FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Okay, so doing seventy-five down a narrow two-lane road blasting "Born to Be Wild" from your stereo is a classic cliché. But seriously, can anyone really break the speed limit to Pachabel's "Canon in D?"

Besides, it just happened to be on the radio--and it's not like a 1990 Nissan audio system can really blast anything too loudly (what, ten watts? Fifteen?). I don't really like the damn song to begin with, but it fit my mood that night.

In the days before I-4 crossed Florida from Tampa to Daytona, State Road 72 was a major corridor between the east and west coast. Now it's a ghost highway. Heading east from Sarasota, you get past Myakka State Park and the world jumps back fifty years. Sawgrass plains and marsh surround you, pressing right up against the road and throwing vast openness against it in every tree, every cabbage palm, every hyacinth you race past. You only pass a few cars, a few pickup trucks, and more semis than either--the truckers know it's still the fastest way to get things from south Tampa Bay to Palm Beach. The speed limit's fifty-five, but even at sixty-five other vehicles will pass you, including the state troopers. They all have places to be going. I usually don't. I just like driving.

A learned elder once told me my weird habits (like driving long distances for no reason) came from having a weird name. "Spencer" gave me all sorts of trouble in elementary school--I don't care what anyone tells you about children, they're just plain obnoxious--but when I hit twenty, it dawned on me that most of humanity is too damn dull for its own good. The learned elder who told me the root of my weirdness, incidentally, is one of the most hopelessly dull people I've ever met.

It was just past midnight and the moon was a day before full, bright enough to light the fields around me as I drove out of Myakka toward real cow country. I turned off the headlights experimentally. The road reflected back moonlight as pale grey. The first intersection in a half-hour, a county road leading off to one of Florida's private Twilight Zones, passed to my left, and Steppenwolf faded off the radio. "We're in the middle of an hour-long classic rock cruise," the DJ intoned, "and ridin' along with the Welch." A hard-edged guitar and keyboard started, resolving into "Ebony Eyes," a tune near the top of my list of Good Songs Radio Doesn't Play Often Enough. I cranked the volume even more, straining the pancake-sized speakers to their limit, and sped up.

I passed her during the second verse. My headlights were still off; when I realized someone was standing on the side of the road, I snapped them on again just as I raced by. I got a flash of dark skirt and top against golden skin, beautiful long brown hair and big eyes that might have been the ones "the Welch" wrote his song about. And an arm stuck out, thumb pointed upward.

Now, as you might have guessed, hitchers aren't too common on a road like S.R. 72, especially at fifteen past midnight somewhere equidistant from Sarasota, Arcadia and hell. No matter what direction she was going, she had thirty miles to go. Of course, she was walking in the direction I was coming from--on my side. Either she wasn't very smart about hitchhiking, she was too desperate to be thinking, or she was a psychotic mass murderer waiting for an idiot like me to come along so she could stab me through the heart with a pair of scissors, ditch the car and body in a cow field on the other side of the state and hitchhike to Kansas.

I slammed on the brakes and pulled over, then put the car in reverse and backed up slowly.

I started to get out of the car just as she got within about ten feet of it, her body cast in the red glow of the tail lights. I turned around to greet her--and stopped, the words turning to prickly cotton in my mouth.

She didn't have golden skin at all. She had golden fur.

And a golden muzzle, with a little black nose on the end of it, big almond- shaped dark eyes framed by her brown hair--mane? Even a long, fluffy tail perfectly matching her hair color. She might have stepped off the stage of "Cats," but Andrew Lloyd-Webber would have killed for make-up that perfect.

And something told me it wasn't make-up.

The tail flicked wildly as the expression on her feline face changed from relief to terror. She screamed--I wasn't sure which was more unnerving, the almost-human quality of it or the faint growling undertone--and spun on one heel, fleeing into the darkness.

"Wait!" I yelled, still half in the car. "Dammit."

I scrambled out and sprinted to the spot where she had been, the impressions of her high-heel shoes still in the grass. She could run that fast in heels? "Wait," I said again, loudly but without conviction, then turned around and got back in the Stanza. The song finished, merging into Gary Wright's "Dreamweaver." I snapped it off and leaned back in my seat, turning off the engine and staring out the windshield.

Cats didn't stand on their legs and wear clothes... did they?

"You spoke English," a voice said faintly from behind me. I almost fell out of the car, spinning around again.

She stood just at the edge of the light. Her eyes were not ebony, but a breathtaking dark emerald. She still looked terrified, her expression now registering not a simple fear for one's safety but the more devastating fear for one's sanity. Then it clicked: she had just expressed surprise that I spoke English... in English. I began to feel some of her fear myself.

"Y-Yes," I managed to produce on my third try. I got out of the car and stood up, not moving any closer to her.

She looked me up and down, her expression fighting to stay neutral, her lower lip--if that was the right word--trembling violently. "How can you be speaking my language?"

"I've... spoken it all my life." I'm sure that helped her, right? Well, hell. How do you be tactful with an impossibility? "What are you?"

She stared at me. "A cat."

Dammit, I can see that. "Yes. But you're--you're--you don't look like a cat. Not the ones I know of."

She looked at me in uncomprehending terror, then gasped. "You look like Mihi!"

"What?"

"You're a human." She shook her head, the trembling of her lips racing down her body for an instant. "Where'd you come from?"

I gaped at her.

"Did you escape a lab somewhere, maybe?" She was looking down, talking rapidly. "I--I don't know of anybody using humans for experiments, at least not like that, I mean you're like something from a movie, although I guess you don't--"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I blurted.

She jumped back, making a small squeaking noise.

Then something else clicked; spiders ran down the inside of my spine. "Wait. I'm sorry. What do humans look like?"

She looked puzzled. "Uh... Mihi is about this high at his shoulders." She bent down, putting her hand a foot off the ground. "He's, uh, furless, tailless... round head, pug nose, silly ears, uh...."

"Does he walk on two legs or four?"

"Four."

"And he doesn't have opposable thumbs."

She shook her head negatively, eyes becoming impossibly wide.

This made Mihi about the size and, I suspected, the shape of a chimpanzee. Except he wasn't a chimp.

The most probable explanation for what was happening was I had hit a tree about a half-hour ago and was experiencing uncannily realistic delusions brought about by massive blood loss. Or, maybe the entire road trip this time was a delusion. Or a dream. There, that must be it. I was dreaming I was in the middle of nowhere talking to a hitchhiker who happened to be a six-foot tall cat built like a model, who had just told me about Mihi... her pet human.

If this was a dream, I should be able to control it. I willed a cup of coffee to appear in my hand.

"What's going on?" the cat asked, voice husky with the hysteria she was trying desperately to hold back.

I thought about offering her the cup of coffee, except that it hadn't appeared. This, I suspected, was a very bad sign.

"I don't know."

"You're not some sort of--modified human?"

Modified? "Are you some sort of modified cat?"

She sucked in her breath, eyes narrowing.

"I have a pet cat. About half the size your Mihi must be."

Her expression became angry. "You--"

"He is your pet human, isn't he?"

She breathed deeply, fists clenched, then suddenly fell to the ground in a furry heap, tears flowing down her muzzle.

"Do you know where you are?"

"Sitting on the ground by Route 72, talking to something that only exists in cartoons," she got out between sobs.

"State Road 72?"

She looked up and nodded.

"It's the same road for you?"

"B-between Sarasota and Arcadia. Yes."

"You need to take 70 to get to Arcadia. That's not important." I closed the door of my car, leaning against it.

"How did you know that?" she asked, standing up.

"I could ask you the same question."

"I come down here three or four times a year. I've been doing it for the past five years. My parents live in Sarasota."

"I live there, too. Uh, you know, there aren't any cats--like you--in Sarasota."

She looked blank, then suspicious. "Are you going to tell me it's filled with anthropomorphic humans?"

"'Anthropomorphic humans?'" I repeated incredulously. "'Anthro' means human."

"It means cat. 'Anthropomorphic' is in the shape of a cat." She buried her face in her hands. "You're going to tell me Sarasota is filled with anthropomorphic humans."

"Just like the rest of the world."

"Oh, God," she said, dragging the last word out into a wail. "This has got to be a--a dream."

"That's what I think. Or thought. Or hope." I cleared my throat. "But I think I'm dreaming you."

"Then am I in a world of humans like you, or are you in a world of cats like me?" she said.

As someone who spends too much time reading science fiction, I had already been making up an explanation: my mysterious cat-person had entered our world, without realizing it, from a parallel earth where everything was just like it is here, except that cats and humans are somehow reversed. It hadn't occurred to me that if everything that would have to be real for that to happen really was real, it could work both ways. I shoved the idea to the back of my mind; if I let it stay up front I'd lose the rationality I had now, and I suspected I'd need all of it.

"Your car broke down somewhere on this road?"

"It was running out of gas."

"I'm the first person you flagged down?"

She nodded affirmatively.

"If your car's ahead of me, then why were you walking on this side of the road, flagging down people travelling toward it?"

"The only gas station I know of is this way. A Union 71. Uh, and you were driving down the wrong side of the road."

She was right about the gas station, if five numbers off. "It's at least ten miles to it. I have a full gas can in the car. I can take you back to your car and give you enough to get to the gas station. You have money?"

"Yes--uh, well, I don't know." She held out a bill, her hand shaking slightly. She didn't flinch when I walked over and took it, which made me feel absurdly relieved. The back of her hand--paw?-- was furry, but the palm was a pad. Just like a cat's. I shook my head and examined the fiver she had given me, then pulled out my own wallet, took one out, and silently handed both of them to her.

The layout was identical down to the faint multicolor ink "weaving" under the green, the signatures and serial numbers in the right place. Both bills were series 1986. Hers had a different treasurer's signature on it. The figures in the two portraits had different names but might almost have been illustrations of the same president, one as a bearded human, the other as a bewhiskered lion. Their eyes were the same.

"What slaves did he free?" I asked wryly.

She stared at the two bills. "Cheetah."

I took back my bill and put it back in my wallet, looking down at the ground, at my car's tires, at her feet--great set of gams ya got there, considerin' you're a goddamn cat. I wished very strongly for that cup of coffee.

"Well." I opened the driver's side door, got in, and unlocked the passenger side.

She leaned against the side of the car, big eyes closed. "One of us shouldn't be here."

"Either way, you can't leave your car where it is now."

She wasn't listening; her ears were pricked up (really pricked up, for God's sake), her body taut, staring into the distance. Then I heard it--an approaching car. The lights came around a curve in the distance; I stuck my head out of my window and watched it approach as closely as she did.

The lights came closer, agonizingly slowly, and resolved into the headlamps of an old pickup truck. It was on the left side of the road.

My heart skipped a beat, then another, as the truck drifted serenely into the other lane, back again, and back to the right once more. Then I heard the cat's soft whimper. The truck rambled by at about forty per. The driver was a textbook Florida redneck down to the plaid shirt and Budweiser baseball cap, and he was quite human.

She watched the truck recede into the distance, and was silent for a long time. Then the door opened and she got in without speaking. Her hands were shaking so much she could barely fasten the seatbelt.

I started the engine and pulled back onto the road. "Tell me when we get close." I turned the radio on, softly this time; whispers of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" drifted through the cabin.

About ten minutes up the road, she said, her voice just barely audible over the music, "Slow down."

I did so. We came to a dirt path heading into... nothing. "Down here."

"This isn't a road," I said, pulling over to the side and stopping the engine. I reached in the back and pulled out the gas can.

"I got my car down with no problem."

The path was barely wide enough for two people walking side by side; it stopped about twenty feet away from the road, next to a lonely power meter inexplicably attached to a telephone pole. There was an outlet at the base of the pole. Was the meter for the outlet? I shook my head; the mysteries of Florida Power & Light were not meant for mortal comprehension.

"This way," she said. She had walked past the end of the road, through a maze-like passage between stands of cabbage palms, past a clump of the ugliest excuse for oak trees I've ever seen and into a pristine field of weeds. The weeds looked like they hadn't seen human (or whatever) visitors for millennia. Their peace had come to an abrupt end, however, when the cat had parked her Porsche on top of them.

"That's your car?" I said. It was a 928S4, metallic blue, sparkling in the moonlight, windows tinted to near blackness. "You drove an eighty-thousand dollar car into the middle of a cabbage palm thicket?"

"It was better than leaving it alone in the worst part of Florida!"

"This is far from the worst part." I walked over to it. "Can you unlock the gas filler?"

She did so. I removed the cap and emptied my gas can into her tank, then closed everything back up.

"Okay. That's not enough to get where you're going--just to the gas station. I'll have to pay for you."

"I don't know where I'm going after the gas station!"

I froze, almost hitting myself in the head with the gas can. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She didn't have any parents to go to in this world's Sarasota.

I rubbed my head. "Maybe you should follow me home, and we can try to figure out what to do in the morning."

"Aren't you on your way somewhere?"

"Nowhere important," I said with a shrug. "It's only a half-hour or so back to my apartment."

She shook her head and fell silent.

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"No," she said. She opened her door and sighed, her tail stirring the air languidly, then got in.

"Oh," I said. She paused. "What's your name?"

"Reli." She rhymed it with Kelly.

"I'm Spencer," I said.

"Spencer," she repeated. She smiled slightly, not long enough to hide the terror still under the surface, then closed the door and started her engine. Something glinted in the brush near the car for a moment as the lights hit it, perhaps the eyes of some startled animal.

I walked back to my car, got it going and turned around; by the time I hit the pavement, her 928S4 was right behind me. Thankfully, she didn't seem to have any problem staying on the right side of the road.

It was about ten minutes later when we pulled into the gas station. I went inside and paid for ten gallons, then went back out and pumped the gas for Reli, who stayed in her car.

As I returned the nozzle to the pump, she rolled down her window. "Thank you," she said.

"This isn't that much," I said.

"Really? What would have happened if someone else had found me?" she asked. "Would they have helped, or would they have taken me to a lab somewhere?"

"I don't know," I said. "What would have happened if I had been the one in the wrong world?"

"I'd be the one taking you home." She smiled.

I smiled back awkwardly. Then I got in my car and pulled back onto 72, heading back toward Sarasota, the radio still on and a Porsche with a driver from another world following at four car-lengths.

About forty minutes later, we sat down on the floor in front of the couch--a place everyone seems to find more comfortable than the couch itself--and regarded each other over cups of hot chocolate: a twenty-three year old liberal arts major and the Catwoman from Mars.

Reli had a small overnight bag with her, since she had packed for her trip to her parents' house. "They've got to be wondering where I am now," she said softly, ears down.

"Only if time moves the same speed in your world as it does here. Maybe you'll go back and no time will have passed."

"But I'm not from a different world, not really, am I?" She looked across at me, hands on her knees, big eyes even bigger. "It's the same world. But your species and mine are in two different... places."

"I suppose so." I stared down into my mug. "Evolutionarily, that doesn't make much sense. Cats don't have the same niche we do. I mean, primates are omnivores, cats are--"

"Omnivores," she said. "Cats are omnivores. And humans don't have opposable thumbs like we do."

"Primates don't make tools?"

She shook her head wonderingly.

"So our two worlds--dimensions, whatever--shared the same planet, and the same evolution except for a few changes millions of years ago. Very, very minor changes."

Reli sipped her hot chocolate, getting a bit of foam on her nose. She flicked it off with a finger, then set the mug down on the coffee table and hugged her legs to her chest. "Does this happen with every animal? A different earth with a different dominant species? All in the same time and place but separated by... something else?"

"Well, the question we need to worry about is how you managed to cross that something else, so we can figure out how to get you back." I stood up and stretched. "The only thing you did different on this trip was to pull off in that weed patch, wasn't it?"

She nodded. "It seems pretty incredible to think that did it, though."

"Chaos theory in action? I don't know. It's the only clue we have to go on. Right now, we both need some sleep. At least I do."

Reli sighed and nodded again. "I do, yes." She stretched, yawning wide, and rose to her feet, picking up her bag.

"You can take the bed. I'll sleep on the couch."

She walked to the open bedroom door, movement silent and fluidly graceful. "You don't have to do that."

"Oh, it's not a problem."

"Well, your bed looks like it's big enough for two."

I stared at her, momentarily wordless.

Reli looked baffled in return for a second, then put a hand on her hip. "I just mean sleeping," she said, sounding either amused at me or exasperated. Or both. "We are two different species."

"Yes, uh, well." I cleared my throat. "We're also two different sexes, and we just met, and... and."

"And it'd violate your sense of propriety." Definitely amused now.

I sighed. "I suppose so, yes. Yes."

She stepped in the bedroom and closed the door halfway, looking back over her shoulder with a tired smile. "I'm not sure whether to be shocked or flattered, Spencer." She shut the door completely.

Neither am I, I thought to myself. I didn't want Reli to think I thought she was attractive--the last thing she needed was the worry that not only was she out of her normal reality, she was trapped there with a cartoon human pervert.

I finished my own cup of chocolate, dropped both mugs into the kitchen sink and threw myself onto the couch.

About five minutes later, I heard a scratching at the door. I opened it and Belladonna raced in, heading toward the food cabinet and looking at it impatiently. I sighed, locked the front door, fed the damn cat a midnight snack and threw myself onto the couch again. Belladonna followed suit by throwing herself onto my chest, purring loudly.

I didn't want the Siamese's attention right then, but I've never been able to resist a purring cat, so I kissed her on the nose and stroked her back. Then I started to wonder if Reli's fur would feel the same way. I couldn't imagine what her reaction would be if I asked to pet her, but I didn't think it would be very pleasant.

I pushed Donna aside and rolled over, my face against the back of the couch. My sleep was fitful, filled with disturbing dreams I couldn't remember clearly.

I woke up at about eight the next morning. It was a Saturday; usually I wasn't up on weekends until noon, but I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. The Siamese watched me from the coffee table, still looking reproachful over being pushed off the couch.

I put on some coffee and rummaged through the refrigerator, producing four eggs and some bacon. Reli came out just after I had brought in the paper, poured myself a cup and sat down on the couch. She didn't say anything, but just sat beside me, one leg drawn up on the couch and the other stretched out alongside it, and rubbed her eyes sleepily.

Her hair was a mess and her fur was ruffled, the blue nightgown she was wearing tied loosely around her waist, falling off one shoulder and almost--not quite--exposing one breast, the bottom riding high up on one thigh. She didn't appear to be conscious of the pose, but I abruptly found myself shivering, reacting in a way that should clearly have been reserved for human women--and ones doing far steamier things than just sitting with one leg nearly touching mine. Reli didn't notice my physical reaction, but when I did, I cleverly responded by dropping my coffee cup into my lap. "Shit," I said suavely, jumping away from the couch.

"God, are you all right?" Reli jumped up, holding me steady.

"I'm fine," I said, running to the bathroom and pulling off the pants. Fine, fine. Except for a sudden, serious lust for a cat-woman, I'm perfectly normal. Fine.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Reli's voice came from outside the door.

"Yes, I'm perfectly n... fine," I gritted, slipping into another pair of underwear and pants. When I stepped out again, Reli was trying to keep a concerned expression on her face but was clearly about to burst out laughing. I hurried past her to the kitchen, hoping my face wasn't the bright red it felt.

"Do you mind if I get some coffee?" she asked, leisurely following me.

"No." I watched her pour the cup and head back to the couch.

I started to feel angry with myself, angry for finding the conversation last night so easy, angry for the thoughts of attraction I'd had at first sight of. Angry that I was angry over them. I refuse to believe in love at first sight. I was all too aware that what I had just felt had a heaping measure of lust, even if my mind was stubbornly insisting there was more to it.

If Reli could have known what was going through my mind then, would she have been repulsed?

Would she be right to?

I fixed breakfast quickly, bringing out both plates of bacon and eggs and setting them on the coffee table. By this time, Reli had dressed, in a loose, sleeveless light blue blouse and tight grey pants that were almost, but not quite, jeans. They looked like denim but they were lighter, woven loosely to let air circulate through her fur. Light filtered through the few parts not hugging her curves.

"You cook?" she said, sounding genuinely taken aback.

"Not much, but some guys can use more than the microwave," I said with a grin.

She laughed, looking self-conscious. "Some girls can't. Thank you." She took the plate and started to eat.

Then she froze. Belladonna, had emerged from the utility room and was heading toward the couch.

"That's--a cat, isn't it?" she whispered.

I nodded. Donna wandered up to Reli, who remained stock still, and looked up and yowled inquiringly. The big cat reached down to the little one with a trembling hand and stroked it timidly. The Siamese started purring.

"She doesn't see you as an animal, I guess," I said. "You're just a different kind of person."

Reli looked up. "And what about you?"

I looked down, biting back hordes of responses from flippant one-liners to sudden confessions of... strong like. "I think she's very perceptive."

Reli considered the response, then smiled. I breathed a silent sigh of relief. "You like cats?"

"I've always liked cats," I said. "Belladonna takes advantage of that way too often."

Reli raised her eyebrows.

I laughed. "She can be a hell of a nuisance sometimes. But when she rubs up against me and starts purring, she has her way with me every time."

She laughed, too. "Mihi is like that. Always into everything. But his skin is so soft..." She trailed off, then shook her head and pushed the plate away. "When should we be leaving?"

"As soon as you're ready," I said.

If any of my neighbors in the apartment noticed the unusual sight Reli presented, walking in the bright Florida summer sun to a car that easily cost three times any other vehicle on the lot, they made no comment. Most of them probably wouldn't be up before noon on Saturday, either.

"I suppose you wouldn't like to race there," she said as she got in her car.

"Yeah, right," I snorted, dropping into my Stanza. It might make twice the MPG hers did, but it'd have trouble taking on a Ford Escort.

The drive out was uneventful. I'm not sure what I was expecting in the way of events, of course. The road between Myakka and the mysterious patch was unusually busy; we must have seen over a dozen cars in the near-hour long trip.

Both of us parked in the glade itself. Reli navigated the cabbage palms at twice the speed I did and didn't disturb a single frond.

"So now what?" she said when I got out of my car.

"We look for something weird." I scanned around briefly. Yep, looked like an ugly weed patch to me.

"This is where your car stopped yesterday?" I pointed to a flattened area of grass by a stand of trees. "Looks like you hit something."

"It was dark. I hit two things, a cabbage palm and something else. What was it?"

I nudged a splintered tree stump with my shoe. The stump was about a foot wide and fragmented, a rotting chunk lying on its side with two or three roots still anchored, the others sticking straight up. "Old oak tree, probably hit by lightning decades ago. All it had was this stump."

"Oak trees live a long time, don't they?" She bent down by the stump. "This one would have had to been very old to be that wide."

"Hundreds of years."

"And it's been dead for a long time since. She brushed at the dirt where the stump had been. "Look at this."

I knelt and looked down at the dirt. She had brushed the remaining sand and wood chips off of a highly polished, silvery-black disc about a half-foot across; a straight line was engraved from one side to the other, through the center. "It looks like a solar cell," I said after a moment.

"Those are fragile, aren't they?"

"Uh.... yes," I said, trying to figure out where she was going.

"This isn't. And I think it goes down quite a way." She pulled back from it and looked up at me. "This thing hadn't seen light for five or six hundred years until last night's moon."

I thought for a moment. "Did you hit the cabbage palm before or after you hit this?"

"Before."

"How soon?"

"Just a second."

"Okay. You were coming this way"--I traced back along the path toward the road--"so it would have to be along this line. Left or right side?"

"Uh... left, just like the stump."

I looked along the line of cabbage palms she should have run into. All were perfectly healthy. "You see the one you hit?"

She stood up. "I remember seeing it in my rearview mirror." She went over to one of the palms and looked at it. "This one, I think." She looked back at me, confused.

"You hit the cabbage palm in your dimension. You hit the oak stump in this one. Or in both."

"Then the solar cell--or whatever--brought me here?"

"We can't convict it yet, but there's a whole lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to it. Drive back over it."

"What?"

"Drive back over it."

She looked at me, then got in her car and carefully rolled over the disc. Nothing happened.

"Hmm," I repeated. "I'm willing to bet this thing's the trigger. Some condition isn't being met."

"Maybe it really is a solar cell," she said. "It gathers power during the day and you can only use it at night."

"It hadn't seen any sun for hundreds of years when you hit it last night," I pointed out.

"So maybe it just doesn't run during the day."

I sighed. "This raises a whole bunch of questions. Who built this? When? Why? Does it go anywhere else?"

"You think we can find any of those answers?" She crossed her arms.

"I don't know." I slumped against my car.

Reli crossed over to me and put her arm around my shoulder. I tried not to stiffen. "Well, if we're going to wait until the evening to try this again, I don't want to stay here," she said. She unfairly used the three inches or so she had on me to push me toward her car, then opened the left side door for me.

"What do you have in mind?" I said, looking around the cabin. I expected to be facing the steering wheel and control panel, but there they all were on the right side. I noticed a Passport radar detector--no, something that looked just like one but in a milk-white case--clipped to the driver's visor. Reli climbed in and shut her door, somehow starting the ignition and fastening her seatbelt in one motion.

"As long as I'm on a parallel dimension, I'd like to see more of it than a cow pasture," she said. The windows rolled up electrically, and the Porsche made its bumpy way back to the road. "I want to see your West Palm Beach."

I fastened my seatbelt, then looked at her in surprise. "Don't you think that's a little... dangerous?"

"Probably," she said.

"I'm being serious, Reli. What do you plan to do if a cop or some National Enquirer-reading redneck cruises by and sees you?"

"They can't see through the tint." She stopped the car on the road, pointed east.

"What if they do?"

She brushed back her hair and smiled a beautiful, innocent smile at me as she shifted into first. Then she floored the engine and popped the clutch. I was slammed back into the seat, my sight dimming momentarily; the only sensation was the sound of squealing rubber. When my vision returned a few seconds later, the speedometer was at 80 and still climbing faster than mine did off the starting line. "We outrun them," Reli said, reaching up and clicking on the radar detector.

"Help," I said, checking my belt again. Reli leveled off her speed at 130. "Is that thing in miles per hour?"

"Yes."

I looked out the window. The cypress swamp was almost a blur; I looked back to see the rear end of a pickup truck approaching in our lane. The turn signal came on a split second before Reli switched lanes; there was just enough time to see the face of a befuddled hick behind the wheel before we were back in the correct lane and the front of the truck was rapidly receding in the rearview mirror.

"You know, we just passed him with a greater relative speed than his actual one."

Reli flashed me an amused isn't it great? expression.

"Okay, fine," I sighed. "Do you drive like this all the time?"

"It makes the road go by faster."

Yes, by a factor of two. I stared back out at the window. Well, I had always fantasized about a car that could go that fast; after getting over the shock of actually doing it, I decided my imagination hadn't done the ride justice.

The blur outside became brighter and wind started rushing through the cabin as the window silently slid down. Reli had opened both of them fully.

"Are you nuts?" I shouted over the wind.

Reli's hair whipped behind her in the wind, framing her golden face in chocolate brown silk. "When we get to a town, I'll close the windows. I promise." She smiled that wonderful mischievous smile again, and I mentally kicked myself for finding her fanglike canines cute.

"What are you going to do once you get there?"

"I don't know. I thought we could drive by where I live. At least, where I should be living." Her expression grew distant. "I suppose this is pretty silly, isn't it? But I don't want to think about tonight."

"About going back?" I said with surprise.

"About not going back. We don't really know if that thing opened a gateway, or if it'll be that simple to go through it again. We don't know how or why I got here."

"Crossing dimensions should violate a few physical laws," I said. I had been following her, honestly, but somewhere at the word "gateway" I took a tangential road. So I don't think linearly.

"Why?"

"If you're from a different universe, you shouldn't be able to get here without an equivalent amount of matter or energy being transferred the other way."

"Well, I'm here. Maybe it doesn't work that way."

"I think it has to work that way."

"Maybe I'm not from a different universe in that sense. Or maybe conservation of energy is about the total in all the universes, not just one. Or maybe it just doesn't work the way you and I think." She laughed. "Physical laws are only immutable until the day somebody pops out, proves them wrong and makes the next generation develop the next set of immutable laws. Well, here I am."

"Then you know about conservation of energy?"

She snorted. "Yes. And quantum mechanics, relativity, tachyon engines."

I started. "Tachyon engines?"

"Just kidding." She grinned. "I saw your books and figured you were a science fiction fan."

I rolled up my window and leaned my side against the door, my right knee nearly touching the gearshift as I looked at her. "Are you?"

"I don't know." She rolled up her window, too, and the cabin quieted. "A lot of what I've tried to read is like only big ideas--there's no character development, no romance. That's fine for an adventure game but not so great for a story."

"You play computer games, too."

She shrugged. "Some, yeah."

I sighed faintly and looked out the window again. This was so unfair, it had to prove there was a God, and that He had one damn sick sense of humor.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." I shook my head and smiled a little. "Earlier you said, 'how or why I got here,' didn't you?"

"Yes. I guess 'why' sounds odd, but I think everything happens for a reason."

"Then why do you think you're here?"

"I don't know." She flicked the wheel to one side and back again, passing a couple in a Tercel who watched the Porsche rocket past as if it had flown off the last reel of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. "Maybe I won't know until I get back. Maybe I'll find out before I leave." Her voice was cheerful, but she was biting her lower lip, a shadow visible behind her bright eyes again: what if she couldn't leave?

We drove on in silence, now heading down SR 70. When we reached Arcadia's city limits she dropped down to 65 for the 45 mph zone. It felt as if we were standing still.

"Do you mind if I put on some music?"

"What?" I looked over at Reli. She was holding a compact disc in one hand. I noticed, for the first time, her fingernails were pointed and thick, developing into near-claws at the end. "Weird question. Are your claws retractable?"

She lowered the disc and gave me a look, ears flattening slightly. "I don't have claws."

"Sorry, and I'll take that as a no. Go right ahead. Please."

Reli looked at me a moment longer and shook her head, then put the disc into the stereo. The system's brand name was "Telan-QWI"; it was colored snow-white, with translucent yellow buttons. It only appeared to have one band, labeled "KMt," and had more controls than some mixing decks I've seen. Whoever Telan-QWI was, I suspected their human-world counterpart only advertised in obscure audiophile magazines and charged more for a set of speakers than I'd make in two or three months at the convenience store.

The stereo's display came to life with an unsettlingly normal LCD display reading "12 Tr 63:47," followed shortly by "1 Tr 0:00." The track timer started running and the cabin suddenly boomed with a chord from a pipe organ. A violin started very softly under the organ, playing low notes against the unchanging hollowness of the pipes, then rose in an incredibly intricate, haunting melody. The notes of the organ started to fade away as the violin's last bars were repeated again an octave lower and at twice the tempo over a seat-shaking drum opening. Two measures later the guitar and synthesizer started, picking up the riff. The percussion slid into a drum line that would have made Neal Peart break into a cold sweat.

"I don't know if you like this kind of music," Reli said, reaching to turn down the volume. The lead vocal began, female, a low, strong voice with Bowie's phrasing, starting to sing of castles and storms and the frailty of humans--or cats--with perfect clarity.

I reached out to intercept her hand. "You don't have to turn it down. Whoever they are, they're incredible. The drummer is amazing." My palm pushed across the back of her hand for an instant; the fur was Persian soft.

She stared at our two hands without moving hers, her mouth slightly open, and I saw a flash of her tongue. Then she dropped her hand to the gearshift and seemed to almost pull herself back to the car, staring fixedly out the windshield. "Yes, she is. They're called Obsidian Rose."

I watched Reli's face, hardly daring to breathe. Was that a reaction to our touch? Had it even happened? If it had, and it was...

But how could she be attracted to a human? How could you be attracted to a cat, blockhead? Maybe both of you are perverts. My mind chased its own tail, or perhaps chased Reli's, for long minutes as the road flew by.

We were in West Palm Beach before the Obsidian Rose album finished. I'd never have dreamed of making it across the state in ninety-odd minutes, but then again, I'd never have averaged 110 miles per.

"So where are we going?" It was the first thing either of us had said since that electric touch; she seemed to have been thrown into thought over it as much as I was.

"I live in Briarwood. It's off of U.S. 1. Or at least, it is in my West Palm." She looked over at me worriedly.

"It is here, too." It wasn't the most expensive subdivision in West Palm Beach, not by a long shot, but that still meant they charged almost as much for a bare lot as the places I was used to would charge for a house. "You don't live alone here, do you?"

She sighed. "My parents retired to Sarasota when I went to college, so the place is only occupied three months every year. Although now I'm out of school, so I guess it has a permanent resident."

"And they gave you the old house."

"As long as I take care of it."

"Must be nice." We turned onto U.S. 1, now firmly surrounded by traffic. Few spared the car more than a second glance; Reli's confidence in her window tinting appeared well-placed.

"They bought me the car two summers ago." She sighed. "They'll give me anything money can buy."

I laughed. "Most people wouldn't say that was so bad, Reli."

"I don't want to be a rich bitch," she snarled. The unexpected tone made me want to back the window. "That's what they call me at school. Not to my face, but I hear about it.

"I don't know anything useful." She was suddenly talking faster, angrily. "I couldn't have made breakfast this morning like you did, you know that? If this thing gets a flat tire, I can't change it. My parents couldn't do it, either. They'd just pay somebody to. Who needs skills when you can buy people who'll have them for you?" She threw herself down in the driver's seat, brow furrowed. I could almost see two little trails of steam rising from her flattened ears.

"Your life can't be all that bad. I can only dream of doing the things you probably take for granted."

"That's my point, Spencer. I don't want to be taking them for granted." Her voice was almost a hiss. "People I want to be friends with don't trust me, because they think I'm looking down on them for not being in my social class. The people who are in my social class are shallow idiots. And the only difference between them and me is that they like being shallow idiots."

"Take it easy," I said, reaching out and stroking one of her shoulders. The moment I touched her fur I felt the electricity again, but I willed it away; this wasn't the time. "Being rich doesn't mean you have to be a shallow idiot."

"How many rich people do you know?"

"I don't know."

"A few? How many of them are interesting?"

"Uh--"

"I mean, really interesting. How many of them are fun to be with? How many would you go looking for when you wanted to do something? How many of them do you have fun with just being around? None."

I knew what I wanted to say, but a little voice inside my head warned me to keep my mouth shut. I took a deep breath and, for once, overrode my social risk avoidance system. "That's not true, Reli. I'm with one right now."

Reli looked startled. Then, for a few seconds, the most adorable shade of red shone through the fur on her muzzle, and she smiled, taking my hand in hers and squeezing lightly for a moment. "Thank you."

It was only ten more minutes to Briarwood, and another five minutes of driving down gently curving streets lined with expensive, well-manicured homes that were all one of three basic shapes. There are a lot of things I like about Florida, but architectural originality isn't one of our strong points.

We stopped in front of an obnoxious mint-green home with a two-car garage, a BMW parked in the driveway, and a little kid playing on the lawn. "My God." Reli rolled down her window and stuck her head out, looking at the house. "This is the right address. 2530 Azalea Court. But the house is..."

"Different?"

"Ugly. It's supposed to be shorter than that, with a little garage. Brick, not painted concrete. No stupid arch on the porch." She leaned out further, scrutinizing the humans' aesthetic values and shaking her head sadly.

The little boy, no more than five, was gaping at Reli's visage with an expression of pure, unabashed puzzlement. "You probably shouldn't have the window rolled down like that," I said nervously.

"And they're yuppies, too. Yuppies suck," Reli continued.

The child suddenly ran toward the car, having made a positive ID of the driver. "Kitty!" he called gleefully.

"Kitty?" Reli repeated, glancing down at the child and then at me. The child's mouth dropped open when she spoke.

"It's another word for cat."

"Heathcliff?" the child inquired doubtfully. Reli glanced at me again.

"Not worth the explanation," I sighed. "We should move on before the kid's parents come out."

The boy walked closer to the car and reached up to Reli with both hands. "Kitty," he said again, apparently deciding Reli didn't fit Heathcliff's parameters closely enough. "Kiss kitty cat." He tried to jump into the car.

Reli reached down and lifted the child up with both hands. He promptly kissed her on the nose and tried to pull her hair. She disentangled his hands and licked his cheek, and he made an amazing hiccup/giggle noise and stared at her as if she was the Lady of the Lake handing him Excalibur. Then she set him down and rolled up the window; the car pulled away from the curb silently. He was still visible in the rear window, staring at the car wide-eyed.

"I suppose you think that was kind of silly," she said, smiling.

"The word I was thinking of was 'foolhardy.'" I figured the kid was going to go to his parents, tell them about the pretty cat lady who kissed him and start an awful fight about whether putting him in that accelerated-learning nursery school had done more harm than good. Then I tried, unsuccessfully, not to be jealous of the snotty little brat.

"No harm done," she said.

I grunted.

As we waited at a stoplight to turn back onto U.S. 1, she looked at me. "So now what?"

"I don't know. We could get some lunch." I paused. "No, we couldn't, could we?" I grinned ruefully. "You make an awfully inconvenient date."

She laughed. "Maybe we'll learn how to control the gate and find some world where both my type of cat and your type of human mix without raising eyebrows."

"I don't think there's going to be a world like that."

"Hey, I don't think there's going to be a world like this, but I'm here. At this point anything's possible."

I laughed. "I suppose."

"This place has a drive-up window. What's their food like?" she said, slowing down as we approached a McDonald's.

"You don't have McD's?"

"We have lots of fast food," she said defensively. "I've just never eaten any."

"You're kidding."

Reli poked me in the side. "How's the damn food?"

I squirmed away from her as the poke turned into a tickle. "Quick, cheap, and boring."

"Well, since you're going to have to pay for me, and pay for gas, cheap is good." She swung into the drive through lane about twice as fast as she should have, bringing the car to a stop in front of the speaker so gracefully I didn't even feel a bump. I've always been jealous of people who could do that.

"Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, please?" the speaker said from my side as I rolled down the window. "Just a minute," I responded.

Reli looked at the menu board. "What's a hamburger?"

"Cooked beef patties on a bun. You don't have them, either?"

"Oh. We just call them fry patties. Get me one with cheese?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, turning back towards the speaker. "I'd like two Quarter Pounders with cheese, one with extra pickles, two regular French fries and two large Cokes." Reli pulled forward on the speaker's command.

The man taking the money was busy with another order and barely looked at my hands when he was taking the money. We pulled forward to the second window.

"That's two Quarters, two regular fries, two large Cokes," the girl there said unnecessarily, handing me both Cokes. I tried to block her view of Reli, an attempt that failed miserably when Reli leaned across me to take the sandwich bag.

"Oh, wow!" the clerk said, bending down at the counter to get a closer look. "Are you in some kind of show?"

"Reli!" I started to hiss. She dug her nails into my leg to shut me up. It worked.

"It's a good costume, isn't it?" Reli said smoothly, leaning across me again and smiling, thankfully without showing any teeth.

"That's wild." She handed me the bag containing the fries and burgers. "How'd they make your nose move like that when you speak?"

"Duct tape," she replied cheerfully, pulling away from the booth.

Both the girl and another worker had their heads out the window staring at the car. Reli rolled down her window just enough to stick her arm out and waved at them, then closed both windows.

"Don't do that! And dammit, those are claws!" I snapped, rubbing my leg.

She looked at me and burst out laughing. I did my best to look stern but only made her laugh harder.

"This isn't that bad," she said a few minutes later, nibbling on the Quarter Pounder. She took a sip of her Coke and regarded the cup for a few seconds as if it wasn't quite what she had expected, then downed the rest of the burger in under a minute.

We drove around West Palm a little more, Reli commenting on every sight that wasn't the same as the ones she was used to, then stopped and refilled her tank. I was beginning to be glad I had gotten paid yesterday.

The trip back to Sarasota was quiet; she drove at a more leisurely 75, and I reclined my seat back and dozed off.

When I awoke, the car was stopped; Reli's seat was reclined back, too, and she was turned on her side, facing me. Watching me sleep? She was studying me awfully intently.

I opened my eyes slowly, meeting hers. I became aware of birdsong outside, and the light had the deep amber of dusk. We were back in the glade, by the gateway. Neither of us spoke for what seemed like a full minute.

"Sleep well?" she said softly.

"I did." I sat up; she remained reclined, watching me. "How long have we been here?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes," she said. "I didn't want to wake you up. You've been through almost as much as I have, I guess." She brought her seat up, too, and sighed, looking out the window at the scrub forest. "It's almost time."

"Don't be nervous," I said, patting her shoulder again.

"That's easy to say." She took my hand in both of hers, moving it to her lap. "I'm getting ready to leave, and I still don't know very much about you, Spencer."

"There's not that much to know. I'm a fundamentally boring person." I laughed, although the way she held my hand was making it awfully difficult to concentrate. "I'm a liberal arts major, and I work as a clerk at a convenience store. Hopefully that's not what my degree's preparing me for once I graduate. What else? I don't have that many friends and the ones that I have are weird, in a good way. I read too much science fiction and not enough literature. I'd like to make movies someday, although I don't know if I'd want to write or direct or both. I like driving but can't afford to do it that much on my salary. And that's about it."

"No girlfriend?"

I swallowed, and tried to answer casually. "No... no. A couple dates now and then. I don't feel like I quite fit in the social scene at my college."

"You're too romantic."

I blinked. "What makes you say that?" That was something I'd thought, but only privately; I'd suspected it was more cynicism borne of frustration than an accurate statement.

She cocked her head, smiling. "I don't know. Just an impression. You're very much the old-fashioned gentleman aspiring debutantes profess to be looking for, even though they're more concerned with old-fashioned money than gallantry."

I smiled back. "Are you a debutante?"

"No." She laughed. "I guess I'm not, even when I try." The sun had disappeared behind the line of trees; the moon now shone just above the east horizon.

"Reli," I asked suddenly, "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"No," she replied softly, looking off into the trees. "But I think I believe in love in a day."

We fell silent again. After another minute passed she squeezed my hand and moved it back to my lap, then got out of the car.

I did, too, and walked to the disc, then cautiously touched a finger to it. The disc sparked purple, and I jerked my finger back.

Reli turned abruptly and crossed over to me. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, yeah." I looked around. A few seconds of hunting produced an almost-round rock. I rolled it gently towards the disc. When the rock touched it, the disc glowed purple; as it rolled off, the disc became black again, and the rock became transparent.

Reli stood up and crossed over to stand by me, then walked over to the rock. "Where'd it go?" she suddenly said.

"It's right there," I said. "You're standing by it."

"No, I'm not."

I walked slowly towards her. When I passed the disc, the rock disappeared from my vision. "A-ha," I said. "There's a--a kind of window around the disc." I crossed back over to it. "If I look across the line on the disc as if it was the window's bottom edge, I can see the rock. But from where you are, I can't see it at all."

"That's--" Her gaze sharpened, and she moved towards me, staring at the "window." Then she gasped. "I can see the cabbage palm."

I crossed over to her side and looked in the direction she was pointing. The view was the same as it had been on the disc's other side looking towards the road, except that now the ghostly image of a squashed cabbage palm was superimposed over one of the whole ones.

"Then that is it," I said excitedly. "All you have to do to get back is to drive over the disc in that direction!"

She smiled, then bit her lip. "Do humans have the ability to make something like this? A gateway between worlds?"

"Not that I know of."

She shook her head slowly. "Neither do cats."

"Then someone--else built it, I guess," I said. "Like I said yesterday, there's a lot of questions. Like you said, we're not going to find most of the answers. But we found the important one."

Reli looked at me, then stepped toward the cabbage palm, one foot coming down firmly on the disk. It flashed purple. As she walked toward the palm, she became as insubstantial as the rock; she walked over to the ghostly squashed palm and pulled off a transparent frond, then walked back to me and placed her foot on the disc again. It glowed green as she stepped through, now solid. She handed me the frond silently, then walked back to the car and sat down in the grass. I realized she was crying.

"What's wrong?" I said, hurrying over beside her.

She looked straight into my eyes, and I didn't stop myself from falling into her liquid green pools this time. "Will we ever see each other again?"

I had to turn away from her gaze to muster enough strength to answer. "If the gate stays open, you could come back through."

"I wouldn't know how to get to your apartment," she said with a despairing laugh.

I looked back up and wiped a tear away with a finger, then hugged her awkwardly. "I'll visit you, then."

"We can't know, though," she breathed. "We can't know."

When we drew apart, she looked up at the moon for a long breath, then closed her eyes, muzzle still pointed upward, and clenched her fists. "Spencer," she said, motionless.

"Yes?"

"Something... you said, about your cat. About Belladonna." She abruptly came to life, kicking off her shoes and kneeling in front of me, leaning forward with her hands to either side of my legs. The moon was a backdrop to her, the light fringing her in a halo and shining through her hair as it cascaded over her shoulders, and she was achingly beautiful. I gave up trying to talk myself out of being attracted to her, and even stopped trying to rationalize it. I just nodded, barely perceptibly.

Reli slid closer, leg pressing against my own, and traced her hands along my arms, then down my back, almost bringing her body against me. She shifted up slightly and cupped one hand against my head, tilting it back to bring my lips a hair's breadth away from hers. "Will rubbing up against you and purring," she whispered, "let me have my way with you?"

I felt my mind short-circuit.

Part of me knew I wasn't romantic as much as afraid. That part of me knew philosophical and intellectual aloofness had been my salvation through a childhood as an outsider. That part of me knew if I gave up that separation, that emotional distance, I wouldn't get it back. That part of me was the part screaming most loudly now. Push her away. Tell her she's a cat and you're a human--you couldn't ask for a better excuse, for Christ's sake! That part of me had never been so panicked.

The rest of me stared at Reli open-mouthed for an eternity of seconds, then reached up to her shoulders, pushing my fingers into her thick neck fur, and gently pulled her down on top of me.

It is impossible to describe how sensual that kiss was. It was long, extremely physical, licking and biting, rough feline tongue against smooth human... well, never mind.

The exact details of what came afterward I'll leave to your imagination. She does purr, quite loudly.

After we were exhausted, we lay in each other's arms, my head nestled against her breasts, one of her legs and her tail around my waist. We stayed that way, just the moonlight and her soft purr, for hours.

I was the first to move. The moon was getting low in the horizon. "If you're going to leave, you're going to have to do it soon," I said hoarsely.

She smiled up at me, sadly, and nodded. She rose gracefully to her feet and stretched, tail lashing.

We dressed in silence, until Reli turned and faced me. "I'll come back if I can. You know that."

"I do," I said, hugging her. "And I mean what I said about visiting you." The embrace turned into one last passionate kiss.

Both of us said "I love you" at the same time.

Reli climbed into the Porsche and started the engine, rolling down the window. "I'll be visiting my parents again in a month."

"You didn't visit them this time."

Her face clouded, then she laughed almost hysterically. "I don't think they'd believe me if I told them why." She put the car into gear.

"Goodbye, love."

"For now." She blew me a kiss.

I blew it back.

The car rolled forward. The front left tire touched the disc, followed by the rear left; it flashed purple twice, and the car became insubstantial. I kept watching as the ghostly Porsche bumped its way toward a different S.R. 72. A few minutes after that, the first rays of sunlight appeared, and the superimposed view of the squashed cabbage palm winked out. I studied the disc a moment, then carefully covered it with the remains of the stump that had hidden it for centuries.

Reli proved to have had a better sense of place than I did; it took me nearly all of a night the following weekend to find the glade again. I uncovered the disc, wanting to see if I could learn anything more about it--yet nervous that experimenting with it might screw something up.

But I didn't get the chance. The squashed cabbage palm didn't appear.

I touched the disc with my fingers. Nothing. No sparks, no flash of purple. I smacked it with my fist. The only effect was a shooting pain up my knuckles.

"Oh, no," I muttered. Just covering it up again couldn't have broken it, could it?

I walked purposefully over the disc, stomping on its surface as I went; it remained dark. I tried again a dozen times before giving up and sitting down next to it.

Before I knew it I was crying, harder than I had since elementary school. I wondered if, in the same glade in a different reality, a beautiful furred woman was sitting alone crying, too.

The gate was temporary, once-only magic. Poetically that made the most sense, didn't it? Fantasies aren't meant to be permanent. And that's surely what it had been--a woman of my dreams, even dreams I'd never before dreamt, could only exist in dreams.

Maybe it hadn't happened at all. I'd thought it was a dream from the start. The disc did look an awful lot like a survey marker, didn't it? No impossible science, no wild magic. Just inert metal stuck in an unusual place, that I'd found tonight by a happenstance that matched the dream.

That very vivid dream, one I could remember every word from, every sight. Every touch.

I drove back home, numb, and didn't go out driving again. Driving for its own sake had lost its charm.

Weeks passed by. Two, three, a month. I kept the dream out of my head by keeping everything out. My studies and work suffered, but I'd squeak by. I always did.

Then, cleaning out my car, I found a five-dollar bill with a picture of a lion on it.

It took me a week to convince myself to go back to the glade, almost two months after the night Reli had flagged me down. The moon was again one day away from full.

I approached the disc and touched it in the fading sunlight. Again, nothing. I sat down heavily and watched the moon rise.

When the first moonbeam hit the disc, the squashed cabbage palm flickered into sight.

I stared at the ghostly image, trembling, then got to my feet and stepped solidly onto the disc. I held there a moment, then stepped off it, heading toward the cabbage palm.

And then it was solid.

I passed by it and made my way toward the road, stopping about ten feet away where I could crouch hidden in bushes. It took nearly ten minutes for a pickup to pass by. It was driven by an old man in a Budweiser cap, a plaid shirt... and grey fur.

The gate is on a lunar cycle. I'm guessing it remains open from the day before the full moon to the day after. Why? I don't know, and I don't know how to find out. I'm open to suggestions, but for now all the questions I had at first are still there. Maybe the gate goes to other worlds if you know how to set it. Maybe there's a network of them. Maybe all the Earths are somebody's experiment, and this is how they keep tabs on their subjects.

I admit it. Right now I'm not as interested in the why as I ought to be. Just as long as it keeps working.

After crossing back into this world, I headed home and got a good night's sleep, then woke up today--the day of the full moon.

My car can make it to West Palm Beach and back on a full tank of gas--one nice thing about underpowered Japanese imports. I blew a lot of money on window tint this morning and filled the tank this afternoon. When the sun sets, I'm heading back down to the other coast, to 2530 Azalea Court in Briarwood. Except not our Briarwood.

It should give me a day there. Next time she or I could spend two full days in the other's world. Of course, if I miss the window this time--or I'm wrong about its length--then I'd have to spend a month stuck inside at 2530 Azalea Court. It'd screw up my classes this semester, and I'd surely lose my wage slave job.

I can imagine worse things.

While I'm there, I need to make a copy of the Obsidian Rose album, too. For long road trips you should always have the right travelling music.