The coffee table beside Seven vanished and was replaced by a Victorian tea table, complete with a pot of tea, three cups and a bouquet of early summer roses from the yard. Actually, Seven saw, it was as if everything pulsated, but so quickly that he couldn’t keep track. Everything shimmered and vanished, but not before a second group of objects already began to appear.

He stared and squinted. There was no time where there was nothing, but always at least the indication of an appearing or disappearing object. So when the roses appeared again, Seven grabbed the vase and held it to see what would happen.

“It wasn’t a very bright move,” he said later to Cyprus, who agreed. Because the vase and flowers trembled, shook, shimmered—and so did everything else in the entire room. Then, as if the room had made up its mind, the vase and roses settled down to be themselves. The Victorian tea table stayed. The flood watermarks were gone. The room didn’t change back again, and Seven found himself standing in the wrong place and the wrong time.

Seven gulped. Surely, he thought, this must be happening only to his own perception. That is, the twentieth-century house would be there for George the Third when he came home from stacking the garbage and buying the pickles. Wouldn’t it? But there was no time to consider George the Third because Seven suddenly heard someone come in the back door—and anyone who came in that door would find him, physical body and all, where he didn’t belong. In his consternation, Seven dropped the vase. It crashed into pieces on the floor.

In a flash, Oversoul Seven rushed to the stairs, running on tiptoe as quickly and quietly as possible, heading for George the First’s private attic study. Seven’s heart was pounding. He was sweating. He thought that at any moment someone would come out of a bedroom to see him racing down the dark hall of the second story. It surprised him that a body could move so fast, but he was panting by the time he reached the door to the attic steps. He opened it, overcome by relief, and stood resting against it on the other side.

It was then that he heard George the First laughing.

Seven was all ready to go through the door to George’s study when he remembered that he had a real body, even if it was in the wrong time. He lifted his hand to knock at the door, then just stood there, pondering: George probably wouldn’t let him in; and worse—he wouldn’t recognize him because when they’d met before, Seven was in a wise-old-man image.