Symbols danced before Christine's eyes, rainbow-hued Greek and Latin characters, subscripts and superscripts. Schrödinger's equation waltzed with Vernon's reformulated field expressions. The de Broglie wave function shimmered in and out of focus as it transitioned through various eigenstates.
Feynman's path integral slithered through her consciousness. Constants slotted in and out of matrices. Four-dimensional graphs appeared in graceful rotation, displaying successive three-dimensional views.
It was all so clear. The necessary transformations were obvious. The mathematical notations reassembled themselves into intricate patterns that Christine immediately grasped. The solution was surprising but beautifully simple.
Triumph filled her. She understood at last how to twist the universe and unlock the gates to other dimensions. Joy suffused her spirit like pure light. Humanity was saved, saved from its own stupid errors.
A touch woke her. The equations fled, along with her comprehension. She opened her eyes to find Zed bent over her, shaking her shoulder and looking concerned.
"Why didn't you let me sleep? I saw it—the way to bend space and make faster-than-light travel possible. Now it's gone." She sat up, shaking her head, and glared at the stocky extraterrestrial.
"You were moaning and thrashing around on the bed. Almost like convulsions. We were worried."
"In any case, you've been asleep for thirteen hours," Alyn added. In two strides he crossed the floor of Christine's tiny quarters and seated himself on the bunk beside her.
"Thirteen hours?" She searched her memory. The pictures it provided made her blush. Alyn's platinum-crowned head buried between her damp thighs. Zed's massive erection bobbing in her face. She recalled the salty taste of him, the silk of his skin sliding over her tongue, the metallic tang of his cum. She remembered writhing against Alyn's mouth as he devoured her pussy. And there was more, much more - endless moments of shameful delight, pinned between them, Zed's cock buried in her cunt while Alyn's slender organ plundered her ass.
Christine remembered it all, far more clearly than her fast-evaporating dream of quantum inspiration. Her body remembered, too. Her quadriceps ached as though she'd done ten kilometres on the treadmill. Her inner thighs were tacky with her juices and pleasantly sore. When she shifted to support her back against the bulkhead, little twinges of pain recalled the outrageous sensation of being stretched and filled in both her orifices. Fresh moisture pooled in her cleft despite her determination to stay aloof.
"I guess you two wore me out." She twisted out of Zed's grasp, still bitter about losing the revelation from her dream.
"That's part of it," Alyn replied, trying to capture her hand. She snatched it away. "I suspect it is also a side-effect of your time in stasis. The stress from your mishap outside the ship may also have had an impact."
"So how do you feel now?" asked Zed, stroking his half-erect penis. "We missed you, while you were sleeping."
Christine tried to feel annoyed by the alien's apparently insatiable interest in sex. He was so beautiful, so hard and hungry-looking, so male, that she lost the battle.
"Rested. Starved. And not for sex," she added, noting Alyn's cock was also swollen. "No more sex until I've eaten. And until you've given me some answers."