The next morning, I awoke in a cold sweat on my cot in the supply closet. The Captain would certainly not appreciate what had happened to Sully, I thought, rolling reluctantly out of bed like a snail leaving his shell. I decided it best to check on the older Sully in his quarters. At least I wouldn’t be alone when we broke the news to Cap.

“How’d you sleep?” I said, after Sully opened the door to his room dazed, disoriented and not at all like the pilot I knew yesterday before we leapt.

“Not a wink, kid,” he said. “This spaceship has a lot of weird sounds at night, and nothing like my apartment. Never thought I’d miss that dump.”

“We gotta get our story straight with Cap. I’ll obviously take the blame, but is there any way you think you can jog your memory? I know it’s been a while (for you).”

Just then, we heard Cap over the shipwide intercom: “All crew, I repeat, ALL CREW to the wheelhouse.”

“Ah, shit,” I said. “Looks like we’ll have no chance for that. Let me do the talking. I realize it’s been a rough couple of years for ya.”

“More than a couple, kid,” Sully moved and spoke slower than before we leapt. He also had sustained substantial grey hairs across his head and grizzled beard. There was no way we were keeping this from Cap.

***

The Captain did not take the news well.

Her eyes widened to the point of almost falling out of her head as we delivered the message of Sully’s setback.

“YOU are never to perform any unauthorized dimensional leaps on this vessel ever again,” the Captain lashed at me with her acid tongue. Her wide eyes shot lasers through my soul.

She cast me into the supply closet, upon further notice. Solitary confinement it was.

***

Time seemed to slow to a halt, as I laid there on my cot in the supply closet. My mind drifted into oblivion. They say prolonged exposure to solitude can drive a mind insane, which may have very well occurred had it not been for Kitty.

I can’t tell you on which day she came knocking on my door. Until that point, my days had only been punctuated by the notice of three square meals—breakfast, lunch and dinner—announced by the dull door thud of their delivery man, who slid the tray sleekly under my barricade and left silently. A ghost could have been feeding me and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

But the day Kitty came knocking, her gentle rapping sparked a bit of hope back in my ears after all too long a quietude. The welcome disturbance perked me out of my slump, in fact, and I leapt eagerly to my feet to see who it could be. On the other side, stood the cute and petite Kitty, blushing—she was the youngest of the crew members, couldn’t have been more than 20—wearing a look of genuine concern for me.

“The Captain said we aren’t supposed to talk to you, but I was frankly worried,” the lilt of her voice was like music. “You’re too young to be left alone.”

“Oh, well, I appreciate it,” I said. I really did. This was the first shred of compassion I had experienced on the Cheshire.

“Is there anything I can bring you?” Kitty kindly inquired.

“Maybe just yourself, for a visit every now and then. It’s nice just to see another human being. Obviously with discretion, though. I’d hate for you to end up like me.”

“I will!” she said, and I believed her.

Kitty was pure of heart. She was the youngest and perhaps that made her the most innocent, but it was more than that. She shot straight as an arrow in everything she did, a virtuoso of virtue itself. She was also quick as a whip, which is how she was able to earn her place on the elite Cheshire crew. And just like that, she came to visit me nearly every day for the rest of my lonely imprisonment. That’s how she became my star pupil… and how I earned the nickname ‘Big Cat.’

“If I’m the Kitty, then you must be the Big Cat,” she’d say, chuckling, as we learned together to leap through dimensions.

First, though, I had to establish zen in my Drop. Honestly, the solitude helped with that too.

***

NEXT UP: Big Cat and Kitty take to the Dew, but not before Bill sets his Drop. He established zen meditating in solitude for weeks. It’s in this state of confined, serene clarity that he remembers how to expand and warp the space-time around him. It’s here where he finally finds his center.

***