"Portals"

(what there is of it)

The doorbell rang. Putting down the book she had been reading, she got up off the bed and made her way downstairs. Swinging open the front door she found Tim Lawrence standing on the doorstep. He was not the first person she had been expecting to find. Actually, to be perfectly honest she hadn't really been expecting anyone in particular, but no doubt if she had stopped halfway down the stairs to calculate and tabulate the probabilities of each and every person on the planet being at the door, Tim Lawrence would not have been number one on the list. By that time, Tim Lawrence would also have given up ringing the bell and gone home. It was just as well she had opened the door.
Of course, while all this was running through her head, fighting for processor time against a discussion on the subject of just what Tim Lawrence was doing at her door anyway, it didn't actually occur to her to say anything. Realising this, she said, "Oh." It was just about all she could think of to say. It was a very nice "oh", though. She congratulated herself for it. "Hi", she added. It was the cheery, pleasant sort of "Hi" which gracefully belied the sentiments of the speaker, chief among which was I'm in the middle of a really good book so this had better be worth it. It was also a brilliant follow-through. Well, she thought it was anyway. Tim Lawrence had yet to make any comment one way or the other.

At this point, however, the author must pause for a moment to confess to the extent of his artistic license. The author knows damn well that Tim Lawrence is Tim Lawrence, but the young lady who has just opened her front door doesn't. That is to say, she doesn't know that his name is Tim Lawrence at all. She recognises the face, but the closest she can get on the name front is the vague notion that the face belongs to a Tim Something - or was it Tom Something? Naturally, the author cannot find the energy to rewrite what has already been written, but may do what he can to redress the situation which we now rejoin just in time to hear Tim (or Tom) Something say:

"Hi."

And now, dear reader, barely a word later, we must pause once again. For while you sit smugly satisfied with your superior knowledge of Tim (or Tom) Something's real name, it may occur to you not only that our two characters have met before, but that you have no knowledge of the extent or nature of their contact - except what you can extrapolate from the relevant facts obtained thus far: Firstly, she is surprised to see him; secondly, she isn't at all sure of his name. In this light it may be safe to assume that they have not been happily married for the past ten years, especially when you discover that they are both seventeen years of age. Further hypothesising is clearly pointless without a great deal of information. Fortunately, the young lady is about to recollect her knowledge of Tim (or Tom) Something in an effort to ascertain his current intentions. This will save the author the trouble of doing it himself. Shall we continue?

After that, nothing was spoken. Not for a few moments anyway. She was far too busy wondering what Tim (or Tom) Something could want. As far as she was aware, she had only spoken to him on three occasions. The first had been during maths at college two months earlier, when he had apologised profusely for treading on her toes. Totally ignoring her own footfelt wishes, she had told him it was quite alright (a lie), that it was her own fault for not keeping her foot well out of his way (a lie), that it was further her own fault for not wearing steel toe-capped boots (a lie), and that it really didn't hurt a bit (definitely a lie).
She had been left very unsure as to the value of this diplomacy, and while her feet cowered in the relative safety of their shoes, she thought of all the things she should have said but hadn't (Later that day she had recited all these things to a faithful friend down the telephone. He had been quite shocked by some of them, until she gently reminded him that he had completely forgotten to be even remotely concerned regarding the current condition of her foot. She went on to point out that the fact that her foot was now completely recovered and happily toying with the phone lead was quite beside the point).
The second of the three occasions had been four weeks later, the day after an inexplicably sleepless night, when she had staggered out of another maths session, in the forlorn hope of being able to go home and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet. She would not have saved her legs the effort of descending two flights of stairs had she realised that the lift was about to shatter her plans. The lift, which quite happily withstood without complaint, the onslaught of certain males who seemed quite determined to utterly destroy it, decided instead to grind to an unscheduled halt with a total innocent such as herself inside and plunge her into sudden and total darkness. To be perfectly fair, though, the fault lay not with the lift at all, but with the nameless individual who had (unbeknownst to our heroine) blown up a nearby electrical substation, while under the influence of certain highly illegal substances which conspired to delude him into believing that the substation was in fact an advance scoutship sent by an intergalactic invasion fleet from Betelgeuse.
In her current exhausted state, she would have been happy to curl up in a corner and fall asleep for a while, but she was sharing the lift with none other than the same foot-crushing individual we now know as Tim Lawrence. After minutes of dubious scuffling sounds he had produced from his bag a small electric torch which he promptly shone straight in her face.
Discovering first the alarm button, and then that the alarm button was useless, the two of them had sat down to await further developments. Before long they were somehow chatting away quite amicably and had covered a wide and often bizarre range of subjects by the time the power was restored two hours later. At this point the lift doors abruptly slid open to expose to a crowded foyer the two of them sitting together on the floor. They had each very rapidly gone their separate ways.
The third occasion had been about a fortnight after that, when one Saturday afternoon she had been relaxing in the bath. Against her better judgement she got up to answer it - and there are no prizes for guessing who was on the other end. He had been calling to ask her what she was doing that evening, and she had quite apologetically explained that she was going out (in actual fact she had been due to go absolutely nowhere, and did rather fancy a quiet evening alone - however, saying she was going out left matters rather less open to negotiation, a critical concern when every second brought her bathwater closer to absolute zero). He had said, "Oh well," two words which by their tone alone had spoken volumes about hopelessness, depression, and the contemplation of many and varied means of suicide. For this reason she made a point of saying sorry again just before the goodbyes.
And here he was, presumably to try his luck again, this time in person.
Then she noticed that he was holding a carrier bag. Sadly its opacity prevented her from identifying the shape within, a shape with roughly the dimensions of a ream of A4 photocopy paper. She could think of no reason why anyone would turn up on her doorstep with a ream of A4 photocopy paper, and so was forced to assume that the bag contained something else of roughly equal dimensions. Perhaps he had decided to improve his chances by getting her a present. She really fancied a huge box of chocolates just then.
"Come in then", she said, stepping aside - and taking an extra step back just in case he tried to flatten her toes again.
She led him to the sofa, where he displayed sufficient initiative to sit down. "So", she said, sitting in an armchair opposite, "what's in the bag?"
She had visions of soft centres while he reached into the bag and pulled out an object which confounded her until he flipped up the lid to reveal a keyboard underneath. As the laptop computer booted its software, he turned the colour LCD screen - on the inside of the lid - to face her.
No chocolate. But, a portable computer? Men who gave you flowers were acting on impulse, but men who gave you portable computers had to be acting on acid. And yet he didn't look like he was on anything - except the sofa, but that didn't really count.
Then it occurred to her that maybe he wasn't about to give the computer to her, perhaps he was just going to show it to her. But why would she want to see his computer? Maybe, she told herself, looking at the computer might help to explain the situation. However, Tim (or Tom) had just turned the machine back round to face himself. But it seemed he was going to speak, so maybe that would do.
"I know we don't really know each other all that well," he said. She couldn't fault that statement. "But, well, you seem like the sort of person you can trust." Flattery would get him nowhere - although she hoped he would continue to try. "I don't really know who else to tell. Can I ask you something?"
"Well, you can ask. Whether or not you get an answer is another matter entirely."
"Can you keep a secret?"
"I can't really answer that", she said. "The only way I could know that is if I was already keeping secrets - and if I acknowledged the fact that I was keeping them, and if you even knew they existed, they wouldn't really be secret, would they? But yes, I imagine I am capable of keeping secrets."
"Could you promise me that you won't tell anyone about this?"
"About what?"
"Promise?"
"Yeah, okay, I promise."
"Right", he said, tapping a key. Between the sofa and her chair, in the middle of the floor, something appeared.