(Sal here.  Stay with me, guys.  This chapter is going to be hard.  Just trust me.)

It was like being underwater, being deep under water, like in those bottomless parts of the ocean where no light can reach, where the pressure itself is enough to crush a body into oblivion.  Were I conscious of the darkness, I would have been terrified, but my mind and body were one in absence.  I felt nothing.  I knew nothing.  I was nothing. 

And then, without warning, I started hurtling back toward the surface. 

Slowly, slowly, my senses returned, starting with my hands.  I felt something warm around one of them, like somebody was holding it tightly with both of their own.  The sensations crept up my limbs, bit by bit.  There were goosebumps on my arms; it was cold in the room.  A breeze blew down across my face and made my eyelids flutter.  I swallowed.  My throat was dry- and something plastic and painful had been forced down it.

Then, I heard broken voices drift limply into my ears.  A worried, low woman's voice.  "...You hear me, sweetheart?"

Blankly I thought about the voice.  After a moment, I recognized it to be that of my mother. 

Wait.  My mother?  What- what was she doing down here?  How did she get into the base?  It was a secret!  I had to be hallucinating. 

She kept trying to coax me awake.  "Julia?  Hey, Goose.  We're here, and we love you, can you hear us?  Can you-"

I moved my head a little, an attempt to nod.  My mother's worry turned into euphoria.  "Ian... Ian, look!  She's coming around!"

Now a somewhat more nasal tenor voice, soft with concern but pumped with hope, joined her.  "Julia!  Hey, sweetie.  Come on, open your eyes."

My dad was there, too?  What kind of family party was this?  All I needed now was for my brother Scott to join in, and the scene would be complete.

"Is she waking up?" Ah, right on cue, Scott!  "Hey, sis!  Hey!"

"Not so loud, Scott, come on," my mother chided, still gently slapping my wrist.  "She's been out for three days, she doesn't need anybody yelling at her."

That sounded normal, all right. 

I was back home.  Good old 2017.  That much I knew, that much of my brain was operational.  I was aware, but my emotions remained at a stand-still.  All I was concerned with doing right was pulling out of this vegetative state.

With my family cheering me on all at once, I began to stir.  I heard my dad call for some doctor to attend to me.  I wiggled my toes, lifted my hands, which were strangely so heavy at the moment.  The transport to 1977 hadn't been nearly this taxing.  Weird. 

All of a sudden there were many other voices blabbering on all around me while unfamiliar hands wrapped in latex manipulated and contorted me in ways I would have resisted had I been myself. 

Then something my mother had said hit me: "She's been out for three days."

Three days? 

Where was I?

At last, I had the strength and the courage to open my bleary eyes- which were immediately burned by the fluorescent lights above and all around.  Masked faces were peering down at me, checking my pulse, my blood pressure, my respiration, my whatever else they had to check.

Oh.  I was in a hospital.

A face with two blue eyes under rather cocky-looking eyebrows and above a surgical mask leaned over me.  "Hi, there," he said.  His youngish voice was rather brisk, no-nonsense, very American.  "How're you feeling?"

I tried to speak, but the tube in my throat kept getting in the way.  So a nurse's hand reached in and took hold of the exposed end- which, I found to my mounting horror, came out of my nose.

"Okay, honey," Blue Eyes said.  "Just hold on, shut your eyes.  This won't be fun."

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to scream while the nurse pulled the long plastic tube through my left nostril.  Oh, God, that stung.  I was still so completely out of it, but I knew pain from pain.  My dry lips moved, silently cried out one word, the most comforting word to salve my hurt, my confusion.

"She's doing that lip thing again," someone noted- someone that sounded like Dr. C. 

"What's she saying?" asked the guy fiddling with my IV. 

"It's that same word, she kept doing that while she was asleep,"  Tube Nurse said. 

Above the din all around me I heard my father call, "Is she okay?"

"She's still disoriented, she'll have to stay here another day at least," IV Guy replied. 

There was so much happening around me right now, and I did not have the proper mental facilities to deal with it.  The nose tube was out of my throat, so I could breathe on my own again. I was too exhausted for real questions yet, too drained for feelings except those of pain and cold and fatigue.  And still my lips kept forming that word.  I wasn't even really putting any brain power into it, it was psychosomatic, like a reflex, an immediate response that my body innately knew would soothe me.   And so I repeated it, hand reaching out at the air, until my eyes closed again under the sedative once more being pumped into my veins. 

The last thing I saw was those blue eyes hovering just over my face, as he waved and said gently, "See you in the morning." 

I replied with the same voiceless word, then my eyes shut for another twelve hours.

...Freddie... 

********************************************************************************************

By the next morning I felt well enough to sit up.  I was still hooked up to an IV and various other formidable-looking machines, but I was much more mobile- and sentient.  Sleep, real sleep, works wonders.

I had set up house here in a private room at the hospital a stone's throw from my university.  I sat alone in my room, eating from a nasty cherry-flavored Jell-O cup and watching Futurama on the complimentary TV (this hospital was great; it even hooked up to my Netflix account), waiting for my family to come visit me in a little while.

I was back home, right where I really belonged in the long run.  I kept telling myself that.  But it didn't feel like home.  I didn't really feel anything at all, honestly.  I couldn't even muster a laugh or a politely amused smile whenever Zoidberg scuttled across the flat screen.  I just felt empty, rather cold inside, with no place to harbor happiness or agony or sorrow or fear.  The doctor had said I was still in a kind of shock, and that the medication I was being given tended to suppress the activities found in the paleomammalian cortex (say that three times fast), so I was to expect to feel a little stoic for at least another week.

All the same, I was still rather disturbed at myself.  It was as though my soul was still in suspended animation, and they had yet to reinstall it in my body.  Even more unsettling, every time I tried to lose myself in memories of the last two weeks, it seemed that they were so strongly tied to my emotions that I currently couldn't remember much of anything except for the concrete minutia I hadn't associated with any really powerful feelings, like cars or the weather. 

Worse still, I was not allowed to look at or handle any Queen paraphernalia while in the hospital, under Dr. C's orders.  That, I did not understand.  Surely looking at pictures of Freddie would make me feel better.  They always would in the past.

I wanted to see Dr. C and Dr. K right away.  No one still had told me what, if anything, had gone wrong with T-Rod. Granted, I'd only been awake a few minutes last night and just the last hour that morning, but I had to know. My morning nurse had been kind enough to send for K, and now I was blankly wondering to myself who would reach me first- my family, or guys who could provide me answers.

There was a knock at the door, and before I could respond, Nurse Sanjay traipsed back in, iPad clenched in her hand. 

"Hello again, Miss Julia," she said cheerily.  "You're looking so much better already."

"Thanks," I croaked, muting the television.  'But I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be too hard."

"You're a fast healer, you're very lucky," she said approvingly, then commenced the run-down of my physical condition.  Once she finished, she tapped everything down. 

"Your numbers look good," she announced. "White blood cell count's good, your pulse, blood pressure's normal- your hormone levels, let's see.  Progesterone and estrogen levels are a little on the high side- are you currently at the ovulation stage in your cycle?"

I winced.  I never liked talking about these things.  "I don't know, my body doesn't follow a predictable cycle.  I'm one of those weirdies, so maybe."

She nodded.  "It's more than likely you're just ovulating, nothing too major.  For the most part, you seem on the right track.  We'll just keep an eye on you for the next twelve hours, and then you'll be free to go if you stay stable, okay?"

"Nurse Sanjay, what happened?" I asked a little impatiently.

She looked up.  "What's that?"

"What happened to me?  Why did I black out for three days?"

She frowned.  "They told me it was because of the study."

I swallowed.  "What about the study?"

"The one you volunteered for.  I think it was some kind of VR thing or- don't you remember?"

I blinked.  "Not... really?  I mean, I remember the experiment, but- but- why- what happened?"

Dr. Sanjay looked me over.  "Perhaps we need to run a brain scan too, see if there's been any internal damage to the-"

"Please tell me what happened," I interrupted her, then pointed at my bare left hand.  "Also, what happened to my ring?"

"Your ring?"

"I was wearing a ring.  It's gone now.  Where did it go?"

The poor lady opened her mouth, most likely about to tell me she hadn't the faintest idea what I was on about when another thirty-something in a luxurious leather overcoat (Oh, yeah, it's early December again) entered the room without knocking.  I squinted, trying to make out his face, but my parents had custody of my contacts, as well as my backpack.  Maybe they were holding on to my wedding ring, too.  I wondered briefly if they knew it even was a wedding ring at one point.

"There she is," the man declared pleasantly.  "Hello, Miss Guinea Pig."

I squinted harder.  "Hi?"

"We met yesterday," he said.  After a moment I recognized his voice.  It was that same brisk, Hoosier accent from when I woke up yesterday evening.

"You watched them pull the thing out of my nose," I said blankly.

"Hey, you do remember!" he said.  "It's called a cannula, by the way.  But actually, we sort of met even earlier than that. I watched you just walk on into that machine."

"You did?"

"Mm-hm.  You could say that the TRDS-14K2 is kind of my baby.  I designed her.  I was up there with the guys in the observatory."

He was discussing things that happened all of two weeks ago.  I struggled to remember.  "In the... fishbowl?"

He laughed, his eyes sort of disappearing into his face while he smiled.  "It did kinda look like a fishbowl, didn't it?  All of us crammed up there, too close for comfort.  But anyway, I just came to say, Miss Julia- may I call you Jules?"

"Sure."  That's actually a shortened version of my name, after all.  It's not like you want to call me Miss Kitty Cute-Ass- or Harley Quinn.  I mean, who in their right mind does that?

"Jules, I'm very proud someone like you was the first to take her for a spin, and come back in one piece.You didn't even look scared."

I shrugged.  "So, uh- what exactly are you here about, Mr.-?"  I tried to make out the scribbles on his visitor name badge.

"Stuart," he replied quickly, putting his hand forward.  "Call me Dr. Stuart, or just plain Stuart."

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Plain Stuart."

He hesitated, then said, "My last name is Preus- but don't call me that unless you're going to pronounce it properly.  It's hit or miss with everyone.  It's not 'pree-us,' like the car my TA drives, it's 'proyse.'"

"Stuart Preus, as in Rolls-Royce," I repeated- then felt a strange jab in my heart.  That was as close to an emotional response as I had had so far.  When I thought Rolls-Royce, I thought Rudy, driving that Rolls-Royce- with me sitting in it- with Freddie.

With Freddie Mercury.  With my prince.  My black-eyed Persian prince.

I waited for the emotional tsunami I craved, but none came.  It wasn't that I had forgotten, I just wasn't responding the way I wanted.  Boy, is this the mother of all delayed reactions.  When it finally does come around, I may downright explode.  Oh, God, I hate meds. 

"You got it," he nodded.  "No, I just came to check on you, see how you were doing.  I'm catching a plane back to Jersey at noon, but I had to stop and see you before heading home.  We were so worried about you, when we opened up the hatch, saw you convulsing that way-"

"Convulsing?  I had a seizure?"

"Mm-hm.  Epileptic seizure," Nurse Sanjay murmured absently.  "Pretty serious one, too.  You could have died."

I turned to Nurse Sanjay, who was still taking readings.  "But I don't have epilepsy."

Before she could answer, there was another knock. The muffled voices outside the door I knew far too well.  "Come on in," I called. 

Seconds later, there stood C and K.  The last time I saw Dr. K, it was forty years ago in Las Vegas and he had a joint between his teeth.  I wanted to reminisce with him about our adventure aboard the Mother Ship, ask him about what he thought of the original Mark Zuckerberg, anything else he might possibly remember from that hilarious summer night.  But I remained silent.

"Oh," Dr. C seemed to shrink back a little.  "I didn't know you were still in town, Dr. Proose."

My eyes lowered, afraid to look at Stuart's expression; his deep, weary sigh said enough in and of itself. I suppose Dr. C is on the "miss" list then.

"I was about to head back home, just wanted to see this one before I did," he said, turning back to me.  "By the way, how hard did those guys have to sell you my little machine?"

I almost smiled.  "Not hard.  I just wanted twenty points."

"Points?"

"In the gradebook."

He blinked.  "That's it?"

"I'm pretty easy.  I just wanted to keep a 4.0.  I didn't think- that- everything that happened, would happen."

"Jules, with all due respect, you got gypped."

K cleared his throat nervously.  "We have every intention of reimbursing her-"

But Stuart wasn't listening.  Suddenly he reached into his coat's inside pocket and pulled out a business card, which he handed to me.  "Here's my phone number at the university, and this-"  he turned it over, and on the gray underside he wrote down another number.  "This is my personal cell.  Call me anytime if you need anything."

"But you're all the way out in New Jersey," I murmured. 

"So what?  I'm somewhere new every day.  Distance is no hitch.  Let's just say, I'm- a man of many means." 

This time I managed to smile.  "Thanks, Stuart."

He waved his hands as if to say "Pleasure's all mine."  "Now, gentlemen, I'll let you say what you're going to say.  Have to head back home." 

"You didn't," C said carefully, "um, already tell her, did you?"

"Tim, I read the conditions backwards and forwards.  I can't say a word that would conflict with yours, so I won't say anything.  She's all yours."  Then he again turned to me, and looked me over.

"You're cute, Jules," Stuart remarked at last.  "Don't pass up the call.  I mean it.  Anything at all, just let me know.  It's the very least I can do.  Goodbye now."

I nodded. "Bye-bye."

And with that, Dr. Stuart Preus disappeared out the door, with Nurse Sanjay in tow.  Deep down I had a premonition that this was not the last I'd seen of him. 

"Glad to be back, Julia?" K asked.

I shrugged.  "Tell you when I get my feelings back in a week."

"Fair enough.  Aren't you feeling anything at all?"

"Just one thing," I replied.  "Pretty damn confused."

"In what way?" K asked. 

"What's all this about epileptic seizures, and- and convulsions?"

"Why, that's what you had," C said.  "Extreme seizure caused by epilepsy.  It's right here in the doctor's report-"

"Guys, you don't seem to understand, I don't have epilepsy-"

"Well, you do now," he snapped back.  "It's a shame we didn't know about it before, or else we wouldn't have let you volunteer."

"Does time travel worsen epilepsy or something?"

C frowned.  "Time travel, Julia?"

"Yes, time travel," I repeated.  Why was he looking at me like I was discussing some foreign concept? 

C traded glances with K (who, strangely, looked ever so guilty), and sighed.  "Okay, I guess we are going to have to go through it all over again."

I looked at them both, my confusion mounting ever higher.

C sat down on the side of my bed, and explained.  "You were the guinea pig, not of a time machine experiment, but an intense new kind of VR that employs a majority of your body's energy and brain waves to create a projection so lifelike that it can indeed be mistaken for reality."

I paused a moment, letting it sink in.  "Wait, what?"

"T-Rod," C repeated laconically, "is a virtual reality machine, not a time machine."

"You told me it was a time machine!  You wanted to send me to Saul Alinsky-"

"We wanted you to meet a projection of Saul Alinsky, but it seems that there was so much of your brain given over to studying that buck-toothed fruitcake, that you actually diverted, rearranged the projection and created a world of your own.  Your own private retro Matrix."

Matrix?  My heart grew icy.  So every moment with Freddie, talking to him, laughing with him, singing with him, making love to him...

Was it all in my head?

"Why did it take you so long to pull me out then?" I challenged him.

"We monitored your brain activity all throughout.  There weren't very many points at which we could reach you, Julia, you got so sucked into your own brain.  We were really only able to get to you when you weren't around him, that's when the pull was strongest.  You were only under for two hours- but any longer, and you might never have come back.  When we pulled the plug on your little La-La Land, you had a seizure."

I shook my head, covering my ears.  "This is such baloney.  This is all so wrong."

"Oh, is it?"

"I can show you!  All the things I took down in my journal-"

"Your log has been confiscated and reviewed," C said coldly.  "All we found were fantasies and wishful thinking about some dead guy you will never meet."

"And I also- there was a fake Passport-"

"I saw no Passport," C interrupted me.  "Steve, did you see any Passport in her backpack?"

K's eyes were focused on his shoes as he shrugged quietly.

And then I remembered again. 

"I saw you, K," I declared.  "I saw you with my own eyes, in your twenties, smoking weed, driving me and 'Mark' around in that beat up old truck.  The Mother Ship, you called it!  You were a witness at my-"

"Hallucinations," C cut me off.  "Insertion of familiar objects and people to normalize the image.  Very typical. Have you any real, concrete evidence that you were in 1977?  If you do, maybe I'll believe you.  Maybe a picture on your phone?  A souvenir?"

I began to feel nauseous. I had pictures, so many pictures, from those two weeks, in my Android- which I had so carelessly and stupidly left behind because I couldn't find it right off.  All the gifts, all the clothes and everything, I had left in yesteryear because I didn't want Freddie to consider me a thief. Had I really no proof?

WHERE WAS MY RING?

"Have you anything like that?" C asked again, so smugly I wanted to slap him.

I wanted to fly out of bed at him, screaming, fists swinging, feet kicking, teeth biting, but I didn't.  I hadn't the energy or the emotion.  Or the actual faith.

Virtual reality?

All a fake?

It couldn't be true.

But then, again, where was my proof? 

"K," I said softly, plaintively.  "Steve.  My friend.  Tell me he's lying.  Tell me I changed anything.  I shouldn't have been there with you, but I was!  It was real, wasn't it?  K?"

K still wouldn't look at me.  He folded his arms and seemed to shrink under C's hard stare.  And finally, he spoke, and said something that hit me a little harder than it had before.

"There is nothing that happens," he whispered slowly, "that isn't supposed to happen.  Otherwise, it wouldn't happen."

C and K said a couple other things to me, but I was in too much of a daze to hear them.  K's words kept ringing in my head.  In vain I tried to resurrect Freddie's face behind my eyes, but it was too fuzzy, too hard to do.  I wanted my feelings back.  I wanted to scream, to weep, to raise hell, but I only sat there and took it, clenching Stuart's card between my fingers.

I would call him as soon as he got home from the airport.  Maybe he would have a different story.

A few minutes after C and K left, my family appeared.  It was nice to see them, for I had missed them a great deal, whether for two weeks or two hours.  But my heart wasn't in it.  My soul was in too much turmoil for me to mean anything more than perfunctory politeness when I smiled at my dad, or kissed my mother, or nudged Scott- for all I really wanted right there, right then, was to be in the arms of my prince just once more. 

It couldn't have just been some grand illusion.

Could it?

I would find out in due time.