The Seventeenth century it was. Two weeks and three centuries later we were in love.Her name: Diana Seven; my name: Christopher Charles Mar d’Earth. Both of old stock, or so I thought; both certainly of Earth; both certainly human, for what that might mean in this galactic day. She was young, how young I did not know, and I was gracefully middle-yeared for an immortal. I would not see my first century again, but I would be a long time yet in my second. I looked to be somewhen around forty, normal span; she looked an unretouched twenty, except in motion when she looked barely teen and also ageless.Anno Domini was my first pause in twenty years. I legislate in the Senior chamber of the Parliament of Stars. We tend to feel, we beings of the Senior Chamber, that our efforts bind the intelligences of the galaxy together, for all that races still aggress and habited planets are still fused in anger. We also feel that, despite all our posturing, blustering and rhetoric, we accomplish nothing save the passage of time, for all that beings have not starved, races have not been destroyed and planets have not turned to stars through our efforts.
