It is said that when the curious human warrior Pandora unleashed all the evils of the world, she found Hope remaining in the corner of the box. Nice souvenir; a good thing to bring back to the wife and kids, as they hastily pack and leave town to escape the waves of encroaching war, pestilence, and famine, not mention public opinion: No medals for Pandora.

I have to wonder what the hell Hope had done to be so entrapped—as Sesame Street has it, “One of these things is not like the other ones.” Perhaps the ancient storyteller had a vision of the modern trope of the innocent convicted?

But instead of the meek little Hope teaching her unsavory neighbors how to better plead their cases and helping them Google, I suspect she was there under entirely different circumstances: She was emplaced to be their prison guard, one single warden keeping all the evils of the world from fiddling with the latch. It’s not too hard to imagine that the evils want revenge after those countless millennia of golden humanity untouched, and thus the average morning newspaper, in which they crush and mangle the shreds of Hope remaining.

But she must have been very powerful indeed for the Universal Is to have given her that job, and thus we should similarly treasure her and invite her back into our hearts, fanning a welcoming flame with our leaden and diffident hands. She has the power to give us armor against her former internees, and help us forge weapons for the Good Fight.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Pandora. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Hope sniffed, brushing a slowly-moving shred of Guilt away from the close-cropped hair. “Nonsense. Let’s not waste any time mucking about here. We have a world to save, hero.”

And save it, they did.

(Oh, did you want the details of the story? Nope, you have to write them yourselves. We all do.)