I'm on Xanax now," she told him. "I can't sleep at night. I've lost 4 pounds since it happened."
He took her out to lunch after assuring her that he was not coming on to her. "Please," he said. "Tell me what happened."
She started to cry. He found her exasperating, being accustomed to practical, in control Lorena.
"I-I was sliding my tray along like usual and had just set a salad on it when...when...the salad did this weird thing, like it melted or something! I mean it dissolved. And then it went back together. I thought maybe there was something in my eye and I looked up and the lady in front of me, she dissolved too, from the middle of her back down to her knees, then went back together just like the salad. It was awful, just awful!" She wiped her eyes and whimpered.
"Did you have medical tests after?" David asked.
"Yeah, all kinds of stuff. A CT scan, some brain wave thing, blood tests. I'm a little anemic but they didn't find anything else."
David nodded ruefully. "Same thing here. I hate to tell you this, but it happened to me twice."
She looked up in horror. "You mean it might-"
"Yeah. Be prepared. But nothing worse happened, it was exactly the same."
"Oh my God," she said, "I don't know if I can stand it again."
She was so young. "Life is full of things you think you can't stand, but you do," he said.
He paid the bill, gave her his card and told her to call him if it reoccurred. She looked like she hoped she would never see him again and he couldn't blame her.
At the next lunch with his colleagues, he asked Kevin, "Remember when we were talking about that 2D world and I said if we cut a hole in it, the 2D inhabitants wouldn't be able to see anything beyond the edge of the hole, maybe just the other edge far off? What would happen if, say, someone in a 5D world, assuming time is 4D, cut a hole in our 3D world? What would we see where the hole is?"
"I don't know," said Kevin. "This is your idea, not mine."
"Well, put your theoretical physics mind to it and think!"
"I imagine we would see nothing. Since the 2D world beings cannot imagine anything outside of their 2D world, there is no edge to the hole you have cut out of it, right? No 3D edge. They wouldn't be able to imagine the distance between their side of the cut out hole and the other side where their world begins again. Even though there might be 3D stuff all around. Why?"
Should David explain? Not yet. "All right, so if 5Ders cut a hole in our world, we could see nothing in the hole? Even though 5D stuff might be in there."