Chapter 1

Sid worked around the outside of his house getting it prepared for winter. The hoses had to be disconnected, patio furniture carried into the garage, and the last of the fall leaves raked. None of the jobs required his full attention. As a result, he had plenty of time to think about his life.

In hindsight, he was sorry that he had told Cynthia about the portal. She hadn’t gone through it yet and he didn’t know if she really wanted to go through it. He could tell that the idea of camping and wilderness cooking didn’t thrill her. He didn’t know if she was all that excited about the fact that she would have to take care of his sexual needs as well, although he could imagine that she was dreading the idea.

His biggest fear was that with her inexperience she would end up getting killed. For her to go to Chaos in the company of an individual who was knowingly riding into trouble was not a good thing; particularly when she didn’t know even the basics of self-defense. He could imagine nothing worse than watching a lover die.

His second biggest fear was that she would complicate his relationship with Sally. Although she had learned the grace and manners of Sally, he wasn’t convinced that having a relationship with Cynthia was a smart move. He feared that she would be jealous of Sally and forbid him from going to Crossroads to see her. Although Sally talked about him finding an Earth woman, he wasn’t sure that she would really like that.

Working in a slow, but steady, pace, Sid finished the yard work early in the afternoon. It had only taken him about three hours to take care of all the tasks. His uncle had often said that a job rushed took twice as long. Satisfied with his work, he put the rake in the garage and closed the door. Everything was ready for whatever weather the winter might throw in his direction.

Standing in the front lawn, he looked over the property with appreciation for the gift his uncle had given him. He thought back to the times when his uncle and he would work in the yard. The men would work side by side while talking about honor, duty, and compassion. His uncle swore that his personal motto was, “Death before dishonor, duty before pleasure, and compassion above all else.” Sid had enjoyed those discussions and taken the lessons to heart.

Entering the house, he grabbed a drink out of the refrigerator. Taking a sip as he headed towards the study, his progress was halted when the telephone rang. The closest phone was in the kitchen, so he went back to it. Picking up the handset, he answered somewhat suspiciously. He seldom received calls and those were usually from telephone salesman.

He didn’t recognize the voice and became convinced that it was solicitor. Not wanting to open himself to an unwanted sales pitch, he was tempted to hang up. Instead, he listened to what the man on the other end had to say. The caller identified himself as Malcolm Charles Chandler and he mentioned traveling in the same circles as his uncle and that he had a Caretaker. No longer concerned about the man being a salesman, Sid’s thoughts turned to the darker suspicion that the man was a government agent who wanted to learn about the portal.

The conversation that followed was very awkward. The man insisted that they meet in Chaos at the Jones Citadel to solve some major crisis involving slavery. He said that the problem was so wide-spread that no hero alone could solve it. It was going to require several heroes to resolve. Sid wasn’t sure what to think of the phone call. There were too many things that didn’t add up, as far as he was concerned.

After hanging up, Sid sat on the couch mentally reviewing the conversation. He didn’t believe it was possible for Heroes to work together on Chaos based on his understanding of the rules, but Malcolm had answered that they wouldn’t actually be working together, only for a common goal.

According to Malcolm, each Hero would take charge of an army and wage war on his own front. The idea of leading an army and waging a war was far different from the kinds of adventures Sid had imagined. He’d been a ground-pounder in the US Army, not an officer. He didn’t have a clue concerning what was involved in leading an army.

Sid suspected that Malcolm was not a hero because he had some details wrong. Malcolm referred to Chirurgen as the Surgeon. On the other hand, he did say that the Surgeon would seek revenge. The suggestion of revenge was actually the one thing that he believed, but the fact was that he had the name wrong.

Malcolm had also mentioned an inheritance and that he wanted them to meet at the Jones Citadel. Sid had read his uncle’s journals and there had been no mention of a citadel in them. Furthermore, Sally hadn’t said anything about him being able to inherit something in Chaos from his uncle. As far as he knew, a hero had to build his own legacy.

Sid went to the study and opened the wall safe. If there was any truth to the story that his uncle had owned a citadel, his journal would have to mention it in some fashion. Opening the journal, Sid sat back and started to read it while looking for any hints about a citadel. Now that he knew what to look for in the journals, he found evidence that Malcolm’s story had elements of truth in it. There was one section that hinted that his base of operations supported a thriving population of merchants, farmers, and fighters. The passage was consistent with a citadel.

The material gave Sid pause to think about the story Malcolm had told him. On his last visit to Crossroads, Sally had mentioned that one of the Damsels had been taken as a slave. The idea of leading an Army bothered him. He didn’t know anything about being a commander of other soldiers.

For several hours, Sid sat at the desk holding the piece of paper on which he had written Malcolm’s telephone number. He knew that he didn’t know enough about his Uncle’s time in Chaos to disprove his ownership of a Citadel. Shaking his head, he decided to put off making a decision.

The next day, Sid went to school. English class wasn’t particularly interesting until one of the young women said, “I would have loved to have lived in medieval times.”

Unable to hold himself back, Sid laughed. Upon seeing the dirty look the woman gave him, he said, “No you wouldn’t. You would hate everything about those times.”

One of the other women in the class looked at Sid and said, “Those were Romantic Times.”

Laughing softly, Sid replied, “They only seem Romantic in hindsight. The fact of the matter is that life was very tough. The leading cause of death for women was childbirth, and women became mothers at fifteen or sixteen. Infant mortality was extremely high. Disease was rampant and medicine was basically non-existent. Measles, plague, flu, and smallpox killed off people by the millions.

“People worked from sunrise to sunset with inefficient tools and died young. I’m not talking about what we consider hard work. I’m talking about real physical labor. Plowing a field behind a horse required wrestling the plow through the ground, and clearing the field of rocks. There weren’t any microwaves, or grocery stores; and you had to wash clothes by hand. If it couldn’t be done with muscle, then it wasn’t done. They were perfectly horrible times.”

A romantic at heart, Susan looked at Sid surprised by his attitude. Ever since he had described his idea of a perfect woman, she had thought he possessed a Romantic soul. She asked, “What about the relations between men and women?”

“Men and women achieved a certain amount of equality if you consider they both worked until they dropped dead. Away from the house, women were easy victims for desperate men. With women dying at a young age from childbirth, older men took young wives. Fourteen and fifteen year old girls were married to forty year old men. We aren’t talking about good looking men. We’re talking about men who had lost a good percentage of their teeth, had faces scarred from smallpox, and were hardened by years of hard work,” answered Sid.

The woman said, “You’re talking about peasants. I wouldn’t want to be a peasant.”

“I don’t think you’d want to be a noblewoman. Most of your life would be spent in boring activities with only short moments of entertainment. Perhaps you think that you’d be surrounded by witty conversation. Sorry, but your entire life would revolve around gossip. Parties? Any social blunder would be the subject of years of humiliating talk. Travel? You get more travel going to and from school than the average noblewoman would experience in a month. Romance? You’d be married off to some fat Duke or Merchant for political or financial reasons.”

“The literature tells a different story,” said Susan realizing that this was an opportunity for the class to learn one of the lessons she wanted to convey.

“Believing that life was the way it is presented in the great Romantic works of the past, is a lot like believing that the Walt Disney version of Bambi is an accurate reflection of life in the wild,” replied Sid shaking his head. Thinking about it for a moment, he asked, “How many people in here believe that modern life is like ‘Sleepless in Seattle’?”

A large percentage of the women in class raised their hands. When Sid asked, “How many of you have experienced the romance described within that movie?”

All of the hands went down. Surprised to hear Sid talk in such a manner, Cynthia asked, “So you don’t believe in romance?”

The question took Sid by surprise. Frowning, he thought about it for a moment while all female eyes turned to examine him. Looking up from his desk, he said, “Quite the contrary. I believe in romance far more than most of the people I’ve met.”

His answer took everyone in the room by surprise. It seemed contrary to what he had just said about what many considered to be an Age of Romance. Based on the looks he was getting, he felt it was necessary to explain.

“I think our current time is the first real opportunity in history for us to live Romantic lives. Men and women do not have to work from sunrise to sunset to survive. Men now have the time to spend with women to make them feel special. Women have the time to dress well and act with the kind of grace written about in the older works.”

He sighed and said, “I think the greatest tragedy of our times, is that we are doing everything we can to destroy romance. Women are demanding to be treated like men. They argue against men opening the doors for them. They object to being treated like a valuable possession that is to be cherished. They won’t treat men special. They tell men not to treat them romantically ... and then they are upset that men don’t romance them!

“I’m not saying that women are the only ones to blame. Men are just as responsible for this mess as are women. Men have been raised with old fashioned ideas that they have to be in charge. Men fail to recognize that their attitude harkens back to the days when men worked the fields because that is where brawn was required. Of course, the fields meant the survival of the family and that gave him a lot of authority. We don’t work in the fields anymore.

“Men and women work together in the business world rather than the family farm. Despite that, we continue to define the roles of men and women along those archaic lines. Now women come home from work, only to work around the house while the man rests on his ass watching television. From the women’s perspective, it’s a raw deal.”

His comment was greeted with several exclamations of agreement from the women in the room. More than one of the women said, “You can say that again.”

Sid nodded his agreement and continued, “With women demanding to be treated like men, men are negotiating relationships as if they are business deals. They don’t pursue women in a romantic manner, because men are now competing with women for their jobs. Women are demanding that old roles be abandoned even if it means giving up the one thing they really want — romance.”