. .”“Please, Kari.” To have come this far . . . surreal! I leaned forward, into her vision. “I’ll . . . you will . . . I mean . . . we can g...t some soap, you know, and get things really hot and steamy.” I thought of something else. “Of course it’ll be hot and steamy already, if you’re in there . . .” Naked. Kari completely naked.Kari flashed me another smile. “You really have it for me, don’t you?”I nodded. I couldn’t respond.Her hand reached up. She touched my arm, lowered her face and stared. The Beast tutted in wonder. Had he not known better he would have thought her previous night had consisted in an exemplary romance rather than torture at the hands of a literal monster. Turning around, he saw the shattered four poster bed, forlorn in the thin rays of morning light that edged their way around the curtains. The riding crop lay discarded on the floor a few feet away. Despite the fact that he had planned it for more than a week, and carried it out exactly according to his fantasy,. Light moves faster through vacuum than through air. Itdetermines ze speed of light through a given medium. Does zat answeryour question?" Yes", Amanda smiled. "It's exactly what I needed!" She raised herarms and called on her power again. "I issue you a license to departto the other side, harming none as you go." The old man faded fromview and was gone."Amanda!", her mother called from the hallway, "Who are you talking toin there?" It's just my computer, Mom!," Amanda called back."Oh. Good. Why in God’s name would he want to sail off the edge of a flat earth to prove it so? Even if he did, who would remain to report the fact back to the authorities? Only when Magellan actually completed his circumnavigation of the globe did the church recant their belief that the earth was flat, accepting that it was a sphere. What the church finally accepted had been known to the “ancients” more than a thousand years earlier.Less than four hundred years ago, Galileo’s support of Copernican theory.