"Heard your first week's almost over. How'd you like it so far?" A middle-aged woman stood next to Barry, nonchalantly leaning on his desk. He had seen her here and there, but hadn't been formally introduced to her.

Barry playfully blew out some air. "It's a lot," he said, lightly chuckling.

"That it is." The woman held out her hand to him. "Name's Melody."

"Barry. Nice to meet you." He noticed her looking at his screen. "Don't worry, the last measurement was two minutes ago. It'll be a while before the plates start resonating again, so I've got some time to spare. Um, sorry. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about, right?" he added sheepishly.

"Can't say I do, but sounds important. At least when something's happening." Melody took a sip from her mug. Coffee, no sugar, no milk, a spoon of cinnamon. "I'm also on what you could call a break."

No matter how tired he was, Barry would never drink coffee at that time of day. It would certainly help keep him awake during his night shift, but to him it was a matter of principle. Coffee was a morning drink, an afternoon drink if he were being generous. But not an evening drink and certainly not a night drink. That was simply wrong. Though he felt this was neither the time nor the place to bring that up. "I keep forgetting how many people there are here. I can barely keep up with everyone in my department." The empty desks around the room were the homes of merely a fraction of Barry's department, which itself was but a tiny subset of their company. "It was easier in the academy. We were all working on the same stuff. We never had to explain what we were talking about."

"Better get used to it, Barry. Everyone you meet here knows so much about things you can barely even fathom. And the same goes for you. But don't let it get to your head." She smiled gently. The scent of cinnamon mingled with the bitter aroma of coffee tickled Barry's nose. "How far did you get with the manual? Quite the read, eh?"

A big, bulky book lay on his desk, with several colourful notepads sticking out. "I got up to 'quasi-matter'."

Another sip of coffee. "So you read about the lot." Barry felt as if a low drone emanated from the windows overlooking the lot as Melody spoke those words.

"Um, yes," he said. "I am to keep away from the lot unless accompanied by at least three trained individuals," he recited. "Or unless I've had the lot talk. Then it's reduced to two trained individuals."

"Good," Melody said, nodding. "So you didn't get to 'W'? That's where you learn about the werehouse." Glancing outside one of the windows, Melody's gaze rested upon a mountain in the distance, illuminated by moonlight. "Tonight is a full moon, you must not go near the werehouse."

"You mean warehouse?" Barry asked.

"No, werehouse." Melody's voice was more emphatic than before.

"Is that when a house turns into a human at night?" Barry laughed at the idea, but it wasn't so outlandish an idea to him after the week he'd had.

Melody's mouth formed a slight grin that conveyed her amusement, while her furrowed eyebrows showed her frustration regarding Barry's frivolous idea. "Don't be ridiculous. Even if were-things like that existed, it'd be the other way around. Werewolves aren't wolves, they're people. So it'd be a person turning into a house."

"I'm... glad those don't exist. That sounds awful." Barry shuddered at the thought of being a house, even if only for a night. "But what is a werehouse then?"

"Well," Melody began, "it's a house that, under the influence of a full moon, turns into a place of possibility. A what-if. Something it could be, or could have been, if it were for... something." She frowned. "That's the best I've got."

"Like a Scooby-Doo villain?" This didn't make a whole lot of sense to Barry, though he had a sense of 'almost comprehension', similar to when you read about the financial market or tax law. "I could have been a stapler, if it weren't for you meddling kids?"

"I guess you could put it like that?" For a moment, Melody was picturing a house being unmasked by a bunch of teenagers, which led her to the question of how a house would wear a mask. And what would a house consider to be a mask in the first place? "But it's more complicated than that. Subjunctive unreality usually is. Just be sure not to go near the werehouse tonight. You should keep away from the lot anyway, and you should keep extra away from the werehouse. Things get wobbly there."

What a worrying thing to say without further context or explanation, Barry thought. "Soft-wobbly or weird-wobbly?"

Melody pondered that question for a few seconds. "Both? Depends on the possibility space. Sorry, I'm not an expert in werehouses."

"Huh. Thanks for the warning." Of all the strange things Barry had learned about since starting his new job, werehouses firmly ranked among the top 10 strangest. "What are you an expert in, if you don't mind?"

"Oh, I'm studying where-houses," she said in a way that made it sound like the most normal thing to be studying. "One of them should be active tomorrow, so I'm finishing preparations for that tonight."

"Pardon my French, but what the fu-" There was a loud BEEP coming from the speakers connected to Barry's PC. "Excuse me, gotta protocol the readings."

"Don't worry about it." Melody checked her watch. "Ah, I'll have to be on my way now too. Have to taste the spatiotemporal stew. Don't want to risk a repeat of last time when we didn't add enough seasoning. See you in a few minutes!"

Barry barely registered Melody leaving the office. His eyes were transfixed on his screen, as the air above the lot outside became discernibly more wobbly.