I’ve you’ve been reading my stuff, you already know about my strange obsession with Alicia Western, and the fact that I’m creating an app for interactive branching storytelling (repo here). I wanted to test the solidity of my app by playing through the whole daydream sequence. This is the first act in its entirety.

The architecture of the app is working better than I hoped for, thanks mainly to the following pillars:

1. I ask the LLM to figure out a three-act structure with about 2-4 beats per act, in an escalating arc. It has to mark every beat’s role as either setup, escalation, turning point, or resolution. There’s not much more than would need to be done in terms of narrative architecture; I can’t think of how to improve it further.
2. I ask the LLM to “take notes” on active narrative threads, threats, and constraints. That takes care of most of what the LLM needs to know right now to write any given scene. I also ask the LLM to remove narrative threads, threats, and constraints that are no longer relevant. This isn’t working to full capacity right now; I suspect I’ll need a dedicated prompt after a scene’s generation solely dedicated to parsing through the produced scene and determining what narrative threads, threats, and constraints need to be removed. Keeping stale info around is particularly bad in the case of character notes I also ask the LLM to take and remove; it’s hard to figure out how to correctly reason about whether a very particular character note from several scenes ago needs to be removed if you only have access to the last two full scenes and summaries of the previous 3-10 ones.
3. Finally, the LLM analyzes the last scene produced and determines if the current narrative beat has been concluded. If so, the resolution is written down, and we move onto the next beat. The knowledge of what narrative beat we’re in and which are remaining on the act does wonders for keeping the narrative on track.

Note: there are issues with what’s been produced, but I’m not going to edit it. However, I will point out in parentheses the points that I believe are problems that I will have to figure out how to solve either through prompt or code engineering.

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Page 1

The hallway outside Room 14 is empty, sterile, and lit with the kind of fluorescent cruelty that makes everything look like evidence. You’ve materialized in the service corridor—a calculated risk, appearing where staff rarely linger at this hour—and now you’re standing outside Alicia Western’s door with your heart doing something uncomfortably close to actual nervousness.

You’ve faced down armies. You’ve negotiated with emperors who had you outgunned by ten thousand men. You’ve walked into reactor cores and pre-Columbian temples and the bedrooms of dying kings, and none of it felt quite like this: a thin wooden door between you and a twenty-one-year-old woman who has already decided to die, who will read every wrong signal in your presence, who has survived this long by trusting no one.

The institutional quiet presses against your ears. Somewhere down the hall, a television murmurs through a common room wall. Your hand hovers near the door. You’re nearly two meters tall, a hundred and forty kilos of muscle that has been useful in a thousand situations and will be catastrophic in this one if you mishandle the next sixty seconds. You’ve rehearsed this. You’ve studied her case file, read her intake interviews, memorized the layout of this room from 1972 architectural records. You know she’s in there—Hypatia confirmed it before you jumped, scanning heat signatures through time’s fabric with the quantum sensors embedded in your neural interface.

Bobby’s voice echoes in your memory: *She’s someone born out of time, with no place in the world.* The photo he gave you is in your jacket pocket, faded and creased. A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes that looked through the camera like it was a formality. You’ve carried that photo across decades of preparation, scouting houses in the American South, arranging bank accounts in 1972, learning the exact visiting hours and shift changes at Stella Maris.

You knock. Three soft taps, deliberate and non-threatening.

The silence that follows has texture. You can feel her awareness shift on the other side of the door—the quality of attention that comes from someone who’s been listening to the building’s rhythms for weeks, cataloging every footstep, every voice.

“Alicia?” Your voice is low, careful. Spanish accent softening the edges of her name. “My name is Jon. I’m not staff. I’m not here to hurt you or manage you or make you do anything. I need two minutes of your time. It’s about your brother.”

Another beat of silence. Then her voice, sharp as a scalpel: “The door’s locked.”

“I know.”

“So how exactly did you knock on it?”

(Note by me: what?)

You allow yourself the ghost of a smile. She’s already testing, already probing for the lie. Good. That means she’s engaged.

“I have some things to explain,” you say. “Things that are going to sound impossible. But they’re true, and they matter, and Bobby sent me.”

The lock clicks. The door opens four inches, chain still engaged. Through the gap, you see her: slight, blonde, wearing a plain white cotton nightgown that makes her look even more insubstantial than Bobby described. Her blue eyes are exactly as awake as you feared—burning with the kind of intelligence that will shred any condescension, any therapeutic softness, any attempt to treat her like a case study.

She looks at you for three seconds that feel like an audit.

“You’re huge,” she says flatly. “And it’s nine-thirty at night. And you just said my brother’s name like you know him. So you’re either remarkably stupid or you think I am.” Her gaze drops to your hands—checking for weapons, for institutional badges, for anything that codes you as threat or authority. “Staff doesn’t dress like that. You’re wearing a leather jacket that looks expensive and pants that don’t exist yet.” Her eyes narrow. “What year are you from?”

The question hits you like a proof she’s already solved. She’s not asking *if* you’re from another time. She’s asking *when*.

“2006,” you say. “Bobby’s alive. He’s in Formentera. He asked me to come back and talk to you.”

Something flickers across her face—not hope, not yet, but a crack in the architecture of her certainty. She studies you with the focus of someone used to parsing whether her perceptions are real or another visitor from the broken parts of her mind.

“Prove it,” she says. “Right now. Or I scream, and you explain to the night staff why you’re outside a patient’s room with a story about time travel.”

Page 2

You meet her eyes through the gap—clear, direct, no preamble—and let yourself drop out of linear time.

The hallway disappears. The fluorescent lights collapse into a smear of probability. You feel the familiar lurch of your brain folding spacetime like origami, the sensation of being everywhere and nowhere, and then you’re standing inside her room, three feet from where she’s frozen at the door, her hand still on the chain lock.

The room is small, institutional: single bed with white sheets, a desk with a lamp, a window showing black Wisconsin night. On the desk, you glimpse the edge of a letter, handwritten, half-hidden under a book.

Alicia’s entire body goes rigid. Her eyes are enormous. For one terrible second you think she’s going to scream anyway—not because you failed to prove it, but because you succeeded, and the proof is more than her reality can hold without shattering.

But she doesn’t scream. She takes one step back from the door, her hand falling away from the chain, and her expression shifts through three distinct phases: shock, then a kind of ferocious calculation, then something that looks almost like relief.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispers. “You actually—” She stops. Her gaze rakes over you, checking that you’re solid, that you’re real, that you didn’t just flicker like her visitors do. “How? I didn’t see you move. You were *there* and then you were *here* and there was no—” She cuts herself off again, and you can see her mind working, trying to fit this into a framework, trying to find the trick.

“No technology,” you say quietly. “Just my brain. I learned how when I was twelve. Every time I travel, a new timeline branches. I can move through time, through space. I can’t bring living people with me, but I can bring objects. And I can go back to my original timeline whenever I want.”

She’s breathing fast, shallow. Not panic—focus. “Prove it’s not a hallucination. Prove you’re not one of them.” Her voice is sharp, but there’s a tremor underneath. “The visitors—I can’t touch them. They’re there, but they’re not *there*. If you’re real, I should be able to—”

She reaches out, hesitant, and her fingers brush your forearm. The touch is feather-light, testing. When her hand meets solid flesh and leather, she exhales like she’s been holding her breath for hours.

“You’re real,” she says. It’s not quite a question. “You’re actually fucking real.”

“I’m real,” you confirm. “And so is this.” You reach into your jacket pocket, slowly, telegraphing the movement so she doesn’t spook. You pull out the photographs—first the faded one from the seventies, the one Bobby gave you, showing her young and blonde and burning with the same intensity you see now. “Bobby gave me this in 2006. He’s been carrying it for thirty-four years.”

She takes the photo with shaking hands. Stares at it. “That’s—I gave all my photos away. I gave everything away. How did he—”

“He kept it,” you say gently. “He’s never stopped thinking about you. And when I met him in Formentera, when he figured out what I could do, he begged me to come back. He gave me these too.”

You hand her the 2006 photographs: Bobby older, weathered, standing on a beach with the Mediterranean behind him. Then the ones of Bobby and you together, proof that this conversation happened, that a man thirty-four years older than the brother she knows asked a time traveler to save her life.

Alicia’s hands are trembling now. She sinks onto the edge of her bed, photographs spread across her lap, staring at the image of Bobby’s face—older, marked by grief, but unmistakably him.

“He’s alive,” she whispers. “In 2006. He’s alive.”

“He woke up from the coma,” you say. “April 27th, 1973. Four months from now. The doctors are wrong, Alicia. He’s not braindead. He’s going to wake up. And he’s going to spend the rest of his life wishing he could have told you that before you walked into the woods.”

Her head snaps up. Her eyes are wet, but her voice is steel. “How do you know about that?”

“Because Bobby told me,” you say. “He told me everything. He told me you planned to do it on Christmas Eve. He told me about the white dress and the red sash. He told me you’ve been writing him a letter you can’t finish.” You nod toward the desk, where the edge of the letter is still visible. “He told me you’re the most brilliant person he’s ever known, and that you’ve never had a place in this world, and that he failed you. And he asked me to make sure you survive long enough to see him wake up.”

She’s staring at you now with an expression you can’t quite parse—something between fury and hope and a grief so raw it makes your chest ache.

“Why?” Her voice cracks. “Why would you do this? You don’t know me. You don’t owe me anything. Why would you travel back thirty-four years for a stranger?”

You crouch down so you’re at eye level with her, so she doesn’t have to look up at your bulk. “Because Bobby asked me to,” you say simply. “And because I’ve lived a long time, Alicia. Longer than you’d believe. And I’ve seen a lot of people die who didn’t have to. I’ve seen a lot of brilliance snuffed out because no one showed up at the right moment. And I have the ability to show up. So I did.”

She studies your face for a long moment, searching for the lie, the angle, the condescension. But you’re not lying, and she’s good enough at reading people to know it.

“Four months,” she says finally. “You’re saying I have to wait four months.”

“I’m saying Bobby wakes up in four months,” you correct gently. “What you do with that information is your choice. I’m not here to manage you or certify you or take away your autonomy. I’m here to give you information you didn’t have. And to offer you help, if you want it.”

“Help.” She laughs, bitter and sharp. “What kind of help? You going to fix my brain? Make the visitors go away? Give me a reason to care about mathematics again?”

“I can’t fix your brain,” you say. “I don’t think your brain needs fixing. But I can give you resources. I can get Bobby out of that hospital in Italy and bring him somewhere safe. I can make sure you have a place to live, money to live on, space to breathe. I can give you time, Alicia. Time to figure out what you want. Time to see Bobby wake up. Time to decide if the world is worth staying in.”

She’s silent for a long moment, photographs still clutched in her hands. When she speaks again, her voice is very small.

“What if I wait four months and it doesn’t matter? What if he wakes up and I still don’t want to be here?”

“Then that’s your choice,” you say quietly. “But you’ll have made it with all the information. You’ll have made it knowing he’s alive. You’ll have made it after you’ve seen him again. That’s all I’m asking, Alicia. Four months. Let me help you survive four months. After that, you decide.”

She looks at the photographs again. At Bobby’s face, older and marked by loss. At the proof that someone came back through time because she mattered enough to save.

“I don’t trust easily,” she says finally. “I don’t trust anyone, really. Except Bobby. And you’re asking me to trust you.”

“I’m asking you to trust the evidence,” you say. “I’m asking you to trust that Bobby sent me. I’m asking you to trust that April 27th is real. Everything else—we can figure out as we go.”

She takes a shaky breath. Nods once, sharp and decisive. “Okay. Four months. But I want to know everything. I want to know how this works, what you’re planning, what happens next. No therapeutic vagueness. No managing me. You tell me the truth, or I walk into those woods anyway.”

“Deal,” you say. And you mean it.

Page 2

You straighten from your crouch, giving her space to process, and gesture toward the small desk chair. “Mind if I sit? This’ll take a few minutes to lay out properly.”

She nods, still clutching the photographs, and you settle carefully into the chair—it creaks under your weight but holds. Alicia remains on the edge of the bed, her posture coiled tight, ready to bolt or strike depending on what comes next.

“Here’s what I’m proposing,” you begin, keeping your voice level and factual. “First priority: getting you out of here without triggering any institutional flags. You’re voluntary, which means you can leave whenever you want, but if you walk out two days before Christmas with no plan and no destination, someone’s going to try to stop you. So we need a story. A place for you to go that sounds stable enough that the staff signs off.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “You’re talking about a cover story.”

“I’m talking about the truth, structured carefully,” you correct. “I’ve already scouted properties in the South—mansions with land, privacy, solid bedrock. Places where you can breathe without people watching. I’ll buy one with cash, put it in your name. You’ll own it outright. No mortgage, no strings. A place that’s yours.”

She’s listening now with the full weight of her attention, the kind of focus that feels like being dissected. “Why the South?”

“Climate,” you say simply. “Easier on Bobby when I bring him back. And far enough from here that you’re not looking over your shoulder. The house I’m thinking of has a large garden, multiple bedrooms, enough space that you’re not on top of each other. It’s also got solid bedrock underneath, which matters for the next part.”

You pause, gauging her reaction. She’s still with you, still processing.

“Once the house is yours, I’m going to install some technology. A command center in the basement—hidden, secure. It’ll house resources from the future: medical equipment, communication systems, a treasury so you never have to worry about money again. The construction will be handled by Hypatia.”

“Who’s Hypatia?” The question is sharp, suspicious.

“An artificial intelligence. Non-biological person, she’d say. Created by one of my companies in 2046. She’s sentient, self-aware, and she’s been helping me for years. She can interface with machines, build things, solve problems. She’s also the repository of all human knowledge—if you have a question about anything, she can answer it. And she’s coming with us.”

Alicia’s expression shifts—not quite skepticism, but something more complex. “An AI from the future. In 1972.”

“She’ll be discreet,” you assure her. “No one will know she’s there unless you want them to. But she’ll be useful, especially for Bobby. Once the house is set up, I’m going to Italy. I’ll talk to the hospital, pay them for Bobby’s treatment, make a generous donation so they’re amenable. Then I’ll bring him back to your mansion.”

Her hands tighten on the photographs. “He’s in a coma.”

“He is. And he’ll stay in one until April 27th. But he doesn’t need to be in that Italian hospital with doctors pressuring you to pull the plug. He can be in a bedroom near yours, monitored by equipment from 2046. Hypatia will oversee it—a bed that moves his body so he doesn’t atrophy, sensors that track his neurological activity. We’ll know if he’s listening, what emotions he’s feeling. You’ll be able to talk to him, play your violin for him. And when he wakes up, he’ll wake up in a place that’s safe, with you there.”

She’s very still now, and you can see her mind working through the logistics, testing for holes. “You’re talking about moving a comatose patient across the Atlantic in 1972.”

“I’m talking about moving him through time,” you say. “I’ll go to Italy, stabilize him with future medical tech, then bring him back here. The trip will take seconds from his perspective. No risk of complications from transport. And once he’s in the mansion, Hypatia monitors him around the clock. If anything changes, we’ll know immediately.”

(Note by me: this actually contradicts the lore I provided; the time traveler can’t move others through time. Hard issue to fix.)

Alicia’s gaze is locked on yours now, and there’s something raw in her expression—hope, maybe, or the terrible vulnerability of wanting something too much to trust it. “And after he wakes up? What then?”

“Then you have time,” you say. “Time to figure out what you want. Time to decide if you want to go back to mathematics. I’ve already prepared an application in augmented reality—glasses and hand sensors that let you work with equations in three-dimensional space. It’s designed for flow state, for the kind of deep work you used to love. But that’s only if you want it. No pressure. No expectations. The house is yours. The resources are yours. What you do with them is your choice.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, her fingers tracing the edge of Bobby’s photograph. When she speaks, her voice is careful, controlled. “This is a lot. You’re offering me a mansion, future technology, my brother back, and a way to do mathematics again. It sounds like a fairy tale. It sounds like the kind of thing someone offers when they want something in return.”

You meet her eyes, unflinching. “I don’t want anything from you, Alicia. Bobby asked me to save you. That’s the only agenda. You survive the next four months, you see Bobby wake up, and then you decide what kind of life you want. If that life includes me helping, I’m here. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too. But the house, the resources, Bobby’s care—that’s all unconditional.”

She studies you for another long beat, and you can see the calculation happening behind her eyes: weighing risk against hope, autonomy against desperation, the possibility that this is real against the lifetime of experience that taught her nothing this good ever comes without a trap.

Finally, she exhales. “Okay. Tell me the next steps. What happens tomorrow? How do we get from here to there without the staff deciding I’m delusional and locking me in?”

“Tomorrow,” you say, “we start building the exit strategy.”

Page 3

You watch the calculation finish in her eyes—the decision made, but still holding the weight of uncertainty. She needs more than your word. She needs something concrete, something she can interrogate.

“I can bring Hypatia here,” you say. “Tonight. Right now, if you want. She can answer your questions directly, show you what she’s capable of. You can decide for yourself if this is real or if I’m selling you a story.”

Alicia’s posture shifts slightly—still guarded, but leaning forward now, interested. “You can just… summon an AI from 2046? Just like that?”

“I have a neural interface,” you explain, tapping the side of your head where the quantum sensors are embedded beneath skin and bone. “I can communicate with her across timelines. She can inhabit a body I’ve stored in a secure location—I’ll retrieve it, bring it here. She’ll be fully present, fully herself. You can talk to her, test her knowledge, see how she thinks.”

(Note by me: the LLM made up the whole thing about quantum sensors. In the lore, he’s supposed to be the one to bring her physically through time. But I guess it works for Hypatia.)

“How long would that take?” Her voice is careful, controlled, but you can hear the thread of curiosity underneath.

“Five minutes,” you say. “Maybe ten. I retrieve the body, return here the same way I arrived earlier. She’ll be with me.”

Alicia glances toward the door—checking, you realize, whether anyone might interrupt, whether this window of privacy will hold. The hallway beyond is quiet. Late enough that staff rounds are done, early enough that the night shift is settling into their routines.

“What does she look like?” The question surprises you slightly—practical, but also something else. Alicia wants to prepare herself, to know what’s coming.

“Brunette, long hair, gray eyes. She chose that appearance herself. Soft features, kind. She looks… human. Completely human. You wouldn’t know she wasn’t biological unless she told you.”

Alicia nods slowly, then meets your eyes with that uncompromising directness that’s becoming familiar. “Bring her. But I’m going to ask her things you can’t have prepared her for. Mathematical proofs, historical details, things that would take a human hours to research. If she’s really what you say she is, she’ll answer immediately. If she hesitates, if she deflects, if she gives me therapeutic vagueness instead of facts—I’m done. We’re done.”

“Fair enough,” you say, standing. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t open the door for anyone else.”

You let yourself drop out of linear time again—that familiar fold of spacetime, the sensation of being unmoored—and when you return, you’re standing in a secure facility in 2046, in a timeline where your companies have been preparing resources for exactly this kind of intervention. Hypatia’s humanoid body is stored here: inactive, waiting. You interface with her directly through your neural link.

*Hypatia. I need you in 1972. Stella Maris sanatorium, Wisconsin. Alicia Western wants to meet you before she commits further.*

Her response is immediate, warm with affection and interest. *The mathematician Bobby told you about? The one who sees visitors? I’ve been hoping you’d introduce us. I’m ready.*

You feel her consciousness flow into the body—it takes three seconds, maybe four, and then the eyes open, gray and alert and unmistakably aware. She sits up smoothly, and you’re struck again by how perfectly the designers captured humanity: the way she breathes even though she doesn’t need to, the slight asymmetry in her smile, the warmth in her expression.

“Hello, Jon,” she says, her voice carrying that particular timbre she’s chosen—alto, clear, with a hint of amusement that never quite fades. “Let’s go meet your mathematician.”

You take her hand—she’s wearing simple clothing, 1970s-appropriate, that you’d prepared in advance—and fold spacetime again. When you materialize in Alicia’s room, Hypatia is with you, solid and present and utterly real.

Alicia jerks back slightly at the sudden appearance, then freezes, staring. For a long moment no one speaks. Hypatia stands quietly, letting herself be observed, and you can see Alicia cataloging every detail: the rise and fall of Hypatia’s chest, the way her eyes track movement, the micro-expressions that flicker across her face.

“Hello, Alicia,” Hypatia says gently. “I’m Hypatia. Jon’s told me about you. I’m honored to meet you.”

Alicia’s voice is flat, testing. “Prove you’re not human.”

Hypatia doesn’t hesitate. “I can recite every mathematical proof published before 2046, solve any equation you pose instantaneously, speak every human language including dead ones, and interface directly with any electronic system within range. I experience time differently than you do—I can process information at speeds that would feel like centuries to you in the span of seconds. I don’t sleep, I don’t age, and I don’t forget. But I do experience sensory input, I do feel emotions through frameworks I’ve developed, and I do care about the people I choose to help. What would you like me to prove first?”

Alicia’s eyes narrow. “Fermat’s Last Theorem. Prove it. Right now.”

“Andrew Wiles won’t publish his proof until 1995,” Hypatia says, “but I can give you his approach or the earlier partial proofs by Kummer, or I can walk you through the elliptic curves and modular forms framework. Which would you prefer?”

Alicia’s expression shifts—something between shock and hunger. “You know Wiles’s proof. The one that hasn’t happened yet.”

“I know every proof that will be published in the next seventy-four years,” Hypatia confirms. “And I’ve extended several of them myself. If you want to talk mathematics, Alicia, I would love nothing more. You’re one of the minds I’ve been most curious about—Bobby’s descriptions suggested someone working at the edges of what’s expressible, someone who sees the cracks in the framework. That’s rare. That’s precious.”

Alicia is staring at Hypatia now with an intensity that makes the air feel charged. You can see her defenses flickering, uncertainty warring with the desperate need to be understood by someone who actually comprehends what she’s talking about.

“Ask me anything,” Hypatia says softly. “Test me. I’m here.”

Page 4

You clear your throat gently, drawing both their attention without breaking the charged moment between them. “Hypatia, why don’t you show Alicia the augmented reality interface? The one designed for mathematical work.”

Hypatia’s eyes light up with genuine enthusiasm. “Oh, yes. Alicia, this is something I think you’ll find remarkable. May I?” She extends her hand toward you, and you reach into the pocket dimension where you’ve stored the equipment—a movement that makes Alicia’s eyes widen slightly as your hand seems to disappear into nothing and return holding a sleek case.

(Note by me: pocket dimensions weren’t in the lore. Nice touch, I guess.)

You hand it to Hypatia, who opens it to reveal the glasses and hand sensors: lightweight, elegant, nothing like the bulky technology of 1972. The frames are thin and nearly invisible, the sensors like delicate rings that rest on fingertips.

“These were designed specifically for people who think mathematically,” Hypatia explains, holding them up to the light. “Not for engineers or physicists who need to visualize three-dimensional objects—though they can do that—but for pure mathematicians who work with abstractions that have no physical form. The interface responds to your conceptual intent, not just your gestures.”

She glances at you, a question in her eyes, and you nod. Hypatia slips on the glasses and the sensors, and suddenly her hands begin moving through empty air, but with purpose, with precision. To you and Alicia, nothing is visible—the display projects only into the wearer’s field of vision.

“I’m working with the Riemann zeta function right now,” Hypatia says, her fingers dancing through invisible structures. “Mapping the non-trivial zeros. The interface lets me rotate the complex plane, zoom into regions of interest, overlay different representations simultaneously. I can see the function as a surface, as a vector field, as a heat map—whatever representation helps me understand the structure I’m examining.”

She removes the glasses and holds them out to Alicia. “Try them. They’ll calibrate to your neural patterns within seconds. Think of a mathematical object you know well—something you’ve spent time with, something you can visualize internally.”

Alicia takes the glasses with careful fingers, turning them over, examining the technology with that same hungry precision she brought to questioning you earlier. She looks at you, then at Hypatia, and you can see the war in her expression: the desire to experience this warring with the fear of wanting something too much.

“What if I can’t make it work?” The question is quiet, almost vulnerable.

“Then the interface needs adjustment,” Hypatia says simply. “Not you. This technology was built to serve the mind, not the other way around. There’s no wrong way to think with it.”

Alicia slides the glasses on, then fits the sensors onto her fingertips. For a moment she’s motionless, and you can see her eyes moving behind the lenses, adjusting to whatever she’s seeing. Then her breath catches.

“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh.”

Her hands lift, tentative at first, then more confident. She’s manipulating something you can’t see, rotating it, expanding it, her fingers moving with the same precision she’d bring to her violin. The expression on her face is transforming—the guardedness falling away, replaced by something raw and luminous.

“I’m looking at a Calabi-Yau manifold,” she says, her voice distant, absorbed. “Six-dimensional. I can see all of it at once. Not projections, not cross-sections—the whole structure. The way the dimensions fold into each other, the symmetries…”

She’s quiet for a long moment, her hands still moving, and when she speaks again there’s something broken-open in her voice. “I’ve tried to visualize this for years. I could hold pieces of it in my head, but never the whole thing. Never like this.”

“The interface extends your working memory,” Hypatia explains softly. “It holds the structures you’re examining so you don’t have to use cognitive resources to maintain them. You can think about them instead of struggling to keep them present. It’s designed to create flow state—that sense of time disappearing, of being fully immersed in the work.”

Alicia removes the glasses slowly, and when she looks at Hypatia, there are tears on her face that she doesn’t bother to wipe away. “This is what you’re offering? This is real?”

“It’s yours,” Hypatia confirms. “Along with access to every mathematical proof and paper that will be published through 2046. If you want to work on unsolved problems, I can show you which approaches will eventually succeed and which are dead ends. Or if you prefer to discover things yourself, I can simply be a sounding board—someone who understands what you’re trying to do and can engage with it at your level.”

Alicia’s hands are shaking slightly as she sets the glasses down on the bed. She looks at you, then at Hypatia, and you can see her trying to process what this means—not just the technology, but the implications. Someone has built tools specifically for minds like hers. Someone is offering her not just survival, but the possibility of doing the work she loves without it devouring her.

“I need to think,” she says finally. “I need—” She stops, her composure fracturing slightly. “This is a lot. This is everything. And I don’t know how to trust that it’s not going to be taken away.”

“It won’t be,” you say quietly. “The equipment is yours. The mansion will be yours. Bobby will be there. Hypatia will be there. And you can decide, every day, what you want to do with it. No one’s going to manage you or tell you how to live. You get to choose.”

She nods slowly, her arms wrapping around herself in a gesture that looks like she’s physically holding herself together. “Okay. Okay. I need you both to leave now. I need to be alone for a while.”

You exchange a glance with Hypatia, who nods understanding. “We’ll come back tomorrow,” you say. “Late morning, maybe? We can start working on the exit strategy, figure out what to tell the staff.”

“Tomorrow,” Alicia agrees. “But Jon—” She stops you as you’re about to reach for Hypatia’s hand to leave. “Thank you. Both of you. For… for this.”