bet that’s what Sten thought, too.”

He continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Second, if by some astronomically absurd coincidence they to happen to track my node, they aren’t likely to get a full trace. So even if they know someone was there, they won’t know who it was.”

I put a pot on to boil. I was going to need some chamomile before this conversation was over.

“And third, even if they do hook me, I’ll probably just get some time in the drudge or, at worst, on the farm. They don’t toggle people for tapping into the net.”

His condescension was starting to grate on my nerves. “Do you ever listen? I told you what happened to Sten. I was there when the drone blipped in. I saw his head explode like a rotten melon. It ruined my best damned jacket.” My voice thickened with emotion, halting my rant.

At least he had the decency to look abashed. “Oh jeez. I’m sorry, Janny. But I’m not Sten. I’m careful, and I know how to cover my tracks. Cracking has been my lifelong passion and nobody is better at it. Please don’t be afraid. I’m not going to end up like him.”

I didn’t respond. Sometimes an uncomfortable silence is the best answer. I turned away from him and filled the infuser, then stared at the pot, willing it to boil.

“Come on, Janny. You’ll see. When this is done, we’ll be living like royalty. I’ll get us a big spread with all the extras. We’ll have a gardener, a butler, a cook, and a dozen maids. Don’t worry so much; everything is going to be fine.”

I made one more attempt to stop him. “Katron, please. It’s not worth the risk. We don’t need a big house, or servants. I like our life. I like this place.”

“You deserve better. Everything’s going to be okay, Janny. You’ll see. Just give me twenty minutes. Sit back and enjoy your tea.” He didn’t even wait for my resigned nod. All his attention was focused on his screen.

Ten minutes later he raised his head and smiled at me. He didn’t shout or celebrate his success. Whoops of joy were for people who accomplished the unexpected. Katron had never doubted his abilities. I forced a smile in return, but I’m sure it never reached my eyes, which were filled with tears.

I had already taken two steps back when I heard the familiar sound of the drone blipping in. There was no point ruining another jacket.

I grumbled under my breath as I opened the cabinet and ran one finger along a long line of canisters, representing most teas known to have a medicinal effect and a variety of dried herbs and powders. It had been a lifelong goal of mine to become an herbalist, and as I studied the faded labels, hoping for some insight, I couldn’t help but recall what my favorite teacher had said so many times. “Your first patient,” he’d said, “will be impossible. It’s a statistical certainty that you’ll end up with a case you’re destined to fail at. Even if you’re wonderful, the most you can hope for is that the poor fool doesn’t die before you find someone to help you.”

Sure enough, I had such a case, on the very day my graduation had been published. Leaves swirled in the door as I opened it to a tall man in a dark coat, hat pulled low over his face. One gloved hand was raised as if to knock again. Obviously a man of little patience. He’d snapped and barked and insisted I hurry; one of his servants was gravely ill. He rattled off symptoms faster than I could process them, and then turned and rushed back into the night. I’d barely heard his address.

After much indecision, I finally settled on a handful of general purpose cures, and a few not-so-general purpose ones, and shoved them into my bag. The air was warm, but the wind was biting nonetheless, and a large melon-colored moon hung in the sky, giving everything an eerie orange glow. The directions given to me had been vaguer than the list of symptoms I was expected to treat, and within moments I found myself terribly lost, in a part of town where shadows were as threatening as the people that sometimes lurked within them.

I was just about to give up - after all, according to my professor, the poor chap was doomed anyway, when the man who had summoned me appeared out of an alley. In the orange moonlight his eyes gleamed somewhere between gold and green, and I blinked in surprise to see his pupils were not quite round. “My servant awaits you,” he said, and I felt a chill not attributed to the wind.

He led me to another alley, and then another, and finally into a narrow apartment building with crumbling stones in the foundation and skittering rats on the stairs. I reminded myself firmly of the oath I’d taken - to help all those who needed my skills, before proceeding into the musty hall, and eventually into a poorly lit room, where a man crouched on a filthy mattress. My hands shook as I ran them along the cool flesh, pale and almost luminescent. I was just about to remove a thermometer from my bag when my summoner clamped a hand around my wrist. “You won’t be needing that.”

I started to ask why, but before I could, my charge rose from the bed. He smiled shyly, and said, “Thank you master, this is just what I need.”

The gleaming points in his smile told me that somehow, what he needed was me.

"Are ye prepared to load the infernal machine?"

I didn't hear him at first. Between the clinking of my chain mail, the incessant buzz of the robotic insects, and the helmet over my ears, it was a wonder I could hear anything at all.

"I ask again, Sir Dalyngrygge; are ye prepared to load?"

King Richard was taking this king act of his entirely too seriously. I tore my gaze away from the holographically-projected Sponge Bob cartoon and checked the trebuchet. It was a wondrous floating pivot machine, all carbon-composite and Kevlar, with an articulated throwing arm and frictionless axles floating on superconducting bearings. The counterweight was in position. I armed the firing trigger, inserted the safety pin, and stepped back.

"Aye, my lord. I stand ready, as thy humble servant, to wage this crusade by thy side."

There was scattered applause from the audience of children and their parents, eating hot dogs and sipping soft drinks and iced teas behind me. A kid on a solar-powered bicycle rode by.

"Load the infernal machine!" King Richard cried.

I surveyed the available projectiles. The pumpkins would be more likely to hold together, but their aerodynamics were unpredictable. No, for this shot, only a honeydew would suffice. I selected a perfectly spherical specimen and weighed it. Two kilograms. Perfect.

I placed the melon in the sling. "The infernal machine hath been loaded!" I called. Giant smoke rings were rising into the sky, propelled by a propane-fueled air cannon across the field.

"Make ready the infernal machine!"

I looked over at the anemometer; the winds were light. The readings from instruments attached at intervals to the mooring line of the aerostat showed light and variable winds to three hundred feet, with a northwesterly trend at higher altitudes. I entered the last five minutes of meteorological data into a statistical modeling program on my laptop, along with the projectile's weight. I used the results to raise the jacks on the rear of the trebuchet another 4 centimeters. I checked that all of the spectators were behind the barricades, and carefully removed the safety pin.

"The infernal machine is ready, my lord," I said.

A tiny model airplane, powered by a ground-based laser, circled lazily overhead.

"Excellent, Sir Dalyngrygge. I hereby decree that we continue our lifelong battle with the forces of darkness. May the army of Sir Carnegie of Mellon be vanquished by our efforts this day," cried King Richard. He gave a signal, and a crescendo of steam whistles screamed a warning.

"Prepare to fire!"

I took the slack out of the trigger rope.

"FIRE!"

I pulled the pin.

For an instant, nothing happened. Then the force of gravity, and the laws of physics, took hold. The massive counterweight fell toward earth, pulling the short end of the throwing arm down. The long end of the throwing arm began to sweep its arc across the sky, accelerating quickly. The sling was pulled out from under the base of the machine, and whipped around the end of the arm. One end released at the precise time that the arm reached its apogee, freeing the projectile on its deadly path.

The honeydew flew unerringly, arching across the field, higher and higher, before beginning its descent, faster and faster, until it blasted through the center of the windshield of its target in a parking lot at the far end of the field: A rusted 1985 minivan, with "CMU" spray-painted on the sides.

An enormous cheer erupted from the assembled crowd. This year's Engineering Carnival at MIT was off to a great start!

My lifelong fascination with snow began at an early age.

By the time I was six years old, I could scan the clouds and predict whether a snowfall was imminent. By the time I was ten, I could step outside and sniff the air and forecast not only the statistical probability of snow, but tell you exactly what kind of snow it would be — the fluffy kind that sticks to your eyelashes, the wet kind that crusts up on top so you can almost walk on it, or perhaps the fine powdery kind that dusts the ground just enough to fool you into thinking school will be canceled.

What I hoped for, of course, was what I called Perfect Snow — the dense, sticky kind that can be packed together into a firm snowball. It was from this snow that I constructed the sculptures that made me a household name.

I remember how my father would laugh and shake his head as the news vans rolled up the driveway. Viewers of the six o'clock broadcast would be treated to images of white dragons rising majestically from our front lawn; of armies of samurai snowmen doing battle; of elaborate castles with snow turrets and snow catapults and teams of snow servants, all made by yours truly.

While the other kids read comic books and played video games, I analyzed snow in my basement laboratory. I kept samples of recent snowfalls in the back of my parents' old freezer, and I studied them as though they were rare minerals, trying to determine which varieties had the best crystalline structure, which ones would be slowest to melt on mild days, which ones were the least prone to sudden collapse. Every once in a while, my mother would try to lure me upstairs with a cup of cocoa or tea, but mostly my parents left me alone with my experiments.

You've probably been told that no two snowflakes are alike. It's not true, and in my basement, I proved it. Did you know that at 28 degrees Fahrenheit, the snowflakes that form are often triangular in shape? These and many other wonderful facts I discovered while sequestered in my basement workshop. Even in the heat of summer, when my friends were at the municipal pool or setting off bottle rockets or eating watermelon slices, I could usually be found at my desk poring over meteorological journals or drafting letters to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. What can I say? I was obsessed.

That all changed when I was diagnosed with acute Horsnooses's Syndrome. If you've never heard of it, it's because I'm one of the first-ever documented cases. Even the slightest exposure to cold temperatures can be fatal. A mere chilly draft sends me into spasms of shivering. If you put an ice cube in my drink, you might as well stir in a spoonful of arsenic.

To safeguard my health, my parents moved to a small village in the Sahara Desert near the Republic of Mali. The temperature over the past month has rarely dropped below a scorching 110 degrees.

Have you ever tried adding a second floor to a sandcastle? It isn't easy, especially when the first story is already ten feet tall ... but I think I've nearly got it figured out.

Hi, my name's Timmy, and I used to be a pathological liar.

I normally live a pretty uneventful life, but I need to tell you about something strange that happened yesterday morning.

I was out in the garden, watering my melons, when I heard a voice.

Now, there's nothing weird about that, right? An odd thing to mention, you might think. Well, that's just it. It's not odd...expect for those of us who’ve been deaf since a particularly nasty childhood accident!

Luckily, I never had any particularly nasty childhood accidents.

But this voice was odd. I tried to put my finger on it, but couldn't. Mostly because it was an audible oscillation of atmospheric molecules. Sounds are pretty intangible that way. Still, something about this one wasn’t right. Nor indeed left, and that's when I realized that it was coming from all around me.

"Timmy!" the voice called. I glanced straight upward, my hand reaching up to cover the crucifix I didn't wear. Wouldn't want to offend anybody, even by omission.

"Umm..." I began.

"Listen and take heed!" The voice bellowed out, cutting me off. It had an eerie 'booming' quality to it, something like the sound of an approaching cave-in. I cringed a little. Seemed appropriate.

"You are a falsifier! A deplorer of truth! You bear false witness against your kin! Oh, stand up straight!"

I glanced upward again...it had seemed a fairly impressive outburst of righteous wrath, but I couldn't help but feel that the last sentence had been a bit disappointing. Mind you, I was now huddled in a fetal position. Slowly, I started to rise.

"Umm...sorry? Sorry...God?" I tried.

From all around me, there came something not unlike a throaty chuckle.

"God, hmm...yes, compared to you, I suppose I am!" The voice was amused. Still all boomy, but definitely amused. This didn't seem like an encouraging development, however. You see, I don't believe in God, therefore even with all this booming voiciness going on, I didn’t really expect to be smited (smote? smitten? - anyway, you get the idea). But seeing as this didn't seem to be God, the possibility that it was something a little more real (and potentially more punchy/stabby/shooty) struck me.

"So, em, who are you?" I ventured.

"Come on, Ti!" He pronounced it 'Tea', my hated childhood nickname. "You remember, don't you?"

My confused expression obviously suggested not. The mighty voice sighed. Mightily. "I assume you are familiar with the word 'conscience'."

I guess I only looked even more confused then, for Mr Boomy continued (hey, I have to call it something, right? I can't just keep on calling it 'the voice', or you'll think I sound crazy!) "Idiot! You really don't get this do you? I'm your conscience! You're supposed to be under my thrall! My servant!"

I gasped, speechless.

"Have you no answer?" Mr Boomy demanded.

"Umm, what was the question?" I croaked.

At that the ground started to shake. I quickly dismissed the idea that this was just a coincidental earthquake. Kinda seemed like a statistical improbability.

"Stupid fool!" The words shook me as if the very air was quaking along with the earth.

"Heed me; see the lifelong error of your ways!" If this kept up, I was thinking of giving Mr Boomy a free upgrade to Mr Shaky.

And then it stopped. The ground was still, the air quiet again. Cautiously, I looked around.

The garden was mostly in shade. In a thin sliver of sunlight by the shed, next-door's cat basked, apparently undisturbed. Even more incredibly, the neighbour herself was tending her garden, seemingly not aware of anything unusual.

So, em, yeah. That's it really. That's how I have come to recant my miscreant ways, and to stop telling lies, like the ones I was caught in before. The ones that led to a final warning from Mr Simmons in personnel.

Oh, and that's also why I missed work yesterday. Sorry.

Yours,
Timmy Liddle.

George sulked as the celebration went on around him. It was bad enough that his employers were dropping like flies, but their refusal to accept that something strange was happening in the castle was ridiculous and insulting, not to mention dangerous.

"The fruit trays are nearly empty. Shall I have the kitchen cut up the melon?"

"Hm?" George glanced at the waiter beside him. "No. The duke is- was, rather, the only one who enjoyed that particular fruit. Dinner will be served soon."

"Yes, sir," Roger said before scampering off to the kitchen. George watched him go, then stalked off to the dining room.

The gargantuan table seemed even larger than usual, as the number of chairs had dwindled to a new low. Servants flitted about like obsessive-compulsive squirrels as they adjusted place servings and fiddled with decorations. George paced the length of the room, his mind thoroughly engaged with puzzling out the events of the past few weeks.

The first to die was the duke. He was a daft old lout, so none bothered to question the doctors' conclusion that he died of a heart attack. Even George was not immune to the blasé attitude concerning the death of the duke.

Next was Duke, the duke's foxhound, and the latest in a long line of lifelong companions. Duke was prone to idiocy; it was assumed he had gotten into the garbage.

Two days later, Margaret, the duke's eldest daughter, fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck. The penultimate step had been loose for years, and for one reason or another had never been fixed.

For one blissful week, the family was unmarked by further deaths. Two people and a dog went into the ground, and life sprang back to normalcy.

On Tuesday, three more family members dropped without warning. All three had been healthy and took care in their activities, and yet still they turned cold and blue. Michael was only ten, but he was already an expert horseman; a stableman had found him in a stall, a horseshoe-shaped imprint deforming his skull. Anna was found face-down in her bed, having suffocated on her own pillow. Aunt Emma had seemingly choked on the lemon she put in her afternoon tea. It was all very strange, and George was starting to get suspicious.

"George, what are you doing? Go inside and supervise the waiters; I think they've been sneaking hors d'œuvres."

"Of course, Madame. If I may, I've been pondering recent events, and it seems to me that, statistically at least-"

"Oh, posh. Coincidences, all of them. Now go fire a waiter or two." The duchess strode out of the dining room, leaving the butler in a snit.

Family members and party guests trickled into the dining room in twos and threes. George showed them to their seats, all the while his brain whirred in cogitation. There was an answer, if he could only find the connection. As he worked, his eyes chanced upon a place card near the middle of the table. Could it be that simple? he thought. Yes, it had to be!

As soon as the entire party was seated, George called for attention. "As you know, there have been several unfortunate incidents over the past two weeks. It has largely been assumed that they are unrelated; that is, until now."

Gasps and twitters enveloped the table as George strode purposefully across the room. "Only one person stood to benefit from each of the deaths – yes, even from little Duke's." He paused, mainly for effect, and took in the sight of the shocked nobility.

The duchess could take no more. "Who, George?" she exclaimed. "Who was it?"

“Nice melons.” I head a voice behind me say. I whirled about, prepared to deliver a heated lecture to the perpetrator of such political incorrectness. What I saw was a short little man who wasn’t looking at me, but at the box of cantaloupe displayed in the fresh food section of the store I had just entered. He was holding them up to his ear and tapping gently on them.

“You don’t always find them so nice and ripe.” He said, and put two in his cart. Without looking at me, he wheeled over to the lettuce. I closed my mouth, obscurely disappointed. I was a lifelong feminist, always ready to deliver education in short pungent sentences to members of the other gender who dared to make assumptions simply because I was a woman.

I deliberately started my shopping at the other end of the store, even though it would mean constantly moving my bread to the top of the cart to keep it from being crushed.

“Statistical analysis would show that only five percent of people shop backwards through the store.” I looked over at the speaker to see a man who could have stepped off the cover of one of those bodice ripper novels that I would secretly flip through at the bookstore.

“Are you suggesting that we backwards shoppers have something in common?” I asked.

The man stared at me as if I were crazy. Then I saw the little melon tapper in behind him. He winked at me and wheeled off.

I could see the muscle rippling beneath his shirt as Mr. Bodice Ripper hoisted a large bag of kitty litter into his cart then another, and another.

“I hear that stuff is good for traction in the winter.” I said desperately trying not to sound ditzy.

”It is also good for cats.” He said giving me an odd look “I have twelve.”

I closed my mouth again and put my own small bag of dog biscuits in my cart, then scuttled off to the tea section.

I stood in front of all those boxes of delicate flavours and tried to filter out the scent of the coffee a few feet away. I picked up a box of peach tea and sniffed at it. Nothing. Putting it back on the shelf I tried maple, cranberry and lichee fruit in quick succession. This (and bodice rippers) was my secret pleasure. I would try each box in turn until I found a tea that smelled – right. I can’t explain it better than that. I would take it home and brew a pot of tea which would fill my little apartment with its magical scent. When it grew cold I would pour it out. I never drank them.

I was holding a box of liquorice tea when I saw Mr. Bodice Rippers staring at me from the end of the aisle. I dropped the box in my cart and turned away. I am sure you could have roasted marshmallows from the heat off my face. The melon tapper was standing on his toes inhaling coffee fumes. He looked at me and shrugged.

“I can’t stand drinking the stuff, but I love the smell.”

“I am the same with the tea.” I replied. “These all smell wonderful, but taste like hot water.” We smile at each other.

“Assumption should be our servant, not our master.” I mused.

“What a curious notion to have in a grocery store.” He said. “I would love to talk more about it.”

“Perhaps while we are not drinking coffee?” I suggested.

"I stopped at the food co-op on the way home from work to get a bottle of Verdelho dolce and a sugar melon for the fresh fruit salad I'm bringing to the wine-tasting party. By the time I had made it through the checkout lines, an hour had passed, and the snow was really coming down hard."

"I was going to get gas on the way home from work, but I still had a quarter of a tank, so I skipped it. I just put ninety dollars' worth in the truck last week; it's a good thing the prices are coming down."

"I carefully put the groceries in the back of my Prius and headed out of the parking lot. It's such a pretty little car; I'll have to get it detailed again after the snow melts. It will last lots longer if I keep it waxed. It was a little slow going up the hill to the traffic light on Arlington Street; the tires seemed to be slipping a little, and the mileage meter said I wasn't saving as much carbon as I usually do."

"The forecast is for twelve inches tonight; I think I'm going to call in sick tomorrow and trailer my new Arctic Cat F1000 up to the hills. Getting that sled was a lifelong dream--You can keep your Harley; I can't wait to see what 1000 cc of liquid-cooled fury can do on a foot of fresh powder."

"It's snowing so hard I can hardly see, but I'm warm and snug in my gas-sipping Prius. If I had a hot cup of Earl Grey tea, I'd be all set. It's a pity more people haven't realized the damage that all those other cars are doing to the environment. "

"It's really snowing hard, and I don't care. I turned on all the driving lights and added air to the shocks to get up higher. Sure is fun driving in the snow in this beast."

"Why does that truck behind me have all those bright lights on? It's not like the streetlights aren't working."

"Who the heck would be driving a little roller skate like that in a storm like this? Jeez, people are idiots. It's a statistical fact: We get a dozen or more huge snowstorms every year. You gotta have ground clearance."

"Man, this traffic is slow!"

"I've never seen the traffic this bad!"

"We're barely moving. That's the neat thing about the Prius, though; the gasoline engine isn't running at all, just the electric one. I wonder if National Public Radio has a good opera on tonight?"

"Traffic is at a standstill. I wonder if LOUD-FM has any good heavy metal on tonight?"

"What idiot would drive that big SUV around like they're the king of the world? We can't keep acting like we own the place. We have to be servants of the earth, not the other way around. It's so irresponsible!"

"I can't get around the idiot in that Prius, and I just know it's going to get stuck on the next hill. If we ever get to the next hill...."

"I can't get away from that idiot in the SUV, and those lights are going to blind me all the way home. If this traffic ever lets me get home."

"What the heck? Why did my truck stop running?"

"Oh, no! Why did my car stop moving?"

"I'm out of gas!"

"I'm stuck!"

"Maybe the driver up ahead has a cell phone I can borrow."

"Maybe the driver behind me can give me a push."

"Bill?"

"Martha?"

Two of the most statistical minds in the county were doing battle. Pat (the meteorologist for WGAG television) and Alec (the weatherman for KBAT radio) where at it again. The argument had nothing to do with whether rain would spoil the fair though. On that, both were in agreement, and were wrong as usual. They might be able to tell you how 1902 had the most rainfall on record, or how the big freeze in 1957 had caught everyone off guard and subsequently ruined the crop that year, but they were lucky if their forecasts were correct on the day they were given.

No, this bout was in regards to another claim that they both held. Trivial as it would seem to most, these two regarded any and all facts to be within their domain. And an award winning melon definitely fit the bill. Every year they could be spotted at the various booths of the fair, giving their opinions as to how this and that would rate. Both had memorized (at least according to themselves) all the Guiness records for everything, and thus could not be wrong

Not to be outdone on anything, both their households held complete encyclopedias, decades worth of farmers almanacs, and assorted magazines, ranging from National Geographic to Mad. They were bound and determined to be the most knowledgeable person alive. This can probably be traced back to their father’s side of the family. His lifelong pursuit of appearing on a television game show was not isolated. The grandfather had the same goal for radio. Their father had made a vow when the twins were born, that if he could not reach his goal in life, at least one of his sons would. The only other thing that the father demanded was that they be servants to the community. He had been a policeman, his father a fireman, his father before that a politician. Both sons thought meteorology fit that bill.

While most of heir fights remained in the verbal category, at times they had come down to fisticuffs. One wonders if how many bloody noses each had sustained by the other was also one of the statistics they kept. Luckily for them, both being celebrities, they usually had a crowd observing them in their antics at the fair. If it looked like they might start getting overly zealous, it would take no time at all for a policeman to reach the scene to break things up.

They were getting a bit boisterous, arguing about the fruit on the stand, but it was still just relegated to noise at this point. There was a little lady in front of them that was trying to get a word in, but it was impossible to break through those two storm fronts. A gentleman saw this and intervened on behalf of the lady. He pushed the twins apart and calmly (though loudly) told them to shut up for a second and listen to what she had to say. Blushing a bit in embarrassment, the twins quieted down and looked to the lady for her comment.

She explained to them that she was the grower of the fruit, and if they would be so kind as to look behind the stand they would see rows of various teas filling the shelves. They would also see that the stand was for the “ Exotic Iced Tea” company. A promotional stand, and not a judging booth. The fruit they were arguing about she said was a lemon, not a melon!

It appears the twins had one thing more in common, color blindness. However, this did not stop them from then debating on the merits of that lemon.

The melon field was hot today; Sun beat down on my bare back as I picked the ripe fruit from the vines. My feet sank into the dry soil, searching in vain for the water that sustained the plants around me. I had head mention that this was the hottest Summer in statistical memory.

-CRACK-

From across the field I heard the struggling cry of someone trying to hold back a scream of pain. The sting of the lash rose like lightening from my memory of a long summer and the spring plantings. I knew well that the self-control was not because of discipline, but fear. Disturbing the Master’s tea party would only earn another eager lash. I could see John Martin caress his whip as he watched the young man, bend gingerly to get another melon. He seemed to regret the fact that a junior officer was closer to the offender than he was. Mr Martin was a hard taskmaster, generous with discipline and only fair in that he treated everyone equally bad. He was in charge and he made sure his crew knew it. The only way to deal with him was to put your head down and work, fast enough to avoid a lashing, but not so fast as to make him think you were doing a sloppy job. Even then you knew that his hand itched every time he looked at you.

I pushed my barrow down the rows toward the mule team, waiting to take our pickings back to the cool shed until the carts came to take them to market. The muscles in my arms burnt as I struggled to steady my load. Even worse then a slow worker was a clumsy one. Mr Martin insisted that he personally make an example of the man who dared to “treat the Master’s produce as worthless trash.” Dropping a melon would see a man strapped to the wagon for hours in the afternoon sun. Next he would receive 20 lashes on the back and 5 across each leg before carrying the tools back to the storage sheds.

After loading my melons I stopped to take a quick breather. Even Mr Martin didn’t begrudge a man a second to breathe after loading the cart. I leaned against the rough split wood of the cart sides, stretching my back, and stole across the fields, up to the house. There beside the fish pond the Master was entertaining one of the local gentry. New money trying to buy favour with the old. They sat wrapped in the supple arms of the willow tree, shaded from the afternoon sun, with a breeze blowing off the pond. The house servants appeared to top up large glasses of iced tea. They looked elegant in their tan suits and frilled sleeves. Proper shoes on their feet and long shirts meant that they would not be burnt at the end of the day. Out of the kitchen door came one of the female servants, carrying a platter filled with sweet meats and rolls. Her hair bounced lazily around her shoulders and skirts swayed in time with time with her step…

-CRACK-

Fire shot through me and I could feel warmth running down my back that I could not attributed to the sun. I knew behind me Mr Martin was grinning, waiting for me to react. I had let my daydreams carry me away a moment too long. I glanced back at the house. At least at the end of the harvest I would be paid and be free to go my own way. I don’t know if I could survive a lifelong prison of porcelain and fine clothes.