Anton had expected the vast emptiness of space. Not really space, but the celestial aether of the multiverse. Light-less, colorless, breath-holding silence that whispered lazily for eons between each glittering universe. A disorienting nothingness navigable only through decades of meticulous research. Instead his tracking and communications display had exploded into chattering activity the moment the worm-hole closed behind him. His scanners were reporting an overwhelming 4,096 vessels; he was being hailed simultaneously on 256 channels.

I am William Hamleigh or his younger brother, and I am courting Lady Aliena of Bartholomew. These are characters from The Pillars of the Earth, an epic saga written by Ken Follett which I am actually reading in waking life. At first we are at my home in Williamsburg, Virginia, actually the home of my mother and father. I am sitting with Aliena on the bench in my parents back yard and we are talking. My grandmother is there and Aliena sketches her. I look at her sketchbook and praise her work.

She's rolling her own now, says he with a wink and a nod. The taste of tobacco is sour and sweet, yellow and thick. Beneath me the railroad ties swim thrumming in metal rhythm. There's the swaying and the jittering, the way the body jiggles on its bones like leaves on a branch. With identity comes responsibility. I was smoking Danny's cigarettes there for awhile, watching his dry fingers roll those crumbling brown tendrils into white gossamer folds. Those favors weren't for nothing.

Here's the thing about braining: it didn't turn out to be the godsend that it was cracked up to be.

There were two major unanticipated obstacles in the technology's development. At least two. Two that we know about.

It was dark and I could hear crickets along the neighborhood streets. Mostly, I could hear my heart like an earthquake. I could still see Bill's face, white and damp and wincing something awful. Sweat was slipping over my temples where the blood quivered thumping under the skin. I felt dizzy and my vision was grainy. I kept on, one foot in front of the other, listening to myself breath and running it all over and over again in my head. The two of them were walking and joking quietly just behind me.

Catherine was slim with straight, long brown hair and rich hazel eyes fringed with shining gold. She was a genuine and frequent laugher with a pretty, attentive face, angular lips that were always smiling and teeth that smiled with them. Her body was petite, firm and casually strong, so that she looked ready to hike up a mountain or climb into a tree at a moment's notice.