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Anyone else who wants to archive this on a free access website or ftp site, 
just send me an email telling me that you did so and the url or ftp address. 
Anyone who wants to archive this on a for-pay site, don't.

Member Net Authors and Creators Union - NACU. Authors and creators 
welcome, email NACU@qnez.com for more info. Lozengy, gules and 
argent; on a chief, sable, an open book proper; eight black hounds, courant, 
langed and clawed, azure; amidst them, five lightning bolts, or. Motto: We 
Pursue.

Copyright 1998 Elaine Blankenship. All rights not specifically granted above 
reserved. Email the author at LainieLee@usa.net.

I do not own the SRU universe, I am just borrowing it. 
======================================

SRU: The Spare Key

by Lainie Lee

Aaron felt beat, he'd just made it to the mall before closing. What a day at 
work! One errand to run and he could go home. He needed to get a new key 
made for his front door, his wife had lost hers again; he had given her the 
spare and now he wanted to replace it.

Frazzled by his responsibilities as lead engineer on the new Seek Missile 
team, Aaron turned into the curious little shop without even noticing that it 
wasn't the vacuum cleaner store where he usually got keys made.

The little bell on the door rang but the shop seemed deserted. Aaron looked 
around blindly for the rather fat shop owner or his equally fat wife or even 
fatter daughter. "Hello," he called. They certainly have been adding some odd 
stock for a vacuum cleaner and locksmith shop, he thought.

A little music box caught his eye. On the top of a lacquered white oval casket, 
stood a little porcelain ballerina, a child ballerina by the proportions of the 
figurine. One arm on top of her head, the other on her hip; one leg lifted and 
angled against the other calf; toes pointed; a look of pre-adolescent 
concentration on her painted bisque face; the ballerina seemed suddenly to 
Aaron to represent all that was fine and good about trying to do something 
well, even if you are doomed to failure.

He sniffed. Something in his eye, he told himself. Reluctantly, he turned 
from the lovely little music box and looked around again for the proprietor or 
one of his corpulent clan. This place is positively filled with -- junk, he 
thought, unable to think of another word for the clutter. Is that a wooden 
Indian by the back wall? A violet painted velocipede, half an harmonium, a 
full set of phylacteries, a sarcophagus in the shape of a suppliant Saluki? 
More than half of the stuff he could neither name nor discern a purpose for.

"Hello?" he tried again.

"May I help you?"

He turned to find the source of the voice, an old man who was certainly 
dressed appropriately for the new decor and stock. The wizard's robe, for 
that is what it must be, might even be part of the stock; it certainly looked old 
enough to be an antique. The wizard, if he could be called that since he 
dressed the part, reached out and lifted the little music box that Aaron had 
been admiring. 

"I need, I need a key made," Aaron stumbled over the words. He watched 
fascinated as the old man wound the little clockwork on the back of the music 
box. Aaron saw now that the box was also a jewelry case, a small one to be 
sure, perhaps for a child. The little lid lifted just on one end of the oval, for 
the ballerina stood on the other end.

"A key?" The old man lifted a gray brow as he put the music box back on the 
shelf then lifted the lid and propped it open with a tiny hinged rod inside the 
compartment, provided, surely, for just such a purpose. With the lid open, 
the box began to play a tune and the ballerina began to practice her twirls.

The tune seemed familiar and Aaron frowned, trying to remember where he 
had heard it before.

"It's 'The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies' you know," said the old man.

Aaron smiled, yes, it was. The movement of the little ballerina even had a jig 
to it, a pause to fit the syncopated spin of the delightful little holiday tune. 
"How, how much is the box?" he asked, suddenly, impulsively. He didn't 
even have a daughter and his wife was, well, she wasn't into fond sentiment.

"Two dollars," said the old man as if it were just the right price, no more no 
less.

"Two, two dollars?" Aaron couldn't believe it. "I expected to pay more than 
that for the spare key I came in here for you to make."

"You'll find the key you're looking for inside the music box," said the old 
man.

Startled, Aaron stepped closer to look. There were indeed, two keys inside 
the little compartment for jewelry. One was the key for winding the music 
box of course. He had seen the old man insert it into the square little hole on 
the back side of the lacquered oval container and wind the works with quick 
movements of those aged hands. But the other key, the other key was 
identical to the one he had been holding in his own hand since he entered the 
shop.

He held the two keys up, comparing. Absolutely identical. He shook his 
head, smiling. "You must be a magician."

"No," said the old man sternly. "I'm a wizard."

"There, um, there's a difference?"

"Oh, yes."

"Um, I do want the -- music box." Aaron reached back over a shelf strewn 
with gewgaws and doodads to retrieve his treasure. The music stopped when 
he lowered the rod and closed the half-oval lid.

"Two dollars."

"For the box? You can't be serious?"

The wizard shrugged. "When necessary. That box has wanted to go home 
with you ever since you came into the mall."

Aaron smiled at the whimsy, still convinced he would have to pay the old 
man well for such a beautiful little toy. He touched a finger to the ballerina 
head, such a porcelain figurine alone might go for hundreds of dollars in 
some of the shops in this mall. She was so perfect, so lifelike, so utterly 
convinced that she can do it right this time. He sighed. "I can write you a 
check..." he began.

The old man shook his head. "Did you ever make a thing, a thing with a 
purpose? A device designed to seek its own destiny? That box was made with 
just such an owner as yourself in mind."

Aaron started. The old man seemed for a moment to be describing the Seek 
Missiles that Aaron had been working on for fourteen months now. There 
weren't that many defense contracts being given out these days; his company 
had been lucky to get part of the programming contract for the top secret Seek 
Missile Project. Seek Missile technology was so highly classified that the 
Pentagon had only told the president about the project just last week, or so 
the rumor went. 

Seek Missiles were like cruise missiles but they found their own targets. Just 
tell them what you wanted, an air base destroyed, or a chemical factory 
demolished or whatever and point them in the right general direction. They 
would find the nearest target meeting their parameters and deliver a payload. 
Maybe even an atomic one.

At least, in theory. The programming of an AI powerful enough to manage 
such a task had been keeping him up nights, keeping him away from home 
weekends, leaving him mentally and physically exhausted. He had begun to 
believe that a functional Seek Missile was actually beyond the capability of 
the current state of engineering art. But he couldn't tell anyone that; his 
bosses didn't want to hear it, the Pentagon didn't want to hear it and he sure 
couldn't talk about it with this old man. The classification of Seek Missiles 
being two levels higher than just top secret, he and the old man would both 
go to jail if he even mentioned the name of the project out loud.

The oddly dressed old man wrapped the music box in brown paper and twine 
and refused to take more than two dollars. Aaron left the little shop, still 
mystified, never to return. He didn't look back. He wouldn't have seen the 
store vanish in a flash of light to be replaced by the original vacuum cleaner 
store cum locksmith with its complement of corpulent clerks, even if he had 
looked. The wizard waited until Aaron was actually in the parking lot.

* * *

Aaron's wife, Roberta didn't think much of the music box. It didn't look that 
expensive and when he said he had paid only two dollars for it she almost 
dumped it into the trash can right then and there. Aaron wouldn't let her.

"I don't like it," she told him. "It is actually ugly." The expression on the face 
of the porcelain figurine particularly perturbed her. The child looked to be in 
pain, or anticipating some sort of pain.

"I, well, I didn't buy it for you, dear."

"Then who did you buy it for? We don't have a little girl, we don't have any 
children at all." She was using her lecturing voice, the one she had honed on 
six years of third graders before they were married.

"I bought it because I wanted it," was all Aaron could think to say. He 
opened the little half-oval lid and the box began to play "Dance of the Sugar 
Plum Fairies" again.

"I bought it because I wanted it. I think it's, uh, cute." He blushed.

"Well, if it is going to make that out of tune racket every time someone 
touches it, you can keep it on your nightstand. I don't want to see it, or hear 
it. Did you get the spare key?"

"Uh, yes." He handed her the piece of shiny brass.

"I'll put it where it belongs," she said. Roberta always wanted things just so, 
neat almost to a fault. She kept an immaculate house and his dinner was 
always ready for him whenever he got home, no matter how late. He knew 
he was lucky to have married her for she was also a stunning woman, almost 
as tall as he with braided blond hair and a figure she prided herself on 
keeping trim and youthful.

She dressed well on his generous salary and he admired the way she looked 
in her periwinkle print dress as she stooped in the little pool of light spilling 
out the kitchen door to lift the fake rock and hide the spare key inside. He 
wanted to want her, but he was just so tired, so drained by the impossible 
project at work.

It was so unlike her to have lost her own key. He didn't question her about it 
because he was half afraid that she hadn't lost it but instead had given it to her 
lover. A lover she had been forced into the arms of by his failure to fulfill her 
needs. He didn't know she had taken a lover, but he feared that if he could 
not recover his ability to function as a husband ought, she surely would. And 
who could blame her?

She smiled at him as she came back inside and relocked the back door. "You 
look bushed, honey. Why don't you go on to bed? I'll finish cleaning up the 
dishes and join you soon." She pushed at his shoulder until he struggled to 
his feet.

He smiled tiredly, picked up his junk store treasure, paused for a brief, long-
married kiss and trudged off to their bedroom. Maybe things would have 
been different if they had ever had children. But either he couldn't or she 
couldn't and they had never asked the doctors whose fault was it anyway.

He never told Roberta but sometimes, he envied her. She didn't have his 
worries or job stress. She had quit work when they got married, quit teaching 
school in anticipation of raising children. But all she had to do was 
housework and her little charity projects, like helping out with the orphans 
who stayed as foster children with the family of their Episcopalian minister. 

She was good with children, if sterner than he would have had the heart to 
be. Sometimes they talked about taking in an orphan, too, but they had never 
done it. Perhaps because they were both orphans and had spent time in foster 
homes themselves, not always pleasant ones, either.

He dressed for bed, gray and blue striped pajamas for the nights of late fall. 
He sat his treasure on the nightstand, on his side of the bed. The works had 
run down and he fished the little key out of the compartment and turned the 
lacquered box around so he could insert the key into the square hole. 
Carefully, he wound the music box, half afraid that the mainspring on the 
little antique would break and deprive him of half his pleasure in his 
unexpected acquisition.

He lifted the little hinged rod and propped the half-oval lid open so the tinny 
music would continue to play. It wasn't out of tune, he told himself as he 
watched the little porcelain ballerina jig and spin. He fell asleep to the sound 
of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" played on miniature chimes. Maybe his 
last thought before the darkness swallowed him was that tomorrow he might 
possibly be able to do something else so wonderfully right as buying the 
music box.

The works had run down again when Roberta finally came to bed.

* * *

During the night, the magic that had sought out the Seek Missile engineer 
began to work. Aaron's limbs became thinner, the trunk of his body shrunk 
and his manhood withered completely away. The rest of his hair fell out and 
his beard and his body hair too. The hair disappeared in the transformation as 
Aaron's pajamas shrank and changed color to fit his new form. New hair 
sprouted, too, but only on his head; that fine, silken blond hair that only 
children have. Down between his legs, a groove formed and opened into a 
channel into the inside of his body where other changes were taking place.

The room changed also, Aaron's clothes in the closet shrank and changed to 
fit his new body. The ripples of transformation spread out, altering records 
here and there. Aaron's engineering career disappeared, his education, his 
marriage to Roberta. Some of these things changed to other documents that 
supported his new identity. Memories changed to match records.

Aaron's company had never taken the Seek Missile contract for lack of the 
right talented engineer to manage it. No other company could take the contract 
either and so the Pentagon had canceled the Seek Missile Project. The 
President never did hear about it.

Perhaps somewhere a wizard smiled, knowing that his music box had 
delivered its payload.

* * *

When the alarm went off, the little girl yawned and stretched and opened her 
clear blue eyes. She so loved sleeping with Mummy Roberta, even though 
she knew that her privileges would end someday when her foster mother 
found a husband. But then they could adopt her and she would have real 
parents again and maybe a little brother or sister.

Roberta reached across the bed and grabbed all of her foster daughter's little 
tummy in her hand. "How's my sleepy child this morning," she asked, 
squeezing a bit to tickle the little girl into protesting laughter.

"I'm wide awake!" Erin squealed, delighted to be the object of Roberta's 
casual affection. She pushed helplessly at the adult hand with her six year old 
muscles until finally her foster mother relented.

"Okay!" Roberta said, laughing. "Now quick, what day is today?"

"It's Tuesday, Mummy," said little Erin. Her face was flushed and she still 
couldn't stop grinning.

"That's right, and why do we get up early on Tuesdays and Thursdays?"

"Ballet practice!" Erin giggled, she loved this game of being asked questions 
she knew the answers to so well. 

"Okay!" And Roberta loved the game, too. Roberta paid for the ballet lessons 
out of her own pocket; she spent a lot more on the little girl than the state gave 
her for taking in an orphan. She loved children, she loved Erin, she loved 
having a little girl to take care of, to be firm and loving with, to be an adult 
for. She promised herself she would never give up teaching; that way when 
Erin and any children of her own she might someday have were grown, she 
would still have children to lead and care for.

"So, you go make breakfast for us, Mummy," said Erin. "And I'll make the 
bed." One of Erin's chores was to make the bed. Sometimes Roberta had to 
make it again but Erin got better at it all the time. It made Erin feel proud to 
help Mummy around the house; cleaning and cooking, too.

"Alright, honey. Don't leave any crocodiles in the bed covers today."

Erin giggled again. Crocodiles were lengthwise folds in the sheets that made 
long skinny lumps under the bed spread. They were called alligators if they 
ran sideways across the bed. Erin hadn't left any giant aquatic lizards in the 
bed covers for months now.

Mother and daughter set to their tasks. Roberta got dressed quickly and eggs 
were frying in the kitchen while Erin struggled with the last of the bedclothes, 
doubly smoothing each sheet to prevent crocodiles.

Roberta's voice came down the hall. "Better get dressed, honey. Breakfast is 
almost ready. And I still have to braid your hair."

"Okay, Mummy." Quickly Erin stripped off her pink pajamas, all the way 
down to her Little Mermaid Underoos. Then she paused. The music box had 
caught her eye. She reached inside the little compartment and removed the 
key. The mainspring of the music works was almost too strong for her tiny 
hands but she managed to wind it enough to set the little painted bisque 
ballerina to twirling and jigging while "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" 
played out its starts and stops and syncopations.

Erin screwed up her face in unconscious imitation of the expression on the 
face of the porcelain figurine; the face Mummy Roberta made fun of, calling it 
"trying to pass a pumpkin."

In the chill fall morning, dressed only in her decorative panties, little Erin 
jumped and jigged and twirled. She felt happy and looked forward to ballet 
practice, because today was the day she knew she was going to do everything 
right.

======================================

Copyright 1998 Elaine Blankenship. All rights not specifically granted above 
reserved. Email the author at LainieLee@usa.net.