Here, the partition between worlds was thinner, but she would not have known. Later she wondered if she would have acted differently. She would question if she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or perhaps it was actually the right time for where she was meant to be exactly.

All she had wanted to do that Friday afternoon was to find the original plans for her great grandfather’s estate, in readiness for redesigning the garden. It was not a difficult task – the microfiles were arranged alphabetically in the municipality’s records office. After a long and hard week she had allowed herself the luxury of a mindless job on a Friday afternoon. She found the disc without difficulty, and inserted it into the slot. She had expected the blueprints to come up as a holo-visual, and she could double-check the plans against what was in her great grandfather’s journal. That had been all she was concerned with.

The machine bleeped and requested: PLEASE ENTER USERNAME.

Not having used the municipality’s record-keeping system or equipment before, Evie typed in: EVELYN EDEN.

The display took its time. She thought at first that the file was defective, then the likeness of an extremely muscular and attractive man flickered onto the display. It appeared to be a video image rather than a still. She stared. That was certainly not what she expected. He stared back insolently, watching her every movement. She grew irritated, and it crossed her mind that someone was playing a joke on her, or the machine had somehow been infected with some kind of virus or malware. She looked for a button or icon to exit to the blueprint search menu. She pressed the Escape and Return keys impatiently but nothing happened. The man in the video appeared to be indicating a prominently outlined on-screen box that she could select. In bold capitals, he invited her to ACQUIESCE. There was nothing else she could pick, though she searched. She cursed silently and selected it. The man in the video looked directly into her eyes, folded his arms and grinned.

Before she could do anything else, the interface glowed once, twice, and it was not the white blueprint selection screen that she was expecting, but swarming nightflies of the cosmos streamed past her, winking green, blue and purple lights, transient in the kisses they laid upon her skin. She blinked, and suddenly she was gliding over the edges of time, space and thought. She was pulled apart, pulled through. The drumming forces clashed, dragged, pushed apart, encroaching on all of her senses all at once. There was a sensation of breaking glass, of a waterfall suddenly freezing, of a sharp desert wind, of the pungency of freshly pressed cider apples, of woodsmoke.

Evie fell for a long time. She was not aware of being awake or asleep. After some time, she decided to open her eyes. It was humid, and her nostrils filled with the chocolaty scent