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loud about what he would do on his trip. Barry followed me. “I said it should appear more fair,” I whispered, dropping the straws in the trash can where the original short straw rested. “You didn’t watch me closely enough.”
    “I won’t make that mistake again.”
    I came out of the kitchen. “Yes, you will.”
    Always the smartest person in the room, Barry could actually appreciate it when, once in a while, somebody got the better of him. It was like for a moment they understood the game he’d quietly been playing with the world his whole life.
    It was hard to sneak one by Barry. He watched as I showed him a red straw, but didn’t keep watching as I turned my back, swapped it out, and cut the blue one. Which made it all seem fair.
    Besides, if anything bad happened the first time around, in the test run, it probably shouldn’t happen to my future roommate.
    Or me, for that matter. Or Melissa. Roger, on the other hand, was… most expendable.
    Just then, the short, thin frame of Chris Findlay burst through the apartment door. “Hey, everybody, do I have some news for you!”
    He stopped and put his hands on his boney hips.
    “It’s a viewer.”

Chapter Nine
     
    “W hat the fuck is a viewer?” Roger demanded.
    “This is. The machine.” Findlay walked over and put a hand on the metal frame.
    “I thought it was a time machine.” Melissa sounded confused.
    “It is. Kind of.” Findlay puffed his thin chest out and grinned. “It’s a viewer!” He seemed very proud of this statement. The rest of us were still a little confused.
    He ran a hand through his red hair and pointed to the panel in front of the machine’s metal seat. “All these dials and knobs are settings to allow you to see where the reflected light is from a specific moment and view it.”
    Melissa held her hand up. “You are totally over my head, Findlay.”
    “Okay, okay. Think of it like this.” He took a deep breath and held his hands out. “When you close your eyes and touch that table, or that lamp, your senses feel it and transmit that sensation to your brain. There is actual physical contact between you and the object.” He glanced at a few faces to make sure we were all with him. “But when you see something, you are just receiving the reflected light from the object. It may or may not be there, but it doesn’t matter. You’re only seeing it, so it only needs to be reflected light to exist in your visual sense.”
    Melissa’s mouth hung open. “Uh, okay… so…”
    “So the machine isn’t really going to take you through time, but it will take you to the point where the reflected light of what you want to see now exists, and you will be seeing it like a transportable 3D movie or something.” He turned and smiled at the machine. “It’s a viewer. Really, it’s rather ingenious.”
    Roger folded his arms and leaned up against the counter. It was quite a departure from what had been said earlier. “That sounds even more insane than it being a time machine. You came up with this all by yourself?”
    Findlay’s grinning face froze. “Well…”
    Roger pounced. “Findlay! You didn’t tell anybody about it, did you?”
    “I was stuck.” Findlay backed a few steps away from Roger. “During that exam I was proctoring, I couldn’t get past this one thing. It was stumping me. I checked over the notes Barry and I had put together, and I couldn’t get it to add up…”
    The tension in Roger’s arms and neck showed how hard he resisted the urge to throttle Findlay. He spoke through clenched teeth. “So what did you do ?”
    “It, uh, seemed like a numbers problem.” Findlay squirmed. “You know, like solving for three or more unknowns in an equation.”
    I grabbed my stomach. This was bad. Really bad.
    Roger pressed. “So you…”
    “I…asked a mathematician.”
    “Findlay!” Roger grabbed his head with both hands. “You idiot! You’re giving everything away before we even know what we have!”
    Barry