Title: Bubble Universe

Tags: md, ts, sf, rb, mf

That sunny spring Thursday I was sitting in my fourth floor office in the university’s aging physical sciences building, grading papers. My progress was slow, not because it was difficult but because my eyes continued to be drawn to the window, and the steady flow of foot traffic across the quad below. Supple young minds, eager to soak up knowledge, and supple young bodies, eager to do things that mom and dad wouldn’t approve of. Not that any of the relatively few female students I taught were ‘hot for teacher’, as it were, but some of them were no pain to look at, it was certain. In the spring time, the things they wore were usually far from puritan. I fought to keep myself from any improper lingering gazes, but I was certain I had been caught from time to time. I was startled from my reverie by a strange occurrence. Just at the edge of my field of vision, to the left of the dirty old window, appeared an object. It looked like an electronic device, about six inches tall and four inches wide. It seemed to be stuck to the wall, projecting forward at an angle. The front of it was a smooth glossy surface, like a touch-screen phone. There were graphics on it. It was running an unfamiliar operating system and application with a series of menus and buttons. I looked quickly behind myself, wondering if it had come through the door, but the portal was securely closed. I saw no way that the object could have made its way to the wall. Maybe it had been there for some time and I hadn’t noticed it? Perhaps the screen—which had an exceedingly thin bezel—had been made to be the same color as the wall. Somebody’s experiment? I still couldn’t see how I wouldn’t have noticed it, protruding like that. There was a clearly defined area of shadow behind it. Currently on the screen was a countdown timer which was flashing at zero, with a set of controls offering to ‘RESTART 15 MINUTE WINDOW’. I thought maybe if I restarted the process it might change color to match the wall again. I pressed the button. Instantly I felt a strange sensation, like a pressure change in the room. I blinked, and my ears popped. Suddenly my heart raced. Maybe this device—however it had gotten here—was meant to control someone experiment, and I’d just caused it to activate unexpectedly? I tried to pull the device from the wall but it would not budge. The timer countdown was now running. I turned and walked to the door. The air felt strange, dry, loaded with static electricity. I ran down the halls toward the floor’s lab. I passed a student I didn’t recognize, staring fixedly at a posting on another professor’s door. I thrust open the door to the lab, and burst in. Lance Olton, a teaching assistant, was there with two students, standing over what I recognized as a vacuum pump from a relatively harmless optical circuitry experiment. None of them acknowledged my entry. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Is everything all right here?” I gasped. Suddenly, sickeningly, I realized that none of them were moving. Not moving, not breathing, not blinking. Not shifting around like a normal standing person. Just there, and completely still. I stepped toward lance and put a hand on his shoulder. He shifted forward slightly in response to the pressure of my hand. I felt for a pulse, and there was none, but his skin felt normally warm. Then I Looked out the window. All across the quad were students, completely motionless, some frozen in mid-step. I grabbed for the phone and called campus public safety, but the phone just rang and rang. I tried calling 911 for emergency services but that didn’t work either. Not knowing what else to do, I turned to science. Being in a physics lab, I had many tools at hand. I checked for radiation. I tested various electronic and mechanical devices. All seemed to be normal. All these people seemed to be in an impossible state of unlife. Visions of zombie horrors flashed into my mind. I ran out and down the stairs—the elevator seemed wholly inappropriate. The receptionist was frozen over her workstation. I ran out the door and onto the quad. I had to find out how far this effect spread—it couldn’t be the entire planet, could it? I gained sight of the busy boulevard adjoining the campus, with cars and drivers stopped serenely in place. Why was it everyone but me? Then, just as suddenly as hit had started, it stopped. I slowed to a halt in the middle of the quad. Many of the students seemed startled at my sudden appearance, but most continued on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I turned and casually walked back to my building, past the receptionist busily typing away, and went up the elevator. Had the whole thing been some kind of hallucination? Yet there, in my office, was that strange device. Some kind of elaborate prank? No; the medical conditions I’d observed were impossible to fake. I had no idea what to make of it. I peered closely at the device. It seemed that the top bit was embedded into the sheetrock of the wall. I grasped it firmly and began to pull. With a tiny puff of sheetrock dust the device came free. The hole that was left was exactly the shape of the device, as clean as if it had been cut with a laser. The hole continued through the foam insulation panel behind and part way into the masonry shell of the building. There was no debris present as might be expected from an impact. I carried the device back down the elevator and to the front desk. “Do you recognize this?” I asked Bernice, the department’s office assistant and receptionist. “Can’t say I do,” she said, hardly glancing up. “If anyone asks after it, let them know I have it.” “Sure.” I walked out the front door again and sat on one of the wooden benches under the building’s entryway. The countdown was again at zero and offering to re-start for fifteen minutes. I noticed the time of day in the upper right corner, but it was incorrect. I tapped it and a calendar was revealed, showing the date of Friday, September 22nd, in the year 2209. I pondered this—I knew that most modern operating systems didn’t support a date beyond 2027 or so. I continued to explore the device’s other functions. It had a scientific calculator, camera with sensors for visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, and even 3D mapping, and web access. Attempting to access the web told me that the network was unavailable. I went back to the original application, titled “PUX Control”. It had many options seemingly related to physics measurements and parameters for some kind of experiment. If it worked as advertised, I figured it would make every physical sciences laboratory in the world obsolete. Where in the world would something like this come from? It certainly had done something beyond a normal prank. Had it come from the future? The date seemed to indicate so. Or maybe some crazy prankster aliens? Or god? I shook my head at the crazy ideas popping into my head. There had to be a better explanation. If it was somehow an elaborate hoax, perhaps I could catch it in an inconsistency. I adjusted the duration to 30 seconds, and hit the start button again. Once again, a pop, and a shiver down my spine. The half dozen students presently crossing the quad froze in place in a highly improbable way. I watched the countdown, and right on cue it started again. “Amazing,” I said out loud.

* * *

On Sunday night, the papers were still not graded. I was alone in the building’s break room, leafing through page after page of hastily scribbled notes. Partly based on information in the control device’s software, and partly on experimentation, I had determined the properties of the effect. It only worked in an sphere exactly 100 meters across centered somewhere inside the building’s third floor, being a wholly unremarkable point near the wall of one of the conference rooms. The edge of the boundary was a completely transparent and impermeable barrier on which no mark could be made visible. The effect would operate for any period of time, from the tiny period of 10^-16 seconds to a period of time very close to one hundred years. There was no apparent way to cancel the field. I had no way to know if the field’s effect was physical or purely manifested in my own mind. As a test I performed an experiment inside the field measuring the decay of an isotope of beryllium, and then replicated the experiment outside the field. The numbers agreed to a level of precision I would not have been able to predict had the effect been mental. I was convinced that the effect was physical, but was still at a loss as to how to explain it. Objects in motion would be held in place until affected by an external force. This included people, who could be stopped in mid-stride or even in the middle of a jump. Living beings contained in the field had a very strange set of physiological responses. Nervous system response was completely absent, as was all neural activity. Somehow many physiological systems continued to function, but in strange ways—blood flowed without the heart moving, muscles maintained position, even salivation seemed to function. Of course any change made in the duration of the field would be reverted at the end of the specified period. I dissected the same mouse several times over, observing how his systems functioned. My own body, of course, functioned normally as near as I could tell. Further, human beings and animals alike seemed completely oblivious to anything that might happen while the field was active. I verified this with a series of informal experiments. During a subsequent exploration of the device’s software, I made perhaps the most shocking realization of all. I could not only measure things like the force of gravity, the composition of the air, and so on, but I could change them before the effect was started. I bounced around as on the moon, and made the ambient temperature a comfortable 71 degrees; I did not experiment with turning the atmosphere to methane or changing the nuclear weights of elements. I realized that this technology could potentially be used to generate huge amounts of energy or materials. It was too good to be true, I knew, and this knowledge merely spurred me to further investigation. I slept that Sunday night on the break room sofa. I woke groggy, and wandered over to the campus workout center to make use of the showers. I had a spare change of clothes in a locker there—not because I worked out regularly, but because I was used to pulling all-night grading and experimentation sessions. I stepped out of the locker room and saw a few students using the equipment. My eyes lingered on the bouncing breasts of an auburn-haired beauty on a treadmill. I sighed quietly and made for the door. Then I stopped just out side, suddenly aware of the feeling of the PUX control device in my pocket. I admit, it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment. It really hadn’t. Still, there was suddenly a new stakeholder in the planning for how to investigate and make use of the device. The farthest corner of the workout center was inside the sphere of the effect. I pulled out the device, set it for one hour, and started the timer. My heart was thumping as I walked back in the door. I knew the boundary was just to my right—I touched it with my hand and traced its texture-less extent around to the other wall. Three of the students were beyond the boundary, visible to me but unreachable. The girl on the treadmill and another female student on a rowing machine were within my area of access. I stepped closer to the girl on the treadmill. I could still smell the scent of her perspiration. She was wearing a tank top and a sports bra with a pair of form-fitting running shorts. I watched her for a few moments, half expecting her to turn and look at me. My pulse was thundering now. I tentatively reached out a hand and touched the exposed skin between her shirt and shorts. It was slick with sweat, and as smooth and soft as it looked. My hand wandered down over the curve of her ass, the back of her thigh. I grasped her around the waist with both hands, and turned her towards me, then lifted her off the treadmill and onto the carpet. Her body awkwardly shifted its muscles to support her in what seemed an unnatural position. Her face remained passive, distant, with her lips parted in exertion. I moved my hands up and fondled her breasts through her shirt. The sports bra had little hope of containing a pair as ample as hers. I lifted her shirt off over her head, struggling for some time with her arms. The bra followed next, and I gazed for a few moments at her massive mounds. They had to be double-D or larger. I hefted them in my hands. I licked them, tasting the sweat, and sucked on her rosy nipples, which disappointingly did not respond. I laid her down then and pulled off my pants. I straddled her chest and pushed her breasts together. I pushed my hard cock between her sweaty mammories. A few strokes of the soft breast flesh was all it took, before I shot my load all over her chest, covering her mounds and nipples. I caught my breath. The timer showed I still had forty-five minutes to kill. I leaned over and pulled off her jogging shorts and pink cotton bikini underwear. Her golden auburn colored pubic hair was neatly trimmed to match her skimpy underwear. Over the scent of sweat and the mess I’d made on her chest was the scent of her arousal, which I guessed came from the exercise and the knowledge that any man within distance was probably watching her shapely ass and breasts move. Probably more the fit young men pumping weights on the other side of the barrier than the dirty old professor who’d just left the locker room. I parted her labia and touched her clitoris and vagina with my fingers. Without the usual satisfying feedback the act was not as enjoyable as it might have been. I tasted her secretions with my fingers. My cock was now hard again, and slightly slicked with the last of my ejaculation. I settled into place, lifting her legs in my hands, and slowly thrust into her. Again the lack of feedback was disappointing, but her vagina was pleasantly tight around my decidedly modest dick. I fucked her slowly, eyes locked on her supple labia moving over me. I lifted her legs to my shoulders and penetrated her deeply. I watched her face for a while and decided she’d look better if I closed her eyes, which I did, although it was harder to do than it always looks in the movies when somebody dies. I experimented with some different positions, but missionary was still the easiest way to achieve full penetration without active assistance. I decided the next time I’d try reduced gravity. Her residual lubrication was wearing off, and I scooped up some of my first ejaculation from her breasts and used it to smooth my continued assault on her vagina. I fucked her harder, and stared entranced at her oscillating tits. My second load let loose, flooding her insides with my too-long contained semen. I glanced at the device. Five minutes remained for cleaning myself up. I considered re-dressing her, but there was no point. I walked out and stood in a close approximation of the spot I’d been in when I left. The timer reached zero, I felt that now-familiar return to normalcy, and turned to glance at the young lady on the treadmill jogging along, fully dressed and none the worse for wear. I smiled, and realized I stunk like sweaty sex and needed another shower. I decided to go home this time, and after showering procured a proper change of clothes and a few personal items I thought I might need.

* * *

I had a class to teach. This was the class for which the exam scores were due and I made an excuse for myself. I lectured mechanically, and ended up dismissing the class early, citing my continued illness. I hurried back to my experiments. I continued trying to identify the source of the field. I had been setting up various instruments in one of the less-used labs, so that I could look for anomalies in the normal continuum, as I had come to call it, when the PUX was activated. By that evening I was drawing a blank, and I set out designing some experiments to determine more properties of the area inside the field. I needed some specialized materials and placed orders at some websites. I knew I would need to explain the purchases eventually, but figured I had plenty of time to invent a cover story. It was late at night again. I was restless, but too tired to do more work. I was fiddling with the myriad controls on the PUX device. I’d found that if I pointed at objects inside the control area, the device would allow me to specify parameters for their properties in the next execution. I tested it by making a workbench weigh only a few grams, however this also changed the rigidity of the material and the object crumbled. I decided to use caution when operating on objects that might endanger me. Which could me nearly anything if I accidentally transmuted it into something radioactive or toxic! I was staring out the open window of the lab, pondering this development, when I heard a tell-tale giggle from the quad below. A pair of tipsy-looking female students were staggering back towards the dorms. I pointed the PUX control device out the window and zoomed in on the two of them. Tell-tale contextual interfaces became available indicating that I could adjust their properties. While one of them sat on a bench, the other produced a cigarette and lit up. I perused the menu. The usual properties were available—I could turn them to stone or make them transparent. However there was a new option that caught my eye—‘life systems simulation’. I activated it and saw a whole new set of parameters for the physical responses of human subjects. These parameters were based on a profile called ‘Mammal—Passive’. There was an option to view the source code of the profile, which appeared to be in a high-level language I wasn’t familiar with, and despite its simple scientific and mathematics based syntax was still harder to understand due to a lot of unfamiliar physiological terms. I opened the list of profiles. Some seemed to be generic profiles for creatures of specific types: “Mammal—Sleep”, “Reptile—Attack”. Non-suitable profiles were disabled. Some were specific species with more advanced behaviors defined: “Human—Compliant”, “Chimpanzee—Enhanced”. A few were extremely specific: “Chimpanzee—Subject #433”, “Dog—Subject #99233”. I gathered these to be simulations of specific subjects. There was even a long list of human subjects. Once again my carnal desires won out. I applied the compliant profile to the two young ladies below and activated the PUX. I walked down, passing a frozen janitor with mop in hand. I was slightly un-nerved at the sight of one of them smoking and the other watching the moving cigarette attentively. When the standing one noticed me, they both turned toward me, but didn’t say anything. “Hello,” I said. “Hello,” they said in unison. “Umm, what are your names?” Again, in unison. “We have not been assigned names. We do have instance numbers if you would like them, or you can give us symbolic names.” “How about Amy and Beth?” I asked indicating each in turn. “And would you mind not talking like that? At the same time?” “Of course not”, said Amy. “Only three minutes remain in this session. What assistance do you require?” “None, this is just, ah, a calibration run.” “That is fine. Do you wish these instances to persist to the next execution?” “Yes, please.” “It will be done.” I walked back inside the building and waited for time to run out. Then I turned up the time and re-started. “Follow me please,” I said, and led them to the lobby. Now in the light I could get a better look at them. Amy, the smoker, was dark-haired, thin, and powdered to a uniformly pale complexion. Beth had equally black hair, though somewhat longer, with a similar build, though her skin was dotted with freckles. Both were dressed in jeans and form-fitting shirts. “The experiment today is to gauge the effectiveness of a new treatment. To do so will require me to engage in sexual intercourse with both of you.” “Okay,” said Amy blankly. “We have not been provided specific training in sexual intercourse. Do you have supplemental materials for us?” “No, I’ll be able to talk you through it just fine I’m sure.” “How do we begin? Shall we remove our clothes?” “Yes, that will do nicely,” I said, sitting back on the sofa. I’d never witnessed a more mechanical undressing. Both were fairly flat-chested, although it’s hard not to appreciate fine young breasts like that. Both also had obviously shaved or waxed recently.” “Excellent,” I said as they faced me again. “Now please simulate slowly increasing signs of sexual arousal as I touch you.” I sat up and felt their skin. They were starting to smile and move more realistically. I felt their taut skin, their perky breasts, their rising nipples, the curve of their hips. I stood and walked behind them, testing the resiliency of their backsides. I reached around and groped each one from behind, grinding the expanding bulge in my pants against those most instinctively stimulating shapes. “Please sit and spread your legs,” I said. They complied. I slowly teased around each one. I noticed a suspicious fluid leaking from Beth. “Is that from you?” I asked? “That is human semen. It was present at the beginning of the session. Is it not pertinent to the experiment?” “Of course it is, of course it is.” What a naughty girl. I began to finger Beth’s sloppy seconds, and with my left hand also Amy’s more pristine insides. “You can simulate an orgasm if it seems appropriate,” I said. It seems I over-did the parameters a little bit as Amy started to come immediately. Then so did Beth, squeezing some guy’s sperm all over my hand. I sat up, holding out my covered hand. “Both of you please lick my hand clean,” I said. This time, the no-nonsense, mechanical action was very simulating as they lapped my hand clean. I stood and dropped my pants and tossed my shirt aside. “Now give the same treatment to this. Try not to touch it with your teeth. Take as much in your mouth as you can without gagging. Actually, scratch that, please suppress your gag reflex. Ah, good. While Amy does that, Beth, please lick any part of my genitals you see exposed. Yes, just like that. Amy, you can very your depth and motion every several seconds. Ah, that one is very nice. Good, now please switch tasks. Perfect. Switch off at random intervals.” I just sat back and watched them. They were pretty good at sucking cock... the intensity was intoxicating. “Okay, now in a moment I’m going to ejaculate. Please try to hold it all in your mouth. You may swallow some if you need to. Ah! Oh yeah. Yeah. There you go. Stay still, stay still. Perfect. Now back off but don’t lose any. Good, now give her a kiss and share it. Very good. Oh, this experiment is going perfectly. Swallow it now, swallow it and lick each other clean.” I sat back and beckoned the two of them to sit on either side of me. “How about a back rub,” I asked after a minute. “We have programming for that,” replied Beth. I lay down and let them do their thing. Their programming was excellent. After a while a certain protrusion made laying on my stomach uncomfortable. I rolled over and they began rubbing my chest and legs. “Shall we massage your penis as well?” “Is that part of your programming?” I asked. “It is common in many modern massage styles.” “Well, sure.” The style was fascinating, very formal but definitely stimulating. “Would you like your prostate to be stimulated?” Asked Beth. “Ah, no thanks,” I said, “I think I’m ready for some vaginal intercourse. Beth first.” “In what position?” She asked helpfully. “Surprise me,” I said. She helped me to rise and then with the help of the sofa assumed an unlikely position that must have come from one of those mystical sex manuals. Amy helped me into the male position but it felt rather awkward. “How about something more traditional?” I helped her down with her knees on the edge of the sofa, and stood behind her. “Please provide ample vaginal secretions.” “Of course,” she said. I entered her, and it felt great. “This should probably be stimulating to you,” I mentioned. She began to react as I moved into her. “Amy, please caress Beth. Perfect.” I humped her, listening to the sound of the two of them panting. Beth began to sort of mew softly; it was perfect. Without any prompting, she had an orgasm. It felt great. “Your turn, Amy.” She assumed the position. She felt great. She had a little tattoo of a rose on her ass I hadn’t noticed before. Suddenly she came, rather sooner than I’d expected, but didn’t ask me to stop. “Beth, please hand me the tube in my pocket. Yes, thanks.” A real pervert comes prepared. I poured some lube onto Amy’s asshole and started to finger her back door. Once she was opened up a bit I sank my meat into her ass slowly but firmly. “That hurts a bit,” she said, “is that expected?” “I suppose, just focus on the pleasure.” She felt great. This was a new experience for me and for Amy’s physical body as well, I could tell. It wasn’t long before I was ready to come again. I pulled out. “Please get down on your knees and look up at me. Give me kind of an imploring look. Yeah. Now stick out your tongues. No, with your mouths open, like you’re trying to catch a snowflake. There you go. Yeah, now just hold still.” I defiled them with my jizz quite thoroughly. The quantity was encouraging. However even as I instructed them to clean each other I felt I had no more ‘umph’ left. The simulation had fifteen minutes left, and I considered exiting, starting it again to take a quick breather, and then re-starting before the two real-world cuties could leave the area. But no, there was plenty of time and certainly plenty more candidates for my amusement. I said goodbye to the similacrums and rushed to the chemical safety shower on the fourth floor. While normally it would be considered highly improper to use it for bathing, while I was in the PUX session I could do so freely. I cleaned up superficially, then dried with a pile of paper towels and dressed just as the simulation restarted. As I drove home I wondered over what mechanism might allow me to exist in my normal form, to carry my clothes and objects with me, but not to bring any objects back out. I wondered if, when I left, even the dust and other particles I’d accumulated were left behind? I wondered how large of an object I could bring in? Could I bring another living creature with me? More targets for experimentation. In bed, my mind wandered widely until sleep came.

* * *

At the end of the next day I was back in my appropriated laboratory. There was a knock on the door. “You wanted to see me?” Asked Benjamin Fuller, one of my undergraduate students. His eyes swept over my instrumentation. “Yes, you asked about extra credit, I have an assignment for you relating to my work.” Ben’s eyes lit up at the chance to get in on some real research. “Sure! What do you need?” “Come take a look at this,” I said, gesturing to a set of instruments set up near the window. “Do you recognize that spectrograph?” As he concentrated, I tuned the PUX controller and activated it. The session began, and Benjamin—or rather the profile “Human—Subject #101,333”, the last in the lsit—looked around with a confused expression. “Well, there you are,” he said. “Pardon?” “You, the twenty-first century interloper. I’ve been waiting for you.” “Who are you?” I asked. “I am Lee Kim,” he said. “From 2209?” “Actually it was five years before I inserted this profile into the system. Why is this session so short?” “Just in case. You may save and I will re-start presently.” The session stopped then and I restarted it for a slightly longer period.” “So,” I asked, “if it took you five years, and only a week has passed here, how is it your profile shows up on the list?” He sighed. “It’s complicated.” “Try me.” He snorted. “It’s not that you wouldn’t understand it. It’s that the less you know, the better for the both of us. The self-consistency of space-time is a dangerous thing.” “What do you mean?” “It is an idea contemporary to your time. Messages to the past cannot change the course of history. If, to use the usual cliche, I were to communicate with someone in 1934 and convince some person in Germany to kill Hitler, that person would surely fail at that task. Sometimes such failure manifests itself as completely unexpected and random accidents resulting in the death of the recipient. Now I might pick a person known to have lived well into old age, but somehow causality would correct itself—or rather follow the same path it had followed all along. Sometimes those people have mysteriously become insane in ways never anticipated.” “So you think that I’m at risk for one of those fates?” “Yes. This device, the Physical Universe Quantifier, is meant only to create throw-away bubble universes. Using it as I am now is against all the guidelines under which it was created. “So what do you want? You want this back? How did it get here anyway?” “No, I want you to destroy it. There was a mishap involving a singularity—telling you that much won’t hurt anything. It is sheer blind luck that it arrived in a time and place where you could find it. It could just as easily have gone back to the stone age. But then...” “What?” “I hadn’t realized. Of course! It’s you! You’re Michael Wheaton!” “Umm, yes?” “Well, let’s just say that you are destined to apply what you’ve learned here to the advancement of modern physics.” “So I’m not going to die?” “No, no. You’re going to be quite successful.” “I see. So you want me to destroy the PUQ controller?” “Yes.” “But my research...” Kim, nee Benjamin, sighed. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go back out, and write down ten questions for me. I will write down the answers, and you can decide later which, if any, you want to look at. From what I understand, you were a brilliant man who didn’t need any prompting to come to his discoveries.” I mulled this one over. Kim seemed to sense my hesitation. “Perhaps you are tied to the idea of your, um, other activities?” My heart jumped. “You know...” “Well, I have been able to decode a few of the signatures of your simulacrum profiles.” “I see...” “It’s not illegal in my time. And it’s an ethical conundrum. Of course using this expensive equipment without permission is. Then again you’ll be long dead by the time this thing exists...” “So what if I don’t?” “You’d be tempting fate, and I might lose my job.” “Okay, fine, I’ll do it.” “Good, please set the next session for at least two hours so I can have time to fill in the questions. Stopping and starting is sort of disconcerting.” “Okay.” “And one more thing. Since I’m just a simulacrum of Lee Kim, and I won’t really exist any more once you stop instantiating me, would you be so kind as to grant me a wish?” “Maybe,” I said uncertainly. “Do you think you could bring me a copy of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, on real paper? A library copy would be fine.” “Umm, sure.” “Thanks.” The session ended. I gave Benjamin some busy work, and set out my preparations. I had to drive to Borders to find a copy of the requested book; the library didn’t have it. The next morning, I waited papers and book in hand until Benjamin arrived again with the results of the simple calculations I’d requested. I distracted him and re-activated the PUQ. “Sorry for the wait,” I said to Lee Kim. “No worry, no time has passed for me.” “Okay. So here’s the papers and the book.” Kim Grinned. “Perfect,” he replied, “enjoy your stay!” With those words he suddenly turned and jumped out the open window. I rushed after him, only in time to hear the sickening thud of the ground below. I ran down the stairs and tried to aid him, but his neck was broken and there was nothing I could do. What was his game? What did he mean? I went back inside and paced nervously while I waited for the time to run down. The session did not end. The timer started to go into negative numbers.

* * *