Chapter 17

I was holding my breath as I looked back and forth between Lisa and the screen. Brock pressed the mouse button and time seemed to slow down; the screen changed to showing the 'Active Temp Deltas' box was empty, and for the longest instant Lisa, now tensed with her eyes squeezed shut, was unchanged.

Then, at the speed of a camera shutter flick, she was changed. I had been half-expecting my old friends the glow worms to appear, but there was no glow, no wavy lines, and no shimmers of air. Noiselessly and instantly, the cat fur, whiskers, and ear changes were gone, replaced with a brown-skinned girl that looked Puerto Rican or Dominican. Even with no makeup and mussed hair, she was extraordinarily attractive. I could see that her face had been the model, if you will, for the quasi-cat face that she had been wearing, but as I looked at her now it was obvious that Victor had done something besides paste whiskers and fur on a human face; there had been some sort of further transformation which was now undone.

I realized I was still holding my breath, and I let it out in one long sigh of relief. Brock, Lauren, and Courtney were all staring as well, and Lisa still had her eyes tightly shut. Brock was the first to break the freeze, clenching his fist briefly in a 'yea, me!' gesture of success.

"What happened?" Lisa whispered.

Lauren reached up to the mirror behind the desk and pulled down the towel that had been hanging over it. "Look for yourself," she said happily.

Lisa opened her eyes and saw herself in the mirror. She touched herself wonderingly, patting her face and feeling her ears. She smoothed her hair, rubbed her arms, and then said to herself, "It worked. Gracias a Dios." She started to cry as she crossed herself and whispered, "Santa María, madre de Dios. It worked. Sweet Virgin Mary, you answered me."

Personally, I thought Brock had more to do with it than the Virgin Mary, but I thought now was probably not the time to discuss theology. Lisa was crying and laughing at the same time, turning back to the mirror every few seconds to look again at herself. On the third or fourth iteration she finally noticed Brock grinning happily at her, and leaned over to give him a long hug. "Thank, you, thank you, thank you," she whispered to him. "Thank God for you." She leaned back and gave him a smooch on the lips — not a sensuous kiss, exactly, but a long lip-smack that made his blush return like a beacon. Looking at her, I had no trouble believing she was a sought-after actress and model, and looking at Brock I had a feeling that after that experience, any payments from me for this venture would be strictly a secondary reward.

Both Courtney and Lauren were looking happy as well. "This is great!" Courtney exulted. "I can't believe this was so easy! Can you do me next?"

Brock's happy expression faded a bit. "What do you mean?" he asked slowly.

Courtney caught the change in his mood instantly. "You know," she said carefully. "Fix me. Put me back in the world. Undo what he did. Get me my life back."

"Um..." Brock began.

"What is it, Brock?" I asked him.

"There aren't any other temp deltas active," he said softly. "That was the only one."

"What do you mean?" Courtney asked angrily. "What do you mean? What do you mean?" She was heading rapidly for a fevered explosion, and Brock was looking scared and panicky.

"Brock, can you explain what you're saying?" I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew.

He stuttered a bit, but got out, "The machine is only keeping one other delta active, and I'm pretty sure it's not one that's applied to you. There's nothing for me to turn off."

I sighed. "Remember my analogy about the blond hair?" I asked Courtney. "The temporary and permanent kinds of change? One change is where the act of change is itself part of reality; it has to be maintained. The other is where the machine erases part of reality and writes a new part in with permanent marker." I paused. "I think Brock is reminding us of what we already knew, Courtney. The change to your life was the one done in permanent marker. It doesn't go away just by stopping the machine."

She stood stock-still for a moment, and then started nodding slowly. "Yeah. Yeah." She pursed her lips and exhaled sharply. "Yeah, OK. I knew this was too easy."

Lisa said, "That means no one knows who I am, still, right?"

"I'm pretty sure that's true, Lisa."

Brock was listening to this conversation with increasing puzzlement. "Are you someone famous?" he said at last.

Lisa looked at Courtney and Lauren for a moment and then burst out laughing, a little wildly but genuine laughter. After a moment, the others joined, tentatively at first but the laughter was infectious, and the release of tension needed. I couldn't help a chuckle myself and even Brock, honestly puzzled, was tentatively smiling as he looked from one to the other, finally asking, "What? What's so funny?"

"Brock," I said. "You certainly deserve to hear the whole story. It's going to sound crazy, of course... but you've already seen the impossible happen in front of you, so merely 'crazy' has got to be an easy reach now."

We took turns walking Brock through the story, with Courtney and Lisa relating their own kidnappings and the entertainment careers that made them of interest to Victor, Lauren taking up the story with when and how she was taken, and me stepping in after I met Lauren and our journey to Ithaca. Indulging a flair for the dramatic, I told the story as it happened, letting him think we had met the real Courtney in jail until I got to the part where she blurted out incriminating statements before collapsing. Only then did I backtrack and explain that I had suspected her, and was able to try to gain an advantage — although ultimately Victor had been able to trigger his 'safe mode' protections and escape, with me shooting out the dish in an effort to stop him.

"I knew that as long as he could keep giving commands to the computer, nothing he did would be good news for anyone — except him," I concluded. "I had seconds to decide. If I had waited longer, he might have done something else, or extended his magical reality protection to the dish, or who knows what. I wish I could have preserved the dish and kept Victor locked-down and harmless, but..." I spread my hands apologetically, "I failed to."

Brock was silent, looking back and forth from me to the women, shaking his head in wonder. Finally, he spoke. "This is... so cool."

"That's it?" asked Lisa. "Nothing about how impossible this is, you don't believe it?"

Brock shrugged. "I just saw you change from a cat woman to a... uh... to, uh... to not-a-cat-woman right in front of me."

I nodded. "That would make it a bit easier to jump on board, I guess."

"And I've read a lot of stories where stuff like this happens, and I'm into sci-fi and fantasy," Brock continued. "You ever see Galaxy Quest? I feel like that kid Brandon in the movie who learns that all the advanced sci-fi stuff in the TV series he watches is real, and he goes, 'I knew it!' I've been reading about this kind of thing forever. Maybe that makes me a geek, but guess what?" He paused for breath and then said, "I knew it!"

I had to chuckle. "That puts you ahead of me, Brock."

"Me, too," added Lisa. "I wish I had read about stuff like this. Maybe I wouldn't have gone a little crazy back there when it all happened to me. But I never got into fantasy or sci-fi stuff like that."

Lauren looked at her. "You were on a fantasy show," she said.

"Four episodes, not my greatest résumé builder," she replied. "I can't believe you remember that. I did the worst Jamaican accent ever."