Seven couldn’t believe what he was reading. George hadn’t discovered the Codicils yet! And Seven had hoped to learn them from George, to give to Window in the twentieth century. With dismay, Seven stared again at the journal page. The circle in space barely contained it, and again George’s hand was in the way. But again Seven managed to glimpse the date at the top of the page—June 2, 1892—and he shook his head in confusion. It was June 2, 1982, in the attic, and in the world of George, Josephine, Gregory, and Window. Then apparently George the First had had his out-of-body encounters while Window and Diggs sat with Seven in the kitchen just a short “time” ago; and before George got out of bed to see what was going on.

These thoughts came and went, but since Seven realized that George hadn’t discovered the Codicils, a sense of foreboding began to assail him. At first his dismay merely grew sharper. Then, however, the circle of space in which the journal appeared began to darken, shimmer, and tremble until finally it seemed to whirl into darkness altogether. It became a black circle of space darker than the space about it and somehow threatening. If the Codicils weren’t discovered ‘in time’ Seven wondered, what probable worlds might vanish? Could they actually disappear? And how could the Codicils appear in the twenty-fifth century and form the basis of a world, if they hadn’t already been planted in the past? Seven looked around anxiously. The black circle was … expanding, while at the same time it grew even blacker, and more concentrated. And compelling.

Seven thought he heard Cyprus cry, “Seven, look away. Quick.” But it was too late. Events began to happen and unhappen with such rapidity that Seven instinctively knew he was in trouble. In a flash he dismissed his own mental image of himself, so that he was invisible consciousness. (And just in time, as he said to Cyprus later, “Because that circle or hole or whatever was like a multidimensional meatgrinder; any kind of form at all would be … well, ground up.”)

His consciousness actually twirled topsy-turvy, turned inside out, sideways … if consciousness had a shape, it was pulled out of it, so that Seven first felt long, then short, then big, then small, then absolutely “not there.” The circle that had opened up through the universe itself, it seemed, was like an eternally ravenous animal-of-space. Seven felt as if he was falling down some infinite tunnel. Even that idea didn’t fit, though, because Seven felt that time was so scrambled that while he was falling through the tunnel on the one hand, on the other hand, another part of him was poised eternally on its threshold—staring, unable to move. And that part didn’t know about this tumbling-through-the-tunnel-self at all.