Willow blinked and shook her head as the lights came up. Her elbow bumped the arm of Franklin Dubose. "Sorry," she said.

"No problem," he said as he gathered up a topcoat that looked expensive enough to cover his sport coat. "I needed the jolt. That-" he nodded toward the empty stage "-was twaddle."

Willow tilted her head and crinkled her nose. "You didn't like it?" The lighting in the lecture hall was warm and golden, gleaming off of polished wood. The back of the balcony was still in shadow.

"Well…" Dubose looked past her to Sophia and Lucian. "Your friend seems very excited, so I would keep this between us, but, no, I didn't like it. It's nonsense, at least from a scientific point of view."

"What do you mean?"

"Well-" Dubose adjusted the temple of his glasses and lowered his voice "-what he's saying sounds like science, but he's actually appropriating scientific language for another purpose."

"But what he's saying is true, isn't it?" Willow risked a quick glance over her shoulder; the last thing she wanted was for Lucian to overhear this.

"Well, in a sense, but he's using actual concepts as a veneer of respectability. I mean, really, the heart of his thesis is 'we don't understand everything about the universe', which any halfway-decent thinker knows. I mean, really, we're discovering more and more that we really don't know much about the actual underpinnings of ideas that we've depended on for decades. That is humbling and awe-inspiring, but this-" he waved hand toward the platform "-is pseudo-mystical cant."

Willow smiled. "So, it's not so much science as science fiction."

Dubose chuckled as he settled his coat on his shoulders. "I don't think it's that advanced. This is fantasy. He's not talking about science. He's talking about magic."

Willow's face felt frozen for a heartbeat, then she recovered. "What do you do?"

"Me?" Franklin Dubose thrust his hands into his pockets. "I'm a humble professor of chemistry at Northeastern." He shook his head. "Well, this was a pleasant conversation, Ms.-"

"Oh, Rosenberg. Willow Rosenberg."

"Ms. Rosenberg." He extended a hand; they shook and he left, heading toward the far aisle. Willow turned around just as Sophia pulled away from Lucian.

"We need to get him out in the air," Sophia said, "before someone uses a tranquilizer dart on him."

"That was awesome!" Lucian was wide-eyed. "I mean-" He mimed explosions next to his head "mind blown."

"See what I mean?" Sophia grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. "Let's go, champ." She pushed slightly, sending him out into the aisle. It was slow going down the steps; Julian kept turning around to share another insight Zelinger had provided. The crowd jostled and pushed past them as Sophia tapped him on the arm and pointed toward the foot of the stairs. The trio finally arrived in the lobby and paused, waiting on the scrum at the door to clear. Willow looked toward the auditorium to estimate the wait; as her eyes roved over the bustle of humanity, she saw a face that looked slightly familiar, a face that detached itself from the crowd and approached her as the redhead frantically searched her memory. She felt like she was about to break out in the nervous sweats.

"Hello. Wow, uh, so you were here for this?" The young woman pointed over her shoulder with a thumb, then dropped her hand. "Did you ever find a club to join?"

"Um, yeah." Willow nodded. "Thanks for all your help."

"Hello," Sophia said, extending a hand past Willow. "I'm Sophia Gravel."

"Erin, Erin Lofgren."

Sophia pointed to Willow. "How do you guys know each other?"

"We, uh, we really don't." Erin grinned; even her smile was knowing. "I do work-study at one of the help desks in Building 10."

"Oh, so you're an Engineer, too." Sophia smiled, charmed.

"Yeah, just another big ol' nerd at the Institute." Erin shrugged and raised her hands in a 'whatchagonnado' pose.

"Wow, that's so cool. What?" Sophia turned to see why Lucian was tapping her on the shoulder. He jerked his head toward the door; the jam was clearing. Sophia nodded. "Hey, are you headed back?"

Erin nodded. "Yeah, just back to the old apartment."

"Oh," Sophia said as they moved toward the door, "you live off campus?"

"Well, yeah, I'm a sophomore, so…"

"Ooooooh," Lucian said as they shouldered out into the cool night air. "Snazzy. Hey, what did you think of Zelinger?"

"Well," Erin said as she took precise steps along the sidewalk, "I thought it was interesting and entertaining." The naturally sarcastic line of her eyebrow perfectly matched her tone.

"You didn't think it was amazing?" Lucian seemed flabbergasted by the possibility.

Erin shrugged. "I can see how you might think so. You're a freshman, after all."

"Ow! So cold!" Lucian clutched his stomach.

"Serves you right," Sophia said, grabbing his upper arm.

"How did you know we were freshmen?" Willow asked as they passed under a streetlamp.

The amber light haloed Erin's hair. She tucked her hand in the pockets of the leather bomber jacket she wore over jeans and Chelsea boots with thick rubber soles. "Please," she said, her smile only accentuating her droll aura, "you guys couldn't be any more freshmen if you all wore a scarlet F around your neck." She bumped Willow with her upper arm. "Literary reference there for you."

"No," Willow said. "How would I have known?" They boarded the bus and grabbed the hanging straps; the bus was crowded.

"Where's your apartment at?" Sophia asked.

"You know Central Market?"

"Wow," Sophia said. "Those are nice."

"Yeah, well, mine's across the street." Erin shrugged; the gesture was so carefree and insouciant that Willow practically turned green with envy.

"You really didn't think Zelinger was good?" Lucian's forehead was creased with worry or concern.

"Oh, he was good… I mean, it was a blast, but, c'mon, be honest… he expected us to jump a lot of gaps to stay with him."

"But dark energy and dark matter are real." Lucian swayed slightly with the bus's motion.

"Okay, let's give him that, although dark matter hasn't been proven to exist. The distance between what it is, I mean, what we know about it, and what he claims it is, is a big honking leap."

"But isn't a big leap, taking a big chance, a part of science?" Lucian was not going to let it go.

Erin tilted her head back and shook out her hair. "There's a difference between looking at data and saying 'Hey, this could lead us in this direction' and taking two points and saying 'Well, this will end up here'." She lifted an eyebrow, which seemed to Willow as withering as Cordelia's snarkiest put-down. The bus slowed. "Well," Erin said, "this has been cool fun, but it's my stop." She scanned their faces, Willow's last. "I'll see you around." She exited the bus and vanished into the dark, a spectre in leather and denim.

"She was cool." Sophia said as the bus doors closed with a hiss and the vehicle lurched forward.

"Yeah." Lucian overcame inertia and pulled himself upright. "But she's stubborn." He shrugged. "And wrong."

Willow turned out the desk lamp and crawled into bed. Quan was still out who-knew-where and Willow wanted to be asleep before her roommate returned. Quan was quieter if Willow was asleep; the redhead had learned the hard way that if she was still awake when the tiny girl got back, there was a good chance they would be awake until daybreak. Post-party Quan had quite a motormouth.

Willow closed her eyes and ran through her list of sleep inducers: the black screen with the white pebble in the center, the story where she won the Nobel Prize (this one was usually quite effective; the moment when she walked to the stage was the signal for her brain to shut down), the techniques that almost always put her away, but every time she teetered on the edge of slumber, Zelinger's words echoed in her mind, followed by the sentiments of Franklin Dubose:

"I believe we are about to discover the world beside us."

"He's not talking about science. He's talking about magic."

She flipped from her back to her side, then, as the false starts multiplied, to the other side. One statement was from a man she knew nothing about, the other from a man who thought the first man a charlatan. So why did she feel such foreboding? A plan finally occurred to her that eased her mind: she would learn as much about Joel Jerome Zelinger as possible. Her breathing slowed and she drifted off to sleep before Quan came in.

Willow leaned back and stretched, trying to work out the kink that had formed between her shoulder blades. She was in one of the computer labs; a notebook sat beside her keyboard, the page completely filled. She mused that this might be the future of the internet; it turned out that it was easy to find out about anyone, really easy, not like… She shook her head: was it three years ago? Anyway, back in the day, she had crawled through lines of code, searching for ways into databases, all to glean nuggets of information. Now, she just typed it into Yahoo or its search engine provider, Google, and, boom, almost limitless information appeared, especially when one searched for someone who seemed to be as self-promoting as Joel Jerome Zelinger.

The most obvious fact about him was his speaking schedule: it was staggering. Zelinger did have a PhD in Renaissance Art, as well as a Master's in that subject and one in Environmental Design. He had been on the faculty at a couple of small colleges; Willow could find nothing exceptional from that time. That had changed five years before, when an interview he gave to a local TV morning show had landed him a spot on Donahue talking about the anxiety facing fin de siecle America (Willow rolled her eyes; he actually used fin de siecle) as it navigated 'the first technology-driven millennial change'. Willow felt herself leaning toward Franklin Dubose's position: anyone who ignored China and developments like buttons, clocks, and gunpowder didn't seem to be digging very deep.

His appearance on Donahue led to a quick book, The Burden of History: How the Upcoming Millenium Weighs on Our Minds. Willow couldn't find it on any bestseller lists and the reviews she uncovered were… lukewarm. Joel Jerome Zelinger seemed destined to be remembered a a mild burp in the gastric system of celebrity.

That was not what happened. After the book was published, Zelinger taught for a couple more years, then took a sabbatical. He emerged with a new book, Inside Out Upside Down: How the World Is Bigger Than We Know. The promotional materials claimed that Zelinger had studied with Tibetan monks, attended mystical rituals with tribes in the Amazon basin and rain forests of Papua New Guinea (Willow shook her head; 'mystical rituals' was clearly meant to imply 'imbibed drugs unavailable to you, dear reader and figured out how to expense them'), and communed with physicists at CalTech, Cerne, and… MIT. The book sold. It sold like gangbusters. Zerlinger was on a rocket ship to generalized notoriety. Forget Donahue, this time he was on Oprah. The thesis of the book seemed to be that not only was science not all of human knowledge, but that Western reliance on and deference to science was holding back human development.

Willow logged out of the computer. The last thing she had done was check the library database. MIT did, in fact, have a copy of Inside Out Upside Down. It was in Hayden, a ten minute walk away. She could grab the book and a sandwich at the Courtyard. The redhead slung her backpack over her shoulder and set off, full of purpose.

"What the hell is that?" Quan kicked off her boots; one arced through the air and landed in the center of her mattress.

"It's a book," Willow said without raising her head. "We have many of them available."

"Don't be a smartass." Quan vaulted onto her bed, avoiding her boot as she landed. "What book is it?"

"Oh, it's by the guy we went to hear last night."

Quan rolled her eyes. "That was your big nerd three-way? Shit, one day you're gonna wake up and think 'This is how I spent the best years of my life'." Willow said nothing. Quan rolled onto her stomach, propped up on her elbows. "No comeback? You quit that easy?"

"Mmm-hmm." Willow nodded as she turned a page.

Quan scowled for a moment. "Hey, has that got anything to do with that chick you wanted me to find out her name, you know, Sanderson?"

Willow looked up and frowned. "I don't think so."

"Bullshit." Quan peeled off her sweatshirt and sat cross-legged on the bed in her bra. "Don't ever try to play fucking poker. You'll lose your shirt."

"Kinda like you already did." Willow rolled her eyes.

"Ooh, sick burn. Hey, what's the dark of the moon?"

Willow turned another page. "Just what it sounds like… you've got the full moon, then the waning moon, then the dark of the moon, then it starts over with the waxing moon. Pretty self-explanatory."

"Huh." Quan slipped off her bed and rummaged through the clothing piled atop her dresser. She pulled out black T-shirt, sniffed, then pulled it over her head. "Why do you think that Sanderson chick was talking about it?"

"What?" The book dropped to Willow's lap.

"See? Don't play poker." Quan ran her hands through her hair. "Hey, I wasn't out partying last night, well, I was out partying, but I was also doing some dope spying."

Willow squinted. "I am so confused."

"It's not rocket science. You wanted to find out who that Sanderson chick was, I found out there was a thing over by Tang, so I went, maybe she liked to party." Quan launched herself into the air, landed on the bed on her back, and bounced twice. "She did."

"And you talked to her?"

"The fuck? You think I'm stupid? No." Quan put her bare feet up in the air and bicycled. "Parties are great places to hear shit. You have to talk pretty loud because of the music, and because people don't realize how loud they are after a little… refreshment, and nobody thinks that whoever's dancing behind them might be doing it to listen." She rolled to her side and propped her head on her hand. "I'm Harriet the fucking Spy."

"Okay." Willow shook her head and placed the book on her desk. "What did you do?"

"Me?" Quan shrugged her free shoulder. "I just did what I do, dance like a fucking champ… and keep my ears open."

Willow's eyes narrowed. "How… accurate is your memory?"

Quan snapped up to a sitting position, indignant. "Are you implying that I was fucking high?"

"No." Willow's mouth twisted. "I'm asking if you were so high you might have misheard something?"

"No." Quan's nose wrinkled. "I mean, yeah, I was a little high, I had a little bit-" she held up her thumb and forefinger millimeters apart "-of GHB, but just enough to take the edge off."

"Quan," Willow said as she put her hands on her thighs and stood up, "you're definition of 'taking the edge off' would leave me in a coma."

"'Cause you got no tolerance built up." The tiny girl cocked her head to one side. "You gonna keep up this 'Just Say No' PSA or you wanna hear what I know?"

"You'll have to tell me on the way to dinner." Willow shrugged into a green hoodie with daisies appliqued along the left sleeve. "I only had a sandwich at lunch and I'm starving."

"Hey, are we gonna eat with Goofus and Gallant?" Quan asked as they entered the dining hall.

"Highlights?" Willow looked down at her roommate. "I assumed you were raised on a diet of Mickey Spillane and Beavis and Butthead."

"Ah, I loved the jokes page, but I found a copy of Last Exit to Brooklyn when I was four and never looked back." Quan shrugged.

"Very enlightening." Willow swiped her meal card and turned left; Quan meandered away to her right. Willow chose a chicken quesadilla and a salad; she wanted to leave ample room for dessert. She found an empty table at the edge of the space where she would be able to look out the window and watch the day turn to night. She had just spread her napkin on her lap when Quan sat down. Her diminutive roomie had two slices of pizza, a samosa, two steamed pork dumplings, and a burrito. Willow used her fork to gesture toward Quan's plate. "Is there a theme here?"

"Fuckin' A there is," Quan shot back. "I like all of it."

"Okay," Willow said. "Now, I'm going to eat while I listen to you tell me whatever you found out. Deal?"

"Deal," Quan replied, or at least Willow assumed that's what she said. Quan already had half a slice of pizza in her mouth and was headed for one of the dumplings. "Damn," she said. "These are so good. You should try one."

"Uh, Jewish, remember?" Willow took a bite of her quesadilla.

"Another mark against organized religion." Quan's full mouth made her speech mushy. "Keeps you from eating all the good food."

"Matzoh ball soup, kugel, latkes, borekas-"

"Yay, twenty different ways to make fucking potatoes."

"Bazargan-"

Quan's burrito stopped halfway to her mouth. "What's that?"

"Oh." Willow sniffed and took a forkful of salad. "It's made with bulgur and pomegranate molasses. Brisket, rugelach, tahdig-"

"Okay, okay, don't run through the whole damn deli menu, all right?" Quan took a chunk out of the burrito and chased with the rest of the first slice of pizza.

"So, you were at the party?" Willow gestured with her fork. The afternoon had reached the point where there was more light inside the room than outside.

"Yeah, anyway, I get there and shit's just getting loose, right?" Quan took a big drink of her soda. "I'm enjoying my own self when I see that Sanderson chick-"

Willow winced. "Could we not say 'chick' all the time?"

"Oh, excuse me, Miss Solidarity. Anyway, the Sanderson ch- Sanderson is talking to another… person. Dammit, this is hard."

"Most things worth doing are."

"Anyway, I slide myself over and I'm dancing, like, right behind Sanderson. The good thing about being a fly dancer like myself is that I don't have to think about it, so I could give all my attention to Miss Thang, if that's not offensive." Quan took a bite of her samosa; a chunk of potato dropped to her plate.

"I'll allow it." Willow smirked.

"Oh, nice. Anyway, they're talking about something that's happening at Magazine Beach on the dark of the moon." Quan chewed and swallowed. "Now, I gotta question. Is this about the weird shit that happened in our bathroom?"

Willow took another small bite of her quesadilla. "I'd rather not say."

Quan nodded. "So it is. Remember what I said about not playing cards?" Her shoulders wiggled. "Is that window open?"

Willow opened her mouth to reply when a thunderous metallic crash echoed through the dining hall. The hum of conversation dropped to zero, then a scream split the ringing aftermath, and the room exploded into cacophony. Willow spun in her chair so fast she almost toppled onto the floor, but she caught herself and looked toward the source of the sound. A seven-foot-tall rolling rack, loaded with trays full of dishes and cutlery, had tipped over. Glasse, plates, and saucers, some whole, some shattered were slung across the floor amid a spray of soiled knives and forks. The scream continued, reverberating in the high-ceilinged room. Its source was a girl with glasses and long hair in pigtails. She was spattered with half-eaten and discarded food, but the fact that the rack had missed her by inches seemed more of a concern. Students picked their way through the debris toward her as food service personnel rushed from the kitchen to her aid. Willow and Quan joined the hubbub, but Willow was less interested in the girl, who seemed to be uninjured, than the rack itself. It was tubular steel or aluminum with four shelves, each shelf probably three feet by two feet. A kitchen worker crouched beside it, shaking his head.

"What happened?" Willow asked.

He glanced up at her. "I don't know. These things are designed to not tip over. They're weighted at the bottom just to prevent it."

"I saw someone, I swear!" The girl sobbed as another student put an arm around her shoulders to escort her to the bathroom. "I mean, out of the corner of my eye, I know I saw someone, and then it fell over. It just missed me!"

"I know, I know," The young woman assisting her kept repeating in soothing tones. They passed out of the dining hall; two other employees joined the man Willow had spoken to in lifting the rack upright. As it came into place with a clang, Quan turned to Willow.

"Do I need to be careful about hanging out with you?"