A loose end: paying back Walter the law student

The night outside the lab was damp with early spring. Concrete gleamed under flickering sodium lights, and the breeze carried the bite of wet pavement and possibility. Sadie walked with her phone in one hand and the RAC’s remote interface slotted ever-so-tightly into the back of her boot-cut denim shorts. With a quick change in the lab, the top she wore now was tissue-thin, lemon-colored, and slightly sheer. She didn’t care. If anyone stared, she let them.

She had one last stop before calling it a night.

Walter.

Back when Jon was still Jon, he’d promised Walter the willing law student a change of his own. The man had a good head - practical, steady - and hadn’t laughed when Jon had floated his wild hypothetical about bodily autonomy, metaphysics, or moral accountability earlier that afternoon. He’d just said, “Whatever this thing is, if it works, I better get a turn.”

It was a lingering debt, and the Jon in Sadie felt the need to repay it.

Sadie grinned as she approached the law quad. She slipped around to the side entrance of the Brief Café, where windows still glowed warm and amber with late-night caffeine worship. Inside, students hunched over annotated case law, croissants going stale beside laptops. And sure enough, Walter was still seated right there.

"Ready yet?" she said as she sat down in the empty chair across from the clearly tired law student.

Walter blinked up from his binder, then dropped his pen and let out a long, dry exhale. “I'm sorry, do I know you?”

Sadie smirked. "You met a doctor earlier today. Let's say we're ... related."

Walter looked straight through her. “Don't look so shocked there.”

“I figured he was off creating entirely new people somewhere with an enormous tesla coil and a god complex.”

“Close,” she said. “Turns out the god complex fits better in these denim shorts.” She rubbed a hand against the plushness of her hip.

He gave her a slow once-over, registering the RAC console peeking from her waistband and the look in her eyes. Not mischief. Not exactly. Something deeper.

“So, you worked through your dilemma then,” he said flatly.

“And I brought your wish.”

Walter leaned back in the threadbare café armchair, glancing through her wide-eyed and then around. The place was only half full: two undergrads debating case law by the window, a girl with a beanie passed out over her econ notes. Outside, the world hummed along like nothing strange had just entered the room. Yet, this wet dream of a coed seemed to be offering him an impossibility.

“You’re serious?”

Sadie nodded once, eyes steady. “You still want it?”

Walter’s lips parted. He paused. “What does it feel like? Experiencing a reality change?”

She tilted her head, thoughtful. “Like remembering a dream and realizing it was always real.”

That did something to him. A little flinch, a ripple of hope in his usually guarded expression. He looked down at his hands.