I found myself staring at my screens.  I was looking at words and symbols and pictures.  I had created them.  I remembered creating them.  I even remembered composing them.

I looked at my watch again.  The time hadn't changed.

No that wasn't quite correct.  Time had changed, I remembered performing the act and time passing.  However, there was no way that I could have done that in the brief few seconds that had transpired.

It just wasn't humanly possible to create that quickly.

I had received a phone call from my research partner Vivian.  She had a question about my line of research in sensory activation.

For three years we had been working on a project to develop a software application that would allow users to interact with the program using additional sensory levels. 

We were closing in on completion of the project and hoping to launch the initial beta test, but Viv was not herself lately and for good reason. 

We had been working on this project long distance collaborating via email, instant message, VOIP and encrypted discussion forums.  We had only met in person twice in three years, but that had not hindered our significant progress.

"Jeremy, I've completed the new voice compression rendering component.  Can you test it out this afternoon?" Vivian had asked during a 2Cans voip conference.

"Absolutely, I can't wait," I said thinking how I had been waiting for this update for two months.  I was so eager with anticipation that I could hardly contain myself.  This was the final component to the application, the last puzzle piece.

"All right, I'm sending the file to you now," Vivian stated.  "I have to head to the hospital and I'm running late so I'm just going to hit send and hope that it uploads to your location successfully."

"That's fine, give your father my regards," I said and quickly hit the accept button to receive the file she was sending.

Vivian didn't even respond back.  She was probably on her way out the door already.  He had been hospitalized after some freak accident that Viv wouldn't talk about. 

I only knew that it was a freak accident as I had read about it through a news report on the internet.  Freak accident didn't quite cover the situation, I could only imagine how Viv was managing to hold anything together at all.