Inside a Silver Box by Walter Mosley

nature of the Latter-Day Laz to torture and destroy, to warp and maim and even to erase certain resistors from any form of ontological being.”
    Lorraine looked up again.
    Ronnie winced at the power of the Silver Box’s memories.
    “Hegel said that God comes into existence through history,” Lorraine posited. She was trying to gain the high ground in the way she always had—through intellectual rigor.
    “He was a fool who thought only of power and of greatness,” Used-to-be-Claude replied. “He was vassal to so-called royalty, not a thinker but merely a bully with a razor-sharp mind.”
    “But you said the Laz came to power through their minds,” Lorraine argued. “Maybe they were destined to become gods.”
    “I co-exist with all being!” Used-to-be-Claude shouted. As he spoke he stood and as he stood he became taller, ten times the height of the original man. With him the room again took on gargantuan proportions. “Am I your God? Should I pull off your legs and arms and leave you and yours to grieve until finally I fill your head with microscopic carnivorous worms that slowly eat away your every memory?”
    Lorraine screamed and got down on her knees as Used-to-be-Claude leaned over her.
    Ronnie got in front of the young woman, holding up both his hands, a mortal man trying to hold back a hurricane. “Why you got us here for, Silver Box-man?” he demanded.
    Slowly Used-to-be-Claude resumed an erect pose. As he did this his body and the room shrank back down to normal proportions.
    He smiled at the ex-thug and bowed slightly. “It’s been a long time since I have communicated with anyone but myself,” he said. “And I am no apologist for the Laz.”
    “Just what do want with us, man?” Ronnie said. “I mean you done good by us and we wanna help, but let’s just get down to it.”
    “It’s not much,” Used-to-be-Claude said with a mechanical shrug. “I need you to try to save the Earth.”
    “The Earth? You think Ma Lin is that dangerous?”
    “He is much worse than that, at least potentially. But you won’t be protecting the Earth from him. I will destroy the entire planet to make sure he does not form a base of operations to work from.”
    “You?” Lorraine said. “You would kill every living being on an entire planet?”
    “I have done it many times in the past. I have taken more lives than a man could count in a thousand lifetimes.”
    “And how are we supposed to stop you?” Ronnie added, instinctively looking for a weak spot on Used-to-be-Claude’s body.
    “By finding Ma Lin and bringing him to me.”
    “So you can kill him?”
    “If his soul has not already been sundered, it soon shall be,” Used-to-be-Claude said in an elocution completely foreign to the original man.
    “And if we don’t get him, then we’re dead?”
    “The Earth will be destroyed but you two can stay with me. You might be able to repopulate a new earth somewhere.”
    “Damn,” Ronnie uttered. “You mean like Adam and Eve?”
    Another mechanical shrug.
    “We better get back,” Loraine said while Ronnie thought about being the patriarch of a new human race.
    “Um,” the reformed killer said. “Yeah, yeah, right.”

 
    ELEVEN
    U SED-TO-BE-CLAUDE DIDN’T MOVE. He just sat in his chair, staring at a spot on the jet and silver wall.
    “Hey, SB,” Ronnie said at last.
    “Yes, Friend Ronnie?”
    “Are you gonna send us back?”
    “Certainly.”
    “Well, then, I mean, shouldn’t we hurry it up?”
    “That concept is meaningless here.”
    “What you mean?” Ronnie asked.
    “Your urgency about time means nothing in this place,” Used-to-be-Claude stated. “When I return you to the portal where we met, it will be at almost the exact same instant that you left.”
    “But we need to get on with the job,” Lorraine said with hardly a quaver in her voice. “My family is there. I have to save them. I need to.”
    “I’m sorry that I frightened you, Friend Lorraine. It’s just that I saw in