"Mrs. Tolmacheva," said a stout man stroking his mustache while his body comfortably rested on a sofa. "Mrs. Tolmacheva, please try to visualize the scene that inspired the writing of the memorandum."

"It’s a pyramid," she answered in a whisper, "or a crystal—a prism, perhaps. There is light inside of it." She stopped speaking for a while, then murmured, as if in a trance, "a rocket is launched against the pyramid. It enters and disappears...now it’s coming out in reverse! I don’t know... I don’t know. It could be a ray of light. Yes! A beam of light comes in and now the pyramid is illuminated with the colors of the rainbow."

"How big is the pyramid?" asked a second man who stood behind Nietzsky, the one with the thick mustache.

"I don’t know. Miles high."

"What do you mean, ‘miles’? Look carefully, Mrs. Tolmacheva," interrupted Nietzsky.

"I don't know, I don't know... it could be small. Perhaps no larger than a crystal, or a ruby."

The man who was standing approached Nietzsky and whispered in his ear:

"She is either describing Newton’s experiment separating light, or some sort of laser device. The reverse movement could be the apparent backward motion of the blades, produced by light, as seen with Crookes’ radiometer."

"I try to get into the crystal. There’s a very strong light. It’s not like ordinary light. It’s different. I hear a voice that says, ‘You must not enter.’" Tolmacheva lifted her hands from the briefcase and covered her face. "I see myself as a child. I see myself! The light is throwing me away from the center of the pyramid. I’m going backwards, backwards, coming out so fast!"

"Don’t let yourself be thrown out," said the one standing. "Go in again. Tell us what’s in there!"

"I’m going forward again. ‘You must not enter,’ I’m told. I see myself. Oh!" Tolmacheva broke into sobs, "I’m crazy! I’ve lost my mind! They are throwing me out!"

Now she was standing, shaking from head to toe as if trapped by a vision of horror. Both men came forward to soothe her.

"Come, Madam," whispered Nietzsky in a helpful tone. "They’ll take care of you in the next room. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Tolmacheva."

He held her gently, and walked her towards a door that opened at that very instant. Another woman appeared and took care of Tolmacheva. Then the door closed.

Nietzsky was returning to the sofa. "It’s always the same story. We’ve tried this a hundred times only to get the same result. This time we invited you so that you could give us an opinion that corresponds to your field. I remind you that in previous sessions we had other interpreters, and each was more illogical than the first. So what is your opinion?"

The physicist was now sitting in Tolmacheva’s chair. He began to speak, in a condescending tone. "I think she is speaking about a laser system. Let’s disregard this fantasy about an object that is miles high, an all this talk of missiles coming in and out."

"Whether or not they're 'fantasies' is not your problem. There are other experts who will comment on that. You are here to interpret matters from the point of view of physics," Nietzsky snapped. Then he reflected for a moment and continued, "I'm sorry. What happens is that the memorandum speaks about a system to de-activate missiles, yet I assure you that Tolmacheva never read the text. She’s only been allowed to touch the cover of the briefcase. So, please, what do you make of all this?"

"Well, based on what I’ve heard so far, I am reminded of Basov’s experiences."

"Ah, yes. Basov, Lenin Award and the Nobel Prize for Physics, right?"

"Right. In 1967, he, Zubariev, Efinkov and Graskin succeeded in accelerating light to more than two million kilometers per second. This swept away Einstein's theory about the limit on the speed of light. The experiments were conducted at the Lebedev Institute's Quantum Physics Laboratory of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. What do you think of that?"

"That’s great," Nietzsky replied impatiently.

"Basov fired a super-luminous beam into rubies that were previously charged and arranged in series, accelerating light nine-fold. When your student..."

"She’s not my student!" Nietzsky interrupted testily. "She is a subject who has remarkable ability in the field of the paranormal. Our investigations are still not very well known in the Soviet Union."

"OK, OK," continued the physicist. "Anyway, when the lady said that a beam had launched her inside the crystal and she had seen herself as a child, she may have been describing an experience similar to that of Basov, who was affecting time. This could be related to going back and forth in time, due to the acceleration of light. Therefore, a gigantic object that contracts or expands might be a fantasy, or could reflect on the modification of space because of the change in light's velocity."

"Briefly, what do you make of all this?"

"I would say that your... uh, ‘subject’, has tuned into an experience that could produce some deviation in time. Providing, of course, that Mrs. Tolmacheva is not mistaken. And, if she is right, I feel very sorry for her."

"Why?" Nietzsky demanded.