Liam Perrin

He tried to comfort her. “A lot of ideas sound good. Like antipodal tunnels.”

Her face was blank. Like a panther’s. Right before it eats you.

“Tubes straight through the Earth. Jump in the hole. Fall faster and faster – cross the center – fall slower and slower until you reach the surface and step right out onto the other side.

“But, problems.” He counted on his fingers. “One, heat. Two, pressure. Three, the places you’d want to go – their antipode is somewhere in an ocean. Four, the terminal velocity of a human and the diameter of the Earth mean you’d be falling for almost three days.”

He shrugged.

“You’re saying,” she said, “the shortest distance between two points isn’t always a straight line.”

“Yes! No-”

She smiled.

He did too. He was never quite sure what was happening, but if she was happy he was happy.

Confused, mildly distressed, and happy.

He examined the scene from behind his coffee mug. “What’s that?” he said.

She placed a model Volkswagen down next to a model gas pump. “I have to get gas today,” she said.

There were several dioramas set up around the room.

“Wouldn’t a to-do list be,” he searched for a gentle word, “quicker?”

She selected a female figure and placed it carefully next to the Volkswagen. “It makes going about these mundane tasks more satisfying knowing someone cares about them enough to spend time on them.”

“But it’s you-” he said. “It’s you spending time on them.”

“Precisely,” she said without looking up.

As he left, she selected a figure with a coffee mug and carefully placed it in the diorama of the woman building dioramas.

She smiled.