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look at this thing and I know.” He chewed for a moment. “That’s why I had Findlay check it.”
    “What!” Roger jumped up. “Chris Findlay? The computer geek? What’s he getting involved for?”
    “Why not?” Barry shrugged. “What’s to fear?”
    “It’s our discovery, Barry!” Roger’s face turned red. “You—you had no right to!”
    “To what?” Barry cocked his head. “To get help? To seek an opinion from somebody who might know something? A minute ago you implied that very thing!”
    Melissa waved her hand. “Slow down, boys. Barry’s right. We need expert eyes on this thing. People who’d know more about machines than us. Despite what Peeky saw at the mine yesterday…” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “…of the machine , it’s not just an old washer-dryer or bicycle built for two. But,” she turned back to Barry “you should have consulted us before getting anybody else involved. It’s not your toy, it’s our toy.”
    Eyes cast downward, Barry nodded. “Point taken.”
    She let him stew for a moment. “So? What did Findlay say?”
    He grinned. “It blew his little computer geek mind. He’s never seen anything like it, either.”
    I forced down my excitement. “How did you even get him here to look at it? It was after midnight when we left you.”
    “I checked to see who might be up playing Warcraft. Those computer guys never sleep. He was online, so I called him.”
    “And he dropped everything in the middle of the night to rush over?”
    Barry nodded, munching on his donut. “Pretty much.”
    “What did he think it was?”
    “After checking over it with me for a few hours, Findlay and I are of the same opinion.” Barry wiped some sugar from the corner of his mouth and folded his arms, leaning back on his kitchen counter.
    I stared at him. “Which is?”
    “Well,” Barry seemed to enjoy the suspense but also appeared not quite sure how to tell us. “It appears that what we have here… is some sort of machine for moving through what Einstein referred to as the blanket of the time space continuum.”
    “Oh, for…” Roger ran his hand over his face. “What the hell does that mean?”
    “That means it’s a time machine.” Melissa gazed at the machine, her voice a whisper.
    Barry nodded.
    There was a long silence as we sat there, perplexed and amazed, looking at the odd, oval machine in Barry’s living room.
    “Geez, what bullshit!” Roger laughed. “You had me going there for a second!”
    Melissa didn’t blink. “Does it work?”
    “Of course it doesn’t work.” Roger grabbed his head. “There’s no such thing as time travel. Even Einstein argued against it. This is some grad student’s attempt at stupidity, or a prank, or -”
    He went on, but I could see she wasn’t listening. She was completely focused on Barry and his calm lack of an answer.
    Against the backdrop of Roger’s protests, she asked Barry again. “Does it work?”
    “Maybe.” A smile tugged at Barry’s lips.
    That stopped Roger. “What?”
    “Findlay is coming over again after class today.” Barry slid a hand along the oval frame. “I spent all night going over this thing, putting a reason behind every piece of technology I could see in front of me. Why these gauges, why that many knobs." He circled the machine. "The pieces started to come together in a strange pattern that I couldn’t recognize. Like the four blind monks who each felt a different part of the elephant, you know?” He sat down on the edge of his desk. “I needed somebody to look at the pieces and tell me what it said to them, in their area of expertise. So I started with Findlay.”
    I didn’t understand. “A computer science whiz?”
    “Findlay’s a computer engineer. He builds the things that drive the computers. I started with him, intending to go right down the line: computer science, engineering, physics, mathematics. But I got lucky. He and I started asking the same questions about