The Children Who Time Lost by Marvin Amazon

it’s very possible that you could conceive another. Yet here you are, winning a child. She must be thinking that she should be here instead of you. After all, you’ve had your time.” She shrugged. “I just thought you’d like to know.”
    I nodded. She turned and continued walking again. If you weren’t so damn important, I’d slap you right now, you smug woman.
    “I heard that,” she said and laughed. I placed my hand over my mouth.
    The corridor curved right and then left, and we kept walking. It seemed to be an eternity, but then we reached a solid black wall. She placed her right palm against it, and a blue light ran up and down the wall as it had done before. The wall shuddered and retracted. She stood beside me and we both watched until a path came into view.
    I stared into another bright room. This one was about two hundred square feet, with opaque glass all around it. The woman pointed to a black leather sofa at the end of the room. I looked at a white cradle and heard the magical sound of a baby crying. The woman smiled, placed her hand on my shoulder and led me forward. I shook with each step. I leaned toward the baby but stopped after seeing a sheet of paper stuck to the right side of the couch. It said “Dylan.”
    “It’s a boy,” I blurted.
    “Yes, it is. Does that please you?”
    “Yes,” I half-shouted. “It pleases me very much.” I lifted the baby in my arms and studied him. He couldn’t have been more than a year old. His cheeks were chubby. His hair was blond and his eyes as blue as the sky. He was very different from my Madeline but still adorable. I lifted him to my face and felt the tears pouring from my eyes. I looked at the woman. She was still smiling. I turned back to Dylan. He was smiling at me, too.
    “Yes, you’re a cute one, aren’t you?” I made funny faces at him and he laughed. I cried and laughed at the same time as I hoisted him in the air a few times. I rested him against my chest and faced the woman again. “What about his parents?”
    Porsche stepped backward, watching me. Then she placed her palm against the wall to the right of the entrance. The blue light ran up and down the wall like before and she dropped her hand.
    “Look outside,” she said.
    I gasped. The glass wasn’t opaque anymore. I could see what looked like a living room, with long brown sofas and glass tables that floated four feet in the air with no legs. I looked back at her and she pointed toward the area behind my baby’s cradle. I looked again and almost jumped out of my shoes. A man and woman stood behind the glass. They held each other and looked straight at me. I took a step forward and then moved left and right, but their eyes didn’t follow me. “Can they—?”
    “No,” Porsche said. “They can’t see you. It’s a one-way mirror.”
    I walked up to the glass. They were both extremely attractive, with bleached blond hair and striking blue eyes. I looked at my new baby and smiled. I could see where he’d gotten his looks from. I looked at the couple again and realized that while the woman smiled, the man was scowling, like he didn’t want to give his child up.
    “Come,” Porsche said. “It’s time to leave.”
    I approached her, but she raised her hand.
    “Aren’t you going to get his things?” she said.
    “His things?”
    She pointed at a silver suitcase on the floor, tucked neatly under the sofa. “He’s not from your time; you’ll need to use what his parents have provided to acclimatize him to 2043.”
    I nodded and laughed at myself. In my excitement, I’d almost forgotten all of Dylan’s things. The suitcase was much lighter than it looked. I started to open it but stopped myself. It could wait until we got home.
    Porsche moved to the side of the entrance and held her right hand out, and I took one last look at Dylan’s birth parents.

    The walk down the corridor didn’t drag like it had before. We reached another solid black wall after a couple of