It'd been back in the early days, after one of their first encounters with the anomalies. They were euphoric, high on success and the thrill of discovery. Stephen and Nick had been returning to their shared office at CMU intending to lock the doors and share a few celebratory drinks. Connor stayed quiet, hoping they'd absent-mindedly forget (as brilliant men so often did in his experience) that he was there in the car with them. Praying they'd overlook him when he trailed behind them into the office like a ghost.

Looking back on that moment now as he raced through the ARC's hallways, Connor truly wasn't certain whether that evening in their company had been the sublime gift he'd always considered it to be or a curse.

Stephen had yanked an amber filled bottle out of the back of a bottom file drawer. The confidence and surety of the gesture making Connor ache with envy. To know someone that well, be accepted and party to their secrets and quirks, left Connor breathless with wanting. The sound of scotch splashing into two tumblers had been so loud in the otherwise silent room. Connor nearly jumped out of his skin when Nick appeared beside him with a piece of paper.

"See this?" Nick had asked him, dangling the blank sheet in front of his face.

Trying to cover for his nerves Connor had simply nodded in puzzlement.

"What if all of time is like this sheet of paper?" Nick asked.

He folded the sheet precisely in half, resting it momentarily on top of stack of books to as he used a fingernail to firmly crease the fold. He held the paper up for inspection between two fingers.

"What happens when two moments at opposite ends of time converge?" Nick asked, warming up to his subject in a way that was all too familiar to Connor from countless hours of lectures.

Nick put the paper down and folded it once again, using his thumbnail to make the same precise crease.

"What happens when time folds over again and again," he kept folding and creasing, turning the page into a tiny cube, "each moment overlapping with another, end over end until it cannot fold any more, until all the moments in time are connected."

Connor stared attentively, waiting for the brilliant lesson, the epiphany at the end of the lecture.

"What would happen?" Nick asked.

The question hung in the air unanswered and Connor waited.

"Well?" Nick asked impatiently, turning to look at Connor, at Stephen.

"I don't know, professor," Connor stuttered quietly, feeling ashamed that he didn't have the answer.

He looked over at Stephen, lounging back in one of the chairs. The other man shrugged nonchalantly and taken a sip of his drink, indifferent to Nick's ranting after all this time as his assistant.

"Well neither do I, Connor," Nick had replied with a frustrated huff before tossing the piece of paper back onto his desk.

Remembering that moment now, Connor understood that Nick had only gotten it partly right. As he raced for the parking garage, to find Phillip, Connor felt the heaviness of irony. Nick had been too tidy, too precise. Time wasn't a piece of paper that had been neatly folded. It was crumpled and crushed together into a wad like discarded newsprint tossed in the trash. Moments touching dozens of other moments in a messy jumble. Time was folded in on itself, hiding secrets never meant for the eyes of man. Human being, the entire universe, was just an accident, existing between moments, between the pages. And time was getting ever smaller, crushing inward until there were no gaps left at all.

He had to tell someone. Had to get help. Abby was counting on him. Their baby, barely more than a fluttering of cells inside her mother's womb, was counting on him.

This time he had to have the answers. He couldn't afford to fail.