The alien narrator loves Alice Oxbridge, although the word love does not capture the feeling any more accurately than space travel captures climbing into a vehicle capable of carrying you off-planet. And our narrator has the power to erase the moments of tragedy in Alice’s life, but he cannot do so without breaking his one unbreakable tenet and becoming the prime example of sentient idiocy.
Alice’s was not the first birth I witnessed, nor even the most unusual. The first time I saw Alice’s birth, I bypassed the event, skimming ahead to the advent of the automobile. Gears fascinated me more. But on reflection, something drew me back to Alice in the garden, newborn on the rain-wet grass. The world seemed to move beneath her.

Variants

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  1. “Gauging Moonlight” by E. Catherine Tobler, in Sci Fiction, 20 July 2005.
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by E. Catherine Tobler