About a year ago I had an assignment from editor John Helfers to write a story for his Fiction River: How to Save the World anthology. Now understand, I am one of the executive editors on the Fiction River line of anthologies. But the editors of each volume have the final call on the stories in each volume (within reason). John had been pretty clear on what he wanted, but I had written “The Lady and the Seeders” a month before, starting it from the title and hadn’t done anything with it. And it was about saving the world, after all. So I sent it to John just to see if he was going to expand out his directions enough to include it. He wasn’t. He liked the story, though, and Kris liked the story, and I was kind of fond of it as well. But in his rejection letter to me, he said it felt like a novel. Now, as an editor, I say that to writers at times myself. Often frustrating to the poor writer, but in this case, John was right. It did feel like a plot of a novel. Sort of. So I put the story away and as I started into this Smith’s Monthly, I decided to write the novel from the short story. It’s called Against Time and it was in Smith’s Monthly #3. There are tiny parts of the story in the novel, and characters have shifted around, but the core of the book is similar to the short story. So here in this fourth issue, I thought it would be fun and interesting to readers to show the short story that started the novel you read last month. Enjoy.