"Joel Gotlib is going on about that now," she said, presumably referring to a Canadian newscaster. "It sounds crazy. Anyway, nothing like that happened to me."

"All right," said Lloyd. "We're sorry to have disturbed your sleep, Dr. Tompkins. We'll be — "

"Wait," said Theo.

Lloyd looked at the younger man.

"Dr. Tompkins, my name is Theo Procopides. We've met, I think, once or twice at conferences."

"If you say so," said Tompkins's voice.

"Dr. Tompkins," continued Theo. "I'm like you — I didn't see anything either. No vision, no dream, no nothing."

"Dream?" said Tompkins's voice. "Well, now that you mention it, I guess I did have a dream. Funny thing was it was in color — I never dream in color. But I remember the guy in it had red hair."

Theo looked disappointed — he'd clearly been pleased to find he wasn't alone. But everyone else's eyebrows flew up, and they turned to look at Jake.

"Not only that," said Carly, "he had red underwear, too."

Young Jake now turned the aforementioned color. "Red underwear?" repeated Lloyd.

"That's right."

"Did you know this man?" asked Lloyd.

"No, I don't think so."

"He didn't look like anyone you'd ever met before?"

"I don't think so."

Lloyd leaned closer to the speakerphone. "What about — what about the father of someone you'd met before? Did he look like somebody's father?"

"What are you getting at?" asked Tompkins.

Lloyd sighed then looked around the room, seeing if anyone was going to object to him going on. No one did. "Does the name Jacob Horowitz mean anything to you?"

"I don't — oh, wait. Oh, right. Sure, sure. That's who he reminded me of. Yeah, it was Jacob Horowitz, but, geez, he should take better care of himself. He looked like he'd aged decades since I last saw him."

Antonia made a small gasp. Lloyd felt his heart pounding. "Look," said Carly. "I want to make sure my family members are okay. My parents are in Winnipeg — I've got to get going."

"Can we call you back in a bit?" asked Lloyd. "You see, we've got Jacob Horowitz here, and his vision seems to match yours — sort of, anyway. He said he was in a lab, but… "

"Yes, that's right. It was a lab."

Incredulity crept into Lloyd's voice. "And he was in his underwear?"

"Well, not by the end of the vision… Look, I've got to go."

"Thanks," said Lloyd. "Bye."

"Bye."

Swiss dial tone issued from the speaker. Theo reached over and shut it off.

Jacob Horowitz still looked decidedly embarrassed. Lloyd thought about telling him that probably half of all the physicists he knew had done it at one time or another in a lab, but the young man looked like he'd have a nervous breakdown if anyone said anything to him just now. Lloyd started to shift his gaze around the circle again. "All right," he said. "All right. I'm going to say it, because I know you're all thinking it. Whatever happened here caused some sort of time effect. The visions weren't hallucinations; they were actual insights into the future. The fact that Jacob Horowitz and Carly Tompkins both apparently saw the same thing strongly suggests that."

"But Raoul's vision was psychedelic, didn't someone say that?" said Theo.

"Yeah," said Raoul. "Like a dream, or something."

"Like a dream," repeated Michiko. Her eyes were still red, but she was reacting to the outside world.

That was all she said, though, but, after a moment Antonia caught her meaning and elaborated. "Michiko's right," said the Italian physicist. "No mystery there — at whatever point in the future the visions are of, Raoul will be asleep, and having an actual dream."

"But this is crazy," said Theo. "Look, I didn't have any vision."

"What did you experience?" asked Sven, who hadn't heard Theo describe it before.

"It was — I don't know, like a discontinuity, I guess. Suddenly, it was two minutes later; I had no sensation of passing time, and nothing at all like a vision." Theo folded his arms defiantly across his broad chest. "How do you explain that?"

There was quiet around the room. The pained expressions on a lot of faces made clear to Lloyd that they'd gotten it, too, but no one wanted to voice it aloud. Finally, Lloyd shrugged a little. "Simple," he said, looking at his brilliant, arrogant, twenty-seven-year old associate, "in twenty years — or whatever time the visions are of… " He paused, then spread his hands. "I'm sorry, Theo, but in twenty years, you're dead."

The vision Lloyd most wanted to hear about was Michiko's. But she was still — as she doubtless would be for a very long time — completely out of it. When it came to her turn in the circle, Lloyd skipped over her. He wished he could just take her home, but it was doubtless best for her to not be alone right now, and there was no way that Lloyd, or anyone else, could get away to be with her.

None of the other visions relayed by the little sampling of people in the conference room overlapped — there was no indication that they were of the same time or the same reality, although it did seem that almost everyone was enjoying a day off or a holiday. But there was the question of Jake Horowitz and Carly Tompkins — separated by almost half the planet and yet apparently seeing each other. Of course, it could be coincidence. Still, if the visions did match, not just in their broad strokes, but in precise details, that would be significant.

Lloyd and Michiko had retired to Lloyd's office. Michiko was curled up tightly in one of the chairs, and she had Lloyd's windbreaker pulled over her like a blanket. Lloyd picked up the handset on his desk phone and dialed. "Bonjour," he said. "La police de Geneve? Je m'appelle Lloyd Simcoe; je suis avec CERN."

"Oui, Monsieur Simcoe," said a male voice. He switched to English; Swiss often did that in response to Lloyd's accent. "What can we do for you?"

"I know you're terribly busy — "

"An understatement, monsieur. We are, as you say, bogged."

Swamped, thought Lloyd. "But I'm hoping one of your witness examiners is free. We have a theory about the visions, and we need the help of someone proficient at taking testimony."

"I'll put you through to the right department," said the voice.

While he was on hold, Theo poked his head through the office door. "The BBC World Service is reporting that many people had matching visions," he said. "For instance, many married couples, even if they weren't in the same room at the time of the phenomenon, reported similar experiences."

Lloyd nodded at this bit of information. "Still, there's always a possibility, I guess, for whatever reason, of collusion, or, Carly and Jake notwithstanding, that synchronization of visions was a localized phenomenon. But… "

He left it unsaid — after all, it was Theo the visionless he was speaking to. But if Carly Tompkins and Jacob Horowitz — she in Vancouver, he near Geneva — really did see the exact same thing, then there would be little doubt that all the visions were of the same one future, mosaic pieces of tomorrow… a tomorrow that did not include Theo Procopides.

"Tell me about the room you were in," said the witness examiner, a middle aged Swiss woman. She had a datapad in front of her, and was wearing a loose polo shirt; last in fashion in the late 1980s, they were cycling back into popularity.

Jacob Horowitz closed his eyes, shutting out distractions, trying to recall every detail. "It's a lab of some sort. Yellow walls. Fluorescent lights. Formica counter tops. A periodic table on the wall."

"And is there anybody else in this lab?"

Jake nodded. God, why did the examiner have to be female? "Yes. There's a woman — a white woman, with dark hair. She looks to be about forty-five or so."