Dat Slack slack hrush shrak. Dat shack.

Stuart's right hand flowed over the blackboard as quickly as his exhausted fingertips could push them. For hours, the race had endured, his brain against his hand, and never had the result been in doubt – his writing could not keep pace with his ever branching, ever advancing thoughts. Equations, formulae, and diagrams streamed from the end of his chalk piece, covering the work surface in an increasingly complex fractal design. Time had halted in his perceptions; now time existed only on the blackboard. Al and Fred and their spotless cars resided firmly in the past as he chased down a variety of promising tangents. Still faster he worked the chalk, unaware that class was about to start. Absorbed by undefined numbers and abstract speculation, he did not sense the approach of Shawn Hunter until the lumbering troglodyte had clapped a pair of chalkboard erasers next to his face.

Scarcely noting the layer of chalk dust coating his face and hair, Stuart twirled around long enough to affix Shawn with a withering look of disdain before returning to his efforts. He dimly noticed the voice of Mr. Feeny and the shuffling sounds of his classmates arriving. Soon, he would be forced into his seat, but he made the most of his time, diligently chasing his solution through the algebraic jumble in front of him. Behind him, Mr. Feeny and Cory were talking, setting in motion the events of the next episode or wrapping up the previous or simply putting in the legwork to earn a few laughs from the studio audience.

"Sometimes we need to learn to think differently," Cory was saying.

Minkus registered the comment with a fraction of his attention. He scratched the back of his head. It sounded like they were drawing their little scene to a close, in which case his time at the blackboard was nearly up. He started working on finding a good stopping place while the curly haired moron went on.

"In the course of your education, you have taught to look for the right answer, but you also must know that in life, many times the right answer is that there isn't one," Mr. Feeny opined. "This is an especially valuable lesson for you, Mr. Minkus. So I'm afraid your… calculations are all for naught."

Stuart took one last look at the alphanumeric combination in front of him, committing it to memory. "Not necessarily," he said. "I may have inadvertently discovered the secret of time travel."

Later, when Mr. Feeny excused them for their lunch break, Stuart returned to the chalkboard, notebook in hand. The class had spent the morning working on word problems, most of them starting with the words "A train leaves Philadelphia…". Stuart, however, had unobtrusively continued his own efforts. Pencil and paper sufficed for the entire realm of sixth grade mathematics, but he required a broader surface for his inquiry. He had scarcely jotted the first equations when he felt a light hand on his shoulder.

He turned around slowly, savoring the scent of Topanga before his eyes even fell on her. Behind her, the classroom was empty – they were alone.

"Is it true, Stuart? Did you figure out the secret of time travel?" she asked meekly, her eyes imploring him.

"Well…" Stuart faltered, struggling to compress several hours of upper level physics into a binary response. "Yes? But no, too. "

"Oh."

Watching her face fall, he searched his mind for something, anything to say which would make her smile. "More yes than no," he blurted out.

"Really?" she asked. "You've got something?"

He wanted very much to answer in the affirmative, to let her believe that he had, alone and unaided, produced noteworthy results, but he wasn't sure he could lie to her. "No, not really."

Topanga stepped up to stand beside him, and they both stared at the board in silence. She tilted her head in concentration, looking at the equations on the board the way someone looks at a satellite map of their neighborhood. "What is this here?" she asked suddenly, jabbing her finger into a derivation of one of Einstein's field equations. "The little T?"

"Well, that's a variable for time…" he said, trying to keep the disdain out of his voice.

"No," she said with conviction. "It's not a variable."

"Well, it's clearly not fixed," he protested. "The theory of special relativity alone-"

"And your little C isn't right, either, but we can deal with that later." Topanga declared, shaking her head. Before he could stop her, she wiped out all the t's. "Let me see the chalk."

"Topanga-"he started.

"Stuart, I don't have your raw computational talent, but I'm not helpless at math," she intoned sternly. She seized the chalk from his finger, and wrote "p(t)" where the solitary letter had once stood.

"A function of time?" he muttered, more to himself than her. "What kind of function?"

Topanga laughed. "I have no idea, Stuart. Play with it, and see where you end up," she suggested. Giving him a small smile, she turned around and left the classroom.

Stuart returned to his working, thinking about how best to represent time in his formulae. He jotted a few quick notes on the chalkboard. He toyed around with a few algorithms with time as a single, linear variable, then as a polynomial expression, and finally as a multivariable surface in n-space. "Wait a minute," he said out loud, considering the implication of the expression he had just scribed. "Maybe time isn't a continuum – maybe it's a random repetition of moments! I think I've got it!"

Stuart Minkus slipped out of existence.

He sat on a broad, floral print couch in between a young, dark skinned couple.

"Whoa! Who are you?" squeaked the boy, a skinny teenager with thick glasses and bright red suspenders.

Stuart turned to the girl, approximately the same age, just as she opened her mouth to scream –

"-a continuum – maybe it's a random repetition of moments!"

Stuart materialized this time in an empty bedroom. From the furnishings and décor, he guessed that it housed a couple of young girls. Feeling decidedly self-conscious (this was not how he had anticipated his first appearance in a girl's bedroom), Stuart stood up. From outside the door, Stuart heard footsteps, and a man's voice called out "Dana!".

"-a continuum – maybe it's a random repetition of moments!" Stuart shook his head. He was close to figuring it out, but not quite there. He was still missing something. "Nah!" He quickly erased the chalkboard and headed out for lunch, unaware of anything unusual. Throughout the meal, he kept throwing curious glances at Topanga, but she avoided his gaze in an almost playful manner. How had she known how to adjust his equations? It should have been impossible. She wasn't stupid (far from it) but she was only a sixth grader and they were working at a level of mathematics that would make the sharpest theoretical physicists cower and hide in a corner. He burned with the desire to confront her, but he couldn't do it in front of the others. Ned, Hillary, and Darren were close friends, and the five of them had some interesting business between them, but whatever had happened on the blackboard was strictly between him and Topanga.

As it turned out, Stuart didn't get his chance to question her before school ended that day. When the final bell rang, he rushed to his locker in record time and swapped out his books hurriedly before racing to the adjacent hallway, where Topanga's locker lay. There was no sign of her. He let out a satisfied breath, confident that he had arrived before his quarry. As the minutes wore on, he feared otherwise. Just as he was about to give up and head home, she arrived… with a boy Stuart didn't recognize.

"Oh, hi there, Stuart!" she exclaimed brightly. "Have you met Anson?"

Anson was either a bit older, or he'd simply started puberty a little earlier than most. He stood a full six inches taller than Stuart, providing a clear few of the patch of sickly looking whiskers sprouting from his chin. "Yo," the behemoth intoned, his voice booming from a freakishly low register.

"Uh, hi," Stuart squeaked. Momentarily derailed, it took him a moment to remember why he was there at all. "Topanga, may I speak with you for a moment?"

She granted him another beatific smile. "Certainly, Stuart." She turned to her companion, putting her hand on his right arm, just above the elbow. "Can you give us a moment, Anson?"

"Sure, whatever." With those parting words, he stalked away down the hallway, inspecting a Stay in School poster with great interest.

"Who is that guy? Does he even go to our school?" Stuart demanded in a fierce whisper.

Topanga's bright expression didn't so much as falter. "Anson is a new friend of mine," she said simply. "Was there something you needed?"

Stuart glowered for a moment. "You know why I'm here," he said. He had expected that this salvo alone would provoke a response, but he was wrong. "How did you know how to fix my equations?"

"Oh, Stuart, I'm surprised at you! You just don't think I'm very smart, do you?" Topanga giggled. If she took offense at the idea, she concealed it very well.

Stuart shook his head. Topanga was behaving very strangely, even by her standards. He had never seen her be so coquettish before. He'd have been excited if he believed that she was genuinely flirting with him, but it just didn't ring true to him. "I know exactly how smart you are, Topanga," he said quietly. "But you're twelve years old. There's no way you should be able to do math at that level."

"Neither should you," she pointed out. "You're the same age as me."
He'd already considered this. "Yeah, but I'm the precocious super-geek character, remember?"

Topanga's expression dimmed. She glanced over at Anson, who was pacing the hallway just outside of earshot. "Maybe this isn't the time to discuss this."

"Then when?"

"I'll call you later, and we'll meet up tonight," she promised. "All of us."