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working with a scientific
phenomenon, the likes of which have never been seen before. I’d
like you all to meet Kaia, our newest intern.” All the students in
the class turned to look at her. “Kaia, please tell us: what is a
Door?”
    “ Well…” she said slowly,
thinking carefully, “a Door is literally a door, except that rather
than allowing your physical body to move from one space to another
in close proximity, it allows you to move from one room to another
room which may be zero or hundreds or billions of miles away. It’s
like a bridge over huge oceans of space.”
    “ A bridge – perfect. A Door
is a bridge!” John turned and drew a picture of a bridge on his
teaching tab. It appeared on the wall behind him. “So a bridge
takes you from one side of a river or a gorge or a chasm to the
other, correct?” His eyebrows began dancing around his forehead.
Kaia stared at them, fascinated.
    “ But what if—”
    The student who had muttered to himself when
Kaia came in, interrupted John in a very straightforward manner:
“Mr. John. The Doors are so different than anything we’ve ever seen
before – scientifically speaking – in a new science, hypotheticals
just don’t make sense.”
    John frowned. Kaia decided that she didn’t
like it when John frowned. The expression didn’t quite seem to fit
on his face.
    “ First of all, Boris,” John
began. His voice sounded harsh; it almost had a metallic ring.
“Doors have been around for longer than this planet has been
colonized. It is not a ‘new science.’ While the government spreads
the propaganda that Door travel is illegal and unsafe, here we are
traveling through Doors every single day without harm. In fact,
there are Doors all over this planet in people’s homes, basements,
freezers – and they know about them. And we know about them.
It’s not rare, it’s not new.
    “ Secondly, you should
always apply hypotheticals to science — old or new! How are we
supposed to ever think of new things if we never allow ourselves to
think outside the box? There are many ways to think outside the
box, and hypotheticals are one very useful method that nearly
everyone can follow.”
    John stopped talking and stared at
Boris.
    Boris shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He
didn’t meet John’s eyes.
    Kaia raised her hand. “So, if we know so
much about them, what is left to hypothesize?”
    “ Excellent question,” John
replied, removing his glare from Boris and turning a smile towards
Kaia. “And the answer is, apparently, a lot.”
    He turned and looked at the bridge. “As I
was saying, a bridge takes you from one side of the river to the
other. But what if the bridge took you from one side of the river
to three other sides of the river? Or three different places on the
river?”
    Kaia frowned. “You mean like it splits in
the middle once you go through?”
    “ Exactly!” John
straightened his tie with an unconscious gesture. “It splits!
You’ve all seen those massive highway systems that the people on
Earth like to build, right? Giant concrete structures which are so
huge they are barely comprehensible, massive feats of engineering
which allow you go any number of directions without seeming to
leave the road, even though the signs indicate that you are moving
from one road to another.”
    “ Would there be signs
inside the Doors?” another student asked.
    “ That, Felicia, my
favourite tree-hugging biologist,” John answered, “is where
cognitive mathematics comes into play!”
    The group of students groaned.
    “ Did anyone in here pass
cognitive mathematics?”
    Kaia raised her hand. “Barely,” she said.
Only two other students raised their hands.
    “ Why is cognitive
mathematics so hard?” John asked the group.
    Stewart raised his hand. “Because it’s like
trying to do brain surgery on yourself.”
    “ Excellent analogy!” John
gave an excited hop. “It’s just like brain surgery!” He looked over
at Kaia. “Kaia, why do you