“Well, you wouldn’t. It hasn’t happened to you yet, and now I guess it won’t. Or it will. I forget how the metaphysics work after this. Have fun in development hell, I guess.” She raised the huge stamp high above her head and brought it down with the fury of a falling star upon the collection of sheets that represented Handy’s baleful life. Handy watched it fall, and felt a pit form in his stomach in the bare second it took for the stamp to fall and hit the sheets of paper—