It wasn't the most visually exciting presentation as far as science projects go, but something about the odd-looking box with its multiple dials and blinking lights kept drawing my eyes towards it anyway.

At first glance the kid manning the booth wasn't much to look at either. I pegged him around 18 or 19. He wore a dirty white lab coat with a nametag on it that read simply "Samir." He was slightly overweight and had a bit of a bad complexion. The only word that could possibly describe his skin tone was "pasty." It didn't look like he got much sun, although I suppose that was probably true of a lot of these hardcore scientist types. And yet upon paying closer attention there was an odd look in his eye that spoke of an immense confidence about something. He carried himself with a certain level of swagger that I would never have guessed him capable of after a superficial once over.

Still, I couldn't help but be intrigued when he informed me flat out that the device in front of me was not only miles ahead of the rest of the projects in the room, it was also the most amazing thing I would ever see in my life.

"You seem pretty sure of yourself," I said. "I've seen a lot of pretty fantastic projects so far today." It was true. I'd been chosen as an honorary judge when the national science fair came to our town this year. Being an eighth grade science teacher I feel like I know a lot of the basics pretty well. But some of this stuff was far beyond my realm of expertise. Without a doubt, there were some budding young geniuses in the room that day. I made a mental note to myself I was going to have to tell my wife Linda about this one. She had gone home already with our daughter Jamie, who was still a little too young for science fairs.

"You haven't seen anything like this," Samir replied. "Anywhere. Ever."

"Okay. So explain it to me. What's so special about this little doo-hickey here?"

"This device can change the world. Literally."

"Literally, huh?" I rubbed my chin. "So how does it work?"

"You think you're prepared for this?" he asked in a slightly ominous voice.

"I don't know. I'm still waiting for you to tell me what it does."

"I told you what it does!" He seemed to be a bit exasperated by my apparent stupidity. "It changes the world! The whole universe for that matter!"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes at this. This kid seemed like the classic misunderstood genius. At least in his own mind. Still he seemed so sure of himself.

"Okay, I believe you. Against my better judgment, I do. But you're going to have to walk me through this slowly. What is this thing exactly and how does it work?"

"Really? Please step over here." The kid suddenly seemed very excited as if it was the first time somebody actually believed his claims about a device that could change the world. I got the distinct impression I was the first person today he had been able to demonstrate his device to. He handed me a wristband and instructed me to put it on. He put one on his own wrist and picked up a smaller device that looked like a remote control with a single red button on it. "There are many people out there who will tell you that this is only one of many possible universes and I'm here today to tell you that those people are correct. Now, there are many components that go into making up a universe." At this he gestured towards the numerous dials on the machine.

I hadn't had a chance to study them too closely up to this point so I took the opportunity to have a look at them now. Each one was labeled with a different pair of words. Most seemed to be obvious opposites, such as forwards-backwards, bigger-smaller, hotter-colder, or brighter-dimmer. Others didn't strike me as exactly opposite, but were certainly different such as one labeled mechanical-organic or another labeled sharper-rounder. Still others made no sense to me at all such as flux-fuse, wing-plank, or linger-falter. At first I thought there were about fifty dials on the machine but then the kid swung open a panel and revealed at least another fifty dials. Then he opened yet another panel and still more dials revealed themselves, many of these bearing words that I had never heard of and could only imagine were made up as many of them seemed to be strings of consonants like pgrqk-ljthm.

"I'm afraid you've lost me," I said. "What is a pgrqk-ljthm?"

"Hmm," Samir murmured. "That's very complex. I don't think we should start with that one. I think I can more ably demonstrate this if we start with something a little more familiar to you. Let's begin here." He placed his hand on the dial labeled forwards-backwards and paused for dramatic effect. "Are you ready to have your mind blown?"

"Sure," I said unconsciously bracing myself as the kid turned the dial one notch to the right and pushed the red button on his box.

Nothing happened.

"Well?" Samir asked.

I looked around. I saw the convention center filled with science projects and perhaps a few hundred people wandering around looking at them. "Uh, nothing's changed."

"Look at your watch," Samir urged me excitedly.

"Okay," I said and looked at my watch. It read 4:17 PM. "So?"

"Did you notice what time it was when I turned the dial?" the kid asked with a note of impatience in his voice.

"No, I didn't. Was I supposed to? You didn't say anything."

Samir let out a little sigh. "Well, I suppose I can take you back and show you." This time he turned the dial one notch to the left and pushed the button again.

Again nothing seemed to happen.

"Look at your watch now," he said.

I looked. It read 3:17 PM. "So what is this, some kind of magic trick? You're changing the time on my watch when I'm not looking?"

"Okay," he sighed again. "Perhaps this demonstration was a little too subtle. I was trying to ease you into it. Let me turn the dial just a little bit further and maybe you'll get the gist." This time Samir turned the dial several notches to the right before pushing the button.

Instantaneously the lights went out and the room fell silent. There were no longer any other people in the room aside from the kid and myself. "What happened?" I couldn't help but let out a gasp.

"Look at your watch now."

I looked at my wrist and now it read 2:49 AM. "It's the middle of the night! How did you do that?"

"Incidentally it's also next Tuesday," Samir said dryly. "But I suppose if you don't have a calendar on your watch you wouldn't know that. Shall we go back?" He didn't wait for my response before turning the dial several notches to the left and pushing the button. The lights came on and the sound of many people talking at the same time returned. Without being prompted I checked my watch. It was 3:17 PM again.

"This is amazing! So this thing is like some kind of time machine?" I was definitely going to have to give my wife a hard time about leaving early now.

"In a sense," Samir said. "But it's so much more than that. You haven't tried out any of the other dials yet."

"I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this time travel thing. How far into the future can this thing go? Does it go to the past as well?"

"Theoretically you can go to any point in time. You could go a million years into the future if you wanted. Although to be more accurate, you'd be going to a universe where it's a million years later than it is here. But please, I have much to show you."

Before I could respond he went to another one of the dials and gave it a good twist and pushed the button. The walls of the room, which had previously been plain old white suddenly turned bright orange. The kid twisted the dial again and suddenly they were navy blue.

I gazed around in astonishment but everywhere I looked none of the other people seemed to even look twice at the walls which had changed color quite drastically. "How come nobody else is saying anything? Can't they see what's going on?"

"The walls haven't changed color for them," Samir replied simply. "We've jumped into their universe. As far as the people here are concerned those walls have always been navy blue. In fact the only difference between this universe and our own is that in this one all the white walls are blue."

"So how come we're the only ones jumping universes?" I asked.

"That's what the wristband I gave you is for. It has a signal that's connected to the machine. I advise you keep it on while visiting another universe or you won't be able to jump back. Speaking of which..." he turned the dial again and pushed the button and the walls went suddenly back to white.

"I'm starting to believe your claim that this is the most amazing thing I'll ever see in my life," I said.

"Yes, but you haven't seen anything truly amazing yet. So far I've only changed one component at a time. I changed the time and I changed the color. But I haven't changed more than one element at the same time."

"Okay, I'm game. Show me." Boy was I going to have a story for Linda tonight. Even Jamie might appreciate this one, although she was young enough that every story was still magical and amazing to her. Well, the ones that didn't bore her to tears anyway.

Samir pulled out a notepad and made a few scratches on it before turning several of the dials. He licked his lips in anticipation and pushed the button.

All at once the room expanded in size, the lights turned a luminous purple color and all of the people wandering around grew lengthy rubbery arms and legs and sprouted tails. As jarring of a change as this was for me, none of these strange-looking humanoids seemed to take any notice at all as they continued about their business. We still appeared to be at some sort of science fair, as they continued to look at various exhibits that were set up around the now much larger room.

"Feel free to have a look around, if you'd like," Samir said as he fiddled with some more dials and made more marks in his notebook. As long as you're wearing that wristband the machine won't jump universes without you."

I got up to take a little stroll and as I did so Samir pushed the button again. An odd vegetation of an unfamiliar sort shot out of the floor about knee-length and the ceiling turned an odd red and blue checker-board sort of design. There were creatures wandering about, but they no longer appeared even remotely like humans. Rather they were large lumbering beasts walking on four legs with numerous spiky projections growing out of their bodies. All pretense of being at a science fair was now gone as the creatures seemed to be grazing on the vegetation and occasionally letting out loud shuddering sounds.

I walked about four feet away from one of the creatures to have a better look. It wasn't very pretty to look at. Its face was scaly and it seemed to have a rough leathery hide. It seemed to have lost any sort of humanoid intelligence as it mostly stood in one place, munched on the local flora and grunted once in awhile.

I returned to the machine intending to ask Samir what he made of these odd creatures, but he was already turning numerous dials in preparation to rocket us off to another universe. He pressed the button and in front of my eyes the creature I had been looking at turned silver and metallic. The vegetation which had previously been plant-like suddenly became a mesh of electrical wires and the ceiling, walls and floor turned green and looked not unlike a circuit board in a computer.

Samir barely took the time to look around before he was scribbling in his notebook and adjusting dials again. He didn't seem to be too interested in conversation, but I finally managed to get his attention by grabbing his shoulder.

"Okay, you win. This truly is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my entire life. You've taken me to completely alien worlds."

He shook his head dismissively. "This is nothing yet. I've charted all of these worlds. Right now I'm trying to take you somewhere completely unknown."

"That's all well and good," I said. "But I'm thinking maybe I've seen enough for now. You do know how to get us back to our universe, right?"

"Of course I do," he rolled his eyes. "I've been keeping careful notes of every twist of the dial. Thorough documentation is the first rule of multi-universe hopping. Now, this one ought to take us somewhere completely new."

He pushed the button and the light went dim. I could see my hand in front of my face vaguely if I strained my eyes, but I couldn't see the walls or ceiling anymore. It was eerily quiet. The air felt damp and chilly and there seemed to be a thick fog around us. The ground beneath my feet had taken on an odd texture. It was somewhat spongy but it also felt like there was a thin layer of sand on top of it.

"Where are we?" I asked. My voice had an echoey quality to it.

"I don't know," Samir shrugged. "I've never been here before. Maybe we should walk around and explore a bit. I've got a flashlight in my pack here."

"Well, okay," I said although I had a bit of an unsettled feeling in my stomach. "Which way should we go?"

"I think I see a light over in that direction." He gestured over my shoulder. I turned around and tried to see what he was pointing at. At first I couldn't tell any difference, but as I stared for a bit I began to see something. Not so much of a light as a vague luminescence. I agreed to go investigate it only after he assured me there was a homing beacon in the wrist bands we wore and there was absolutely no danger of being unable to find our way back to the machine.

We walked for what I took to be about fifteen minutes through the omnipresent gloom. We spoke very little and the oppressive sameness was starting to weigh heavily on me. The monotony was broken only once when a shrill high-pitched shrieking noise sounded far off in the distance behind us.

"What was that?" I asked.

"No idea," Samir mumbled and kept on walking. He didn't seem to be offering up anything further on the matter so I followed in silence.

I'm not sure how much longer we continued in that manner. Time didn't seem to have much meaning in a place such as that. Then out of nowhere I began to hear music. Barely audible and clearly some distance away but clearly music. And not just any music but the most beautiful, relaxing, comforting music I'd ever heard in my life. Whatever energy had been drained from walking so long rushed back into me as I felt inextricably drawn towards the sound. I thought at first I must be losing my mind and having an auditory hallucination but Samir clearly heard it too as he began humming along to it and started walking faster.

Presently we came to a wall. Samir shined his flashlight up and down and side to side. It was an enormous slab of gray that rose up higher than the eye could see and stretched in either direction further than the feeble beam of the flashlight could pierce. This was surely a wall that could put skyscrapers to shame. And yet we could hear the music coming from somewhere behind it and it was clear we had to find a way through. I could hear it calling to me like the sirens of ancient myth and I knew I had to get to it somehow.

We walked along the length of the wall in the direction which we perceived the music to be getting louder. We knew we were on the right track as the notes became clearer and against all odds even more beautiful. Images flooded my mind recalling every pleasant experience I'd ever had. The taste of a double scoop ice cream cone when I was a kid. Going swimming on the first day of summer. Chasing after butterflies in a warm green meadow. Laughing with friends. My first date with Linda. Our first kiss. Our wedding day. The birth of Jamie. It all came rushing back. I can only imagine Samir was experiencing something similar as he had an enormous smile plastered on his face.

Finally we came upon a narrow crack in the wall just wide enough for one person to squeeze through at a time. This was clearly the source of the music and there was even a faint light emanating from it which most likely accounted for the luminescence we had originally set out to investigate. The music grew even louder and I could hear it calling my name, beckoning me forward. Samir entered through the crack first and I followed right on his heels. We found ourselves in a narrow passageway that winded its way gently to the right. This went on for twenty yards or so and then opened up into a larger chamber.

As soon as we set foot into the chamber the music abruptly came to a halt and a rancid odor filled the room. It took us a moment to come out of our trance enough to notice the thirty or forty dark forms slowly rising up from the floor. Samir shone his flashlight on the nearest one and we were greeted by what I could only describe as some foul mockery of a human being. It almost looked like a person turned inside out, all throbbing red muscles, pulsating blood vessels and various guts and tubes leaking fluid. Its face was frozen in a twisted corpse-like snarl and it made a horrible gurgling sound as it slowly lifted a gnarled hand towards us. Suddenly a stream of liquid shot out of one of the tubes and sprayed me on the left shoulder, which began to instantly burn.

"It's a trap!" Samir shouted. "Run!"

This was enough to snap me out of the last of my reverie as I realized these horrible creatures shambling towards us had us vastly outnumbered. I turned around and ran as fast as I could back down the passageway, barely registering the pain in my shoulder.

I squeezed back out of the crack in the wall with Samir hot on my heels. I could hear the heavy trampling of many feet behind us but didn't spare a look over my shoulder until I had run about twenty feet. A small army of the monstrosities was pouring out of the crack. They twisted and writhed in a stuttering shuffle, but they moved slowly and I had the impression we could outrun them.

Samir was faster than he looked and was a few paces ahead of me. I didn't want to lose him so I put on an extra burst of speed I didn't know I had in me. After several minutes I glanced over my shoulder again. I couldn't see anything but I thought I could still hear footsteps shuffling after us in the dark. I was starting to feel a little tired, but adrenaline kept me going. Samir was glancing at his wristband periodically and subtly adjusting our course. After a few more minutes I could tell we were both slowing down, but we forced ourselves to continue at a jog.

"Do you think we lost them?" I panted.

"I don't know," he replied between gasping breaths. "Better to keep moving. We're almost back to the machine."

A short time later we stumbled back across it. Samir asked me to hold the flashlight while he adjusted the necessary dials. I pointed it at the machine for him as he worked quickly. "One more turn ought to do it."

Suddenly the high pitched shrieking noise I'd heard awhile back sounded again. Only this time it wasn't far off in the distance. It sounded like it was right behind us. Instinctively I whirled around. The flashlight beam caught a glimpse of some sort of giant hairy brown insectile thing. I didn't get a very good look at it before it charged towards us. I heard a choked scream beside me and just had time to turn the beam on Samir. He had been completely impaled through the stomach by the monster's long sharp prong-like arm.

"Help me," he croaked. I could see blood trickling from his mouth. The monster let out another ear-piercing shriek and pulled out its arm. From the corner of the flashlight beam I could see Samir's guts spilling out onto the floor.

All of this had happened in a matter of seconds before I had time to react. In a blind panic, thinking it the only means of escape I turned a random dial on the machine and pushed the button.

The light was much better now and I could see the environment had changed considerably. We were on a sandy blue beach next to a dark grey body of water. We were outside under a bright purple sky with a large green sun shining intensely. There were some odd looking trees growing in a grove behind us. Everything about our surroundings had changed. But the monster was still there. It had changed color and possibly shape as well. It now looked somewhat like a giant red praying mantis with huge knife-like arms. It let out another shriek and stabbed at the kid again, this time in his face. The tip emerged violently from the back of the kid's head dripping blood and brain matter.

I lunged towards the machine again and turned the forwards-backwards knob as far as I could to the right.

This time the monster disappeared. Presumably I had jumped into some far distant future for this universe. It was cold and the light seemed less intense somehow, as if the alien sun had dimmed with the passage of time. The ocean I had been standing next to was gone, apparently long-since dried up. The grove of trees was nowhere to be seen either. Instead I seemed to be standing in the middle of a vast blue desert. No wind stirred. There was nothing but complete silence all around me. It seemed to be a rocky dead world.

Samir's mutilated body had come with me as well since he still wore the wristband on his arm. It didn't take a doctor to know that he was beyond hope. There was little more than a gaping hole where his face had been. He still clutched his notebook in one of his hands. I pried it out gently and had a look at it.

It was no good. I couldn't make heads nor tails of his chicken scratch. I dropped the notebook and sat down hard on the ground. I had felt a momentary wave of relief upon escaping the monster. But now I felt a new wave of panic bubbling up in me. I couldn't stay in this world. That was obvious. But how was I supposed to find my way home? What about my wife and daughter? They must be getting worried about me by now.

I stared at the machine apprehensively. It was the only way I could think of to get out of here. But I wasn't too excited about the prospects of returning to some world of horrors like the one I had just narrowly escaped. For the time being this quiet world seemed to be a safe place to stay.

I sat on the ground for a long while. I wasn't sure just how long. My sense of time had gotten seriously out of whack. For all I knew time didn't even pass at the same rate in this universe. I felt tears welling up in my eyes and then they burst like a dam. I let myself cry until I couldn't cry anymore. I kept sitting and rolling the situation over in my mind. I finally decided on a couple of things. I knew I had to take a chance with the machine. I had come to the conclusion that I might not ever be able to find my way back to my universe. But maybe I could get to one that was a pretty close approximation. If I just adjusted one element at a time maybe I could re-build my world as I knew it. First adjust the color until I got to a universe with blue skies and a yellow sun. Then maybe I could play with the vegetation until I got something resembling green grass and normal everyday trees. Maybe I could find a universe with very close approximations of Linda and Jamie. For all I knew, maybe I could find my way into some sort of Shangri-La that was better than my universe. Maybe it even still contained my wife and daughter, but our lives together could be better than we ever possibly imagined.

The other thing I decided was that Samir couldn't come with me. It seemed kind of morbid to drag a dead body around with me everywhere I went. And perhaps this was selfish, but I worried that the smell of fresh meat might attract some unwanted critters and I definitely didn't need any more of that than necessary.

I didn't have any way of burying the body and I felt a little bad about that. But at the same time left alone on an uninhabited dead world didn't seem like the worst final resting place to me. I carefully slipped the wristband off his arm and put it in my pocket. Then I took a deep breath, turned a knob one notch and pushed the button.

If something had changed in my surroundings I couldn't tell what it was. Everything seemed identical to me. But Samir's body was nowhere to be seen so evidently I had jumped into a different universe. But this universe must have been infinitesimally different than the universe I had previously been in. I had erred on the side of caution only turning a dial one notch but this change was too subtle. I turned the same knob one more notch and pushed the button. Once again I couldn't distinguish any difference. It was going to take me forever to get anywhere at this rate. It was clear to me I was going to have to be a little bolder in turning the dials. I would keep a sharp eye about me. If anything seemed dangerous I would turn the dials quickly and hope for the best.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I had turned the forwards-backwards knob as far to the forwards position as I could, so I was pretty sure I was currently far in the future compared to my home world. I also knew there were horrible monsters in the past of this universe or one very much like it. So I needed to hop into a substantially different universe before I tinkered with the time setting. I didn't really know which settings to alter so I turned several knobs, took a deep breath and pushed the button.

The first thing that struck me was the heat. I found myself on some sort of rocky outcropping surrounded by a body of boiling liquid. The sky was a deep red and filled with ominous purple clouds in which lightning crackled. The metal of the box in my hand was starting to grow hot to the touch. This world seemed decidedly inhospitable so I turned some more dials quickly and pushed the button again.

I came to a world where the sky was blue but everything else was wrong. There were two suns in the sky, one small and green, one large and pink. It was still blisteringly hot and there was a cloud of biting insects swarming around. The ground beneath me felt swampy and strange. If I could keep the sky the same color and improve everything else I might possibly get somewhere. I turned a few more dials and pushed the button again.

No luck on the sky. It was now a bright yellow color. There was no sun to be seen anywhere but a couple of moons dominated the sky so I think it may have been nighttime. One of the moons had prominent rings around it similar to the planet Saturn in my universe. The ground had solidified beneath my feet but appeared to be completely flat in all directions. The insects were gone but there didn't seem to be any life or vegetation anywhere. The air seemed heavy and difficult to breathe and for the first time it occurred to me that it might be possible, if not probable, that I could jump into a universe with a completely toxic atmosphere and that would be the end. It was a disconcerting thought but one I tried to put out of my mind for the time being as I ventured on to the next universe.

It was several more jumps before I encountered another monster. This one was a tentacled abomination with numerous rows of teeth and hundreds of eyes. It almost got me as I materialized just a few feet away from it, but I escaped just in the nick of time. I jumped into a brutally cold and nearly pitch black world. Not being able to see made me nervous so I quickly jumped again. And again. And again.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed or how many jumps I had made. I didn't seem to be getting any closer to anything that looked even remotely familiar and I was starting to get hungry. It was several more jumps before I found a world with some vegetation that had something that vaguely resembled green berries growing on it. They could have been poisonous for all I knew, but I was becoming ravenous and decided it was worth the risk. They were bitter tasting but after a few minutes passed with no ill effects I ate as many as I could stand. There was edible food in this universe but little else to recommend it as the sky was a dull gray color and the sand crawled with bugs with oversized pincers. I filled my pockets with as many berries as they would hold and then jumped again.

I tried different tactics sometimes turning many dials on the machine, sometimes only turning one or two, but nothing seemed to cause a noticeable improvement. I would occasionally stumble on a universe that had something desirable such as a pleasant temperature or green grass but I couldn't seem to hold on to the elements I wanted to keep in the next universe. After one dial turned just by itself brought me to a world with a blue sky and yellow sun I resolved not to touch that dial again for fear of losing the familiar elements. Except another completely different dial turned by itself then turned the sky beige and the sun blue. I journeyed to wide open worlds and very cramped ones where I was surrounded on all sides by thick rock. On one jump I found myself submerged under water. And dangerous creatures appeared all too frequently. I got stung by something in one world that made my left hand swell up to twice its normal size and I got bit on the ankle by something resembling a flying snake on another world. Doggedly I kept turning dials and pushing the button. Sooner or later something had to give.

It was several jumps later when I first noticed something else odd. In all my travels up to this point from universe to universe the one thing that had remained consistent was the machine that was transporting me itself. It had always looked exactly the same as far as I could tell. The little box with the button on it had always been black and the button had always been red. After the last jump the box was suddenly bright orange and the button was fluorescent green. It hadn't even occurred to me that the machine could be affected by the shifts in universe. I had assumed it was the one constant but even that proved not to be the case. Several jumps later I noticed the words on the dials were changing. The forwards-backwards dial was now labeled inch-mile. What's more various dials started to disappear and reappear. It struck me as a little weird, but what wasn't weird about my current predicament?

It was a few jumps after that when the first change in my body occurred. My fingernails simply disappeared. The dial I had turned to get here had also vanished off the machine so I couldn't go back to the world I had just been in. Not that I was eager to go back there, as I had been surrounded by howling banshees with enormous claws. Besides, I figured the loss of my fingernails wasn't too big of a deal. My wife could probably overlook a mild change like that, if I ever saw her again. And maybe they'd come back in another universe.

I never did see my fingernails again, but that turned out to be the least of my worries. A few jumps later found my body covered in hideous warts, painful blisters, and dripping pustules. I couldn't even figure out how to get rid of these even after numerous jumps. It wasn't long after that when the extra set of appendages grew out of my back.

* * *

The machine vanished completely after the last jump. It just disappeared into thin air. It doesn't matter anyway as I don't think I could have operated it anymore. My hands are gone now as well as my legs. I have a few useless stumps growing out of what used to be my shoulders but they are far too weak to move me around. So I'm laying on the ground staring up at a brilliant orange sky. I've long since given up hope of ever being reunited with Linda and Jamie. I doubt if they'd even recognize me anymore or want to be with me even if they did. They hardly even seem real to me anyway. I'm not sure anymore if they ever existed or if I just imagined them at some point during the eternity I've been hopping through universes. I think I've been insane for quite some time now.

At least the temperature on this world is pleasant. There are sparse tufts of purple grass on either side of me and I can hear running water somewhere nearby, although it wouldn't do me any good even if it were three feet away. I'm completely immobile now.

I can also hear something snarling off in the distance somewhere. I don't know how long I've been here like this. I'm desperately hungry but I don't imagine I'd be able to eat even if I could find food. My tongue seems to have vanished, as well, and my mouth has shrunk to the size of a grape. I only hope I starve to death before whatever's making that horrible dripping, snarling noise finds me. But the noise keeps getting louder.