As horrified as I was, there was nothing I could do—at least at that moment—about this situation and these people. I had some thorny problems of my own—I had no money and nowhere to stay. Ultimately I could have retreated to the Citadel and done a bit more computer hacking to correct that, but I was hoping to stick around the castle, in the open.

The moment that I handed over my ring, I ceased to be of interest to the Dooms. I might as well have ceased to exist. They were walking away when I raised my voice slightly and called after them: "My lord?"

Doom stopped, and turned to look back at me. "Yes?" he asked, his voice tainted with annoyance. "You go on, dear, I'll catch up with you." he told Valeria.

"I am glad it pleases you to jest with me, but such are my circumstances that I am afraid I cannot appreciate the humor in it." I said, casting my eyes down meekly and modestly, although I wanted to snarl. In Memoirs of a Geisha, much is made of the power of a woman's eyes, but I've always felt I could do more with my voice, and one key is to keep my tone and volume low. A woman speaking in a loud shrill voice is not taken seriously—least of all by men.

"How am I jesting with you?" he asked. I had puzzled him.

"Knowing me to be friendless and alone, without a roof over my head, a change of clothes, without even the wherewithal to buy a cup of coffee—since I impulsively and spontaneously gave my one negotiable asset to your lady wife—you turn and walk away, pretending to leave me here, destitute."

"I do not see where that concerns me—or where the joke is in it." He was serious.

What was wrong with this man? "I wonder that you can say such things straight-faced. I know what is said of Victor Von Doom—the compassion and care he takes of his people, his generosity and benevolence, and so I know you are pleased to jest with me." Butter would not have melted in my mouth. I was not thinking or speaking of this Doom when I said that…

He liked the sound of that. "When the ring is appraised, you will receive fair compensation. In the meantime—" he said to an aide—"see that she receives five thousand euros and find her a room somewhere in this pile.":

"Thank you, my lord. I knew it could not be otherwise." I said. Let him interpret my last sentence as, 'I knew you were only joking, that you are a fair and just man'. What I meant was 'I knew I could talk you into doing what I wanted.'

They gave me my old room—the same one I had lived in for three years. It seemed—smaller than I remembered it, the ceiling lower, the colors faded. I set out to explore this version of the castle as I would if I had never been there before.

Some of it was the same, other parts were quite different. The indoor pool where the conservatory should have been, for example. Nor was the tower as I knew it—the family lived elsewhere in the castle. That made me feel a little better. I did not like to think of these people living where Victor and I lived—or of that debauched youth holding his 'parties' in the nursery suite.

Why did this Doom and his Valeria have no children born to them? Why had they adopted? I supposed that depended on whether these alterations to the nature of reality were only cosmetic, or whether they went to the bone. If someone was moving people around as if they were dolls in a doll house, that was one thing, but if this person who had altered our world could truly alter history—not just people's memories of it, but the real events—that was quite another. In the first case, they had no children because they had not been together—in the second, there had to be a real reason.

Which was it? I was inclined to think the second, because this version of Victor Von Doom was fundamentally different in his character from my Victor. A simple alteration, a re-setting of the stage, as it were—would not be enough to change that.

I had proof when I spotted Boris deep in the bowels of the castle, and would up overhearing a brief exchange between Doom, the It—poor Ben—and Boris that illuminated why this Doom was who he was.

I knew the sound of Doom's steps—that was no different—followed by the grating, bag-of-rocks sound of Ben walking behind him, and I concealed myself as they passed.

"Come along, my friend, into your pen." came Doom's voice to my ears, sounding jovial. I heard the creak of a gated door. Doom continued, condescendingly, "You did well today, my pet. Very well."

Ben's voice, tiny, humbled, humiliated: "fankyew." The way a child might say 'Thank you' to a disciplinarian who insists on being thanked for giving him a whipping to teach him better.

Doom called, "Boris! Extra meat today for the It! Extra rations of whatever he wants. Clean blankets! And hose out the filth in this cage!" The word filth was said with great disgust. After a few more words, he left, and Boris got to work. I moved closer and watched. I saw for myself the space that was allotted to Ben Grimm—who, as much as Victor hated him, was always treated as an honorable foe, in the world as I knew it.

This inferior version of Doom housed the It, his teammate, in a crate like an animal—no, in conditions that would bring animal rights groups to their feet. It was almost too small for Ben to stand up or lie down in. There was befouled straw on the floor, slop-buckets, no consideration made for his comfort or wellbeing—and Boris, far more bent and weary than the Boris I knew—was having to clean it and tend to him on his own. He seemed to have a great deal of trouble getting around. That was only natural, if he had to perform this kind of heavy manual labor every day. Boris was old, and getting frail.

Ben sat in a corner of his cage and let Boris work around him. He made no move to help the elderly Rom—he was slumped in a way that said exhaustion and despair had smothered his spirit to the point of extinction.

I wanted to cry, but anger warred with pity in me. I had to leave there. I could not go on looking at the two of them. At that point, I was ready to find Doom and smash his face in myself.

In this version of the world, Cynthia Von Doom was not dead. She had raised Doom, not Boris—and the Cynthia of the reality I knew demonstrably did not have the best judgment. No one who would trust Mephisto and sell her soul could be said to have the best judgment.

Boris had been more to Victor than someone who gave him shelter and fed him—he had been a role model. As quiet and humble as Boris was, it was he who had taught Victor what it was to give one's word, and what it was to keep it—not just at the time, but to go on keeping it, year in and year out. He had taught Victor the meaning of responsibility, and he did it by example. A child might hear what you say, but they pay very close attention to what you do…

It was from Boris that Victor had learned to be, not just a man, but an honorable man.

This Doom had never learned any of those lessons, that much was clear. And—what if this Cynthia had also sold her soul, but not died? What would Doom have learned from her?

The castle, which had always felt like a haven to me, suddenly felt as though it threatened to crush me. I had to get away from it, if only for a while. I went down into Doomstadt.

Everywhere I went—everywhere I looked in Doomstadt, I saw the ill effects that this dishonorable, inconsiderate Doom had wrought upon Latveria. It was cheapened, commercialized, and shabby. Victor had been very careful about what changes he made, what new buildings he put up. No one had been careful here.

There were beggars in the main squares—homeless persons in the heart of Doomstadt. No one was homeless in Victor's Latveria. There were resources and facilities to care for the aged and the mentally ill.

I did some shopping—I needed clothing—I bought a sleep mask, not so much out of hope as because I wanted to get used to sleeping with one on—some toiletries—and I visited an art store.

If I was going to pass myself off as a professional calligrapher, I needed the tools of my trade. They had a nice selection in the shop, and I selected inks, gouaches, metallic powders, gold leaf and the sizing to make it adhere to paper, a porcelain palette, fine sable brushes, various papers, a scalpel-like cutting tool or three, a portfolio to store my work—until all I needed was one last essential—pens to write with.

These days, most pens came in pieces— the shaft, be it plastic, wood, or metal— which one held, and interchangeable metal nibs which one wrote with. The store had as good a selection of those as I could hope for, but they also had an array of glass pens, imported from Venice, in a locked display case.

I had a glass pen once, which I received as a gift. It had been beautiful, but as a writing instrument it had left a lot to be desired. I had found out its shortcomings were common to most glass pens—it was awkward to hold, clumsy to write with, the ink flowed erratically and ran out immediately. Nor were they consistent from pen to pen—they were made by hand, and the writing tips varied too much. I would be better off if I were to buy a bunch of felt tip pens that were cut at an angle that made any writing look like calligraphy.

All of these things notwithstanding, I was going to buy not just one glass pen, but several.

They were not metal—that was the important thing. Who had obviously benefited the most from this change in reality? Magneto. Who, therefore, would I have to confront before all of this could be sorted out? Magneto. It would be an excellent thing if I had at hand a weapon that his powers could neither affect nor detect.

Victor, if faced with the same conundrum, would have sat down and designed a device, then spent days—even weeks—developing it, building it, testing it, altering it. Maybe that was because he was male, or because the curse of super heroism turned even him into a part-time idiot—or simply because complicating things came naturally to him, but that was Victor. I preferred to look around me and ask myself—what around here can I use to fight Magneto? That was why I had gone under the sink on the island in the Bermuda Triangle for the cleaning solutions.

I had considered going to a house wares store and buying a ceramic kitchen knife, but if, as I suspected, I was being followed, that would look odd. Why would I be buying a knife, when I had no kitchen? These pens were a much better idea. They didn't even look like weapons. It would be natural for me to have them—they might cause a comment or two, but they wouldn't arouse suspicion.

I went up to the front counter and paid for everything I had chosen so far, to prove I was a serious customer and not just a waste of their time. Then I asked to see and try the pens.

Given that I had shown and sown good faith by buying so much already, they were happy to let me uncork my ink, break open a pack of paper, and test how the pens wrote. I dipped the nib of the first, lowered it to paper, and wrote, in my best Gothic script,

'Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedome.'

It was a quote from Shakespeare's Tempest—lines spoken by Prospero, when he tells his daughter how he was usurped and exiled. Well, I felt usurped and exiled at that moment, so it fit. I picked up another pen, and kept writing.

Forty-five minutes later, I had not only tried every single glass pen in stock and chosen three that were the least difficult to write with—fine-tipped, medium, and wide—I had a stack of samples, a dozen spectators, and a very happy shop owner who wanted me to come in again to do more demonstrations and give classes—for money. While I wrote, he had sold several books on calligraphy, in addition to pens, paper and ink to people who were inspired by watching me.

What had that idiot Kristoff said? 'Who bothers with that anymore? All you need is a software program with some fonts!' There is nothing like watching the marriage of line and meaning come off the end of a pen.

If I was who I was claiming to be, I would have jumped at the chance to make money by teaching classes, so we negotiated, and I agreed to give my first official demonstration on Sunday…

Sunday was supposed to be my wedding day.

I agreed anyway, and returned to the castle, where there was a sight that lifted my spirits—Kristoff covered from head to toe, in semi-solid grey flame-retardant goop, and complaining about it at the top of his lungs.

"I'm telling you, Father, I don't know what happened! One minute I was—we were—Everything was fine, and then this shit—."

"Watch your language!" snapped Doom. "Vulgarity is the sign of a poor vocabulary and a slow wit."

"Sorry! This stuff came shooting out all over my suite, everywhere! I thought the system was deactivated in my rooms. What went wrong?" He wiped a blob of the goop off his ear. "All my stuff is ruined!" he whined.

"Where is that engineer? I don't know what went wrong either. And stop whining. It's unmanly. Things can be replaced. A system malfunction is not to be taken lightly. Engineer!" bellowed Doom.

"I don't know what happened, sir." said the engineer nervously. "It was deactivated, as you commanded, but for some reason, it came back on line—and not just on line, but upgraded to high-priority. It won't turn off. The Prince's rooms are overflowing, and the excess is starting to flow out into the corridor."

I kept a straight face as I went back to my room, but it wasn't easy.

The lift that gave my mood didn't last. I was too aware of my situation. I put my purchases away, took a shower, and lay down on the bed. I had missed at least two meals, owing to the time change, but I was not hungry. I doubted I could eat if I forced myself to try.

I was back in the same old creaky bed I had slept in for three years.

Alone.

It felt more alone than ever.

I knew the world would return to normal, that it was just a matter of time, but 'eventually' was not 'now' and 'now' was where I was.

I was not home; home was where was Victor was. I could live without him, but I could not thrive.

I didn't even feel like reading.

After a while, I slept.

A/N: Next chapter—naughty stuff!