Lu Han’s computer hummed quietly as he searched the Net for information. Outside, another bright, cool day was beginning to degrade into cloudiness that might bring rain or even snow. He didn’t know or really care. He was too busy trying to verify what Yixing had told him last night about the research he’d been doing, then trying to find out if it led him to him.

                Either he didn’t know the best search question to ask or the subject wasn’t one of the most popular. Either way, several hours passed during which he scanned articles that hinted at the matters Yixing had spoken of last night without success.

                Yixing appeared to be right about one thing: from what he was seeing, not many scientists wanted to ask whether conscious intent could affect the quantum field.

                Lu did, however, gradually realise that some terms were appearing repeatedly without explanation, as if they were understood. And he realised there was certain evasiveness when they came up. Either that or they were used within such strictly defined limits that he couldn’t get the meaning.

                Finally he changed his search criteria from quantum physics and linked conscious with Princeton. Up popped a Web site link for the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab.

                He might not have studied physics in depth, but as an accounting major with a minor in economics, he had studied a lot of statistics, and as he delved deeper he discovered that the things that Yixing had discussed in loose generalities were actually being investigated with mind-blowing results. While the ultimate conclusion was that conscious intent had such a small effect on random number generators that it could be ignored, the fact remained: the statistics showed the effect to be way, way beyond chance.

                Good Lord! He thought. What a door to open: human thought could affect the functioning of a machine…or the rate of radioactive decay. In small ways, yes, but even those small ways were a window to a whole different view of the universe. And it further elucidated what Yixing had meant about some scientists being afraid to ask questions. Of course they were afraid to ask. None of them would want to be labeled fringe lunatics.

                He sat back in his chair, stretched and thought about what he had just learned. Yixing, whoever he was, hadn’t been spouting some kind of extremism last night, but a valid scientific viewpoint, however much mainstream science might try to skirt it. That much at least hadn’t been a sales job.

                However, there was no way to search for him, not with only one name, first or last he didn’t know. He sighed, then spoke aloud to the empty room. “Get over this obsession,” he told himself. “Just get over it. Load the damn shotgun if you’re that worried, and then forget about it.”

                Not a normally obsessive person, his behavior, his contradictory responses, had begun to seriously trouble him. The man limped around town in the middle of the night, sat on a public park bench for a whole twenty minutes, had spent time last night trying to reassure him in some way, and there was nothing left to do except regain his own sense of proportion and rationality.

                Sitting here at the computer working the “Yixing problem” as if he had nothing better to do with his time was out of character.

                Wasn’t it?

                He sighed again and rubbed his eyes. “What is going on?” he asked the room. The room, of course, didn’t answer.

                But some little voice in his head finally did.

                It’s not about this guy, it’s about another guy. A guy who lied to you.

                Was he really in some subconscious way trying to make Yixing a stand-in for Minseok?

                Oh, yeah. Now you’ve got it.

                At once he leaned forward and pressed the button to hibernate his computer. Then he shoved back from his desk, realising only as he stood that he had grown stiff from not moving for so long.

                “Idiot,” he said to himself.

                In the kitchen he made a fresh pot of coffee and a sandwich.

                Yeah, he was an idiot, he decided, but only because, however indirectly, he had opened that damn Pandora’s box again, the box named Kim Minseok.

                That box containing a torrid fairy tale, an all-consuming one-year romance that had ended in the heart-stopping, earth-shaking discovery that he was a married man. That he lied to him all along, claiming he was divorced. An instant of discovery and shock that had seemed to kill everything inside him in one icy blow.

                Until the pain started. To this day he couldn’t say what hurt worse: losing love, being used or being betrayed so callously. It had certainly hurt to leave his job in Seoul because he couldn’t dace the constant reminders.

                But at least he had managed to find his way home. Maybe he had thought it would all get better here. Instead, just as Yixing had remarked last night, he’s brought him baggage with him. You can’t run from yourself. Probably one of the oldest clichés in the world. And so, so true, as Yixing had pointed out.

                He sat at his kitchen table and bit into his sandwich, thinking about the tangled mess of his mind. A mind that he always preferred to believe was relatively neat and orderly…yet as of this moment seemed anything but.

                What was the psychological term? Transference? No, more like projection? Whatever, it disturbed him to think the he might be reacting to Yixing in a way dictated by his experience with Minseok. After all, what had Yixing done except sit on a park bench in the middle of the night? So maybe his suspicions resided less with his actions and the timing of them than they did with the horrendous betrayal he had suffered at Minseok’s hands. Maybe he felt uneasy and threatened for no other reason.

                Probably a good time to have a heart-to-heart talk with one of his bestfriends, but a glance at the clock told him that they were all still involved in the middle of their workdays. Not the time for a conversation like this.

                He took another bite of his sandwich just as his phone rang. With a muffled groan as he tried to chew and swallow fast, he pulled the phone from his pocket.

                “Hello?”

                “Hi, Lu, it’s Kai.”

                “Oh, hi, Kai. Thanks for calling. I’m sitting here concluding yet again that I’m overreacting to that guy.”

                “Conclude away. I did the ‘stop and identify’ I promised you I would last night.”

                “I saw you. You’re going to think I’m nuts.”

                A quiet laugh escaped him. “Not a chance. Why?”

                “Because after you left I went out and talked to him. And then I met him at Lotteria and we talked longer.”

                “Well, I’ll give you credit for guts and curiosity, but I’m not going to tell you that was a  wise thing to do with a total stranger.”

                “Well, since I’m getting concerned about the state of my own mind right now, I have to agree. I bounced from he’s not really a threat to feeling stalked, and now I’m on m