Chapter 17

"So this is what you do for a living?" Penny asked Leonard as she stared up at the room that was three stories high with a few bridges on the upper levels and all the strings that sometimes even seemed to come out of nowhere.

"This is my life." Sheldon stated.

"Oh baby, then this girl can't be all that bad." Mary walked closer to Sheldon and wiped his tears. "She understands you better than I ever can."

"She's married." Leonard whispered with gritted teeth.

Leonard and Penny followed some other guest out to the back patio, leaving Sheldon and Mary behind. The back yard was covered with a strange looking open dome.

"Is it a brain?" Penny asked as she looked up at the shape and the lights that flashed around every now and then like neurons firing.

Underneath the dome shape was a large playground. But not a normal looking playground.

"It's a brain!" Penny said excitedly as she read in her booklet. "The jungle gym is a large DNA string, an open lung, a heart and intestines. Ew. But cool. It is a brain. The lights are neurons. If you touch certain ones then things happen. Sound, or something…. Yeah that's where you lose me. This is really cool."

"She's really cool." Leonard grinned. They walked back inside and found Sheldon just where they left him in the middle of the room.

"Shall we move on?" Penny took Leonard's hand and pulled him towards a set of stairs. A sign pointed up and said: To Heaven and down: To Hell. A large red sign warned against going downstairs.

"To heaven." Leonard stated and they walked up the stairs, with Mary and Sheldon trailing behind. Sheldon couldn't take his eyes off the strings but once they were a level up, they could see the strings again.

Another sign pointed them towards the right and they walked to the second door. They walked in and gasped again. There were walls of glass standing inches apart from each other and leaving only a few passageways for them to walk through. Lights shone up from the floor onto the glass walls and reflected the night sky. As they walked down the walkways, if looked as if they were in the middle of space. Comets shot through the walls and planets moved slowly. A low sound somewhere in the room gave the effect of soundlessness.

They stood in the room and looked around them as if they were floating in space.

After a while, they eventually decided to move on and returned to the stairs. As they walked down the hallway, they could still look up at the strings in the large open hall.

Once down stairs, they ran into Pris again.

"I don't even know what to say." Leonard said as he walked up to his amazing sister. "You… this… I'm… boom." He imitated his head blowing up and she smiled.

"Hey, what's hell like?" Penny asked.

"Don't go there." Pris stated. "It's dark and awful and scary."

"Why is it part of the show?"

"Some parts are ice cold, others is burning hot." She explained. "There's night vision glasses just outside the door if you really want to go, but it's really hell. My idea of it anyway. It's my worst nightmare. It smells bad and haunting images of hunger and pain and suffering throughout the entire basement of the building. It's not for the faint of heart, that's all I'm saying."

Sheldon walked the last few steps down the stairs towards them. He glanced at a bench against the wall and cut quickly towards it.

"I know you're super busy, but I have so many questions." Penny said to Pris.

"I will always be here." Pris said. "have you guys seen the illusions yet? I was just heading there now."

Pris lead them towards the hallway and Sheldon quickly stepped onto the bench. "Oh Captain, my Captain." He said loudly and Pris stopped walking. She turned and faced him as Leonard, Penny and Mary stared at them.

"To be honest, I've always wanted to do that." Sheldon said with a giggle. "But to the point, I would like to offer you an olive branch, or a white poppy, a paper crane or a more secular peace sign." Sheldon held his fingers in a popular v sign for peace. "But I am not an ancient Greek, European, Japanese or a Hippy." He said as he stepped down from the bench. "So I would like to offer you this." He took her hands and held them between them as he leaned closer and kissed her forehead."

"That's a kiss of peace." Mary whispered to Penny and Leonard. "It's very catholic but at least he's heading in the right direction."

Sheldon gently let go and stepped back. "I'd give you back your wooden chess piece, but I don't want to. I love it too much. It's mine. You can't have it."

"I noticed that Sheldon still hadn't said he's sorry." Penny whispered.

"I think he did." Leonard smiled. "He just doesn't know it."