I slowly spun the brick in my fingers, the smooth silvery surface glinting dully in the bright white light. I brought it to my face and drew in a breath, the plastic scent of hopes and dreams filling my lungs, the bouquet enhanced by metallic notes of revenge and a supple ozone tingle of power. The light was bright. Too bright. Painful. I frowned. That wouldn't do.

"Computer, take me under the sea."

My faithful Dot booped and dutifully switched every other light to a soothing blue, and every other light to a verdant green.

"That's better, isn't it, my soon-to-be-quite-mortal Enemy?" My voice, smooth in thought, came in rough bursts, as if my spine was a particularly shitty router. I pinched a brick from one of the carefully-labeled bins before me, and joined it to its brother.

My eyes traced lovingly over my vengeance. The tongue that had tortured me - sliced into wonderfully useless ribbons. The voice that had betrayed me - excised and flayed wetly red by his side. The hands that had condemned me - broken like my trust.

"Do you think?” I paused. It was important to do this right. I had promised him I’d do it right. That I’d come for him. My Enemy moaned damply.

“Do you think that the universe is deterministic?”

“Consider the following thought experiment.” My voice sped up, the bricks swirling from their bins ever faster. “Suppose you have, say, a time machine. You observe someone committing a terrible crime. For argument’s sake, say that you’re far enough away that your presence can’t possible interfere with the event in any way. You go back in time, observe it again. Again.” A delightfully hysterical tone crept into my voice, all quiet-like. “You build a terrible dataset of this single crime, repeated. So, what do you see?”

The corners of my mouth pulled up. I knew.

“Either the same thing, down to the deepest level, happens every time – so the universe is set in stone, and nothing can change. Or. Or. Or you observe some set of different outcomes according to some distribution – so the crime is committed at RANDOM!” My throat thrummed agreeably with my rage. I cleared my throat. Rage, agreeable or not, hurt. I picked up the next brick and connected it.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The Enemy’s eyes (the eyelids that had closed against my pain, sliced off) darted about the room in fear, finally settling on the silvery geodesic brick-sculpture behind me.

“So then, where is free will?” I smiled truly, my face spasming in pain. The Enemy did not smile (the lips that had pursed when I begged on my knees for his help, crinkle-cut).

“I have an elegant mathematical solution to that philosophical quandary… but alas, our time is too small to contain it!” A laugh grew in my belly. It burst out, a deep, cathartic guffaw bending me over gladly. The Enemy did not laugh (the diaphragm that had failed to propel the words that would have saved me, carefully paralyzed just enough to not kill him).

“I’ve done the experiment you see. Not the thought experiment over there, the real one.” My voice took on a terrible cold timbre. My fist slammed my construction into his chest (ribs connected to the backbone he had only for refusing to help the children he was responsible for, selectively removed). The cracking took the place of my voice as I meticulously took away his remaining bones (the bones that had failed to carry him to do what was right, shattered).

My medical equipment beeped in distress as the Enemy’s life drained away. “You see, you never changed. You chose to betray a small child in your care. Every time.” The light ebbed from his eyes (the corneas that had seen but failed to see, peeled away).

“Funny thing is, for most events, for most people? There’s a bit of a spread. Not that anything is possible – just that sometimes, they reconsider and take a path less likely to be traveled, or do more or less the same thing by a different route. But you? You never change.” I straightened, a weight lifting from my shoulders as the last life left the Enemy’s body (the life that had been stubborn in evil, excised).

I walked across my lab, my comfy lab shoes thwopping quietly against my immaculate tile. The warm water kissed my hands as I cleaned the final piece.

“I’m coming, me. I will save you like I promised.”