Leslie looks up with a smile that twists something up inside Ann, makes her think of the stupid website from earlier, remember the assignment: See what's really there.

I’m not blind, Santana, and if you actually think that I don’t know that you’ve been looking since at least that pool party at Kurt’s, you’re underestimating me severely.

“I bet you’d like to cut him open,” Jim says, his breath warm against her ear. “I bet you’d like to see inside.”

This is about Sheldon growing up to a world that’s bigger than just him.

Cinna nods, turning his glass slowly in his fingers. "Yes," he says. "I'm the master of the ultimately meaningless gesture."

"You sound like you're worried, but that can't be right."

Just before the end, Dom says, "She saved Theseus from the labyrinth."

"It's OK -- we're friends. This can be normal. Here, hand me my pants." (Because that's a normal sentence for friends to say.)

Spock took his first bite of waffles, chewed slowly, and swallowed. "The surface grid acts as containment for the syrup."

“But I think…I think you like me beating you…I think you like Wesley Crusher outsmarting you, one-upping you… I bet you want Wesley to top you."

"I don't think it's from the buildings," Sheldon said. His voice sounded flat and dead, and it startled her so much she jammed on the brakes. Hysterical Sheldon she could handle. Blowing everything out of proportion, no problem. But defeated, lifeless, dead-sounding Sheldon threw shivers up and down her spine and an icy pressure into her stomach. "Sheldon?"

"Hilarious," Johnny says, deadpan. "I think I'd recognize Clay Aiken. Also, ew." "No, dumbass," Paris says. "The hot one. And – oh. Um."

His brow creases. "I think," he says slowly, "that I don't believe in a universe so limited it has only enough room for one view of the cosmos." Never, never will he stop surprising her. "Yeah?" "Yes," he says. "Is it trivia time, or may I resume the episode?"

On day five, however, Penny bursts into his apartment and mutters, "Coffee." He has prepared it for her today. He has found that she is far less violent when he breaks up with her if she has had caffeine. It is only logical, if not kind, that he ply her with coffee first.

"Don't be an asshole, Penny," says Imaginary Dan Savage. "He knows his own body. Look at that fucking body language. You're basically raping his face."

She picks up her phone and goes inside, into the bathroom. She turns on the overhead light and studies her face in the mirror. She punches in a number on the phone without needing to look at the buttons. It's a number she's never forgotten, one she's wanted to call a thousand times. She can barely hear the ringing on the other end. Her heart mimics the roar of the waves only a few dozen feet outside the doors, thrums in her ears and throat. She feels the wind shift again.

There seems to be a party going on in her birthing room, even though no one bothered to invite her. The guys are eating Mongolian beef and kung pao chicken while she enjoys a sumptuous dinner of ice chips and red Jell-O. The smell of their food is making her a little nauseated although she can hardly begrudge Sheldon a little dinner.

People will probably say that a Nebraskan Admiralty should hang below Presidency of the Earth. People, as far as Penny is concerned, can suck it.

Sheldon takes the cowboy hat off and hands it to her. "So help me, Penny, if you show that picture to anyone, you're dead." She's already sent it to Leonard, Raj and Howard. Four bars of coverage, even out here in Bumfuck Egypt. Technology is beautiful.

It starts in Pasadena, after their flight from Kansas City and a layover from hell, when he backs her up against the wall at Stuart’s store before they’ve even finished unpacking all their gear, with all the guys oblivious just around the corner and Penny’s heart beating madly in her chest. Things go fairly quickly after that.

"You don't have to, like, make out with her. Just go get your game on. It's cool." God, Howard's pretty good at this advice shit. Maybe he should just bow out of the game gracefully and retire. He can wear long velvet dressing gowns and dispense advice to distraught young fictional lesbians. He will be a guru, a modern-day guru with glorious hair, and he will often be holding a glass half-full of dark red wine. His mansion will have many cameras. For security purposes, of course.

Kris didn't know what the hell to do. Adam was kissing him, sweet cold tang of the lemon ice in his mouth, Adam's lips hot by contrast, and he was doing something with his tongue, and Mrs. Lambert was standing over them saying, "Adam!" in exasperation, and three weeks later, they were married.

That's it. That's the way out of this; he'll walk the worlds like a human does, a thin clear vessel with a narrow thread of heartbeat, one thought in front of another, one life in front of another, and then-

Adelle has nightmares. In most of them, she's a doll, wandering around the house with dull, vacant eyes, a pleasant smile on her face. She dreams this almost nightly. It gets less horrible every time.

But—I didn't want to sleep with Harrison Ford, I want to be him.

"Hey, it wasn't every day you made me wear an old bathrobe and an Easter basket for a crown."

It comes as something of a shock when she throws the shoe at his head.

Meemaw came through the front door Velociraptor-first. | "Oh holy shit!" said Penny.

I want to face you.

He sways in her direction. "You looking for a little fun ?" | "No," she says. "Just testing a theory."

Kris says, "Uh," and stares, wide-eyed, unmoving, until he realizes he's clutching several pairs of dirty boxer-briefs to his chest in the presence of an angel of the Lord.

"I find it a little demeaning to be threatened over magnets."

Adam doesn’t ask if he’s sure, if he knows what he’s doing. Amazing the things you can get across in 140 characters. 

“Singer wanted; instrumental proficiency a plus; whistlers need not apply."

Penny doesn't believe in ghosts. Never has. Not until tonight.

And sometimes, she thinks, sometimes he does things because he can, because he hurts and he wants someone else to hurt, too.

Six years later, they met again at a train station.

Penny says "I'm not going back" and then regrets it instantly because she's a little bit superstitious. Out here it feels like somebody might be listening. As if saying something aloud to the sky and prairie and the morning sun makes it into prophecy or prayer. Summer on the Nebraska plain has an element of truth to it.

God, she'd forgotten how to drive. How good it feels to just chew up miles, to move. In California everyone drives everywhere, it's totally stupid, they get in the car and spend fifteen minutes in traffic just to go one block. Now she's got nothing but horizon, and she's going fast so it changes, mountainscreeksbrushsand all thrown together, makes you feel like a goddess to go fast through it. Penny falls in love with Nevada. Nevada's got a lot of horizons, they're rewarding. Up and down one ridge, and then there's another. All silver desert, a brilliant sandbox of jagged rock and dune.

He takes his cocoa and settles into his spot on the couch, one hand around the warm mug, the other pressed flat to the empty seat cushion on his right. He watches a marathon of Doctor Who Christmas specials, regenerating hands and runaway brides, and luxury space cruisers and Cybermen. There are whole stretches where he doesn’t look at the TV at all, but counts the red lights, the blue lights, the yellow lights in the strands hanging along the ceiling. He counts lights and listens to Time Lords and misses Penny.  It’s been a month since she left. She hasn’t been back, but he hung the lights for her anyway.

"Mildew," he pronounces darkly. "Don't leave it in a pile in the laundry room, as you doubtless intended to do. It will create the ideal conditions for fostering the growth of mildew. Now, assuming you haven't changed your laundry habits to ones sane and logical, which is frankly unlikely, you'll have a load comprised of mixed materials i.e. denims and towels and delicate garments all roiled together in an indiscriminate orgy of poor planning, inevitable pilling and ill-advised synthetic fibers."    "I heard 'orgy,'" she offers.

She tugs him close again, standing on tiptoe so her words will go right into his ear. She wants to laugh and cry at the same time. "Oh, Sheldon, " she says, her face growing warm. "Don't you get it? You're everything. "

(When she gets home that night she translates, Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want -- just for practice, of course.)

He’s not even sure if he wants Kurt to like him back, except every time Kurt’s around him, he does that stupid flirty thing that seems to get him a ton of girls that doesn’t seem to work on Kurt.

If someone asked her to explain the events leading up to their first night together, she wouldn't be able to string together a coherent story if she were offered a million dollars and the lead in the next Steven Spielberg film.

Pay attention, because I am only going to do this once.

"I needed to do it. Just in case. If something goes wrong again, I needed to kiss you one more time."

"Okay, I'm going to go take a shower, if that's all right," Blaine says. "Sheldon, would you like to join me?"   "Join you? In the shower? That's absurd. That's—oh. Oh, I see. Yes. A shower would be pleasant."

"Oh," Sheldon says, surprised. People usually love his interesting facts about various fruits and vegetables. "Very well. Would you like to tell me an interesting fact about your banana?"   "Yeah. It's going to be lodged in your left nostril pretty soon if you don't stop bothering me."

And the days pass like receding waves, rolling over her, dragging her each hour a little farther from the shore.

"'Homemade' is not a subspecies of pie. 'Homemade' is not a part of pie taxonomy."   "It's cherry," Penny bites out. "Eat. A. Friggin.' Piece."

"You're too pretty, and warm, and friendly, and you smell like Meemaw's cookies, and you don't wear enough clothing, and Leonard thinks he's been in love with you all this time, and you make me want to know what feelings are, and you can't know comics."

"I'm not going to write an essay, Sheldon!"   "I've told you, Penny, at twenty-two you should be able to compose more than a simple book report!"

I'll either find a way or make one.

He has no roadmap for this particular trip.

"We need guns," Mike Sarver said.

“Wanting to live in Katy Perry’s image isn’t the same thing as being gay, Kelly,” she’s pretty sure he replied. But pretty patiently, for Oscar.

“God, you two are such women,” she says, and Ryan laughs because it’s true.

His nefarious plan is not to have a nefarious plan, though, and after a long moment she gets out of the car.

"Hey, when you gay marry him, can I be your best man?"

"I'll drink some FIRE," he tells Pam and she leans around the desk to blink at him, before sitting up again.