First and foremost, I want to thank my wife and children for their forbearance during the years I spent writing and rewriting my story. This kind of statement sounds routine or corny until you actually write a book and see how much time and attention it takes from your family life. Now I know.

Particular thanks to friends and acquaintances who read an entire draft: Dan Grabon, Adam Barr, Thomas McElwain, Sean Burke, Harold Helm, and Jamie Spencer.

Additional thankyous to those who read at least part of the story: Sharon Keld, Sue Repko, Idris Magette, Scott Montgomery, Alden Zecha, Ruhama Veltfort, David Paul, Lane Hughston, Jim Lewis, Shep Pryor IV and V, Michael Spence, Gerald Voth, Dave Belden, Mark Tiedemann, and my brother Steven.

Another round of thanks to the Princeton-Writing alumni discussion group. Brad Burg and other members provided feedback during the early drafts, then his classmate Sanford Thatcher gave sage advice as the time for publication approached. I began writing the story early in 2001 and, four years later, the novel had expanded to more than 100,000 words. Almost 15 more years would go by before I finally published it.

I’m also grateful to the following individuals who provided background information that helped me fine-tune details: Caroline Seawright (parts of the soul in ancient Egypt), Anne Guérin-Castell (The Saragossa Manuscript movie), George Fletcher (New York neighborhoods), Gary Hack (Philadelphia housing styles), Tom Goyett (lunar phases in July 2102), Dr. Judith Hall (multiple births), MacKinnon Simpson (Lo’ihi), Ali Haydar (Mingo Iroquois and Muslim names), and Koichi Ezaki (types of wood native to Japan).

Last but not least, I’m deeply appreciative of assistance received from two people during the final production that turned the text into a book: Marcus V. of Smashwords for providing daily answers to formatting questions, and my daughter Gebby for tracing the coastline of New England and then working with me to create a map showing the imagined geography after the Great Change, as well as key locations in the plot.

Martin Schell

Klaten, Central Java

December 2019

Foreword

I can never forget my first encounter with this book. I was only 11 years old, but the incident engraved itself in my memory and remains clear to this day.

It was Sunday, July 25, 2038, two days after my mother’s birthday. Her parents, whom I called Grampa and Gramma, had been living with us in New Jersey for a few years. Relatives from both sides of my family had gathered at our house for a reunion.

Most of us kids decided to play a game of hide-and-seek inside the three-story house. When it was my cousin’s turn to seek, I retreated to the attic where Grampa and Gramma had their bedroom. Over a dozen boxes of thin photoengraving plates lined the base of the wall to my left. On top of the nearest box, a large book lay open.

I casually turned a few of its translucent pages, reading a sentence here and there. Soon I started to feel drawn into the place and time of the story. I failed to notice the sound of my cousin’s footsteps coming up the stairs. I heard him when he burst into the room, but my eyes remained fixed on the book.

Seeing my fascination, my eight-year-old cousin quenched his exuberance and quietly came up beside me. We stood side by side and gazed at the book as I flipped more pages. Suddenly he pointed at one page and shouted, That’s my name!

After reading a couple of paragraphs, we looked at each other the way kids do when they’re lying in bed ready to jointly declare that it’s time to fall asleep. I felt like I was in a daze, and my cousin certainly looked like he was in one.

At that moment, the other kids came into the room and one insisted, Come on! You’re not going to spend all day reading a book, are you? My cousin and I let ourselves be led downstairs for another round of the game, with me as the seeker.

The next time it was my turn to hide, I went straight to the attic but the door was locked. I didn’t see the book again until Grampa handed it to me on July 8, 2042, four days after my 15th birthday, whispering, Don’t tell anyone you’re reading my book.

I read the story quickly, eagerly letting myself be drawn into its futuristic world, flattered by the inclusion of a character who bore my name.

Six years later, the book became blank as a result of the Great Change. I found the engraved plates on July 8, 2054, got a new copy printed, and sat down to read it.

During this second reading, I realized my character played an important role in the story but I couldn’t grasp it. Almost every time my name appeared, the plot became strangely fuzzy. If I caught my attention wandering and immediately reread those passages, my mind still couldn’t focus on them.

One passage was clear, however: my grandfather’s disappearance while walking in Central Park, an event which had come to pass between my two readings. Seeing it foretold in the book gave me an eerie feeling that his story might not be fiction.

I have taken the liberty of inserting this foreword before binding the new copy. Hereafter comes the complete text of Grampa’s manuscript, printed from the metal plates that I first saw in my parents’ attic 16 summers ago.

The Dreamer’s Visit

If a man could pass thro’ Paradise in a Dream, & have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his Soul had really been there, & found that flower in his hand when he awoke — Aye? and what then? — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(notebook entry modifying a passage from Geist by Jean Paul)

Dreamer’s Prolog

Dreams have always fascinated me. Where do they come from? How are they influenced by past, present, and even future experiences? Why do trivial details seem vivid while significant events are seen through a haze or presented as puzzles?

For many years, I recorded my dreams in diaries: dreams about work, long-lost friends, erotic encounters, flying, and even dying. Sometimes the settings recurred, but a few of those familiar places were absent from my waking life — I never saw the waterfall in Madagascar or the health food pastry shop in San Francisco — and it could well be that those particular locations don’t exist.

I had lucid dreams in which I knew I was dreaming. I also traveled back in time during dreams, even visiting my grandfather once when he was a young man.

The dream I am about to tell you is the strangest of all. I never had a dream like it before or since. It happened in the cool part of the dry season during my third year in Indonesia. I was then leasing a house in Yogyakarta, a city where ancient Javanese traditions permeated modern life. I had not yet met my future wife.

The evening unfolded in an ordinary way. After dinner, I showered Southeast Asian style by scooping water from a large tiled basin onto my body. I put on a light pair of white cotton drawstring pants and a thin short-sleeved shirt, did my regular meditation, and went to sleep at the usual time.

Chapter 1. Thedoc: Awakening

I hear the penetrating sound of wood striking metal. The shock jolts me toward wakefulness and I feel an adrenaline rush. I recognize the sound as the All’s well signal of the ronda, a nightly patrol undertaken by my neighbors who each volunteer for a specific day of the week. Some of them have an annoying habit of hitting a hollow metallic telephone pole, which produces a more piercing sound than a traditional kentongan drum made of wood or bamboo.

Then I realize that I heard only a single strike, not the full sequence of the signal. A woman quietly but firmly announces, Pulse change. Next a man slowly says, Lights on. Very gradual. They seem to be in my bedroom, but their strangely accented voices sound farther away than its left wall.

Still lying down, I become aware that the bed is higher and narrower than the one I went to sleep on. The sheet is no longer on me and the air is cooler, as if I had an air conditioner in my bedroom. I feel a lightness of being, a strange exhilaration too subtle to be joy but more enjoyable than the drowsiness that accompanies waking.

Fleeting images slip like soap bubbles through the grasping fingers of my memory: Six people stand in a circle in a cubical room. Each of them wears a different color of clothing. In the center of the circle is a brown stretcher. Now I’m lying on the stretcher. It rises as its hinges extend, like those of a collapsible hospital gurney.

I open my eyes in a room that extends far to my left. The dim lighting makes its boundaries vague. My bed seems to be in a cleared area at one end. I see outlines of large equipment occupying the rest of the room.

The lights come on slowly. A young brown-skinned woman in a bright red tunic approaches: soft brown eyes, waist-length black hair, and exquisitely shaped arms.

I am Yuni. We need your help. Her words sound more like A-yumm Yunih. Uini johel. The m in am is prolonged like a hum and there’s an audible exhale at the end of her name. I can understand Yuni and her companions because my ears have learned to recognize a wide variety of spoken and broken English during 10 years of living outside my native country.

My name is Martin. Where am I?

A monotone answer comes from behind a large console. It’s the voice of the woman who spoke before Yuni introduced herself. You are lying on the brown cushion of a collapsible bed, 90 centimeters above the floor of a medical laboratory. The laboratory is 360 centimeters high, 480 centimeters wide, and 1200 centimeters long. It is part of an underground facility located on the planet Earth.

Then the man’s voice again, both jovial and commanding, At ease, Objobs. Give him a few moments to wake up fully.

Dressed in a rich violet tunic, he emerges from behind another console and walks toward me. His black skin subtly enhances the hue’s calm call for attention. He seems to be my age — early 40s — and a few inches taller than six feet. I am Kaadray. Objobs’ answer is the most objective one we can give you. This location corresponds to what you know as the island of Manhattan in the city of New York.

Kaadray stands beyond Yuni’s right shoulder. "There is a more important question that you didn’t ask: ‘When am I?’ According to the calendar that was dominant in your time, today is July 8, 2102, exactly 108 years in your future."

Yuni interrupts quickly but gently. Kaadray, you’re just as direct as Objobs was, and you’re stirring up more questions. As you said, give him a few moments.

Kaadray laughs. You’re right. Help Thedoc examine him. Then take him to Vestig for orientation. No need to see Sekkor. He backs off physically and mentally.

Thedoc has gray hair and a short gray beard. His blue tunic matches the blue of his eyes. Easing his portly six-foot frame counterclockwise around the head of the bed, he positions himself on my right, opposite Yuni.

I glimpse a rapid motion out of the corner of my eye. Turning my head left, I see Kaadray and a Japanese woman wearing a bright yellow tunic reach a set of double doors on their way out. She must be almost six feet tall, not counting her topknot.

Thedoc opens his black bag and takes out a mirror. Kaadray, Objobs, and I already monitored your brain waves, heart rate, and other biological functions. Now I need to perform a few tests of a higher nature. He holds the mirror in front of my face. Look at your face and tell me if the image is clear or not.

Clear.

Thedoc and Yuni move behind my head and stand close to each other. He says, Compare your face with our faces. Is the outline as sharp? Is your beard as well-defined as mine? Does your hair have as much detail as Yuni’s?

Yes, yes, and yes. From this angle, his Semitic nose looks as long as mine, the opposite of Yuni’s wide, flat one. Her long hair has a very slight frizz, like some Malays I’ve met.

Good. He takes two pairs of small cymbals out of his bag. Each pair looks like a set of Tibetan tingsha, which produce a sustained bell-like sound when their thick edges are struck together. The metal of Thedoc’s cymbals is unusually silvery and the connecting thong in each pair is made of a synthetic material instead of leather.

When Yuni and I ring the bells, listen for the harmonic. Raise your hand as you hear the resonance build, and stop when you hear it peak. When you can no longer hear the harmonic, put your hand back down on the bed.

Thedoc gives Yuni one pair of bells, and they again stand at opposite sides of my bed. Striking their bells in unison three times, they watch my right hand as I raise it, hold it still, and then lower it.

Good. You passed both tests, meaning you’re as real to yourself as we are to you and you are to us. The mirror test demonstrated that we see each other clearly, and the resonance test showed we perceive events at the same tempo. On the other hand, I must remind you that you’re still lying in bed at home asleep.

Are you saying this is a dream and you’re not real?

From one viewpoint it’s a dream; from another it’s not. Either way, we are real. Vestig will explain the theory to you. At this point, I only want to tell you that you must not touch anyone. Doing so will destabilize your existence in our time.

Like matter meeting antimatter?

Not that dramatic. Your image will start to become blurry and you’ll feel a little disoriented. If these symptoms don’t vanish within a few minutes, you will. That is, your image will become a total blur and then disappear entirely.

Thedoc shrugs off the yoke of consequences. Don’t worry about it. You can go for a while without touching anyone, can’t you? His rhetorical question sounds a little impertinent but then his friendly bedside manner returns. Please lie still and be quiet. Yuni and I are going to smooth your left-right polarity.

He holds his hands about an inch from my right temple, his fingertips close to Yuni’s above the crown of my head. They move their hands toward my feet at the same slow pace, always directly opposite each other, maintaining the same distance from my body, fingertips pointing toward my head.

While they are smoothing me, I look at the ceiling. It seems to be made of the same gray material as the walls but it glows uniformly from diffuse lighting above it.

As their hands pass below my elbows, my gaze drifts to the line where the ceiling meets the wall beyond the foot of the bed. When I focus on a segment, it looks sharp, but it blurs as soon as my gaze begins to shift to another part of the line.

After they finish, Yuni says, Get up slowly and come with me.

I rise, feeling light and refreshed as if I’ve just had a good massage. The floor is pleasantly cool when my bare feet touch it. I follow her out through the double doors.

Chapter 2. Vestig: Orientation

I walk alongside Yuni in an arched corridor, its color like that of fresh butter. At regular intervals, we pass through a cross-sectional seam where recessed bulbs give the impression of a gateway of light.

Vestig has the equivalent of what you would call a doctorate in Time Studies, a field that requires a thorough knowledge of mathematics, physics, biochemistry, cybernetics, psychology, and philosophy.

We arrive at a door. Yuni presses it with her thumb at shoulder level, as if pushing a doorbell. But there’s no ringing sound; instead, I hear a click after a short delay. Then the unlocked door slides into the corridor wall. Yuni gestures for me to enter first.

Tables and workstations line all four walls, shrinking the floor space. Vestig’s bright orange tunic clashes with her shoulder-length blond hair. She’s my height, which makes her the shortest person I’ve seen here. I estimate her age as early 30s.

Welcome, Martin. I am Vestig. Allow me to explain your presence in our era. I will begin by saying that you are not the first person to visit us from our past.

How many others came? What happened to them?

We have received five others, one at a time. All of them have returned safely to their origin times.

Thedoc said I’m dreaming but not dreaming.

Yes. To put it in less contradictory terms, you have two existences: dreamer and visitor. As he probably told you, we are real either way. Just as you dream about real people in your past or present, you can dream about real people in your future. And, of course, the part of you that visits us experiences us as real people.

How did you bring me here?

Time travel requires an active pole and a receptive pole. As the active pole, we initiate contact by performing an exercise similar to what you know as meditation. This activity generates an energy that is amplified by the cubical shape of the room we use. The physical characteristics of this entire facility stabilize the energy and shape it into a channel between us and a receptive being in the past.

A receptive being?

Someone who has developed his or her psychic body, which the people of your time call an ‘astral body.’ There are millions of such people. Making contact with one psychic body from that large group depends on many environmental parameters, ranging from climatic conditions to cultural milieu. There are also ephemeral factors that affect the receptivity of the dream state: your experiences during the day, strangers you glanced at, images you saw in the media, and so on.

I think I understand. The dreamer is the part of me lying at home asleep. You use the term ‘psychic body’ to refer to the part that comes to the fore when I dream. It is the ‘I’ who experiences the dream: visiting places, meeting people, and so on.

After she nods, I continue, "This is my viewpoint, but you haven’t told me about your viewpoint other than to call the psychic body a visitor. Is my psychic body physical from your point of view? If not, how can you see me and talk to me?"

Vestig reflects for a moment, tucking her chin and resting its mentalis muscle on the tip of her right forefinger. The psychic body and physical body have some overlap. For example, everyone has had the experience of an exciting dream that leaves the heart pounding when you wake up. Similarly, psychic reality and physical reality overlap. In our time, we call this overlap ‘consensus reality.’

She stares at me for a few seconds without focusing. Her blue eyes remain glazed when she resumes speaking. I think we should give you a demonstration. She shifts her stance slightly and looks at Yuni on my right.

Vestig’s eyes are alert now when they meet my gaze. Please stand where you can touch the objects on this table. She steps backward and swings her right hand in a graceful arc until it points to the table at the middle of the left wall.

When I stand squarely at the table, I notice a metal ruler that’s lying parallel to the table’s front edge. Beyond the ruler is a slab of polished granite about four inches long, two inches wide, and almost an inch thick.

Measure the length of the stone slab as precisely as you can.

I align the metric ruler carefully against the base of the slab. 9.9 centimeters.

She says, Suppose I tell you this slab has an accurately milled length of 10.00 centimeters. Would you doubt what you had seen with your own eyes?

Yes, and I would check it again.

Go ahead. Measure it a few times.

I report 9.9, 10.0, 10.0, and 10.0 centimeters before turning to face her.

Vestig glances knowingly at Yuni and then tells me, Try it one more time.

I measure the slab and come up with 9.0 centimeters. I can’t believe my eyes.

The scientist asks, Did you get 9.0 centimeters?

I gape at her. I wonder: Is she a mind reader? A hypnotist? Both?

Vestig smiles politely. "According to the laws of physical reality, the length of the granite slab is constant for all observers in the same frame of reference. It is an objective fact regardless of who measures it. The slab is an object and its length is an inherent property. All of these concepts were fundamental to the worldview that predominated in your time.

Over three centuries ago, the philosopher Immanuel Kant stated that an object is only raw material for the senses, not a ‘thing in itself.’ He considered space and time to be ‘transcendental’ ideas that the mind superimposes on sense impressions in order to comprehend experience. These concepts from transcendentalism helped shape the worldview that predominates in our time.

She pauses. To put it simply, reality is flexible. It can be molded by human beings.

She holds up her forefinger like a teacher. Notice that I used the plural. One person alone cannot bend reality because there’s no such thing as a consensus of one. Consensus reality is not only an interface between mind and matter, but also a social agreement between individual and group.

Vestig tenses her mouth into a straight line and sighs. "Reality’s suppleness seems to have firm limits. Two adepts working together can almost instantly modify one dimension of an object by 10%. A skilled group can quickly achieve 20% and with sustained effort get as much as a 3:2 expansion ratio or 2:3 contraction ratio.

If the object is metallic, the transformation is faster but the limits remain the same. Experimentation with special alloys has enabled us to dramatically reduce the response time but we haven’t made progress with the ratios.

She looks at her feet and shakes her head side to side, muttering, I think the true limit is the golden ratio but I can’t prove it, either theoretically or experimentally.

After another sigh, Vestig raises her head and looks at me with tired eyes.

Then she brightens. Time for another demonstration. But first, please measure the stone slab once more.

I measure it and report, 10.0 centimeters. The slab’s return to normalcy is not as shocking as its shrinkage was, but it sure surprises me. This orientation session now feels disorienting, and I begin to doubt that the granite really shrank.

Vestig pulls from her pocket a grayish cube that’s about the size of a gambling die and places it beyond the stone slab. Please touch the cube and the slab. When I turn to face Yuni, look away from the table. We can accomplish the next demonstration with much less effort if you don’t watch the cube. You can look at us if you wish.

She pivots to her left and makes eye contact with Yuni. After the women have locked their gazes for about 10 seconds, Vestig tells me to look at the cube again.

I turn back toward the table and stare at it transfixed. The cube is now on the near side of the stone slab.

Vestig says, I suggest that you touch the cube and the slab again so your mind won’t dismiss the change as an optical illusion.

After I grasp each object lightly, she continues, "Niels Bohr proposed that electrons revolve around a nucleus like planets orbiting the sun. A decade later, Werner Heisenberg developed matrix mechanics, which analyzed the electron as a cloud of probable location rather than a planet-like object that has a definite boundary.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle became a fundamental part of quantum theory and led many physicists to question the separation of mind and matter. Half a century later, mathematicians formulated fuzzy logic, which had practical applications in cybernetics by your time. All of these indeterminacy concepts eventually merged.

She glances down at the table, leading my gaze. The cube is back on the far side of the slab. As you can see from these demonstrations, an object automatically reverts to its unmodified ground state. This elasticity is intrinsic to consensus reality. If human will and technology are applied in the right combination, the reversion can be delayed but not prevented.

Vestig sums up. "The answer to your question is therefore fuzzy rather than yes or no. Your psychic body has some physical existence in our time. You walk as if you are subject to gravity and you can lift a ruler. We can see you and hear your voice."

I nod slowly, then frown. Thedoc warned me not to touch anyone.

Although you have some physical existence in our time, you don’t have any historical existence. The more closely you interact with the people of our time, the greater the risk that you may cause something to happen that wouldn’t otherwise occur. Yuni tells me that stories and vids about time travel were popular during your era, so I assume you’re acquainted with the various types of paradoxes.

Thedoc made it sound more like a health issue than a metaphysical problem.

Vestig smiles. Naturally, he would. The smile vanishes. We sought a person from your time to help us understand some artifacts. Your psychic body, your environment, and your dream state aligned in such a way that you resonated with the frequency of the energy we generated. Your existence in our time depends on that resonance, in several senses of the word.

What does resonance have to do with touching anyone?

As an analogy, imagine that the exercise we performed was like striking a bell. Your psychic body is like a second bell vibrating sympathetically with the one we struck. If you touch someone, your vibration is damped like a ringing bell that comes in contact with a finger.

Her voice becomes weighty. Energy will flow from the vibrating visitor into the resident of our era, regardless of who initiated the physical contact. The loss of energy will destabilize your psychic body’s existence in our time. We think it may also change the physical body of the dreamer, but we have no way of proving that hypothesis.

Why not?

Vestig’s pensive mood hints of something darker than disappointment. She replies, No dreamer has ever visited us more than once.

A tingle climbs up my spine. Why not? I repeat with some urgency.

Because the ephemeral factors never combine in the same way twice. You seem to sense something ominous about my words. Please be assured that we do a followup ‘seeing’ exercise to check on each visitor 24 hours after he or she wakes up from the dream. In all cases, we have found that the dreamer lives on.

I mutter sardonically, For at least 24 hours.

Vestig lifts her chin. I should have been more precise. The life force of the dreamer is not diminished in any way. The reason I sounded disappointed is that a one-time visit limits our ability to receive detailed information about the past. We can’t ask a visitor to go home, get the data we need, and then bring it to us.

But the person wouldn’t need to make a second visit, because time is flowing toward you. He or she could put the information into a time capsule and let the years pass until 2102 arrives. Then you could open the time capsule.

That trick won’t work in our situation. Kaadray will tell you why.

What about sending someone from your own time into the past?

A slight shrug. We don’t know how to do that yet.

Yuni interjects, Even if we could send someone back, it wouldn’t be as effective as bringing a person forward. The visitor is rooted in the dreamer’s time; therefore, she or he will remember information from the origin era a lot more clearly than information obtained while visiting another era.

Vestig says, "The two demonstrations showed you the inherent stability of consensus reality as a whole. Different states of equilibrium can occur as one views smaller and smaller portions of the whole. This phenomenon is well-known in the social sciences. For example, a minority opinion about politics might be the majority opinion among the residents of one district; an unusual concept about the human spirit could be mainstream inside a monastery or an intentional community.

A single event, or a short sequence of events such as your presence in our era, can be highly stable for a small unified group of participant-observers. Although the event would be experienced by the group with conviction and consistency, it might remain unknown outside the group, with no effect on the world at large.

She looks me in the eye and measures her words. "Your existence in our time is the result of a collective exercise in imagination. The six of us who performed that exercise can perceive you clearly because we have generated a strong consensus among us that you exist. However, most people in our time are completely unaware of your presence, as if you are — how does one say it? — a phantom.

The discrepancy between consensus reality as a whole and our mini-consensus is a source of tension. It takes effort for the six of us to delay the automatic reversion that will occur when the larger consensus re-establishes ground state equilibrium. From time to time, we must reinforce our ability to perceive you.

She glances at Yuni, who is spreading a greenish lotion on her face and ears.

I ask, What’s that?

Vestig answers, The liquid contains serotonin and other neurochemicals that enhance our ability to see and hear what is normally not perceptible. In fact, only a little of it is absorbed through the skin. Its effect is primarily psychosomatic.

We face each other again and she looks amused. But that’s sufficient because your existence in our time is more psychic than somatic.

Yuni explains, The green lotion wears off after a few hours. I’m re-applying it early because I need to keep my perceptive faculties in top condition in order to serve as your guide. Her eyes twinkle. This stuff also produces a mild euphoria.

Vestig says, Let’s give him a demonstration. Taking a thin cylindrical object from a pocket, she tells me, Hold your right hand at shoulder level, palm toward me.

When I do, she waves the object in the air between Yuni and herself. A holographic image of my hand forms as she draws.

After finishing, Vestig invites me to examine the drawing. It’s an accurate copy, showing the major lines on my palm and the creases at my finger joints.

Yuni insists playfully, Give me the holopen, Vestig. It’s my turn. Vestig gives it to her and I hold up my hand again but for a longer period of time.

When Yuni finally lowers the holopen, Vestig acts like a promoter instead of a competitor, gushing Voila!

As I compare the second holographic drawing with my hand, my eyes widen. The image shows not only the major palm lines, but also dozens of minor lines of varying lengths. I can even see the whorls at the base and tip of each finger.

Yuni speaks before I can compliment her. The difference isn’t a matter of artistic ability. If Vestig had a fresh coat of lotion on her face, she would’ve produced an even more lifelike image, because she’s the better sketch artist.

Chapter 3. Operating Manual

Vestig crosses her office and takes a hardcover book from the shelf at the center of the right wall. In our time, we literally absorb information from edible bioelectronic devices. However, they require vocabulary and background knowledge that are about a century ahead of yours. Printed material will be faster for you.

She hands the younger woman the square book, which is about half an inch thick. Be present when he reads it.

Then Vestig sits in front of the fish tank located directly below the shelf. When she puts on a virtual reality headset and gloves, the fish vanish. I realize that the tank