Seventy-three hundredths of a second. 0.73. It’s the single beat of a resting heart. It’s the difference between being killed by a truck barreling through an intersection and having that same truck miss you by inches. Had Norris and I been killed that night after my first shift, the world would not have been a better place—but it wouldn’t have been any worse either. Blue would be the color of stop. Would more people die in car accidents because of it? Probably not, but different people, maybe. Likely no one you know would be affected, and even if they were, you’d never know the difference. Unless of course it was you who got killed. But then it wouldn’t matter to you anyway, because you’d be dead.

Point seven three seconds. That meant nothing to me. But it was about to mean all the difference in the world.

It wasn’t a truck that hit me on the field, it was a Cheetah. I was clipped illegally by the opposing halfback. He had seen how quickly I broke through the line, and rather than letting me take down the quarterback, he hit me from the side, low and hard, beneath my padding. I felt a rib crack. And with that sharp blast of pain came an icy cold, and darkness. I was sliding again. I was Elsewhere.

I was tumbling, off balance in pain. It was different from the pain of being attacked in the alley, because I had braced for that. This left me reeling, out of control. I had to regain control—everything rested on it—but my head was full of so many conflicting things. Leo, and Katie, and Paul, and all the people whose lives would be affected by these impossibly long microseconds.

According to Teddy, everything that I had done to this point was small potatoes, but they hadn’t felt small to me, because they had major consequences.

Don’t be afraid to look down.

Because beneath my feet would be glorious realities I could scarcely imagine. Farmlands where deserts used to be. Different nations, different languages.

“Reach for the realities that radiate peace,” Teddy had said. “You’ll feel them. You’ll know.”

And the worlds—those needy realities that were alive yet not—were awakened by my presence. They sensed that I was in pain, and compromised, and they were emboldened by it. They were fighting with one another to get to me first. To consume me.

But I would not allow it. In spite of the pain, I would take control. And so with all the determination I could muster I did what I had to do. I looked down.