Later, Ty woke up. He no longer felt completely exhausted, but he did still feel tired. It was still dark out. The clock said it as 3:37 AM. He thought about going back to sleep, but he was far too worried about Lisa to be able to do so. He turned on the light. She was still sleeping. If you could call it that. She still wasn't breathing, but when he felt her, she was still warm. He tried to wake her, but she didn't respond to his voice, or to vigorous shaking.
He had no idea what to do, nor how long it would take, and he had to have her back to normal by 6 AM to get ready for school. He reached to her alarm clock, which he had previously modified, and turned the knob on the side all the way down. The seconds stopped advancing. At least, they appeared to. At the most extreme setting, which he was now using, for every hour that passed in Lisa's bedroom, only one second of outside world time (as shown by the clock display) passed. This gave him potentially over 8500 hours to solve the problem. Nearly a year. If he couldn't solve this problem in a year, he'd never solve it. She'd be gone forever. He couldn't stand to even think about that possibility.
Given how drained he felt after fighting Lisa to transform her back, did he even have any of his power left? The clock was still working as he'd intended, but he added the rate control feature to it well before this fiasco, so that might not mean anything. He needed a simple test of his power. He was thirsty, so he created a glass of water. He had no difficulty doing so. He drank the water, then wished the empty glass away.
He wanted a bigger test, something more significant. But he had to be very careful. If he used his power, and caused another problem, Lisa wasn't going to be able to bail him out. While he wanted to test his power by transforming his body into Lisa's form, which he'd always enjoyed, he decided that doing any transformation to himself was currently too risky. He thought about doing a transformation to Lisa's body, but vetoed that idea as well. He'd already screwed her up enough. He wouldn't do any more transformations to her unless they would fix her. Restore her normal mind. Unfortunately he had no idea how to do that.
He lay back down next to her. I've usually had to view things that I transform, he thought. Is that necessary? He'd make another change to her bedroom as a test. An innocuous change. Previously, when he'd added the bathroom and then the doorway to his own bedroom, to Lisa's bedroom, he had grown the room slightly to accomodate the new doors. He closed his eyes, and thought about making her room bigger. Twice as big, in width and length. He considered that he had promised to not make unauthorized changes to the house, but then, he'd also promised not to hurt Lisa. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. He made the wish, then opened his eyes. The room was now much bigger. Now the walls were twice as long, and much of that length was bare.
He closed his eyes again, and wished her bedroom back to its previous state. He opened his eyes, and saw that it had reverted. OK, he thought. It's good that I can do that, but of course, I already had a pretty good mental picture of the room, so maybe that didn't prove a lot. Another test is needed.
He had, only in passing, seen the contents of Lisa's closet. He knew she had clothing on hangers, but didn't recall any specific details. He closed his eyes, and tried to imagine seeing what was in her closet. In his mind's eye, he saw various dresses, blouses, and coats. He saw several pairs of shoes and boots on the floor. There were boxes on a shelf, but he didn't look closely at them. Am I seeing what's really in her closet, he wondered, or just imagining it. He let the image go, opened his eyes, stood, and went up to the closet door. With a little bit of nervousness, he opened the door. Inside, he saw exactly the clothing he had pictured. I hope that's because these clothes were here before, he thought. I didn't try to transform anything, so hopefully this is all unchanged.
He closed the closet, and lay back down, and closed his eyes. Can I see inside things, he wondered. Can I see inside my own body? He tried to imagine seeing inside his chest cavity, seeing his heart. He got a mental image of his heart, beating. His excitement at the apparent success increased his pulse rate, and he saw his own heart speed up. He made an effort to calm himself down, and his heart rate gradually slowed.
He tried to make his internal view back out, so that he could see more of his chest cavity. He saw his lungs expanding and contracting as he breathed. He held his breath for a moment, and his lungs were stationary. OK, he thought, opening his eyes and letting his view of his own insides fade away, that's cool, but it's not enough. I don't need to see Lisa's internal organs, those are fine. I need to see her mind. But what does that even look like? Where is it located?
He closed his eyes again, and thought about seeing his brain. An image of a human brain appeared. He had no idea whether it was really his, but presumably it was. He tried to peer inside it. He saw the convolutions of the surface zoom in to fill his mental view, and then he dived in. He saw more tissue, that as far as he knew looked like the inside of a brain. This would be great if I needed to find and remove a tumor, he though, but it isn't helping with the real problem. He let go of the image, but kept his eyes closed.
I want to see my mind, he thought. But what does a mind look like? He tried to imagine it, despite a lack of concrete expectation. The image that appeared was like a combination of a high-tech control room, as if from a science fiction film, and a library. There were immense bookshelves, with rolling ladders to reach the higher shelves. There must be thousands of books, tens of thousands! There was a little man, sitting in a chair in front of some controls and a monitor. He had a book open on the desktop in front of him. Ty moved his vision to peer over the little man's shoulder. He couldn't make out all of the details of tbe book, but at the top of the open page, it said, "Ty, Operations Procedures Manual, Volume MCCXLIV. On the monitor, saw his own body, next to Lisa's on her bed. As he pulled his vision back again, the little man turned to fae him. The man had Ty's own face.
The man said, "You're not really supposed to be in here, you know. I mean, you're always in here, in a sense, but you're not supposed to be conscious of this environment. What you're seeing and experiencing isn't really what your mind looks like, you know. Your mind doesn't look like anything. This is just an abstraction that your mind has imagined for itself. Of course, I know what you're working up to, and this was a good test for you to perform, so I won't report it if you don't. But I recommend that you not come back here. It could cause grave problems for you." The homunculus turned back to the monitor and controls.
"But I have to know," Ty asked the homunculus, "is this really my mind? Is there more to it, or is it just this room? Are other people's minds the same?"
"Yes, this is most of your mind," the homunculus replied. "There are some storerooms that contain older, less important manuals, now rarely used. There are other doors which I've never opened, because the procedures have never told me to open them, so I couldn't say what is beyond them. And are other people's minds organized this way? Who can say? This is the only mind I've ever operated.
"Now go!"
Without conscious intent, Ty found his mental imagery abruptly withdrawn. He opened his eyes.