I like to joke with the Jiv Joven. Aw, c'mon, Jiv, give it a try. Don't you think she's at least remarkable.

The Jiv Joven was silent. I do not know what Jiv is. I am the Jiv Joven, It is 3:42. You are in your room.

Such a straight man, the Jiv Joven.

My room is at the top of my tower, which I built when I was 25 and a bored engineering student. It is an architectual nightmare, I suppose. Imagine those quaint board-and-whitewall buildings you see in little German villages, or in peasant renditions of a fantasy setting. Imagine one of these stacked up on top of itself, fifty feet or so, and at the top a minitaurized castle, barely small enough to fit, and then spiraling up from the castle four towers, more of the villager type builidngs, as well as bits of a log cabin motif and some steel-and-glass elements. It all merges at the top, maybe a hundred feet up, maybe two hundred feet; it's hard to tell because of the middle section which comes in and out of focus. That's my tower. My room is at the top.

It has between five and seven walls, depending. The Jiv Joven invariable stands in a corner and regards me. My bed is most often opposite. My tools are scattered about, and of course, in the very center is my Sight. I was tuned at the moment to Michelle.

Okay, then, where is she now?

She is at Llimas with two frineds, and about five billion other people.

What time is it?

3:42.

No, I mean at Llimas.

7:23.

And now what time is it?

6:17.

Six?

Yes. She is eating a crouton.

Is she lovely?

I suppose.

Jiv!

It is 3:43.

I met Michelle when I was 26 and still bored. She had her hair, long and blond, with curls that happened on the way down the edge, here and there, but not too many. They were the kind of curls that you wouldn't notice until they were gone. I didn't even realize they were there until one day in my room when I was drawing a picture of her on the Sight. I asked the Jiv Joven what was wrong. It told me to add some curls. I thought it might be broken again, but it was clear across my room and I was too lazy to go over to it.

What time is it? I asked.

It's 5:14, you are supposed to be in Physics

What time is it now?

It's still 5:14, and you are still supposed to be in Physics.

Shrugging, I added some curls.

Too many.

I sighed. And now what time is it?

Still 5:14, and you're still supp-

Okay, okay, I'll erase some.

And it was right. She was lovely.

I showed her the picture a week before she left for Llimas. But it looks nothing like me, she said.

Of course it doesn't. This picture is beautiful.

She socked me on the arm. I'll miss you.

I'll miss you too, I said. Will you come back, ever?

She shrugged. Who knows? She looked over the horizon, at the blue blur. It split the sky along a crude slant, making the view look like it had been ripped and hastily stitched.

I told you to use Dan's ship, right?

Yeah, so. There's a first time for everything.

Gambler's Fallacy, Michelle. Dan's never been changed by the Rift.

(And I knew why).

She just shrugged.

Here, I said, giving her a small cube. It had her intitials etched on one side, and mine etched on another. It was cold and black, but if you ignored it out of the corner of your eye, it had an odd glow.

What's this?

I made it with the Sight. Take it with you.

Why? The Rift will just-

No it won't. Trust me. And whenever you want, come back. Visit me.

I will miss you, but I don't think-

Allright, promise me this. Take it. If it's the same when you arrive on Llimas, you'll know I was right. And you can come back. I promise.

She gazed at me then, for a while, and I could feel a small pressure in my chest which seemed to slowly, slowly implode. I could see, out of the corner of my eye and just barely, her curls, a very small smile on her lips, the slow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Then she closed her eyes and very quickly kissed me.

Okay, she said. I will.

Does she still have the cube I gaver her?

Silence

Jiv?

I am the Jiv Joven, and I do not know of any Jiv or Jove or JJ. It is 3:77. You are in your room, the Michelle is at Llimas, where it is nearly eight o'clock, and yes, she still has that cube you made on your Sight.

3:77?

The Jiv Joven shuddered. Begging your pardon, creator, master, lover of the Michelle and giver of the cube. It is 3:57. I am the Jiv Joven, and-

It prattled on, as I picked up the necessary tools and opened one of the Jiv's cabinets. Normally I'd welcome your loquaciousness, Jiv, but today I need accuracy. I adjusted some real-time etherbolts, which tend to loosen whenever the Rift drifts nearby.

All better? I asked.

I'm here.

What time is it.

It is 3:56.

Good. I set Michelle aside and went back to work.

Later it was dark and I rubbed my eyes, satisfied with the day's efforts. I decided to turn in. What time is it, Jiv.

It is 7:22.

I had been working on a spacefold emmulator, for the agricultural sections of Tandej. I was almost done, but lacked the parts to finish. I'm going to bed, Jiv. Where are the rest of the parts?

The phase inducer is at Riley's, which is closed but will open tomorrow at two. You tossed out a broken modulus which can be easily repaired; it lies at the base of your tower. The stable planitron will not arrive at Riley's for three weeks.

What time will it be at Tandej in three weeks?

Tandej will pass behind the Rift in fifteen days. In three weeks, the time will be either 4:14 or 9:01.

Are you sure?

Yes. it is 7:24.

So I have three weeks, then.

There are 7,328 stable planitrons on Tandej itself.

So?

A sunship destined for Tandej will be in orbit in three days, and will return from Tandej two days after it passes behind the Rift.

What? I should go to Tandej and finish?

It is 7:24.

I'm going to bed, Jiv. When will I wake up?

I am the Jiv Joven. I do not know of any-

Nevermind.

Rift pilot Dan did not captain your average sunship, although he didn't know this. I built it for him, when I graduated from University. If I could do it all over again, I'd change a few things. I'm pretty sure with the tools I have know, made on the Sight, I could render everything on Dan's sunship immune to the Rift.

It was hard enough getting Dan to take the ship. He never did like accepting things from me. When I was four and just learning to use the Sight I would make things for him, countless little doo-dads and trinkets. He took them, but I often found them in the trash-pore. I know Dan loved me, and didn't throw away my gifts out of spite. But he was a father from the old-school, which meant sustenance went one way only.

Besides. He was always busy with his projects. I remember the day he lost funding on his hyperdrive project. It was all he could do to salvage the pieces and software. For years they sat piled up in our hologarage. Every few days the microcleaners would whir into life and clean away whatever dust had accumulated on them.

I guess what happened next was my fault. I was eleven. The Sight was my constant companion, but I yearned to play with real things. Mysterious things. Dan forbade me from touching his "relics," as he called them. But I persevered. I had the Sight make me a key, and I went itno the garage. I used the Sight to map every piece, so I could return everything to it's exact location. But I was sloppy anyway, and Dan found out. That's when he started messing around with it all again, and it wasn't long before he quite his job as head scientist at the Institute to dedicate himself fully to his project. A while later mom took me to my yearly physical, and when she found out my UUs were low, she made me stay with her. Dan didn't seem to care.

Living with mom meant I couldn't play with my Sight as much, but that was probably for the best. I got into University earlier then a lot of people, and I think only part of that was because Dan was my father.

Then one day he came over, and asked to see me. Why didn't you just use the televid? mom asked.

Hello, darling, its good to see you.

Darling? You haven't called me that since you started at the Institute.

Dad smiled sheepishly. Can I see him for just a few hours?

I emerged from my room, pack on my shoulder. I'm all ready. Bye mom.

Wait a minute. What do you think your'e doing?

Dad's all better, right? I'm moving back with him.

Years later, when I replayed the scene on the Sight, the Jiv Joven pointed out that my mom had a hurt expression on her face when I'd said that. But I didn't notice it at the time.

Well, son, I don't think so. I just want to show you what I've been working on.

Oh.

Have him back soon, Dan, okay? He's got chemical analysis tomorrow, and Professor Peterson is very-

Don't worry, this won't take long.

Of course, he was wrong.

I woke up at about 12 or so. I flipped the Sight on, and Michelle was still there. That gave me an idea. Jiv? Jiv Joven? Hey. I walked over and gave it a wack.

It's 12:34.

Whoa, that's cool. One two three four.

You are in your room.

Whatever. You never answered my question. Does Michelle have the cube with her?

Yes.

Good. I reached under my bed, and pulled out a similiar cube. Is it the same as this cube?

I said, yes, I did answer your question.

But you were malfunctioning.

I do not malfunction. I am the Jiv Joven. It is 12:34.

Fine. Answer my last question.

Yes. At Llimas, it is also 12:34.

Really?

Yes. Llimas is entering the Rift.

I shudder passed through my body, and for a moment I felt like I was looking at the Jiv Joven through a long tunnel. What?

I sunship pilot forgot to collapse his overdrive and dragged a spike from the Rift to Llimas.

That's impossible.

It was Dan.

Oh. But he never forgets.

It is 12:3-

Nevermind. You said Llimas wasn't going to enter the Rift for fifteen more years.

You are in your room.

Ah geez.

I've replayed what happened in the hologarage on the Sight so many times I don't even have to render the details anymore. Most of it is on record at the Institute.

Dan opend the door and we walked in, and I regarded the engine he had built.

It's kind of small, Dan

It's bigger than a proton, anyway.

He was referring to Dr. Einer's hypothesis that a faster-than-light drive would have to be the size of a proton to maintain structural integrity.

Does it work?

Dan flipped on his Sight. In theory. I've run it through seven million simulations, and it survived some of them.

Some?

Well, fifteen.

Fifteen? Out of seven million? Dan you're crazy.

He shrugged. Well, at least it made fifteen.

So you haven't tried it out yet?

No, I wanted you to see it first.

Well, give it a try.

Hyperdrive theory, as everyone at University learns, is just that: theory. There are as many variations on it as there are scientists too crazy or bored to think about anything else, which is pretty much how dedicated one has to be to study it. But they all agree on one thing: that hyperdrive is meaningless as a means to move from point A along a straight line to B. You can't hook it up to a sunship and jet back and forth from here to Elrion in a matter of nanoseconds. Time gets all out of whack, not to mention curious problem with phase-shifting and the whole fore-shortening mess.

Hyperdrive could move you from point A to point B, provided you had no interest in being in between in the process. Tesseracts were a crude way of describing this phenomena. One particularily mad scientist who also happened to be Dan's mentor during his early years at Univeristy like to think of hyperdrive as suspending oneself in a non-state until one's present universe eventually ceased to exist and another one just like it came into eventual being, with you becoming revived in a new spot at the same time as you left the previous space.

Dan hesitated, his hand floating above a large red button.

Is that really the, uh, on switch?

Dan grinned. Yeah.

Geez, Dan.

Well, here goes nothing. He pressed the button.

I don't know if what he said was ironic, or apropriate. Nothing, indeed, happened.

Huh.

Did any of the simulations occur this way, Dan?

Six of them, yeah, but I adjusted the electron mass so it wouldn't.

Dan flipped his Sight around, examining his schematics, while I peered over his shoulder.

Wait, I said.

What.

Go back. there. Your electron mass is right, but it'll never remain stable with the way you've configured the photon injection.

Yes it will. I've balanced with a-

Doesn't matter Dan. Not if you're going to move this puppy any significant distance. Not unless G”ness was wrong, and two particles that interact don't remain connected for the rest of their existence.

That wasn't G”ness, that was-

I know, I'm talking about the part where their communication is instantaneous.

Dan furrwoed his brow. So?

So, you jump that photon injection any kind of distance, like the width of an atom, even, and nevermind the positron field; the connection falls apart. Time doesn't happen.

Oh.

Dan stared at his machine for a while. Then he kind of grinned. What the hell are they teaching you at that university these days anyway?

I turned to the Sight, to see what other projects I had. A netstone for Elrion, that would take all of a few hours. One for Bsed, but the parts required a cold-sheathing through the Rift, and I didn't have clearance for several months. I don't trust contractors. Then there was one for the Institute, but I could finish that whenever I wanted.

When will I receive another batch of assignments?

You will finish the netstone for Elrion and the partial tin for Bsed on the same day, in eight months. You will not finish the rewiring project for the Institute. When you have finished the rewiring project, the Institute will forward your next batch of assignments.

Eh? Jiv? Will I finish it or not?

No. When you do, the Institute will forward a batch of seven assignments, one-

Wait. Where's the Rift right now.

Point eight-three light years from Gromissy.

How long has it been there? I asked, reaching for a tool and opening the Jiv Joven's cabinet.

Since yesterday at 5:02 and 5:33.

All of the bolts where tight. Frowning, I switched the Sight over to a schematic of the Jiv Joven, original and present. Except for the ding in it's case I gave it accidentaly on a night when the lights went out, it was accurate.

Okay Jiv, when will I finish the Institute's assignment?

I am the Jiv Jove-

Nevermind, answer the question.

You won't.

And what will happen when I finish it?

The Institute will give you a batch of seven assignments.

I paused for a second, then flipped the Sight to the Institutes assignement. A basic phase inducer upgrade, since the Institute's machinery isn't factory standard. A one day job. I could do rewiring in my sleep. What the hell was going on?

Okay, forget it. When Llimas passes out of the Rift, it'll be on this side, right?

Of course.

I started to shake. I manipulated the cube, until a light began to flash on the panel where my initials were traced. I checked the Sight, and yes, the message was moving into the Rift and not out again. When will Michelle receive this?

She received it an hour ago, and in three hours.

So she will come? She'll be here?

The Jiv Joven paused. I was tempted to tighten its bolts anyway.

Yes. In three days. She will stand a few meters to your left for five minutes, and then-

Fine! Great!

It is 12:38. You are in your room, I am-

Yes, Yes, I know, thanks Jiv.

A sunship destined for Tandej will be in orbit in two days, and will return from Tandej two days after it passes behind the Rift.

Uh, okay, thanks.

You have a project for Tandej, which you can finish with one of the planitrons on Tandej itself.

I know that. That's fine Jiv.

Your agreement with the Institute demands that you use to the best of your abilities and judgement the most efficient method-

You're not Gones, Jiv. Shut up.

The Jiv Joven was quiet.

I skipped over to the Sight and flipped through several of the pictures I'd made of Michelle, lingering on the first one, so long ago.

Very quietly, the Jiv Joven said, I do not know of any Jiv.

After his failure, Dan took me back home. So what are you going to now? I asked.

Dan shrugged. I could keep working on it, but.

But what.

I already lost a job and a son.

You didn't lose me Dan!

Dan shrugged again. I should just scrap it.

No! Don't!

Why not?

Well. just don't, for awhile. Okay?

Okay, I guess.

That night I lay in my bed, thinking about all the things I'd made with the Sight for Dan, and how he always thanked me formally for them, but never really saw them. Sometimes I gave him the same thing twice, and he didn't seem to notice.

If I could make the hyperdrive work, I believed, Dan probably wouldn't be so formal. I drifted off to sleep, thinking about the lectrons and the psitrons. It would work theoretically, I mused, if there were three real-states for a particle, not just two. Electrons and their anti-matter counterpart positrons needed a third equivalent, one which was opposite of them both, which with the electron was the opposite of the positron, and with the positron was the opposite of the electron. A physical equivalent of the square root of i. The hard part, I decided as I finally fell asleep, was coming up with the name for such a particle.

And when I woke up the next day, there it was. The tertiary counterpart to an electron and a positron. The name came later. But I knew where to find it.

I went to Dan's hologarage, and thankfully everything was intact. I used Dan's sight to make some tools, and then tested them out. Then I spat on them. I culled out as much of the matter and antimatter as I could from my saliva as quickly as possible. Actually what I had created on the sight was a series of machines, each bigger than the next, so that I could manipulate a machine that manipulated a machine that manipulated a machine. and so on to the sub-atomic particle level. Finally I was able to measure an infitesimal weight which was neither a particle nor an anti-particle. But it was there.

The hyperdrive philosophers dismiss the importance of the sub-subatomic particle. They say it is nothing more than a unique arrangment of quarks that I happened upon. For years members of their ilk had held to the notion that the only thing that governs the existance of sub-atomic particles and quarks is the will of their discoverers. To put too fine a point on it- if a physicist is convinced a particle exists, then it does.

But they were way off. What I had was the building block for quarks. It was life. And I could make it into anything, because unlike electrons, which are all the same, or positrons, or even various quarks, every single Jovitron is unique.

After that it was simple. I reconfigured the Photon injection, isolated a measure of the Jovitrons, and it was done. The hyperdrive still worked the same, but now time could pass. I was so eager, I didn't even call in Dan, to do him the same courtesy he had done me when he'd thought he'd had a working hyperdrive. I just pressed the big red button.

I hadn't check what destination Dan had set. It turned out to be Elrion, which Dan was always fond of. I ended up there, alright. And in my wake I left the Rift. A rip in space and time and life. Light tried to bend around the Rift, and sometimes succeeded. But tachyons that passed near the Rift went absolutely nutso. And no one even believed gravitrons really existed until the began to bounce off the Rift like rubber balls on a sidewalk.

Eventually I was able to convince the Institute of who I was and where I was. They were not pleased. Experiments with hyperdrives were strictly controlled by the Institute, punishible by death, specifically because of things like this. My achievements at University were enough to convince the Institute that I wasn't some mad scientist bent on destroying the universe. I was just a kid who made a lucky discovery. And so I signed the Agreement- in exchange for clemency I would finsh my residency at University, and then remain at the Institute for the rest of my life, and complete whatever projects they gave me. Dan was stripped of all of his scientific credentials, and was allowed to re-up as a sunship pilot.

I'd like to say I fell in love with Michelle the first day I walked into Math Origins, but I didn't. Math history is myth and fantasy, in my opinion, and unlike the liberal thinkers who run the university, I don't think an appreciation for the discovery of ideals will make me a better user of those ideals. I was pissed off when I walked into MO half an hour late, and didn't even notice the girl with subtle curls and perpetual hidden grin, sitting in the front row and writing down every syllable our teacher uttered.

Neither did I notice her honest eyes when she asked me if I had any notes from the two classes she'd missed. In fact, I snorted at her.

But one day I heard her talking to some people after class about her "adventure" as she called it. There was so much innocence in her voice, so much wonder and joy. maybe I'd been hovering too close to old curmudgeous physics philopsophers and hyperdrive technicians.

I eavesdropped. Appearently, she had been wandering around the south edge of campus and came across a breach in the wall, and finding it dark and foreboding, couldn't resist walking through to see what was on the otherside. It was a forest, contrary to the rusted sign which warned of an active plasma stream. It was dense and green, loud with silence. She wandered through for hours, looking for something, not sure what it was until she found it. What was it? they asked her, but she refused to say. But what was it? A broken down cache cartridge? A crippled jeep from the wars? No, nothing like that, she said. But it was wonderful.

After that, I never missed an MO class, and managed to find out what else she was taking so I could take those courses, too. I had a crush on her, no doubt about it. Eventually I somehow swallowed my arrogance and apologized for snorting at her in MO. She recognized me, of course, and wondered what I was doing in an untech class that wasn't required. I almost confessed right there. Instead I made some lame excuse.

It was wondeful. I felt like I imagined she had felt when she walked through her magic forest. I helped her in her tech courses, she helped me with my untechs. I even managed to spend a few nights each week without flipping on the Sight

Riding the Rift was suicidal for a while. But eventually Dan and other sunship pilots like him survived the ride by going to sleep, although they had to jettison any non-living cargo because it invariably changed into something else, or disappeared, or reappeared before it disapeared, or any number of weird things. That was the nature of the Rift- unfathombale. Some of the hyperdrive philosophers at University even suggested that the Rift exists so long as people try to understand it and fail. Once someone grasps its meaning, it changes, so that she knows even less then before she had started. That was a bunch of crap, of course, I understood the Rift perfectly.

Dan was the first one to conceive of rendering a sunship out of a single piece of matter. That meant it's engines had to be fitted like a cartridge, and jeittisoned at the moment the sunship entered the Rift. Computers couldn't handle it, since they had to be jettisoned, too. The best Rift pilots could read the Rift, know the exact instant to jettison the engine and knock themselves out. Sloppy ones lost engines or their own minds.

Nobody except me knew that Dan didn't have to go to sleep to Ride the rift. That's why he was the rift pilot with the most time and the best record.

Some things can survive the Rift without changing, or more precisely, can use the Rift's forces to fuse into a semi-real state as long as they don't spend too much time in the Rift. It's a fine art, practised only by a few dozen people, myself included. That was how I'd made the two cubes which Michelle and I posessed, and of course, the Jiv Joven. I don't have to sleep through a Rift ride either, which is why I'm so good at it. Also, I know how to keep things from being lost in the Rift. Most cold sheathing is nothing more than knowing how to construct the chemical compunds and precise layers for whatever needs to be sheathed. I can do that, but I can also sheath things just by manipulating their existance as I ride a Rift. Modified sunships are commercial, but the Rift is regulated by the Institute, as part of the Agreement, and that means I only have access when the Institute allows it, which is on a piece-meal basis at best. I'm pretty sure that if they knew that Dan and I were immune to the Rift, they'd never let us in at all.

Gones. I hated that bastard. He was the chief overseer of my work at University, my probabation officer, so to speak. Before he died, he handed each of my assignments to me personally, adding every now and again his own riders to make the tasks more painful. Droose needs a tachyon-field coalation grid, and I want you to do it without using a phase-mass.

That'll take days! Why can't I use a phase mass?

Because you are being punished. You have three days to finish.

Damnit Gones, I was going to attend proffessor Eldridge's lecture tomorrow.

Well, work fast, boy, and maybe you can squeeze it in.

And I couldn't disobey, or I'd have my excursion privileges revoked for a week, or a month, or a year. The Sight was wonderful, but never as good as the real thing.

One day Gones brought me a freshman's assignment. A lot of dull work. He loved to torture me like that.

You want what?

Too many students are wandering through the broken wall that edges the University's plasma stream, and losing limbs.

Fix the damn wall, then.

That breach marks the exact spot Dr. Ellen Magony discovered her infamous Entropy Design Engine, he said with mock respect.

So? Put up a sign. I don't do sigils.

Signs haven't been working, boy. You intellectuals are all alike. Think you're smarter than real physics. Think you can outwit plasma decay.

No, Gones, we just think we're smarter than you.

Make the sigil. No bells and whistles. Just simple pain.

You fucker, I thought.

And it better be strong, boy. He leaned in close, and I could smell the salt supressants on his breath. I'm going to test it myself. That should be incentive to make really hurt.

Boy, was it.

The way I figured it, kids wandered through the breach because they were human, and wanted to explore. So instead of a sigil, I made a theta-wave trip inducer. Basically, you walk through the breach, fall unconscious, and have a dream where you wander around a world finding what you know isn't there, but secretly hope is. When you find it, you come too, your memory quickly fading, until you never remember that you walked through the breach at all.

Gones tried it, of course, and never came out, simply because he knew he was walking into it. The theta waves therefore rebounded in an endless loop. Eventually his body died from malnutrition. While he body slowly wasted away, the punitive board accused me of attempted murder, but I pointed out that Gones knew exactly what he was walking into, and that he was more than able to come out, if he wanted to. It's suicide, not murder, I said. He's outwitting his own hypothalamus, that's all.

They weren't convinced. Just turn it off, they said.

I can't. He'd die for sure. As long as its on and he's in there, he can come out.

It hasn't killed any of the thirteen students who have wandered into it since Gones.

What?

None of them rememeber the experience at all. And if you ask them if the've ever seen the plasma stream, they just shrug.

It took a few weeks of deliberation, but they finally agreed with me, and the inducer is still there. Of course, none of them knows how the inducer killed Gones, and as long as none of them decide to test it out, no one will ever be harmed by it. Instead of replacing Gones with another overseer, they just uploaded my assignments and excursion passes directly to my room, and later, to my tower. I made the Jiv Joven a week later.

The next day I was so keyed up, waiting for Michelle, I actually wandered through the ancient history museum, where she and I used to go and make fun of the vaccuum tubes and bulky motherboards. But even these excursions are logged, and I wanted to save up as much as I could when Michelle got here.

Jiv.

Nothing.

Jiv Joven.

It is 9:52:52

Jiv?

I.

You?

I thought you'd find that interesting.

I checked his cabinets.

I'm sound. It's 9:53.

Jiv?

I'm not Jiv, I am the Jiv Joven.

I shrugged. Maybe I didn't understand the Rift as much as I thought I did.

Okay, Jiv Joven. Where's that broken modulus.

What is the antecedent of the pronoun in your previous sentence.

Huh?

Which broken modulus?

Jiv? Are you sure you're sound? Where's the Rift now?

It's just passed over Gromissy.

What time is it there?

Silence.

Jiv Joven, what time is it on Gromissy?

At the exact instant you asked me 9:54:32:01, Gromissy had no time. Now it is 2:31.

And now?

11:44.

Gromissey is on the other side of the Rift?

Yes. It is 9:55.

How long before Llimas enters the Rift?

One day.

One day? But you said-

I made a mistake.

I glared at the Jiv Joven. It must be malfunctioning on a a level even the Sight couldn't see. Or, more to the point, on a level that I wasn't using the Sight to see.

I decided to kill some time looking at it.

After I found out that Michelle had tripped my inducer and remembered it, I used the Sight to figure out why it was broken.

It wasn't, of course. In my haste to put the thing together and get Gones inside it I'd used some sub-routines that used a sort of fuzzy-logic algorithm. It was a freshamn project, and like a pro I had made some freshman mistakes, including an efficiency coupler which leaked logic from some of the sub-routines into others. The upshot of it all was that the processor decided to let some students remember what happened if it deduced that they're experience would convince others to not bother trying the breach themselves. I used the Sight to manifest a sort of log of inducements, and indeed, none of the people with whom Michelle had spoken had even come close to the breach. I had to loosen some of it's ether-bolts, but even the Jiv Joven admitted at least one of those persons was planning on checking out the breach after hearing about it from an acquantaince, until Michelle's story convinced him not to.

If I didn't know better I would have suspected some of the components in the inducer were cold sheathed in the Rift and it was infecting the system. But that wasn't the case. Call it serendipity. I decided to leave it as it was.

But I had to find out what Michelle's discovery had been.

Well, there it is Jiv.

I'm not Jiv, I'm Jiv Joven.

And you're using contractions, JJ.

I am the Jiv Joven, and the time is 1:14.

You're sick, whatever time it is.

I don't have the ability to be sick.

Well, that's an interesting way to put it.

You are in your room.

And you can use contractions, JJ. See how sick you are?

I can use contractions.

Yeah, but when I told you that you couldn't you, didn't.

I am the Jiv Joven.

Right, and where am I?

You're in your room.

See?

It is 1:15.

Cold sheathing is supposed to be permanent, and invarible. That's why it's so important. But somehow the Jiv Joven's sheathing was imperfect, and since I knew I'd done it right, it must have been eroding in some way. Absurd, really. Equally absurd was that as the Jiv Joven lost its sheathing, it acted more and more like a machine that was passing through the Rift, but, paradoxically, in a stable manner. That the Jiv Joven's instability was aproaching stability as its stabalizing sheathing became unstable was just another fine example of the impossible and certain weirdness that occured thanks to tertiary duality.

Looks like your due for a new sheathing, Jiv Joven,

The Jiv shuddered. I tightened a few of its bolts.

I got Michelle to talking about her walk through the forest by pretending that I had done the same.

But I only wandered around for a few minutes.

Did you. see anything?

What? Like a broken down cache cartridge or a crippled jeep from the wars? I joked.

She wacked me on the arm. No, silly. Like an animal.

Why? What did you see?

She did one of those conspirital glances with her eyes, to the left and to the right, and then moved her head close to mine. I thought I was going to faint.

Promise you won't tell?

Tell who? You're the only one who talks to me, Michelle. Or gets this close, I thought.

In a low whisper, her eyes positively sparkling, she said, I think it was a unicorn.

Impossibly, I somehow fell even more in love with her. I'm no poet- I don't even like to read fiction. But what she said was so innocent, so sweet, so full of unconditional joy. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and never let go.

Eventually, though, I had to let go. But until I did, I think we both purred.

I woke with a start. Jiv!

What.

What time is it.

Uh. 4:00?

Huh? Was I still asleep?

I mean, it's um. 3:52. Yeah.

But. Hang on a second, damnit. You said Michelle was going to be here by 12:00.

Yes.

Why didn't you wake me?

Because, well, at noon, when she was supposed to be here, she wasn't.

What the hell was wrong with this damn machine.

Where is she now?

Uh, well. She's. She's.

I ran over to the JIv, and gave it a good shake. Damnit Jive Joven, where is she?

Okay. What I did was, when she was supposed to be here-

Supposed? You made a mistake, that's all! She wasn't supposed-

No, I checked. She was supposed to be here at noon. Like a bestrum comatrix is supposed to replicate a third yield net sum. Like two plus two is supposed to be four.

What the hell's wrong with you Jiv?

Like I said, when she was supposed to be here, and wasn't, I.

You what?

I. I pulled a spike out of the Rift and tried to bring her. here. On it.

You what? Was she asleep when you did it?

Well, there's the problem.

I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. Finally I fell on my bed.

Sorry.

What did you say?

I said I'm sorry. I mean, she's not dead or anything.

What a minute. Just wait. You don't have the ability to pull a spike out of the Rift.

Right.

Then how did you do it?

Well, After I did it the Rift unsheathed my herst spacers and over shielded my chronometer.

Your clock?

Yeah.

And?

So, after I did it, I had the ablilty to do it, so I was able to have done it.

You mean since you were able to have done it after you had done it, you were able to do it, um, before. For the first time in my life maybe, I was genuinly confused.

Not exactly. But close enough.

So where is she?

She's on Llimas.

Really.

And she's here.

Where?

I'm.not.sure.

I ran over to the Sight, but, incredibly, it was broken.

Sorry. The spike did that.

You say she's here.

Yeah, I mean, okay, I remember her, okay? And you were right, she is lovely. She is really and truly beautiful. I can see what you see in her. And did you know she believes in unicorns? She so sweet, you really should just break out if this place and go to her.

I can't Jiv, goddamn it, they'd come after me. I hung my head.

Just pull a spike, ride over, no one will know.

They will, Jiv, and how do you know I can do that?

Well, I can do it.

I just sat there for a while.

She's still on Llimas?

Yep.

And it already passed through the Rift?

Umm, no.

No?

Remember when I told you a sunship pilot forgot to collapse his overdrive, and pulled a spike out of the Rift?

Yes. You said it was Dan.

Well, Dan forgot because of the spike I pulled out earlier.

So?

So when I did it, he didn't, and.

And what.

And Llimas won't pass through the Rift for fifteen years.

I lay back on my bed, staring at the ceiling.