This double-talk had Slick going around in circles. But he had a strong hunch that taking a trip in the machine was the right thing to do, and he wasn't going to let Porter divert him from that. "Let's get down to cases, Doc. Just exactly what's going to happen to me when I get in this machine?" "It's difficult to explain the process in lay terms, particularly under stress. But this may help you to understand it. Have you ever had the experience of going back to sleep for a few moments after you awoke in the morning, and dreaming a long, involved dream?" "Sure. I get some good hunches that way." "Then you know the dream may cover a period of hours, days, or even years. People in the dream move and speak at a normal speed. Yet when you awaken again and look at the clock, you see that only a few minutes or even seconds have elapsed. A motion picture of the events in the dream would be nothing but a gabble and a blur, if projected at such terrific speed." "Yeah, that's right. I had that happen plenty of times, and I always thought it was kind of funny." "It demonstrates the capacity of the human mind to function independently of the limitations of chronological time. And premonitory experiences--what you call hunches--give us an inkling of the fore-memory phenomenon. In our dreams, the past, future, literal and symbolical material mingles. But by subjecting the physical brain to a certain type of electro-magnetic field, we can isolate the fore-memories, condensed as in the dream, while the subject acts as if in a waking state." "Does it hurt when a guy's brain goes into this field?" "Not at all. Awareness and physical sensations are totally suspended. The elapsing time has no apparent duration. That means you can't feel anything at all, you don't know what has happened until later, and twenty hours or even twenty years pass in a second, as far as your mind is concerned." "Why in the hell didn't you give me that straight, instead of dragging in all this dream business? That's just what I'm looking for, just what I figured it would be from the news stories. Do you throw this here field ahead or does the time machine travel along with the guy inside?" Dr. Porter sighed slightly. The man had a preconceived idea, and nothing Porter had said had altered it in the slightest. "The machine doesn't actually travel," he explained patiently. "That's why I objected to calling it a time-travel machine. It exists here and now and it will exist in the future, I suppose." "You mean it'll be there when I come out of the field?" "I said I suppose so. Why should that concern you, particularly?"