Several hours later, Jess had covered the floor with umpteen piles of paper, in order from "definitely useful" to "useless". Some of the other ranks included "probably useful", "possibly useful", "probably not useful" and "definitely useless but I'll feel sad if the useless pile is bigger than any other pile so I'll put it here instead".

"So, Blanche," Jess said after sorting every paper into a pile, "what do we know?"

"Enough to write a novel," Blanche replied grumpily from the coffee machine. "Are you sure searching Sloth's office is safe?"

"Sure," Jess replied, rummaging through the "probably not useful" pile for proof. Upon finding the right paper, she said, "see, it says right here how safe it is. As a security measure, he made sure that there were no defences that could be activated on the room from outside because the Space Faerie could find it and kill him." She put the piece of paper back on top of the pile triumphantly.

"I'm going to sound like a doom-sayer," Blanche said, "but that only details mechanical defences. There are very, very simple defences one could use."

"Like what?"

"Like blocking off the air vent."

Jess frowned at the perfectly earnest Uni. "Doom-sayer," she said accusingly. "The Space Faerie wouldn't be dumb enough to do that. The same air vent supplies air to the whole level."

Blanche coughed. "Sloth would be dumb enough, though," she pointed out.

"Extreme doom-sayer," Jess chided. "Now, let's see. Time to write an article, is it?"

Blanche coughed again.

"What is it now?" Jess asked irritably. "First you order me to write an article, and now you won't even let me write it in peace."

"Maybe we should get home first?" Blanche suggested.

Jess cast a suspicious glare at the air vent. "Maybe after some more coffee," she stated vaguely. "Would you get me a cup, Blanche?"

Blanche scowled and obeyed as Jess started writing.

"How does this sound?" Jess inquired after a few minutes. "July 15, 2005..."

"Neopian dating, mum," Blanche reminded her owner.

"Oh, right," Jess hastily crossed out "July" and "2005" and replaced them with the proper terms. "All right, then. Swimming 15, year 7," she declared loudly. "Over the past year, Doctor Frank Sloth of many-failed-attempts-to-invade-Neopia fame has developed a new plan. A third great plan. A diabolical, horrible plan. An infallible plan."

Blanche raised her eyebrows. "That's it?"

"You have to give me time to write, Blanche," Jess chided. "Brilliant pieces don't come out of thin air."

Blanche handed Jess the coffee. "You can write the rest at home," she instructed roughly. "I'd rather like to get out of here."

"Why would you want to do that?" Jess asked, puzzled.

"Because any moment now Sloth's going to realise that he can cut through the door."

Jess shrugged and continued writing her article. She had no intention of going home: after all, the Jess that was meant to exist in that time would be going home, and she was trying to avoid her. Going to the same house – even if it was her own house – would not be an incredibly smart way of achieving that.

"Mum!" Blanche cried exasperatedly. "You're not supposed to shrug if faced with the prospect of being caught and thrown out of the airlock, or blasted, or..."

"He'd just duplicate us," Jess replied in calmer a tone than would have been reasonable. "Besides which, he can't duplicate us because aussiejewel was the one who -" she broke off awkwardly. "Never mind."

"What happened to aussiejewel?"

"I can't tell you," Jess replied. "It doesn't matter, anyway. If history couldn't be changed, I wouldn't be wasting my time here."

"What are you changing?" Blanche's tone was quite irritated. "You never tell me anything."

"I do so," Jess said. "And what I'm changing is more of a common sense thing. Sloth invades Neopia, you stop him. Simple."

"You mean, Sloth invaded Neopia, so you go back in time and change history to stop him."

Jess smiled. "Exactly."

"That's insane."

Jess scowled. "I don't particularly want you to be tortured, you know. Or Tigger. Or me, for that matter."

"But you can't change anything," Blanche argued. "It's future history. It happens. It will happen. It has happened, if you account for time travel."

"When you account for time travel," Jess snapped angrily, "It hasn't happened. Therefore, we can change it."

"Not without serious repercussions."

"Such as?"

"A wound in time," Blanche replied calmly. "You would have diverted history from its usual course. That in itself is a serious repercussion. No one knows what happens when you do that, because no one has been stupid enough to try it." She gloated at her owner, apparently convinced she had just won the argument.

Jess wasn't so worried. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Blanche sighed. "I wish we wouldn't have to come to it at all!"

"Tell me, Blanche," Jess said, "when I first approached you here, and when I told you I was from the future, what did you think I was doing?"

"I thought you were causing history," Blanche said simply.

"And that stuff about Sloth did? What did you make of that if you thought I was causing history?"

"I don't know," Blanche protested. "Artistic license? Dramatic effect?"

Jess put her head in her hands. "And the bit about the torture?"

Blanche sighed. "You're going to keep pestering me about this, aren't you?"

"Undoubtedly."

Blanche stared at Jess. "Well then, let me pester you about something. Are we going yet?"

"What?" Jess asked. "Oh. The air vent."

"Exactly," Blanche replied. "Well, are we?"

Jess cast a glance over the room. "Now let's see. What do we have?" She put together a pile of tables and chairs. "That should do it."

Blanche wasn't so sure. "You go first," she instructed. Jess shrugged and did so.

"Now hurry up!" Jess chided, turning around and crawling away. Reluctantly, Blanche followed, startled to find that the pile didn't crash to the floor.

The two girls crawled through the vent and eventually got to the end, but there was a large obstacle there...

"Sloth!" Jess hissed angrily. "Not again!"

"Again?"

"Or should I say, not for the first time. Keep quiet... he might go away eventually."

Sloth had absolutely no intention of going away eventually, and instead opened the air vent slightly to put in a small dish with an unknown – solid – substance in it. He then walked away.

"Righteo," Jess said, watching him go, "let's move forward."

"What's in the dish?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Jess hissed back. "I'm sure it's harmless."

"It's smoking."

Jess stared at the little dish and had to concede that white smoke did appear to be spilling out of it. "Blanche, what else can we do? If we go back, the smoke'll just follow us. There isn't another air vent in that room, and besides we can't live on coffee. We move forward."

Blanche rolled her eyes, but being behind Jess Jess didn't see it. "Fine, mum," she hissed.

Jess took that as an invitation to move forward, but halted as she reached the dish.

"I can't breathe," Jess protested, coughing. "Well, I can, obviously, but... no... oxygen..."

Blanche, to her own annoyance, started coughing also. "Can you open the grille?"

Jess pushed at it pathetically. "No." She then proceeded to slump onto the bottom of the vent, out of air. Blanche did the same.

Unseen by both, Sloth returned and calmly opened the grille, taking the dish away. "Carbon dioxide," he said allowed, "sublimates at a temperature much cooler than room temperature." Pleased with himself, he grinned at the two helpless girls. "And you, Jess, shall not change history."