"Ty, dinner is ready," they heard June say outside his bedroom door. "Bring Lisa, if she wants to join us."
Ty and Lisa headed toward his bedroom door, and Ty replied, "Would you mind coming in here for a moment?"
June opened the door, and stepped inside, and saw Ty and Lisa. "What is it? Can it wait until later? I don't want dinner to get cold."
"Well, it could wait," Ty said, closing the door, "but I'd rather tell you now, and we can keep dinner from getting cold. Lisa, would you please slow down the clock?"
Lisa went back to her bedroom and did that, while June asked, "Slow down the clock? What do you mean?"
Ty explained, "I added a feature to Lisa's alarm clock, that changes the passage of time in our bedrooms. At the full setting, only one second passes in the outside world, for every hour that passes in here. Take a look at the clock."
June walked through the portal door, and looked at Lisa's clock.
"It originally just showed hours and minutes," Ty said. "I added the seconds, and the knob on the side to control it. You see that the seconds aren't changing."
"Why did you do that?" June asked. "Why are you showing me now?"
"Lisa and I have had problems with a few more transformations, though everything is fine now," Ty said. "I originally modified the clock one morning because I was tired and wanted more sleep. But we've needed it to have extra time to fix transformation mishaps. What I wanted you to know is that I broke the rule about letting you, Dad, and Lisa's parents know where we are. For most of the last half hour, of real world time, Lisa and I were far away, beause I was having trouble fixing the problem a transformation caused, and I found that I couldn't fix it here. Since I broke the rule, I wanted you to know as soon as possible, in case you want to punish me or ground me or something."
"Ty, I don't want to punish you," June said. "Thank you for admitting it. But couldn't you just have asked me first?"
"It was kind of an emergency," Ty explained. "I thought you'd approve of my doing whatever it took to solve the problem, but we had only half an hour before dinner, and I was worried that if I didn't get the problem solved in that half hour, I'd have to explain what happened to Lisa to you, which would be fine, but also to Dad, and to Lisa's parents, and I'm afraid that might not have gone so well."
"OK, Ty," June said, "and I'm certainly glad that you solved the problem. We can keep it between the three of us, like the phone app problem. But please don't make a habit of going out without telling anyone."
"I won't, Mom. Thank you."
June was curious. "So what did you need to do, that you couldn't do here? Where did you go?"
Ty said, "Um. We went really, really far away."
"We don't need to keep that secret from June," Lisa said. "Ty created an enormous space station and supercomputer in orbit around Jupiter, and that's where he took me to solve the problem."
June was astounded. "I thought you were going to say that you went to a laboratory across town or something. I wasn't expecting you to say you went a billion miles!"
"Only half a billion, technically," Ty corrected her
"That's not the point!" June said. "I'd definitely prefer that you check with us before you leave the planet! But why don't we talk some more later, and for now, just go to dinner."
"OK," Lisa and Ty both said. Lisa turned the clock back to normal, and the three of them headed to the dining room.