Barely a few hundred billion atoms long, this rod held a power from the universe before; a power from a universe whose laws of physics were entirely d...ifferent from the universe following.The rod was powerful. The atoms gluing it together were virtually indestructible. More than that, they held the power of creation, devised by a race lost to the expansion of space-time.A race centered around love.Permanent, unending love.Love so strong it took the end of the universe to finally break it.The rod. She smiled at him, then thinking about what she had heard last night, blushed furiously.Meg busied herself fixing her coffee, then sat quietly as Marcie did the same. Finally, Marcie turned to her friend. "You're aware that Jeff has fourteen wives, right?" Yesss," Meg responded, dragging the word out as she continued to stir the already-stirred coffee."And you're aware that Arlene is his daughter and Susan is his mother-in-law, and ... both of them are his wives, right?"Meg looked up as she. August 21, 1982, McKinley, Ohio“Do you have some time to talk after we finish eating lunch?”“Sure,” Clarissa said. “Is there a problem?”“Later, OK?”She nodded, and when we finished lunch, she and I headed back to my room. I’d already let Angie know I was going to talk to Clarissa, so she headed off with Jeannette and Marie, while the guys went to toss a football.“What’s up?”“I’m getting grief about being too focused on my medical training.”“I think that’s pretty common for kids who are driven. "Move ahead? Us? What's there ahead of us that makes you sound so bloody optimistic?" growled Danny."Darling, we've spent all our lives together. We have two lovely c***dren as proof of our mutual love, and our grandc***dren too. It's like there was this sapling which we tended to, watered it, gave it fertilizer and watched it grow. Now that tree has become tall and strong and is bearing fruit ... fruits of our labor. Just think of all that lies ahead of us ... in a sense, our lives have just.