You're on to so weird, why are we doing this again?" Christine asked, half-kidding.

I couldn't help but be a bit annoyed. Margie was my aunt. I was allowed to make fun of

her. Everybody else wasn't supposed to, but everyone else did mock her. Constantly.

The whole sprawling community seemed to think she was a joke. She was a disgrace scientist

who'd been kicked out of a professorship at MIT and made to return home to our mountainous

region of Western Canada due to a lack of other job opportunities in a field. She'd been

black-balled by the entire scientific community. At least one would think, if you searched

the name online. She essentially lived as a hermit now, secluded in a rickety old home

in the woods half-right up Mount Dynasty. It was rigged up with a myriad assortment of

odd inventions that function like Rube Goldberg machines to keep a life running in its

slip-shod way. Picture Rick Moranis in, honey ash from the kids, and you'll be on the

right track. Or maybe Wallace and Gromit, since she had a dog who served as a well-trained

assistant and lower companion to her. We were driving up there to see her, and I was

doing my best to navigate the wandering forest road, getting out every so often to move

fallen tree branches, further indication that no one had been up there to visit her,

but us. There had been a big storm a couple of days prior, and I was concerned that it

had knocked out of power, and that she could be in trouble, since she hadn't been returning

my phone call since then. I'm just worried about her, the way she sounded on the phone

the other day, and now she's not even picking up when I call. I just want to check on her

quickly, then we can go, okay?

Christine sighed, and went back to looking at her phone, scrolling through stories from

other people's lives, and reading about more toxic relationships on the website that seemed

...