The universe collapsed and then came back together.
They were standing in another room.
"That was a silly thing for me to do," Maxine said. "Some day I'll slip a cog and get stuck in a wall or something."
Bishop drew a deep breath.
"Monty could read me just a little," he said. "Said you picked it up - just at the fringes."
"You never get too good," said Maxine. "Humans aren't... well, aren't ripe for it, I guess. It takes millennia to develop it."
He looked around him and whistled.
"Quite a place," he said.
It was all of that.
It didn't seem to be a room at all, although it had furniture. The walls were hazed in distance and to the west were mountains, peaked with snow, and to the east a very sylvan river, and there were flowers and flowering bushes everywhere, growing from the floor. A deep blue dusk filled the room and somewhere off in the distance there was an orchestra.