It was easier than he expected to tell her the truth. And far easier to wake up next to her the next morning in his apartment.

"I'm not saying I believe it," she said, propped up on one elbow.

"Then why are you here?" John said.

"Because you clearly believe it and you think keeping it from me is what drove me away."

"Didn't it?"

"Yes, but I need to decide if the secret of cross-universe travel is any different from the secret of harboring a paranoid delusion of cross-universe travel," she said.

John smirked. "Henry and Grace believe me."

"Yes, smart people can behave irrationally. Insane people can be incredibly smart."

"We have a device. We've taken it apart."

"Does it work?" she asked.

"Yes!"

"Have Grace and Henry seen it work?"

"Uh, no. I've seen it work."

"So your experience is your only evidence."

"Charboric and Visgrath know."

"Who witnessed your conversations with those two?"

"Uh, no one."

"So you see my dilemma?"

"Not really."

"Can I still love you if you're a psychopath?"

"Is paranoia really a psychosis? It's more of a neurosis. And everyone has neuroses."

"No, I think dedicating your life to your delusion is a psychosis."

"It's brought prosperity."

"So pinball is part of the psychosis. I a.s.sumed it was just a good idea you had that you had to justify due to an inferiority complex."

"I do not have an inferiority complex. I'm very good at most things I do."

Casey laughed. "You're a very attractive psychopath."

"See? I have no reason to feel inferior. I'm not short like Napoleon. I'm going to college. I own an explosively growing company. I have an above-average... you know."

"How do you know?" Casey said. "About that last one."

"I've read scientific articles. In scientific magazines."

"Did they come with color pictures and pullout centerfolds?"

"No. Black-and-white bar charts. Many, many bar charts."

Casey laughed again and straddled him.

"I appreciate your scientific process," she said. She slid him inside her. "I've decided to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"You believe I'm not-huh!-lying?"

"No, I don't believe it matters as long as you're honest with me."

"I won't ever lie to you again."

"That's what I wanted to hear."

They stopped talking after that.

Huge crates of materials-everything that Grace had ordered-arrived at the old warehouse the next morning.

"What are we going to do with this stuff?" John asked.

"Henry is going to model our diagram."

"I am?" Henry asked.

"Sure."

"I don't know anything about electronics," he said.

"You didn't know anything about pinball before either," Grace replied.

"I can't argue with that."

They were at the point where they could do a couple hundred threads in an hour. The slowly evolving circuit almost made sense, but then John'd turn his head and it would all dissolve away. It was alien and yet familiar. Like thermodynamics.

John looked up suddenly, his bladder near to bursting. The sun had set.

"Where's Henry?"

"He went to cla.s.s," Grace said.

"It was my turn."

"You were in the zone, John."

John stretched, then ran to the bathroom.

"I think we're halfway," Grace called.

"Mapping it," John called back. "We still have to build it."

"Look at what Henry did."

John came out of the restroom and stared at the wired-up machine on the workbench. An oscilloscope blipped. Wires extended from component to component. A lab book lay open on the table. John flipped through it; the first fifty pages were covered in tables and equations.

"He did this today?"

"We were all all in the zone." in the zone."

"You didn't go into the office today. We barely made it into school. Are we wasting our time here?"

"Listen," Grace said. "We-not just you-have gotten ourselves into trouble. The source of that trouble is this device. We need to understand it. We need to reverse engineer it. Then we have all the possibilities in the universe. And then some."

"I hope you're right."

"I'm always right," she said. "I'll go into the factory tonight. In fact, I've got to run."

Grace gave him a quick hug. She said slyly, "So, you saw Casey yesterday... and this morning."

"How do you know these things?"

"If you don't come home to the dorm, the girls girls know!" know!"

"But you don't even live there anymore!"

"Everyone knows where everyone sleeps every night," Grace said. "It's a rule of the women's dorm. Or else there'd be nothing to talk about at breakfast. See you tomorrow."

John pulled a sandwich and a soda from the fridge, then sat down with Henry's notebook. He had to keep referring to the textbooks. Luckily, physics lab had exposed him to Henry's cryptic handwriting. Henry had started with the thread, the lab report on it, and the test bench. With as much data on the thread's characteristics as possible he had tried to reproduce its physical parameters. The mess on the lab bench was his first attempt.

They'd estimated there were one hundred thousand strands in the device. Henry's prototype would require about ten million dollars in parts.

"It would bankrupt us," John whispered. Unless there was a simpler way to model the threads with this universe's components. Could they design a circuit that modeled the thread and then custom-order one hundred thousand of them?

He started rearranging Henry's circuits.

John looked up when the door to the warehouse opened. He expected to see Grace or Henry. Instead it was Casey.

"Oh, c.r.a.p!" he said. "Did we have a date?"

"Not for another forty-five minutes, but you didn't answer your phone, and Grace said you'd be here," she said.

"So I didn't miss it."

"No, but I'm not saying you wouldn't have," Casey said. "I just didn't want to give you the chance to blow our relationship again so soon after we've decided to give it another shot."

"So you're here as a precaution for our relationship," John said.

"Yep, and I brought Chinese."

John looked at the cold sandwich he had half-eaten and swiped it into the trash can. "Excellent."

"So this is the device, huh?" Casey peered into the innards, squinting. "Looks like a toy."

"It's an intensely powerful device, capable of ripping holes in the universe," John said.

"Or you just think it is."

"Entirely possible, from your point of view, but wrong."

"You would say that."

John sighed. "If you are going to a.s.sume that there's no difference between me believing what it can do and it actually being able to do it, can we drop the argument until definitive proof is available?"

"Sure," Casey said. "You got any plates around here? Napkins are probably out of the question." She glanced around. "Good thing they included plastic sporks."

"It's an old warehouse. There's paper towels in the bathroom. I'll clear off a spot on the table."

Casey came back with a handful of towels. "So this is where you guys moved to after you relocated from campus."

"Just for a few weeks. Then we got better facilities."

"Grace is giving me a tour tomorrow." Casey looked into one of the pinball frames that stood in the corner.

"We have sporks there," John said. "Don't worry."

"And napkins?"

"We have waiters ready to wipe your lips as needed."

"Oh, posh."

"Mmm, good food," John said around a mouthful of noodles. "Where're we going tonight?"

"Your place."