Why Are You Smiling?

The spider smiled at him with a full human grin. Some part of Hu thought it might be mildly less terrifying if the spider were larger than the walnut-sized things before him, but he really didn't want it to be larger, and besides, he would be terrified either way. Perhaps terrifying wasn't something that could be gradated.

"What.... Do you... want something?" The spider continued to smile. It had crawled down the cafeteria wall into Hu's line of sight as he chewed the second bite of his dry turkey-havarti sandwich.

Hu looked around. The rest of the company break room was empty except for the vending machines where he'd gotten his unexciting lunch. He looked back at the spider which, despite his fervent hopes, had not vanished or stopped smiling. "Why are you smiling at me?"

Without warning it sprang at him. He flinched away so hard he fell, and still it landed on his temple. "You'll never get anywhere in this company if you don't ask better questions," came a disturbingly resonant voice (resonating how?). "If you had teeth these fine, you'd be smiling too. So then, where did I get these teeth?"

And with that, it was gone.

À l'arme!

Alarms rang in the Pavillon de Breteuil as the sleek black SUV raced away. Howard Putnam drove, known as Howe. Vicky Gallow rode shotgun and held shotgun, stereotypical "progressive 'cause she's a woman" heavy. In the back, techie Leela Invesco and mastermind Ellen Ishitoma, a delirious smile on her face as she petted the secure case in her lap.

City park slid by, the Eiffel Tower peeking into view between patches of trees. As he drove, Howe said, "So, that thing's platinum, right? What's it worth?"

"Oh, about thirty thousand dollars." Ellen giggled. "If you did the stupid thing and melted it down. We're going to change it."

Leela looked up from her anonymized burner phone. "That means what, then?"

"With the international prototype of the kilogram in my hands, I can change the definition of mass. I can make things heavier or lighter. Ten thousand dollars to launch a kilogram to orbit? Not once I change the kilogram!" She laughed. Leela looked blank.

Vicky looked over her shoulder. "You know they redefined the kilogram last year, right? Something to do with the Planck length, I think."

Ellen's face fell slack. "Okay," said Howe. "So how's she gonna pay us?"

The Gift of a Key

When he was eight, a magical creature of unknown provenance appeared and presented him a key, small and unassuming, rather like the boy. "This key will open any lock you set it to," said the creature, "but only once." With that, it disappeared.

The boy carried the key with him everywhere in case it should be needed. He saw a woman locked out of her home, and one locked out of her car, but in each case he thought his key was meant for something greater. He locked himself out of his home once, and that tempted him, but he resisted.

He fell on hard times, and looked longingly at the homes of the obscenely wealthy. In better times, he peered at locked doors in subways, hotels, and museums in curiosity. He could learn what was beyond, but how could he use his gift for something so trivial?

He aged, wed, and adopted, always watching for the lock important enough for his key, never finding anything good enough. Every door, he weighed and judged unworthy. On his deathbed, swaddled in regret and resentment, he gave the key to his children, who did not believe his story and threw it away.

Alternate History Facts for March, 2020

March 1, 1852: Having defeated the animate stone centaur guardian, Archibald Montgomerie became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

March 2, 1657: A battle between a priest and the spirit possessing a cursed kimono sparked the great fire of Meireki, sweeping Edo and killing over 100,000.

March 3, 1923: Henry Luce and Briton Hadden published the first issue of Time Magazine. The title was part of a slow ritual to diminish those parts of the world not governed by the ticking of the clock, strengthening Luce's time-based magic.

March 4, 1152: The prince-electors elevated Frederick Barbarossa to King of Germany after he demonstrated his mastery of the six demonic commands.

March 5, 1868: Arrigo Boito released the opera Mefistofele. It was a critical failure, both with audiences and in its primary purpose, to summon and bind the demon Gusion. Boito immediately set on revising it, but it never accomplished his goal.

March 6, 1953: Joseph Stalin transitioned into his second identity as Georgy Malenkov. Though he could not hold onto the same power he had before, he preserved his life.

March 7, 1967: Alice B Toklas crumbled to dust at the conclusion of a wizard's duel in which she sealed away a hostile invading dimension.

March 8, 1658: The Treaty of Roskilde ceded a third of the Dano-Norwegian Realm to Sweden and another fifth to the distant dimension of Essvall. That fifth vanished entirely from land, making Denmark-Norway and the entire world smaller.

March 9, 2011: The Space Shuttle Discovery made its final landing of 39, over 27 years of service. A replica is on display in Virginia, while the original was donated to an adjacent timeline with less-advanced space travel.

March 10, 1804: The American flag rose over St. Louis, concluding the Lousiana Purchase and the Three Flags Ritual that weakened for generations those native spirits that might have resisted the American possession.

March 11, 1784: The Treaty of Mangalore ended the Second Anglo-Mysore War, in which Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of the Kingdom of Mysore used cunning illusions and brilliant tactics to trounce the British East India Company's forces.

March 12, 1930: Mahatma Gandhibegan the Salt Satyagraha, a 24-day protest march that granted Gandhi the spiritual power of thousands. Rather than using this to attack the oppressors, Gandhi returned it to the people in the form of confidence and pride.

March 13, 1988: The underwater Seikan Tunnel opened between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Still unknown to most, the tunnel burrows not through the Tsugaru Strait but through an adjacent dimension, deemed both cheaper and safer at the time.

March 14, 1757: The British Navy executed Admiral John Byng by exposure to the cthonic realms, for the crime of failing "to do his utmost" in combat against the French. Despite wide support for Byng, King George II enforced the sentence.

March 15, 963: Romanos II of the Byzantine Empire did not die, as widely believed, but fell through a wormhole to 2063 Poland, where he lived the rest of his life as a moderately successful CPA.

March 16, 1660: Members of the Long Parliament finally managed to break the arcane seal preventing them from ending their session.

March 17, 1891: The SS Utopia collided with the HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar as the Anson returned through unspoken paths in a new government program. To protect the research's secrecy, they blamed captain of the Utopia John McKeague.

March 18, 1965: Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov conducts the first extravehicular activity in space, after the Russians were the first to attain permission from the Voidlords.

March 19, 1649: The British House of Commons locked away all magic of the House of Lords in a silver heart in a gold-beaked goose. It would remain so bound until King Charles II found the goose and slew it.

March 20, 1970: Lt-Col Arthur Heywood-Lonsdale became Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire after predecessor Maj-Gen Robert Bridgeman contracted a slow-acting, incurable poison saving Shropshire from netherwasps in the line of duty.

March 21, 1954: The All England Badminton Championships concluded with a sweep by the fey competitors, who then vanished into their realms. Unsportingly, the British instead recorded winners from the human realms.

March 22, 1996: Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on its 16th mission, docking with Space Station Mir and, with permission of the Voidlords, Void Station Ircth IV, before landing on March 31.

March 23, 1884: The ship John Wickliffe at Port Chalmers in New Zealand. Though the passenger manifest doesn't mention it, several surviving accounts from the time include the first known mentions of Bringer of Death John Wick.

March 24, 1387: The Battle of Margate began between England and a joint continental fleet. While the small gods of wine held prisoner by the continental fleet had called to the English, the English victory did not, in the end, benefit them.

March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory's half-ifrit slave burst free of its arcane containment. Having never been taught to control her power, she torched the entire building.

March 26, 1839: The town of Henley swore to forevermore hold a regatta in the height of summer. Fail to uphold the agreement and their descendants would vanish from this Earth. The royal family endorsed the regatta to protect their subjects.

March 27, 1794: President George Washington signed into law an act creating the USA's first six warships. Congress passed the law in part to legally accept the gift of a ghost frigate from a neighboring nation of the dead, which was lost shortly after.

March 28, 1920: The unprovoked murder of a half-spirit daughter of the plains winds triggered a rage in the wind spirits of middle America, causing the 1920 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak and hundreds of deaths.

March 29, 1882: Michael J McGivney successfully overcame the angel Yumiel, binding it to lend its divine energy to the nascent Knights of Columbus.

March 30, 1973: Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton collapsed inward into his heart, which crystallized into a ruby now held in the Tower of London's secret chambers.

March 31, 1822: Ottoman troops began the slaughter and enslavement of inhabitants of Chios. Kara-Ali Pasha hoped the slaughter of an estimated 52,000 would propitiate the god of death, but said entity regarded him as little as he regarded the Greeks.