Excerpt: Won't somebody think of the children?

Sure enough, as I entered the medical bay annex, Melanie was sitting next to a - I'm not sure the right word for it, but it looks a bit like a glassed-in crib - I think it's used for premature babies. I didn't think that Doctor Joe would have had it sitting out here THIS early, though - had she got it out herself? She looked up as I came in, and smiled forlornly. "Sorry I left so early this morning."

"That's - well, thanks. You did have me worried." I looked around for another chair, didn't find one, and plopped down onto the foot of a bed, deciding that nobody would really mind.

"What made you think of looking in here?"

"Well, Odin said that you were here." Mel blinked in surprise. "I didn't ask him, actually, I ran into Julie - and she might be asking what you have to tell her."

"Oh, thanks, great," Mel rolled her eyes, and somehow that exasperated gesture gave me some hope that we'd be okay, because it was so absolutely normal. "Listen, do you want to know why I came here or not?"

For a second I tried to think of a witty rejoinder, but even the notion felt out of place for this moment. "Please, say on."

Melanie considered for a moment before actually getting the words out, her gaze focused on the glass crib. "I had a deam about the game last night - I dreamed that we were pushing for exclusive access to Nick's nook for ourselves and our friends, and the vote was starting to go our way." Then she looked up at me with a piercing dark brown stare. "When I woke up from that dream, Tom, it scared me. Scared me into thinking that we might become those people, if we keep on going the way that we're going."

"Come on, it's not like..." I started, and then faded off, partly because I didn't want to minimize whatever concerns Melanie was feeling, and partly because I wasn't sure that she didn't have a point on some level. We weren't there yet, using the game to become King and Queen and reducing the people that we didn't like to third-class serfs - but could I really say that we weren't on the slope? "So, are you saying like you feel that Paul Mastiz has the right of it? That the game is irreparably flawed, and that we should be focusing on other concerns?"

"I - I'm not sure about anything so sweeping," Melanie admitted. "I - I think that you and I, for the sake of ourselves and our marriage, we should take a break from the game, and I'm not going to feel guilty about that. If this has become something that we can't back away from without courting disaster - then maybe it's a disaster that we need to go through."

"Alright, I'm okay with that," I agreed, almost feeling relieved that the decision was made. "Anything else bothering you?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Nothing that we need to settle before getting married this afternoon, I have to admit. Something - I keep feeling that there's something important that we should be attending to, that should be obvious if we just think about it, but it hasn't come clear yet. Maybe we need to stay away from the game for a while first."