He opened the small box. It didn’t matter now that she had suddenly said “Don’t.”  It was too late, the seal was unsealed.

He looked around the room.  It was all changed, but somehow all the same, but not the same way as the first time this happened.  Now every object was in the same place but every object had changed.  Pamela’s appointment book was now brown and marked ‘R.’  Her dress hanging over the chair in the corner was red where it had been chartreuse.  Every detail of every object was changed, but every object was in the identical spot it was before.

“We’re making progress,” she said.

“Define progress?”

“Before everything was disarranged, now some stuff’s the same.  That’s definitely progress.”