Joni runs up the street to her house. Just one more turn and shell be there!

She turns,
hoping that the smoke rising in the air isn't her house. She crosses a yard and puts her head up
to look toward her house, yearning to see its gray siding and wooden styling. She sees the
doorway first. The door, a lovely rosewood color, is nowhere to be found. The siding is melted
and singed, turning the once rectangular doorway into a haphazard parallelogram. Then the rest
of the house comes into her view. The perfect flowers in front, the walkway, gone. The siding,
the roof, the window, melted, twisted, bent almost beyond recognition. The second floor;
consumed with smoke, still smoldering, mocking Joni. At first, its too much for her to bear, she
gasps, and stumbles. Slowing her run jerkingly, she recoils and back pedals, not believing her
eyes. As he mind connects the dots, she realizes that she was too late, her secret was out. She
screams, a primal release of anger and shame. The world shatters, breaking into a thousand
rhomboids and falling into blackness. Standing on a small circle of earth and grass, she falls to
her knees and passes out.
Joni wakes up slowly. She glances around, realizes Ms. Wheeler is still lecturing away,
and nobody has noticed her little jaunt into her past. She slowly maneuvers into a more
acceptable position to write, and slyly pulls out her phone. She checks her messages, relieved
to find none. Messages these days were bad, they meant someone was dead, or that someone
had found her out. Slyly returning her phone to her bag she turns her attention to Ms. Wheeler.
Psst, a whisper off to her left says. She glances over and sees Jonathon watching her. He
winks, conveying that he watched her fall asleep. She sighs and rolls her eyes, turning her
attention to the board, finally. As Ms. Wheeler starts to talk about the Civil War and American
Revolution, Joni listens, bored by the ancient stories. The bell rings, the class suddenly over.
Joni hops up, reaches under her seat and grabs her bag, and rushes out of the class room with
a quick thank you to Ms. Wheeler. She then runs down the hall, squeezing through kids and
hugging the walls. She sees the doors up ahead and bursts through into the sunlight.
After sitting inside the dark school building for seven hours she isnt used to the bright
sun shining down in her face. Blinking and squinting she covers her eyes with her hand and
walks out toward her car. Walking across the grass to a secondary parking lot she watches the
drones fly across the airspace, crowding the once clear sky. The drones, used for delivery,
surveillance, maps, gps, wifi, and basically anything you wanted them for. After paying a 15$ fee
for a license and safety inspection for you drone, anything was a go. Although blocking off the
sky was a con, the drones had a certain elegance about them. Most of them were black, with
sharp styling lines, pointed noses, and thin wings. You could pick out what the drones person
was if you looked hard. Coded stripes on the wings designated what it was. The military drones,
albeit a little less common, were much easier to spot, with their NATO gray color, scramjet
engines, and menacing front end.
Arriving at her car, the locks disengaged, sensing the key in her pocket. She opened the
door and slid into the seat. As she got comfortable the seat and steering wheel gently adjusted
to fit her perfectly. She pushed the start button to boot up the car. After a short self scan, the car
was ready to go. Joni flipped it into reverse, and slowly pushed on the acceleration. The
electricity flowed from the batteries into the wheels. Producing 700 ft/lbs of torque and 709
horsepower, her FFZero2 was a little old, but still supplied the power and speed she needed.
Throwing it into drive, she floored the accelerator. The motors responded instantly, pushing the
torque to the wheels. Within 3 seconds she was doing sixty. Coming out of the parking lot, she

engaged the gravity assist and took a left toward the freeway. Having ran out of the school,
there were very few other cars on the roads immediately near the school. She took the north
entrance to the freeway, and pushed her car to the limit, hitting 120mph on the on-ramp. Drifting
into the freeway she gunned it, traveling over 200 feet per second. Within a few moments she
was at her exits. Joni then hit the brakes, coming to a stop at the intersection after the highway.
Turning left she meandered along the curvy neighborhood streets. Coming out of the suburbs
and entering a industrial district, she once again gunned it, driving around warehouses at
ludicrous speeds. As she approached her warehouse, she opened the garage and waited to the
last possible second to turn her wheel. Turning the wheel hard to the right, she disengaged the
front motor and traction control, and floored the accelerator. Throwing the rear of the car out
behind her, Joni was now parallel to the garage. She then lifted her foot off the gas and let the
momentum of the car slide her perfectly into the garage.
Closing the garage she hopped out and went up to the door into the main room. Using
her card and thumbprint she unlocked the door. Hearing the solenoids engage, drawing back
the metal rods securing the door to the frame, she opened the door.
Im here. she called out, shutting and locking the door behind her. Tossing her bag on
the table she sat down, and pulled out her laptop. She opened her program she was working on
and added a few more lines of code before she heard Jonathon open the door. She looked
back, and said, Hey.
Did you have to drive like there? He said.
Yes, as a matter of fact, Joni replied simply.
I could see you leaving the school, even then you must have been going forty!
Sixty.
Joni sighed, Ok, one of these days Im gonna get a ticket, ok? Just stop complaining.
Whatever, Jonathon sighed and walked out of the room.
Turning back to her computer, she grabbed her gloves, and connected them to the
computer. Uploading her latest software, she felt apprehensive. Last time she had tried these
gloves on she had gotten her house and parents burned down. But that a long time ago, and
these new gloves had thousands of hours of work behind them. Her computer beeped, letting
her know the code was done. Unplugging the gloves, she shrugged, and slid them on. At first,
nothing happened. She sighed, about to pull them off, when she felt a small prickle. Thats it!
She thought, they worked! Now to see a test. Focusing on her couch, she swiped her right
hand to the left. The couch disintegrated, shattering into a million rhomboids, falling to the floor.
Then immediately a different couch came into mind, the other couch she had debated getting.
Projecting the couch onto her vision, it appeared. The gloves wored! They really did! She
could bring possibilities in from other universes, and make it in her universe. When she made a
decision to buy the one couch, she made two universes. One with one couch, and another. Now
she could switch which universe which couch was in.