[Julia]

Three hours and too many cups of coffee later, I was still quite firm on the whole shoes and makeup being fantastic thing, but I was rather confused about everything else. Our surfing session had been veering wildly in some rather odd directions since German mythology, taking in the personal life of Frederick the Great, basic welding techniques, a recipe for braised lamb, and finally, quantum mechanics.

"Schrodinger's Cat." He waved his cigarette triumphantly at the monitor, as if that explained everything, and flopped back in the ugly orange armchair with a kind of slapdash fluidity that I found strangely distracting. It was as though he had several well-oiled hinges in unlikely places...

"I'm sorry?" I brought myself back to the conversation with an effort and realised I wasn't at all sure whether he'd actually said anything, or whether he was just one of those people who sneeze weirdly.

"Schrodinger's Cat. It's a scientific paradox. I don't know how much you know about quantum mechanics, but it's one of those things that's designed to do your head in. The idea is you put a cat in a box with some acid or poison or something. Yeah, acid I think. Anyway, the point is that while the cat's in the box, you don't know whether its eaten the poison or not, or maybe it's to do with decaying particles and things, er... anyway, so it could be alive or dead. And then there's some stuff about probability and possible outcomes, and the cat ends up being alive and dead at the same time. Or something. Bit of a bugger for the cat though... Ok, forget that. Schrodinger only did it to piss other scientists off, anyway. Oh, I know what we should look up! Have you heard of the Many Worlds Theory?"

"Um... I dunno. It rings a bell. Look, I’m still not quite sure what all this has has to do with Changelings." I was actually half wondering where that orange armchair had come from. I was pretty sure I’d never seen it before.

Eddie's face took on a worried statement, as though things had just got really complicated. "Uh, yeah... Changelings," he said slowly. "That's basically where things get really complicated."

[Erika]

I wondered how more complicated it could become. We had gone from inquiries of “changelings” to “digitalised foxglove.” to “Schrodinger's Cat.” And now back to “changelings”, but only because I pressed on.

It was three hours since the time he first arrived. Cornelius had closed the store and gone home. The sea wind outside our window emitted a long, sustained doleful sound, which had sent an audible shiver through him, though he’d tried to hide it with a yawn. I’d lit a fire in the room. He’d removed his coat. I had poured two glasses of scotch, from a bottle Cornelius kept at the bottom of his drawer.

The scotch had warmed my throat and face. The stranger, who called himself Eddie, had warmed something else, but I dismissed that thought for the moment. I was a researcher at heart, never completely happy unless a patron’s requests had been thoroughly satisfied. And we’d gotten no further than “changelings”. He had done something inexplicable to my research skills.

He had also moved to a chair, which he’d placed next to mine in front of the computer. I watched him as he reached for a bibliography I had printed from the Internet. The right sleeve of his black t-shirt rose slightly as he stretched his arm towards the table and on the soft flesh of the underside of his arm, I glanced what appeared to be a tattoo. It was small, no longer than three inches, and it was the face of a woman with flowing blonde hair and arched eyebrows.

I took a chance. It apparently had nothing to do with our research, but the scotch had worked its wonders on me, as had my view of his briefly unsheathed upper arm, which was both soft and muscular, white and glowing, unblemished save for that tattoo.“What is that?” I asked, my finger reaching out toward the face of the woman.

[Kelli]

"That," he began surprisingly gruffly, "is nothing," he said, pulling his sleeve back down and sitting back. My mouth hung open quite awkwardly. He seemed quite aggravated by my simple question and sat stiffly against the back of the chair. Funny how only moments before we seemed to be drifting closer and closer together, and now, we couldn't be further apart. What did I do wrong?

[Mysterywoman]

"Would you like a cup of coffee" I asked, more to cover the awkward silence than anything.

"Yeah............that'd be nice", he relaxed again as I ambled in the half light back over to the Free Coffee area we had in the far corner of the shop. I had to make a fresh pot, so to fill in time now that we were no longer on the computer, I asked a question I really wanted to know, but sounded like the second most crap chat-up line in the history of chat up lines, "So what do you do............." I wanted to kill myself once it was out my mouth, but the answer was fruitful.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor, that's really my profession, but when I am not studying for a part I am a Professor of Stuff, anything that is interesting. I could never be a writer, but I want to build my studies into a really weird book that could eventually be published. So that's my thing - weird stuff"

"I can't write either", I added, superfluously, but I wanted to keep the conversation going for as long as possible, it had flowed while we were on the net, but now I felt a Reality Hiatus was beginning to set in.

I brought over 2 lattes on a tray with 2 huge slices of cake drenched in chocolate sauce "Mmmmmmmm chocolate" he exclaimed, in a Homer-Simpson-esqe way, but much shexshier, if you know what I mean. He held the fork daintily with his nail-polished fingers, took a long deep drink of the latte and looked up at me with huge lined blue eyes and gave me a wide, boyish grin.

It was 10pm, the rain of the day had gone,we had already had 3 whiskies and 5 cups of coffee. I was alone in a closed shop with this extraordinary person.

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