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The Gate of the World By The Professor The first class after Spring Break is always a killer. I don't know who wants to be there less - the students or the instructor. For the students like me, just back from a week on the Florida beaches, the eight o'clock class was sheer torture. For the instructors... well, as I heard one once remark that teaching at the college level would be terrific if it weren't for all those fucking students. At least it was a small and generally interesting class, I tried to tell myself. Literature of the Middle East was one of those courses that was just original enough to keep me awake at eight in the morning, and my Army experience in the Gulf meant I was familiar with things that made the literature come alive. It also gave me a leg up on some of the younger students in the class - a leg I often needed. College had been tough for me. I hadn't been the best student in the world in high school, and it had taken a four-year stint in the Army to get me enough money to even go to college. While those four years had given me the maturity I needed to face college, it had done nothing toward advancing the academic skills I would need. Here I was a senior and I still had to book it like crazy to maintain a respectable grade point. One would think a guy with the name of Horatio Robert Kramer the Fourth would be the scion of a wealthy family, sliding through Harvard as his father and grandfather had done, preparing himself for a career taking over the family business. No such luck for me, though. Horatio Robert Kramer the Third had been a lowly English Literature instructor - not even a professor - here at Dykstra College in Wilmington Station, Kansas. If he and my mother had ever had a four-figure balance in their savings account, it would have been a miracle. When they had both died in a car wreck, I was only twelve. I was raised by my father's brother and his wife, a childless couple who were about as warm as a bowl of oatmeal left out in a blizzard. They fed me, at least, and clothed me after a fashion, but I was more than content to let the Army do all that for me the day after I graduated from high school. I hadn't seen them since. After the Army, Dykstra College was a natural for me. First and most importantly, it was cheap. As the son of a former member of the faculty, I was granted by charter a sweet deal on tuition and room and board. Coupled with the education benefits I had earned in the Army, it meant I could live frugally and go to school without worrying about working so many hours that my studies suffered. Now at last I was in my last semester of college. Only a couple more months until graduation. Dykstra was fortuitously a school with a good reputation as well, so my soon-to-be-conferred degree would have some weight. A solid liberal arts school that was well endowed, it had developed an excellent reputation throughout the Midwest. Of course, the football team sucked, but you can't have everything. And since I wanted to teach literature as my father had and had no talent for football, Dykstra was the perfect place for me. I checked my watch as I heard the Founder's Tower class bells majestically ringing in the warm spring morning air. Damn. It was running slow. I thought I still had five minutes to make it to class. Professor Bordman hated to have students arrive late for his class. And of course, he was never late himself. Until that morning. I rushed into the classroom and saw my fellow students become suddenly alert. Realizing that Professor Bordman was not in the room, I guess they had thought I was he arriving late. Most of the other students looked relieved when they saw it was me. The exception was Walter Dermott. He looked absolutely crushed. I knew why. He and I had been tapped by Professor Bordman to assist him in running the class. That wasn't as dramatic as it sounded. What we were in reality were glorified gophers. Professor Bordman was notoriously forgetting his classroom materials, and Walt and I were often sent to his office to collect his things. That sort of work never hurts one's grades, so we did it gladly. The difference was that I did it because I was asked to do it and Walt did it because he was a brownnoser from the word go. We had guys like Walt in the Army, too. They were usually sanctimonious little toadies who couldn't run the obstacle course in good time or be expected to get their squad mates through a rough exercise. But they could be depended upon to take credit for someone else's work or get one of their squad mates in trouble. In the Army, we had ways of dealing with little shits like Walt. In college, they flourished with little danger of retribution. I nodded nonchalantly at Walt's morning scowl and took my usual seat between Nancy Sunnington and Dave Melisivaro. They both greeted me warmly. Nancy looked like I felt. Her hair was its usual tangle of brown strands and she wore less makeup than Jesse Ventura. She could have been an attractive girl if she chose, but for some reason, she didn't seem to care what she looked like. She had a nice slim figure and a cute face, but the figure was usually covered by a baggy sweatshirt and casual jeans, and the face, as I've already mentioned, was usually devoid of even basic makeup. Nancy could have taken a few lessons from Wyoming Tom. He was the dude who sat in the back of the room, crossing his legs so tightly that his balls had to look like pancakes. He did wear makeup. Oh, it was subtle and all that, but with the black leather pants and silky black shirts he always wore, I was sure he bought his underwear out of the Victoria's Secret catalogue. Nobody seemed to know much about Tom. The guys avoided him and the girls were a little envious of him, I think. Now as for Dave Melisivaro on my left, he was a kick. Dave had flunked out of Rutgers a couple of years earlier and had spent the time out of school crewing a sailboat for tourists in the Caribbean. Tall, good looking, and personable, he added a little excitement to the class, especially when he got Walt's goat. I really liked Dave. We were actually about the same age, Dave just a year younger than me. We had enjoyed a few beers together over the semester, being the only two in the class old enough to hit the bars. I knew he came from a wealthy family in New Jersey and that the only reason he was even in school was the ten million he would inherit at the age of twenty-five - if he had or was working toward a college degree, that is. "Good break?" Dave asked. He was a man of few words. "Great," I replied in kind. "Florida beaches. You?" He shrugged. "Bahamas. Atlantis Resort." Money talks. "So where is Professor Bordman?" Nancy asked, slumping down into her seat in a most unfeminine manner. "He'll be here," Walt said haughtily, as if he knew something we didn't. I knew he had no idea either, but that was Walt for you. But he didn't show. After ten minutes, everyone in the small class was shuffling about nervously. Professor Bordman just never missed a class, even when he was ill. "How long do we have to wait for him?" Lori Wilbert, the cute little blonde who sat behind Walt asked. "As long as it takes," Walt informed her imperiously. "Bullshit, Dermott," I muttered. Jorge Something-or-other, an exchange student from Central America sniggered. As I've said, nobody liked Walter. "Well, I'll give him five more minutes," Dave sighed. "I've got a quiz in physics I need to study for if he isn't gonna show." All of us in the class - and I've already mentioned everyone in the class - was a junior or a senior. We were all carrying heavy credit loads and all of us had other things to do. As much as I hated to support Walt's position on anything, I did realize that if Professor Bordman did show up after we left, we'd all be in deep shit. He was from the old school in spite of his relatively young age. Classes that walked out on professors of the old school paid the price. "I'll go down and check his office," I volunteered. I didn't mention that I had a key for it. Professor Bordman had loaned a spare one to me a month earlier and I had sort of forgotten to give it back. "I'll go, too," Walt volunteered. Good old Walt. The last thing in the world he wanted was for me to find out what was going on before he did. "Where did you get the key?" he asked moments later when I unlocked the professor's door. "You don't have one, too?" I asked innocently. It was worth it to see the pained look on his face. Professor Bordman's office looked like a famed Kansas tornado had hit it. Papers were strewn everywhere. "Oh my God," I mumbled. Someone had been looking for something. The condition of the office meant it must have been very hard to find - assuming they found it at all. "Mr. Kramer?" I jumped at the sweet high voice behind us. I turned to see Ms. Price, Professor Bordman's secretary standing there. I suppose I should say the chunky little brunette was really the secretary for the entire Literature Department, working with all five instructors, but she always seemed to have a soft spot for Professor Bordman. I often thought she had a crush on him. After all, they were both unmarried and about the same age. "You startled me," I told her. "Not me," Walt found it necessary to comment. He was duly ignored. "Oh my!" she gasped when she saw the condition of the office. "Do you have any idea what happened here?" I asked her. She shook her head slowly. "No, the office has been closed all morning, and I came in an hour ago." She stopped for a moment, thinking. That wasn't Ms. Price's strong suit either. "You don't suppose it had something to do with the book, do you?" "Book? What book?" I asked. She scurried across the hall to her cramped little office and extracted an object from her desk drawer. "This was here when I came in," she explained. "It was in the drawer where I always set my purse." I took the book from her, handling it very carefully. The cover was brown, made of what had once been fine leather, but time had faded it and dried it out until it had warped the entire book. I opened it carefully, aware of the fact that it was so old and fragile that the slightest pressure might cause it damage. I was also aware of Walt straining to see what it was. "Can you read it?" he asked as I opened the cover and looked at what had to be the title page. "No," I answered with disappointment. "It's in Arabic." "But I thought you were over in the Middle East," Walt commented in an accusing tone. "Have you ever been to Mexico?" I asked. When he nodded, I added, "And how much Spanish do you speak?" He didn't bother to answer. I looked back at the book. "This book is so old that it would be hard to read even for a native Arabic speaker. Just like our language, Arabic has probably changed over the centuries. But this word," I said, pointing at a dramatic swirl of ink, "looks like the Arabic word for world." "He left this with the book," Ms Price said, handing me an envelope. I was surprised to see my name written on the sealed envelope in Professor Bordman's sloppy style. "Come on," I told them. "The class probably wonders what's going on. Let's go back there and share this with them." I figured Walt would grumble about taking the book back into the classroom, and I wasn't disappointed. As I said, I knew guys like Walt in the Army. They always wanted to have little secrets they could use around others to show how much they knew. Walt wanted to know what the letter was all about before anyone else. Tough shit, Walt. Everyone grouped around us anxiously as I told them what we already knew. Only Wyoming Tom remained in the back of the room, staring out into the spring day as the rest of us examined the book. "Careful!" Nancy gasped as a little flake of paper fluttered away from the volume. Dave was holding it, and in answer to her command, he laid it gently on the Professor's lectern. Then with the others, he turned his attention to me as I opened the letter. It had been hastily scrawled out on the back of a college memo, as if Professor Bordman had been under pressure to finish it quickly. For the benefit of all, I read the letter aloud: Dear Bob, I am writing this letter to you in haste. From my window, I can see the man I most dread heading this way. There's no time to get away. I can explain everything if you will do this one thing for me - take the book in both hands and repeat this phrase... A sentence of Romanized Arabic words followed. I knew some of them while others meant nothing to me. Still, I thought I could do a fair job of pronouncing them correctly. After you have said this phrase and while still holding the book, think with all your might that you wish me to appear in the classroom. Then say it aloud. I know this sounds strange, but my very life may depend upon it. Please follow my instructions to the letter. I finished, "It's signed by Professor Bordman." Everyone except Wyoming Tom tried to talk at once. I had to hold up my hands to stop the babble. "I wonder if this is some sort of weird test," Dave pondered above the drone. It wasn't that far out a suggestion. Professor Bordman was something of a tease and would often say or do outlandish things just to get us to think. "It's weird alright," Nancy agreed, pushing a strand of dingy brown hair back from her face. "But he's in trouble!" Lori pointed out. "We've got to help him." Jorge nodded in agreement, as did most of the others. Even Wyoming Tom nodded his head, but it could be that he was just dozing. "Now wait a minute." It was Walt, of course. If he hadn't proven to be against it when all of us were for it, I would have been flabbergasted. "This smacks of something supernatural. Surely none of you believe in that crap." "Then we have nothing to fear, do we Walt?" I pointed out. "I'm not talking about fear," Walt hedged. "Then let's do it," I said before Walt could figure out just what he was talking about. I repeated the phrase as Professor Bordman had instructed. Then I tried to clear my mind, murmuring almost to myself that I wanted Professor Bordman to appear in the classroom. Did I really expect anything to happen? Of course I didn't. Deep down, I thought this was one of Professor Bordman's little tests, too, just as Dave thought. So why did I do it? I suppose the main reason was because he had asked me to do it. If it was a test, I'd soon see if I had passed it or not. Aloud, I said, "I wish Professor Bordman was here in this room." Equally important though - I did it because Walt didn't want me to. It should be obvious by now that I disliked Walt every bit as much as he disliked me. Supercilious and generally an obstructionist - not to mention a little on the dumpy side - I would have gladly erased Walt from the face of the Earth if I had a chance. Or so I thought at the time. When I actually had the opportunity... but I'm getting a little ahead of myself. So since I really didn't believe in the supernatural, imagine my surprise when the room and everyone in it began to swirl. It was as if everything and everyone - me included - had been suddenly thrust into a cosmic blender and the switch had been set to puree. Technically, I supposed I shouldn't have been able to see anything since my eyes were being pureed with the rest of me. But that wasn't what happened. My sight remained constant as if it were in the center of the maelstrom while everything else swirled in a mind-numbing riot of thousands of colors and hues. And strangely, there was no sense of motion. I would have expected to feel centrifugal forces acting on me, but I felt no motion at all. For that matter, there was no sound either. There was just the senseless swirling all about me. Suddenly it was as if someone had put the brakes on a carnival ride. The swirling began to slow - slightly at first and then more and more. The colors resorted themselves, resolving into discernable shapes. There was something white in the back of the classroom. As I fought to focus, I realized that it was Wyoming Tom. He was wearing a white silk shirt and white leather pants. No, that couldn't be, I thought. He had been wearing black, and hadn't his hair been dark? It was now blonde. Stricken, I looked around at my classmates. They all appeared normal - or as normal as some of them ever got. Except for Wyoming Tom, of course. He looked down at himself, and I thought I heard him mutter, "Cool." "Who are you?" Lori asked. At first I thought she was talking to me, but then I realized she was looking at someone behind me. I turned and saw a rather attractive but confused woman standing behind me. She was professionally dressed in a cashmere skirt and modest white blouse. Her hair was dark and cut short, but not severely so. "Damn!" she uttered. "It works!" "What works?" Walt demanded. "And who are you? And how did you get in here without us seeing you?" I shot him an angry look for asking such rude questions, but to myself I admitted that I was curious about all of those things myself. "I... I'm Professor Bordman," she announced a little uncertainly. "I'm Arlene Bordman." "You're related to our Professor Bordman?" Dave asked. "Professor Myron Bordman?" She shook her head, wobbling unsteadily on her heels. "I am Myron Bordman," she replied. Needless to say, once again everyone tried to talk at once. "But I am!" she insisted over the din. I had to admit, she did look a little bit like our Professor Bordman. She had fair skin and dark brown hair at least, and she was about the right age. But our Professor Bordman had been short and was starting to become bald. This woman was actually as tall as he had been, and her hair was full and healthy. She might be a little old for me, but I had to admit she was a reasonably attractive lady. In fact, dressed as she was in a thin white blouse, just-above-the-knee skirt, and two inch heels, she looked downright hot. She looked at me, clutching my arm with a feminine hand. "Don't you see, Bob? It works. The legend of the Gate of the World is true." "Gate of the World?" I asked to the confused nods of the rest of the class. "That's right, Bob," the woman said. "Do you remember some of the historical points I brought up in class? Do you remember Abu Bakr?" "Yeah, I think so," I answered. "Wasn't he Mohammed's father-in-law? The one who became the first caliph?" The woman beamed with pride. "Fine work, Bob. I'm glad you remembered. He was also the man who conquered Arabia just two years after Mohammed's death. Then after him, Omar - the second caliph - conquered much of the Middle East. But there's a legend that says it wasn't that simple." We all watched with fascination. This woman had Professor Bordman's style down pat. Every inflection and every movement reminded us of Professor Bordman. But could it be possible? Certainly not! But there had been those swirling colors... "There's a legend," she continued, "that Abu Bakr actually failed to take Arabia. The Moslem religion was a dying sect with most of its adherents fleeing from the victors. There seemed to be no hope - until Ali ben Sharif came on the scene. He was a bookbinder by trade but a sorcerer by avocation. And he was a Moslem. So the story goes, he was devastated when Abu Bakr was defeated and killed. So he gathered magic from as many sources as he could and stored them in a book. The book is nothing more than the set of rules governing the magic. It's sort of a combination magical talisman and owner's manual." "His goal was to find a way to change the world so that his faith could triumph. But he had no clear idea of the forces he was playing with. Reality could be changed, but it didn't always change exactly the way the spellcaster might hope. Anyhow, he cast the first spell, causing reality to be rewritten. When he had finished, Abu Bakr had magically become victorious, but at high cost. For the Middle East was far different from what we know today." There was a fire in her eyes as she told the story. This was the Professor Bordman I knew - just in a female body. She was obsessed with her tale, and given its scope, I could understand why. "The Middle East Ali Ben Sharif knew was a verdant place," she continued wistfully. "The desert wastes we know today didn't exist then. Perhaps that's why Abu Bakr failed in his conquest of Arabia. He was up against a prosperous, powerful foe. It took the wasting of the region to give him a chance at victory." "You're saying he intentionally changed the Middle East into an arid wasteland just so the Moslem conquest of Arabia could happen?" Nancy gasped. The new woman shook her head. "No, it wasn't intentional. According to the legend, Ali had no idea the landscape would be changed. You see, he had done his job too well. By gathering nearly all the magic of the world into one place, he had created a force that used its own logic to grant a wish. He had gathered in the key to the Gate of the World, a magical force said to have been created at the beginning of time itself. The simpler the wish, the more latitude the magical forces are given. For example, if you were to wish to be a multimillionaire, the Gate of the World might kill off your parents, allowing you to collect millions in insurance money. That would be the simplest solution. But it might just as easily do it by changing your great-great grandfather into the inventor of the automobile or something equally important." "In Ali's case, he asked for a Moslem victory, but he never thought about what that might mean. The Gate of the World simply recognized that the easiest way to assure a Moslem victory was to weaken their foes, and the easiest way to do that was to reduce the wealth of the enemy's realm. That wasn't what Ali wanted. He would have been content with a military victory against all odds. Ali, according to the legends, went mad upon seeing the devastation he had brought to the region and sought to destroy the book. He failed in that, obviously." I looked at the book, sitting on my desk where I had placed it. Could it be that such an unassuming little thing could have such power? Professor Bordman must have realized what I was thinking, for he told us, "The book is not what causes the changes. It merely contains a key - a key to the Gate of the World. You see, our current theories about the nature of reality are wrong. There are not multiple realities as recent theories in physics suggest; there is only one reality. It's like a balloon - when you poke your finger at a balloon, it pushes out somewhere else. So when you use the book to open the Gate and make a wish to change reality, other things may change as well - things you hadn't intended to change." "Like your sex?" Lori asked. Professor Bordman nodded. "Exactly." "We should at least try to change you back," I suggested, turning back toward my desk to get the book and... It was gone! I looked around the room and felt my heart sink as I saw Walt inching toward the doorway, the book in his hands. "Walt, stop right there!" He did, but only for a moment. "You think you're so smart, don't you?" he yelled at me. "All of you think you're better than me." He repeated the Arabic phrase I had uttered. "Well, I wish you could know what I'm going to do with this book. I wish I were sitting in my dorm room in my favorite chair right now." And with that, he simply winked out of our sight and the world once more swirled about us. Much more of that swirling and I was going to get motion sickness. "Shit!" Dave yelled. "Now that little rat bastard has the power to change reality and we can't stop him." "Worse yet," Lori commented, "we won't even know when he did it. We'll be part of his new reality." "We'll be part of it," Professor Bordman agreed, "but we will know." We all looked at him, puzzled. "Remember what I just told you?" he asked. "Once the phrase is stated, the Gate of the World is opened. Saying 'I wish' invokes the Gate. I'm sure he didn't mean to give us any advantage, but when Mr. Dermott said he wished that we would know what he was doing with the book, he invoked the power of the Gate. Now every time he uses it, we will be aware that it was used to change reality around us." "But if that's the way it works," Nancy asked, "why did you need Bob to get you into the classroom. You could have wished yourself here." Professor Bordman shook her head. "No, I couldn't. You see, I had just acquired the book and was in the process of translating it. I'm not like you younger people. I actually read the instruction manual before I try to operate a device. The problem was that I didn't have the time I needed to learn everything. I had a... shall we say... rival for the book. He knew of its power as well and was just a few hours behind me in acquiring it from a rather clueless dealer in antiquarian books and manuscripts. He followed me and was in a position to wrest the book from me. I had to make my wish on the fly. "What I wished for was to be safely away from him and to remember any previous realities. That is why I remember who I was before. Unfortunately the way I phrased the question caused me to be safely on a street corner in Tokyo and the book to go somewhere else where you would find it but my nemesis would not." "This is getting too confusing," I groaned. "Yeah, and it's gonna get a whole lot worse if we don't get the book back from that little weasel," Dave pointed out. "Maybe we can get him before he can make a wish against us," I suggested. "Be careful about that," Professor Bordman cautioned. "One the key phrase is given, wishes can be made for up to an hour without repeating the words." "Let's just hope he doesn't figure that out," I replied grimly. The class hour was nearly over, and I didn't have another class for a couple of hours. Neither did Nancy and Lori, so we got nominated to go try to get the book back from Walter. I honestly don't know what we were thinking. Walter had in his possession to most powerful artifact the world had probably ever known and we were going to waltz over there and try to get it back as if it were just an overdue library book. But it wasn't as if we really had any options. Walter - sniveling little asshole that he was - had inadvertently wished that we would be aware of whatever changes he made. That meant we were in danger of living in a world he was molding - a world which might be constantly shifting about us. I thought of the barren, oppressively hot deserts of the Middle East I had come to know in the Army and tried to imagine what they might have looked like as lush, fertile lands. If Ali with the best of intentions could have caused that ecological nightmare to happen, what damage could Walter with his egocentric impulses cause? I shuddered at the thought. And what changes had he already managed to make? He had used the key twice that we knew about but the world had only swirled about once. It was probably because he had made the two wishes so close together. Maybe he had continued to wish once he got back to his dorm room. "Wait a minute," I told the others in the lobby of Walter's dorm. I plugged a quarter into the slot of a newspaper machine and pulled out the morning addition of the Kansas City Star. "What are you doing?" Nancy asked. "If we don't catch Walter right away, we may want to keep up on what he accidentally changes. If we can get the key back, we may have to put the world back together the way it was before. The paper might give us a clue about what changes." I looked down at the headlines and sighed with relief. At least nothing had changed yet. President McCain was still pushing his campaign reform law. The Bob Vila murder trial was still going on, although I thought it was a little tacky for Black and Decker to be sponsoring it on Court TV, even if the murder weapon had been a Makita drill. Senator O. J. Simpson was being talked up as a possible presidential candidate in 2004. Yep, everything was still normal. We walked up to Walter's room as if we owned the place. I'm sure it was all bravado though. I know I didn't feel very confident knowing a creep like Walter had the ability to change the world. Even so, I gave an authoritative knock on his door and was surprised to hear him call out, "It's open!" Walter was indeed sitting in what had to be his favorite chair. A Marzz Barzz CD was on in the background, and a recent copy of Playboy was on his lap. The little bastard looked as if he had the world on a string. I supposed he really did when I think about it. He grinned at us, and I suddenly felt like a mouse cornered by a cat - or a rat in Walter's case. "Where's the book, Walter?" I asked without any preliminaries. I hoped my tone sounded threatening, but if the truth were known, I was feeling very uneasy. Walter had always knuckled under when I had used that tone with him. He knew I was bigger and stronger than he was, but as I was soon to learn, that didn't matter any more. "Oh? You mean this book?" He nonchalantly produced the book from under the Playboy. Before any of us had time to react, he repeated the magic phrase, followed by, "None of you can come any closer to me or leave the room until I give you my permission!" Oh shit. Maybe he phrased it wrong, I thought hopefully, but I found I could not move any closer to him. I supposed we had all thought of the power of the key as relating primarily to earth-shaking events like wars. But there was nothing to stop him from using it on a much smaller scale. I don't know what the Gate of the World had done to make it impossible to reach him. Maybe personal force fields were now possible. Or maybe he had the power of hypnosis. Whatever the reason, we couldn't approach him any closer and we couldn't turn around to get away. "Walter, you're a real shit!" Nancy spat. "Oh, I'm so disappointed that you feel that way," Walter said with mock sadness. "Maybe you should reconsider." He mumbled the phrase once more. "Nancy, you are a stunning girl, Chinese by birth..." He continued to rattle off his requirements as Lori and I watched the world shift around us once more. When the shifting stopped, both of us gasped as we looked at the girl who stood where Nancy had been moments before. If you looked really closely, you could still see Nancy in the beautiful Oriental face. I always had thought that Nancy could have been very attractive if she had just fixed herself up a bit. This girl had done just that - and more. Her skin looked flawless, and the makeup she wore made her look as if she had just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine. Her hair was long and straight, billowing over narrow, perfect shoulders. As for her figure... well, there couldn't be anything in the Playboy Walter had been looking at that was any better. She wore a tank top that was so sheer and silky that I could easily see her large nipples through the jade green fabric. And the white miniskirt she wore was so short and tight I knew she wouldn't dare sit down in it. She was, of course, wearing heels - perhaps three inches high which women called (I found out later) strappy sandals. The girl who had been Nancy looked down in disbelief at her slender hands tipped with long, red nails. "What you do to me?" she cried in a singsong, heavily accented voice. Walter's reply was preceded by a chilling laugh. "Do you think I'm a fool?" I bit my tongue. Seeing what had happened to Nancy was enough to convince me that I didn't really want to answer that question. "I knew some of you would try to take back the book. So I made my wish. I wished that whoever came in that door would be under my power for as long as you were in my room..." There was good news and bad news in what he said. The good news was that he still didn't realize that repeating the key phrase wasn't necessary. The Gate of Worlds would be open for a full hour after he opened it. The other good new was that he had limited his wish to as long as we were in his room. In an effort to be specific, he had unintentionally restrained his current power over us. Of course, the bad news was that we were in his room, couldn't move, and Nancy was suddenly Oriental... and he was turning his gaze to Lori. "Now as for you. I've always thought you were very attractive, Lori." "Th...thank you," she managed to stammer, fear in her eyes. I suspected her fear was well-founded. "I have plans for you later, Lori," Walter said with a wicked leer. "But I think we can make things even more interesting if there are two of you." He repeated the phrase and made his wish. There was a brand new effect added to the swirling this time. Lori seemed to break apart like an amoeba, and when the room settled down, there were two of her. Both girls gasped and raised their hands to their own faces in perfect harmony. A closer look at the two of them showed that there weren't just two Loris. There were two significantly enhanced Loris - longer, shinier blonde hair, bigger breasts, more pronounced lips, and sensational figures were all new attributes. That isn't to say Lori wasn't attractive to begin with; she was. But the new, improved Lori - or rather Loris - just had more of a good thing. "Lori, meet Tori," Walter laughed. "Now which of you is which?" "I'm Lori!" each girl insisted at the same moment with the same gesture. Walter laughed even harder at the girls' confusion. I could imagine what had really happened. Yes, Lori now had a twin, but her twin was really nothing more than a duplicate of her. As a result, they had absolutely identical experiences and would respond in exactly the same manner until something happened which would detract from their common experience. "Now it's your turn, Bob." His voice was cold and deliberate. If I had been able to move, I would have been charging for the door at full speed, but I couldn't even quake with the fear I felt. I had always disliked Walter, but I had never realized that in addition to being stupid and petulant, he was a genuinely evil little man. I was certain whatever he had planned for me would be downright terrible. I wasn't to be disappointed. I was beginning to realize that the Playboy on his lap had been more than a prop to hide the book. Walter had been looking through the magazine, carefully selecting new identities for us. I was sure if I had been able to move and look at the magazine, I would have found an attractive Oriental girl and a set of blonde twins somewhere in the glossy pages. And I had no illusions about what Walter had planned for me either. Whatever I turned out to look like, I wasn't going to be mistaken for Brad Pitt. And what had been unintentionally done to Professor Bordman was certainly proof that the magic the book released respected none of the boundaries of gender. "I've always been partial to redheads," he mused as he pointed a finger at me. "I think you should be one." Walter repeated the key phrase, then mumbled a long description that would change me into a redhead - a female redhead of course. And I knew that that was what I was. I could feel from the sensations in my body that not just the color of my hair was changing. The strange thing was that this time, I didn't just see the swirling around me - I was a part of it. While I could feel things changing throughout my body, I could see nothing but the swirling colors. I wanted to scream or cry or at least curse Walter's name, but none of it seemed possible. And then as quickly as it had begun, the swirling stopped. I looked down at myself at once, relieved that I was still dressed as I had been before in a gray and white Dykstra College sweatshirt and jeans. But wait! Why was the sweatshirt pushing forward in those two places? I shook my head. Something tickled and a lock of luxuriant red hair fell over my shoulder and into my line of sight. "Yeep!" Well, I didn't really say "yeep", but it must have sounded something like that - sweet and high pitched. Lori, Tori, and Nancy were all standing there with their pretty mouths wide open, and Walter let loose with another of his shrill, evil laughs. He rose to his feet, dropping the Playboy and the book from his lap. He bent over to pick them up, muttering something in the process. I would have given a lot to have been able to grab the book, but he had made his wish well and I was prohibited from touching him. Or maybe I should say I thought he had made his wish well. Before he could reach the book, he awkwardly stumbled and was suddenly sprawled out on the floor. Things were happening so quickly and I was so disoriented that it took me a moment to realize Walt hadn't stumbled at all - he had been pushed! And suddenly Dave was there, scooping up the book. Walt looked up at Dave, fear in his eyes. He scrambled quickly to his feet and fled from the room. Dave seemed content to let him go since he had the book. "Are you guys okay?" he asked. We all nodded - if you could call being twinned, changing race, or changing gender okay. "How did you do that?" I asked Dave, hearing for the first time the new contralto voice I now possessed. "I decided to cut class and help you guys out," he explained. "I was just about to enter the room when I heard Walt tell you guys that he had wished to control anyone who walked through his door. So I did a one- eighty and went outside. Thank God he lives on the first floor and had a window open." "You should have seen him!" Nancy laughed, a faintly Oriental lilt in her voice. "He sneaked in here while Walt was concentrating on you, Bob. Walt never saw him coming." "So because you didn't come in through the door, he didn't have any control over you," I surmised with a smile. "Yeah," Dave grinned. I felt suddenly uncomfortable as I realized he wasn't looking me in the eye as he grinned. In defense, I folded my arms over my new breasts. It wasn't the most comfortable posture, but I hoped it hid my new assets somewhat. "Maybe we should undo the damage," I suggested. "I'm not anxious to look like this any longer than I have to." "Not so fast," Dave said. "No telling what damage Walt has done to the world already. We need to take the book back to Professor Bordman and let him change things back." "But that would mean walking across campus like... like..." I couldn't even say it. I just used my newly-refined hands to indicate my new body. "You look great!" Nancy teased. "It's a shame it's not fall. You'd be a candidate for Homecoming Queen." "Thanks a lot," I growled. Well, I tried to make it sound like a growl anyhow. "Oh, don't worry," she laughed. "I live in this dorm, too. I'll get you some clothes that fit a little better than those. Then we'll go over and see Professor Bordman and get all of us changed back." "I still don't see why we can't do it now," I pouted. Okay, I'll admit it - I didn't want to stay in a girl's body for a second longer than I had to. "I told you," Dave said patiently, as if explaining things to a petulant child. "We don't know what else Walt changed just by accident. Remember what Ali did to the Middle East?" "That was different," I argued in my sweet new voice. "He changed world history. What Walt did was minor." To prove my point, I looked around for the newspaper I had dropped on the floor. I bent over to pick it up, regretting my action at once. My new breasts swayed uncontrolled as I bent over, and my ass pushed against my male jeans to the point that I thought the seams would split. I must have given Dave quite a show when I bent over as well. I knew when I saw the first headline that something was very wrong. The headline read PRESIDENT CLINTON TO PUSH MEDICAL PLAN. The picture showed a woman I had never seen before. She was blonde, not at all unattractive, and smiling. The caption on the picture referred to President Hillary Clinton. "A woman president?" Dave commented over my shoulder. Two thoughts struck me. The first was how much shorter I must be if Dave could read over my shoulder. The second was, 'What was wrong with a woman president?' Jeez, I had only been in a woman's body for five minutes and already I was thinking like a feminist. "I've heard of her," Tori and Lori said at the same moment. Then they looked at each other and back at us, speaking once more in unison. "She was married to the governor of Arkansas. She caught him playing around and divorced him a few years ago." Both girls giggled at that. I seemed to remember something about that, too, but I was never much of a political animal. As I remembered, her ex-husband had resigned after the divorce and headed for Hollywood where he was producing movies. She had ended up married to some obscure congressman from Georgia named something-rich. Apparently things worked out a little differently for them in this reality. Behind our new president in the picture was a silver-haired man who the caption said was her husband, Senator Clinton. "But why did changing us have this much of an impact on the world?" I asked the group. It was Dave who answered. "I remember back in high school I read a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov. It was called The End of Eternity. In it, time travelers went around making what they called minimum necessary changes to affect the future. I think that may be how the Gate of Worlds works. It just leaves out the minimum requirement." "You mean we had to change presidents before I could be changed into a girl? Surely something more minor than that would have caused the change." Dave shook his head. "No, not quite right. It didn't have to do it this way, but it was one possibility it could select. Didn't you tell me once that your dad was in Vietnam?" I nodded. "So let's say that something happened and president Kennedy didn't bring everyone home in 1967 like we know he did. Maybe that meant your dad and your mom met later and you were conceived later. You do look a little younger." Actually, I didn't know how I looked, and I wasn't anxious to find out. "So that comes back to what I asked before. You mean something like that had to happen before I could be a girl?" "No," Don replied. "At least not exactly. Let's say that there were thousands and thousands of possible factors which might have meant you would have been a girl instead of a boy. Unlike the people in Asimov's novel, the Gate of Worlds doesn't have any way of determining which change would produce the least disruption on the future and it doesn't care. It just selects one at random -sort of like a poorly conceived computer program. My guess is that the Middle East didn't have to become largely a wasteland just to allow the Moslems to win, but that was the one the Gate selected at random, not caring about additional consequences." "So that means changing all of us back the way we were might be dangerous," Nancy concluded slowly. "Maybe we should just stay this way. I don't really mind being Chinese." "And I kind of like the idea of having a twin," Tori and Lori chorused. "Now wait just a minute!" I broke in, just a little hysterical. "You can't be serious. I have no intention of being... like this for the rest of my life. I'm a guy for God's sake." "Hey, you could do a lot worse," Nancy argued. "You ought to look at yourself in the mirror. You look like a younger version of Geena Davis. You could have any guy you wanted." "I DON'T WANT ANY GUY!" I yelled. "Oops," Nancy mumbled. "Look," Dave said, taking charge. I suppose that was because he was the only guy. Sniff. "Let's just get this book back to Professor Bordman. We can decide what to do with it then." We all nodded in agreement. As much as I wanted to be changed back, I realized it was probably the best solution. After all, if somebody like that Bill Clinton guy could go from being a Hollywood mogul to a US Senator, what would changing me back do? Maybe make that old actor Ronald Reagan President or something? I read someplace that he once ran unsuccessfully for governor in California. I did talk everyone into stopping by my dorm room first. Since Walt hadn't changed my clothes when he changed my body, I wanted to go to my room and find something that fit a little better. My sneakers were now about four sizes too large, causing me to stumble with every step, and my pants were several inches too long as well. Unless I found something else to wear, I would probably fall and break my new face. Of course, that would at least make it less cute... And I must be a cutie, I thought grimly to myself as we walked down the hall to my room. How did I know? Well, because every guy we passed in the hall looked me over with undisguised relish. Maybe it was because my new breasts were flopping about freely. Even under the sweatshirt I wore, they could be seen clearly. That and the fact that I felt as if I had sacks of flour attached to my chest led me to believe Walt had given me what the guys in my old Army unit would have called class one hooters. Damn you, Walt, I thought, I'll get you for this. I only hoped that my roommate wasn't there. It would be hard to explain... But then I realized since I was now a girl, I probably had a different roommate. Co-ed dorms were one thing and coed rooms quite another. I didn't know whether to sigh in relief of cry out in frustration as I entered my room - and yes, it was my room. There was a picture of my parents that I had always kept on my desk as well as a few other personal mementos that had crossed over into this new life of mine. But the room was very obviously a girl's room. Frilly bedspreads, strewn undies, and "cute" little items around the room all said "GIRL" in large block letters. "Hey, that's my blouse!" Nancy exclaimed, looking at a garment on one of the beds. "And all my stuff is here. But I roomed with Lori." "You must room with Bobbie now," Lori and Tori said together. "We probably room together now." They giggled again. "Don't call me Bobbie!" I muttered, holding up a bra with disgust. The little tag on it said 36C. Now as a former guy, I didn't have a real solid understanding of bra sizes, but I had read enough men's magazines to know that the bra was too big for Nancy. That meant it was mine. "Actually, her name isn't Bobbie," one of the twins said, looking through what must have been my purse. That was a dual relief. First, I hated the name Bobbie - or Roberta for that matter. And second, it was good to hear one of the twins speaking by herself. I suspected that as their life experiences changed, they would develop different personalities and be less likely to chorus their replies. "Okay," I sighed, "so who am I?" "According to your driver's license, you're Ashley Sue Kramer now," Nancy replied. "And you're twenty-two, by the way. Didn't you tell me once you were twenty-six?" Well, I supposed if I had to have a girl's name, there were worse ones than Ashley. In fact, it could even be a man's name I consoled myself. Remember Scarlet O'Hara and "Oh, Ashley!"? And I did reclaim four years of life. "Okay, 'Ashley,'" Dave said impatiently. "You'd better get changed so we can get this book back to Professor Bordman." I folded my arms as best I could under my breasts. "You don't expect me to get changed with you in the room, do you?" Dave looked a little stricken. "Oh... well, I thought... I mean... uh... I'll just be right outside if you need me." I actually had to laugh as the door closed behind him. I tried to ignore the fact that the laugh came out as a feminine giggle. The twins and Nancy had joined in the laughter, and in a strange way, I felt a warm feeling of friendship with the girls. It was actually a nice feeling when I thought about it. Since as a guy I was a bit older than most of the other residents in the dorm, I had never developed any good friends. In fact, my classmates in Professor Bordman's class were probably the best friends I had on campus, and they were more the nature of acquaintances rather than friends. But sharing a funny moment with Nancy and the twins had been a moment of true friendship. Maybe girls were just more sensitive to that sort of... But wait a minute! I wasn't a girl. I mean, I was but I wasn't. I mean... oh hell! You know what I mean. "Let's see if we can find some panties to match this bra," Nancy told the twins. "Now wait a minute!" I practically yelled. "I just want to put on some pants that I don't trip over. I don't want a bra." Nancy twirled the bra in her hand. "Ashley, in case you didn't notice, you have an impressive pair of breasts now. And even if you haven't noticed, the boys will. If you don't restrain those, you'll have the boys following you all over campus." I could feel the blood rush out of my face at the mental picture of just that. Reluctantly, I stripped off my sweatshirt and accepted the bra. I tried not to look down as I wrestled with the bra, but it was impossible to ignore what were now on my chest. The cool air had caused my nipples to rise a little, and both breasts moved around as if fighting the restraint of the bra cups. One of the twins attached the bra hooks, so I didn't have to wrestle with them - thank God. "Here we go," Nancy said, holding up a pair of panties which, I had to admit, did at least match the cream color of the bra. "Do I have to?" I whined. Three feminine but firm nods told me I wasn't going to be given a choice. Like it or not, I was now their very own Barbie doll to dress as they saw fit. At least the girls were gentle with me. I balked at shorts so they let me wear jeans. However, I had been expecting the loose, comfortable jeans I had enjoyed as a man. Apparently as Ashley, style was more important to me than comfort. Even when Tori picked the loosest pair of jeans in my closet, I thought I would be cut in half just buttoning them. For a top, they let me go with a pastel blue T-shirt. There was nothing particularly feminine about it - if I discounted the color, I thought. I thought wrong. The shirt had a wide, plunging neckline that exposed the tops of my new breasts. At least I nixed any jewelry, other than a delicate little watch with numbers so small I thought I would need a magnifying glass to read them. "Okay," Nancy announced. "Now the makeup and we'll - " "Uh-uh!" I said emphatically. "No makeup - no way!" They all set out to convince me I'd look stranger without makeup than with, but I was having none of it. I think they were actually considering holding me down to apply lipstick when the phone rang. If I had thought about it, I would have just let it ring. After all, given my new sex, it could have been some boy calling up to ask me out, and that was the last thing I wanted. But like Pavlov's dog, we're all conditioned to answer a ringing phone. I grabbed for it, nearly breaking an unexpectedly long nail in the process. "Hello?" "Ashley? Is that you, dear?" Ashley? Oh, that's me, I realized. But who was that on the phone. It was a woman's voice and it sounded somewhat familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. "Who..." I started to ask. "Ashley?" the voice said. "Is everything all right? It's your mother." But my mother was dead. I almost blurted that out, but I caught myself just in time. "Uh... yeah, Mom," I managed. "I'm fine. It's just some of the girls are here in my room and..." "I understand," she laughed. "I was a girl in college once, too. I won't keep you long. Your father and I just wanted to make sure you still wanted us to come down Saturday and see you." Father? Dad was alive, too? Did I want to see them? Did I want to see them? "Uh... sure. When will you be here?" I tried to keep my voice calm, but my heart was soaring. My parents hadn't died! They were alive! "I thought about noon," Mom said. "Your father has an old friend he wants to see - Professor Wamsley over in the English Department. I suspect they'll want to talk shop for a while so we can go shopping." Shopping sounded like a waste of time, but my Mom... she was alive. And Dad... "Ashley?" "Oh... sure. Noon's fine, Mom." "See you then, dear. We love you." As the phone went dead, I put the receiver down gently. I was too stunned to say anything. Nancy looked alarmed and rushed over to the bed where I was sitting and put an arm around me. "Bob... er... Ashley, what's wrong?" "Wrong?" I asked stupidly. "You're crying," she pointed out. I put a delicate hand up to my eye and brushed away a tear. "Yeah... I guess I am." Then my lip was quivering. My mind flashed back to when I was twelve. I remembered the principal coming into our classroom at school. Somehow, I knew he had come for me. The look on his face was grim, and when he whispered something to my teacher and she looked right at me with shock and surprise, I knew what had happened. I had been close to my parents - as close as only children often are. Without siblings, parents are the only immediate family a child knows. I had cried at the funeral. I tried not to, and my uncle had frowned at me and told me that boys weren't supposed to cry. But I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it than and I couldn't help it now. At least now I wasn't a boy. I think even my uncle might allow that a girl could cry. I explained to the others between sobs why I was crying, and that the tears I spilled were tears of joy. My parents were alive! The girls all hugged me, and before I knew it, we were all crying together. I think it was the best any of us had felt since the whole mess with the book started. Jeez, it was weird. As a man, I never thought crying could make you feel good. Now it seemed as a girl crying felt natural and sometimes even good. "Now we all have to fix our makeup," Nancy said at last. Tori and Lori chimed in in agreement, but fortunately they didn't say it at the same moment. "You really need to do something, Ashley. Your face is all puffy now." "Okay," I sighed, basking in the warmth of the knowledge that my parents were still alive. I was no longer in a mood to argue with them. If I was going to cry like a girl, I might as well look like one. "I'll go quietly. Just take it easy on that stuff, okay?" When they had finished with me, I was already beginning to regret my decision. All three girls bounced around in excitement, looking for just the right product to feminize me even further. Foundation, powder, lipstick, and eye shadow were passed back and forth and applied by deft hands. Now I knew how a canvas felt. It was all in good fun, but they were the only ones having the fun. At last Nancy pronounced, "There!" And with that, they led me to a mirror. I had intentionally avoided looking at my new body until now. The touch of long hair on my neck and the side of my face and its weight lying on my shoulders had been enough to tell me it was quite long, thank you very much. And I had caught a glimpse of red when a lock of that hair had swirled past my face. But nothing had prepared me for the lush red mane I now possessed, spreading out from my face like flames. As for the face itself, there was no denying that I was very attractive. Oh, the face wasn't perfect with its prominent freckles and its slightly sharp nose, but the texture of the skin was smooth and creamy - partially I knew the work of makeup but partially natural. And my eyes were a deep green, wide and round enough to have some describe them as bedroom eyes. As for my body... well, I certainly knew I had breasts. I had tried to avoid looking down at them, but I had been able to feel them sway and even caught a glimpse of them when I was fitted with a bra. But I swear they were somehow sexier and more prominent when nestled inside the scoop neck T-shirt. I hadn't realized it would have such a revealing neckline when I agreed to wear it. My waist was narrow - as prominent in its narrowness as my breasts were in their own way. And my hips were pleasantly wide and feminine. No wonder I had felt them move strangely as I had walked. And the jeans had done absolutely nothing to disguise what I now was. I looked as sexy in those jeans as I would have in a tight miniskirt. In short, I was one hot chick... and I didn't like it one little bit. "Ooooh, you look cool!" Tori and Lori said together. "Great," I sighed. "The universe is unraveling around us and you guys have stopped to make a fashion statement." That really bothered me. It was completely out of character for both of the girls - well, all three of the girls now. Nancy never used to give one whit how she looked. She often showed up at class with her hair in a rat's nest and little or no makeup. As for clothes, she could have cared less. Now she had participated in my frocking and had changed into another miniskirt and was redoing her makeup while Tori and Lori did some last minute fussing with me. And then there were the new twins. Lori had always looked a little like a bimbo but had in reality been a serious student. Reality. It's funny I should use that word. This was reality now, and in it, Lori had a twin. And it was almost as if the brains that had served one girl very well had been evenly distributed between the two of them. The result was that they giggled a lot and seemed to be rapidly becoming bimbos. Or maybe not. It was possible that like Nancy, they had just discovered their ultra-feminine side. So why hadn't I been affected? Or had I been? I though back on my male life. All the memories seemed to be intact. I didn't seem to have any memories of playing with dolls or being a cheerleader or losing my virginity in some guy's back seat. And for that matter, I wasn't attracted to guys - thank God. On the other hand, my movements seemed a bit more fluid. I noticed that I seemed to walk like a woman, although that could be because my hips were shaped differently now. And when I looked in the mirror and brushed some of my long red hair back, the gesture was distinctly feminine. Of course Dave had barged in on Walt right after he had transformed me. I had a feeling Walt had planned on making additional changes to us while we were in his power. After all, if he could change Nancy into an Oriental, twin Lori, and change my sex, it would have been child's play for him to change our clothing and our attitudes. I shuddered as I thought of what might have happened if Dave hadn't gotten the book. By now, I could be some giggling little trollop in spangles (and not much else) sucking on Walt's dick. And speaking of Dave, he was still waiting for us in the hall. He looked at his watch, growling at the twins, "Well, it's about time. I thought you guys..." His voice trailed off when he saw me. "Bob?" "It's Ashley now, remember?" Nancy told him as she followed me out of the room. "Oh... yeah." And that was the last thing Dave said as we walked back to Professor Bordman's classroom. He contented himself to walk behind us, and I could feel his stare burning right through the fabric of my jeans. I wanted to turn and yell at the guy, reminding him that I was just as male as he was - sort of. But I couldn't do that, could I? After all, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was call attention to myself. From the looks we were already getting from passing guys, I had considerably more attention than I wanted already. Back in the classroom, the rest of the gang was there. I was surprised to see both Jorge and Wyoming Tom there. They had begged off on our quest, citing classes they had to attend. Or at least Jorge had begged off. Wyoming Tom, wordless as always, had just shaken his head and left. Maybe he had a fitting for a gown or something. But now they were there, and both of them looked very worried. "You got the book!" Professor Bordman exclaimed, turning away from Wyoming Tom and Jorge. "Wonderful. Now we can start to undo some of the damage." He didn't seem particularly surprised by our appearance, although it took him a moment to sort out which twin was which - as if it mattered. I questioned him on that. "I'm not at all surprised," he answered. "When Walt made that offhand wish as he was leaving - the one about wishing we all could know what he did with the book - he made it so we would be aware of every change he made. When all of you showed up, it was fairly obvious who was who." "Even me?" I asked. "Sure," she said with a grin. "You look a little uncomfortable. I figured you had to be Bob Kramer." "Okay," Jorge broke in nervously with his accented English. "Let's discuss this later. We have much to correct." "Jorge no longer goes to school here," Professor Bordman explained. "I don't think Walt did it on purpose, but Jorge is now a refugee working as a custodian here. His green card is forged, by the way." "Collateral damage," I commented. When everyone looked blank, I explained, "It's an Army term. It means when you strike a target, sometimes you also hit something you didn't set out to hit." "That's an appropriate analogy," Professor Bordman observed. "Whatever Walt changed created a whole series of unwanted changes." I handed him the newspaper. "And you don't know the half of it." "My God! A woman president?" she muttered. She said it with such disdain that I had to grin. She seemed to have forgotten the fact that she was now a woman. I certainly wished I could. "Maybe we should look carefully at the paper before we change everything back." "That's an excellent idea," Dave said with a nod. "Oh no," I said, throwing a nasty look at both of them. "I don't plan to look like this any longer than I have to. All we need to do is word a wish that changes everything back to the way it was just before Walt stole the book. Then everything should revert to normal." Professor Bordman looked a little disappointed. I think she wanted to study the book in typical professorial fashion before changing everything back to normal. Then I remembered that she had experienced a sex change as well - one that presumably had saved her life. "All right," she sighed. "I suppose we should do that. Besides, from what our friend Tom here just showed me, it's probably for the best." I looked questioningly at Wyoming Tom. In reply, he handed me an official-looking notice. I nearly gasped as I read it. Apparently Wyoming (which really was his home state as it turned out) had a law on the books now that made crossdressing a state crime, punishable by imprisonment. Wyoming Tom was believed to have fled the state to escape prosecution. "But this won't hold up in any court in the nation," I argued as I handed the notice back to him. "Not in our reality," Professor Bordman agreed. "But remember, this is a different reality. For all we know, it may depend upon an entirely different set of rules. After all, there were people in our own reality who would have been happy to support such a law - and worse!" "Then let's get back to the reality we knew," I urged. "I'm not sure that's a good idea," Dave interjected. I turned to face him, my mouth open. "What are you talking about? You don't want to go back to the real world - to our world?" "I just mean we don't know what the key might do if we try to change things back the way they were," Dave explained. "We may set up a time loop or something. What if the key sets everything back just the way it was and then just starts it all over again?" "We'd know it and stop it," I replied smugly. Dave shook his head. "No we wouldn't. We just remember Walt's wishes. We'd be taking a big chance." "I'm willing to take that chance to get rid of these," I assured him, pointing at my breasts. "Wait a minute!" Nancy broke in. "Aren't you forgetting something, Ashley?" "What?" I grimaced. The sooner I no longer had to answer to that name, the better I was going to like it. "Your parents," she explained. "If we go back to our old reality, they'll be dead." That brought me up short. I hadn't really considered that. In this here and now, they were alive, but if we went back to our reality, they would be dead. They had been gone from me so long I really didn't miss them, though. Maybe if I had had the chance to mee