(At a university, Gene stands at a dry erase board contemplating some equations. Two students watch him through a glass window at the back of the lab.)

MIKE: Someone forgot to wind time-boy.

VAL: He's thinking. Something *you* ought to try.

MIKE: Very funny. You know, he's really not that much smarter than the rest of us.

VAL: I guess that's why *his* work on the time paradox earned Professor Orfalla a Nobel nomination and your work on carpet mold was promptly forgotten by everyone?

MIKE: You know what you are?

VAL: Yes. I do, Mike. And if you say it, I'll put your face in liquid nitrogen.

(Val knocks on the glass door leading to the lab. Gene turns around and opens the door.)

VAL: Hey. What's the good word?

GENE: Entanglement.

VAL: How's that again? (they go to the dry erase board)

GENE: In Newton's world space and time are separate entities, in Einstein's their entwined.

VAL: Einstein's entwined. Can you say that ten times really fast?

GENE: So how is it that altering one particle of an entangled pair causes the other particle to be affected -- without any communication between the two.

VAL: Because space and time are one.

GENE: So how do you separate an entwined pair? You don't. You can't. In fact you probably shouldn't even try.

VAL: I never do.

GENE: What you should do is carve out one (writes another equation on board) *instant* at a time.

VAL: Look, I like the theory of freezing time as much as the next Star Trek nerd ...

GENE: It's not freezing time, although that's what it would look like to an outside observer. I'm talking about removing one infinitesimal space-time aggregate from all that surrounds it.

VAL: A tiny event horizon.

GENE: Sort of. And then growing that event into something measurable and controllable. Your dog and his favorite bone preserved forever, in his own impenetrable little bubble.

VAL: And who's gonna clean up that bubble?

GENE: If I could just get the math right, I should be able to prove it (walks over to some other equipment) by generating a focal point with the accelerator's beams here and passing liquid mercury through that point.

VAL: Suspending the mercury. Snatching it out of our time-space continuum -- and freezing the moment.

GENE: Forever.

(A redhead enters the lab.)

VAL: Denise. Thank god you're here. Your boyfriend was just coming on to me with the old Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlation.

Denise smiles: That's what got me -- out of physics and into theater.

GENE: Hi, sweetie.

DENISE: Hi.

GENE: How are you?

DENISE: Good. You?

GENE: Good. So, what's new? (Denise shrugs) I guess we're on for tomorrow night.

DENISE: Uh-huh, we are.

GENE: Big night.

DENISE: Yeah. One year anniversary and all. (Pause) Well, we-we should, ah ...

GENE: Oh, you guys are taking off?

DENISE: Yeah.

GENE: Okay. Well, I guess I -- I'll see you tomorrow night then. (Kisses her)

DENISE: Don't work all night.

VAL: You know he will.

written by: David Greenwalt; Original transcript by anonymous. Edited, formatted for this site & checked against source by chicken_cem. Checked against source by chicken_cem.. Full transcript at:
http://www.buffyworld.com/angel/season2/transcripts/35_tran.shtml