Warning:  technobabble, vagaries and unrecognizably perverted character
designs, amalgamated at best.  Understand at your own risk.

**********

On one of the bulletin boards outside a seminar room in the Physics
Department of Tokyo University, the following message was tacked on:

	A Study of Relativity in Light of Fractal Dimensions

followed by scribbles writing over one another, evidently the schedule
and re-schedule of the lecture date.  The name of the guest lecturer
could not be made out from under the scrawl.

Inside, an anxious audience eagerly waited.  The door opened suddenly,
and, despite their thirty-seventy running odds of it happening, the 
lecturer actually arrived.

***

The speaker cleared her throat as she composed herself on the lectern.  
"Thank you all for coming here."  She made more nervous noises as she
eyed the sheer number of people (mostly women), but she steeled herself
for the next sentence, which was, "Ladies... and gentlemen, some people
have put forth the idea that this congregation has come about as a sort
of a fan club."  She coughed politely.  "These people have also seen 
this event to be a major waste of time."

Focussed, she continued in a more relaxed manner, "They could not be 
more wrong.  Ours is an unusual kind of cult, as it is also a search 
party for a missing person."  Several heads nodded.  "It is mostly in 
the latter aspect, but partly in the former, that we are here.

"We come from all parts of Japan, young and old, rich and poor, the
disillusioned, the enlightened, the lovelorn..." here, swift change 
took her features, but left it as quickly, "... and the inspired, to
tell stories, in an effort to learn more, and hopefully to once again
find... him."

***

Enthralled, the seminar held the fully-packed room for a lecture of an
hour and a half, all on the aspects twisted-real-space v erraticly 
curved space, a reconsideration of gravity and time as fractal sub-
dimensions of a five-dimensional true-space, and a slight metaphysical
digression into the powers of the human mind.  The questions which 
followed were deep and animated, at least, as animated as any seminar 
on Physics.

"Are you," asked a sniffly old professor, "implying that time-travel is
possible through the mental powers of a normal human being?"

The man on stage clapped his hands free of chalk dust and smiled.  "My
dear sir, you ask me to fall into the trap of substantiating a fiction.
Stephen Hawking has sufficiently proven that the mental arrow of time
moves in only one direction.  How can you truly forget the past?  No, at 
best the mind can be asked to foresee the future, but not bring anything
physical into it."

"On fractal dimensions between three and four," asked another teacher,
"the assumption of gravity as such a manifestation stems exactly from
Einstein's general theory of relativity.  You said that the mind is
attuned to such working of the universe.  Why, then, would your
everyday man not notice such fractal dimensions and travel the straight
line between two points?"

"That," he replied, "is because everyday man is rarely in tune to his
mind.  Why did our forefathers, the thinkers of olden-day Japan, climb
Fuji-yama seeking enlightenment?  It is because mountains, like most
vast bodies in nature, like forests, plains, or seas, have large fractal
dimensions, which is why terrestrial chi is largest in concentration
there.  There, the mind is more attuned, and it becomes easier to
concentrate.  The thinking man rarely walks the straight path, in more
than one way."

With this, he turned to the other people, "I am sorry, but I have to leave.
I am already late to a previous engagement."  He left, vowing never to
return.

***

"I met him in my farm in Hokkaido," a youngish woman was saying, "when he
helped us to turn away a gang of cow-rustlers."  She hid a small blush.
"Yes, he left before I could tell him how much I loved him."

Several sympathetic nods.  The last embers of jealousy burned out with the 
realization that tens upon tens of people here were actually in the same 
situation.

"I... I really didn't see why he left when he did.  I was heartbroken for
days..."  She was offered hors d'oeuvres on a salver by a passing waiter.

"And you know what the sweet thing was?  After just giving the money to 
this old guy, and improving on the program, he left.  Didn't ask for 
anything except the job.  After how we... I treated him.  So when I heard
that there was... a chance to find him... well..."

They knew.  That was, after all, why they were there.

***

The ex-lecturer rode his mountain bike, and dipped into the alleyway beside
a hotel.  Securing it, he took the service entrance.

The manager noticed his tardy entry.  "You!"

He cringed slightly and had a sheepish expression.  "Sorry... I, um, got a
little lost on the way here..."

"No buts!"  He pointed to the changeroom.  "Put on your uniform, and go to
the conference room in the lower lobby!  There's a luncheon going on, and
there are appetizers to bus!"

He bowed out and slipped in the room.  Another guy was there, already in a
clean waiter's suit.  "Conference room?"  He laughed.  "That's the loony
bunch."

"Loony?"  He slipped into the black slacks.

"Oh, yeah.  Loopy as hell.  Sort of a dedication thing, 'cept that the guy
they're celebrating is missing.  Nothing really weird though, and some of
the babes are real..."

"Real?"  He smoothed the front of his inner shirt.  "Real what?"

The other guy was standing with a faraway look, and drool was starting to
trickle down the corner of his mouth.

"Hm.  Probably doesn't get out much."  He finished dressing up, and he went
to the nearest elevator.

***

In other groups, less emotional discussions were occuring.

A redneck started, "There he was, he stopped that... monster from wrecking 
the village.  We reckoned he was 'fool, but he stopped it dead in its
tracks, I tell'ya..."

The old man squinted.  "I don't get it.  I mean, the only time we had met
was when his pedal was busted.  Nothing big, and there he goes and leaves 
the money to pay off my debts.  I wonder if he knew..."

"He probably does," a woman in conservative clothes said, "he always seems
to know, even before you do."

More acquiescent nods, all around.  Since this was the table closest to
the service station, where the seven-meal course was being heated, the
back door opening could be heard.

The lecturer-cum-waiter assessed the job, and asked the guy at the trays,
"where's the appetizers?"

"Here," he said passing a tray with more hors d'oeuvres and a pitcher of
water, taking a look at the new guy's face.  With a quizzical expression, 
he turned to the huge blow up on the stage.  Turning back, he said, "say, 
you look like that guy in the..."

No one was there, except a wet pile of clothes.  Somewhere nearby, a small
black pig looked for a way out.

**********

Did anyone get it?  I'm sorry about muddling it.  Let's just say that the
idea stemmed from thinking if Ryoga was in the same educational year as the
rest of the Ranma cast, and he was old as they were, and he keeps getting
lost, how does he keep getting good enough grades to graduate to the next
level?  Add some wandering student aspects...  Another idea that got put in
was one where all the girls that Ryoga met/helped/had-liked-him had a 
gathering, telling about their particular stories.

Switch
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