Molly walked leisurely down the paved path that snaked through the woods. It was almost dusk, and she enjoyed taking these early evening strolls after particularly hard days at work, which it certainly had been.
Molly was an astrophysicist, and she was closer than she had ever been to what she knew would not only be a breakthrough for her career, but for all mankind: the mathematical equation that would allow our spaceships to achieve faster-than-light speeds, which would in turn allow our species to finally explore and settle planets beyond our solar system.
She could see it in her mind's eye, as vivid as scenes from a film: colonies on Andromeda! The discovery of life on other planets! First contact with another sapient race! If only she could just solve this last bit of the algorithm, that, so far, had eluded her grasp.
Then, suddenly, and possibly through some mysterious, subconscious process, she had it. She knew what the answer was! The formula was now complete! This was it! Molly Joy, the world-renowned scientist, had figured out the key to the human species' flourishing in the cosmos!
She went to find her phone, so she could write down her discovery for safekeeping, only to remember that she left the device at her apartment to avoid any unnecessary distractions on her walk. Determined to get back now, she picked up her pace, eager to get out of the woods and back to civilization.
....
Hours had passed, and, somehow, Molly was still not out of the forest. How could this be? She should have made it back to the parking lot ages ago! And now it was really starting to get dark! Even more troubling, the paved path had turned into a dirt trail, and the lamp posts that had appeared every 200 feet or so had totally disappeared! Had she made a wrong turn somewhere? She didn't think the route, which she thought she knew so well, had any branching paths at all, at any point along its length.
She picked up her pace again, hoping this whole situation would be, before long, nothing but a distant, albeit odd, memory. Soon, she knew, she'd be back in the parking out, and she would find the map, and see where she had absent-mindedly taken the wrong turn somewhere along the way. Hell, this could even be a funny memory: how the brilliant Dr. Joy had gotten herself lost in the woods right after unlocking the secret to human space exploration! She could tell the story after accepting her Nobel! How they would laugh!
The trees finally opened up, but Molly was disappointed to find, not the parking lot, but instead a small meadow. But that wasn't all - at its far end, resting under a large tree, was a...centaur?!?!? It beckoned to her, and Molly, desperate for answers, walked towards it.
The centaur was definitely male, and, Molly thought, a quite attractive one at that, with his broad chest, chiseled abs, big, muscular arms, and handsome face. She wasn't sure what to make of the horse portion of his body, though, never having been much of an equestrian herself. She thought his hair...looked soft? Well, its brown coloring looked nice, at least...
Wait, she thought, why was she acting like this was all totally normal? This is impossible! There are no such things as centaurs! She, a woman of science, knew that better than anyone!
She must be having some kind of a mental breakdown, she reasoned, and this was all some sort of stress-induced delusion. It had been a hard day at work after all, another in a very long line. Therefore, maybe, the centaur, obviously nothing more than a product of her own psyche, could show her the way out of this fantasy, and back to the world of sanity. It was worth a shot, anyway.
"Uhhhh," she said, awkwardly. "Do you know the way out of here, Mr. Centaur-Horse-Man? I just made the most important discovery of all time, and I'd really like to get back to the real world so I can, you know, share it with the rest of the human species."
The Centaur looked her up and down. "Hmmmm, an Oriental," he remarked, in an amused tone.
Molly didn't know what to think about that. Should she be offended? This was, after all, nothing but a figment of her imagination. Could she really even be mad at her own mind for, apparently, being kind of racist?
"Tell me, Oriental," the centaur continued, his voice deep and bass-ey. "What is the nature of this discovery you've made?"
She sighed. Shouldn't he already know this, since he just was an extension of herself? She resolved to entertain him anyway, at least for now, and hoped doing so would speed up the process of restoring her sanity.
"It's the mathematical equation that will allow our ships to reach planets outside of our solar system," she responded, annoyed and exasperated. How long was this going to go on for?
