A World Without Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

successful.
    My curiosity was aroused. I picked up the first piece of paper and examined it closely. Other than being slightly silver in appearance, it looked like an ordinary piece of copier paper, the type I purchased by the case for use with my computer's inkjet printer. I guessed it must have gotten mixed in with my scrap paper when I'd combined the stacks of useless manuscript pages with some of the trash I'd picked up in the street. Since I couldn't use it, I crumpled it into a tight ball and tossed it at the wastepaper basket as I took the second sheet and began writing again.
    It was closing on midnight when I sat back in my chair, stretched, and yawned. A satisfied feeling for the great progress I had made on my first day suffused through my chest— but then the first day always went well when I felt inspired by a new story idea. My stomach had been not so gently reminding me for hours that I hadn't eaten dinner, but I'd managed to ignore it for the most part as I recorded my first thoughts. However, the time had come to quell the uncomfortable rumbling from deep in my bodily interior.
    After half-filling a two-quart pot with water, I placed it on the stove and used a stick match to ignite the gas burner. The old stove predated the ones with an automatic, electronic igniter, and I mistrusted pilot lights because if they went out, the apartment could fill with gas.
    When I was as hungry as I felt right then, I usually sated my appetite with pasta. While the water heated, I cleared the table so I could eat without splattering pasta sauce on my laptop or paperwork. As I stepped back from the table and turned to see if the water was boiling, I spotted a blank sheet of paper lying on the floor next to the wastepaper basket. I bent to pick it up and immediately noticed the silvery appearance. It was just like the piece I had crumpled and discarded earlier after discovering I couldn't write on it. Grabbing a marker pen, I tried to write a line near the edge rather than just adding a possibly useless piece of paper to my scrap paper pile. When that failed, I tried to write a diagonal line across the center. Again nothing appeared. I naturally assumed it was another sheet like the one I'd tossed away earlier, so I crumbled it into a tight ball. Taking two steps backward, I tossed it as if it were a basketball, using the wastebasket as the hoop.
    Since I wasn't otherwise occupied, I let my eyes follow its trajectory. Halfway to the basket, the paper suddenly sprang open and floated gently to the floor. I stood transfixed, my mouth agape, staring at the paper and unable to believe my eyes. I must have stood there with my mouth open, looking at the sheet of paper, for a full thirty seconds before retrieving it and returning to the table. A close examination disclosed not the slightest trace of a crease or mark on the sheet. The pot of water I had put onto the stove was by now bubbling over and hissing when splatters hit the burner, but I ignored it as I sat down at the table to think. I knew I had to determine if I had really seen the paper open up, so I crumpled it into the tightest ball I could manage and set it on the table in front of me. My hand had barely moved away from the wadded up paper before it sprang open. I watched in fascination as the crease lines melted away before my eyes, then just sat and stared transfixed at the paper for about ten minutes as I struggled to dredge up every memory I had about such an outstanding phenomenon.
    I had heard about plastics with a memory. And there were several shaped-memory metal alloys such as Nitinol, a paramagnetic alloy of nickel and titanium that reportedly had similar properties but that required the application of heat to metamorphose to its original shape. While I was pretty sure the sheet wasn't plastic, it could be an exceedingly thin sheet of metal. Its slight silvery appearance reinforced this perception.
    My only other recollection of anything remotely like this came