Chapter Nineteen
Actually, very first I would need to get back to the world where Ollie was mine to let go of. And not on some seemingly random computer-chosen timeline, I needed to do it now, before things spun more out of control, and more importantly, before one Drew or the other pulled the plug on the entire AltR experiment.
By the time the sun started creeping over the tops of the nearest buildings, carving out their silhouettes in brilliant pink, I had come up with three possible options for achieving that:
Stand on the stoop of my World O apartment until me s collide, and hope for the best.
Break into Pixel again and hold the entire Lightning team hostage until they give me my own functional login, which will lead to control over my time slips…somehow?
Call Drew.
You’d think it wouldn’t really be much of a choice, especially since I’d very recently found out that same-time, same-place clearly wasn’t a world-jumping requirement anymore. Could I outrun Mark if he was at the Pixel front desk? And how, precisely, did one nonviolently initiate a hostage situation?
Fine. I had one option. I just really, really didn’t want to take it. Because I couldn’t see my way to getting Drew to actually help—possibly even to answer my call, he must be in total crisis mode trying to solve the technical side of it all—without explaining what was going on. And explaining that the person he’d been living with for however many years was currently an off-world version of herself—even knowing he was the man who had created a program that specifically made glimpsing alternate realities possible—felt like a one-way ticket to an involuntary psych hold. And I was pretty damn confident that that wouldn’t be the optimal place for me to solve my “Get out of the box, pussycat, or you might die” problem.
But it was Drew . If fame and fortune hadn’t changed the fundamental nature of Ollie in this life, there was no reason to believe that, underneath the annoyances of a long-term relationship, and the veneer of confidence getting the girl had apparently imparted, Drew wasn’t the same thoughtful, gentle, always-game-to-solve-a-puzzle-no-matter-how-ludicrous-it-sounded man I’d been so drawn to that I’d foolishly told a supercomputer programmed to create alternate worlds to give me a peek at what life with him would have been like.
I sent a quick text asking if he had a minute to talk, vainly hoping that his being on the opposite coast might buy me some time, but within a minute my phone screen was lighting up with his number, a picture of him pressing a too-hard kiss to my temple as I laughed filling the screen.
“Hey, everything okay?” he said, no preamble. “It’s really early there.”
“It’s even earlier there, ” I retorted. “Or later?”
“We’ve been up all night,” Drew admitted, tone heavy with defeat. “It seemed like Martin was on to something that might actually get the program back on track, but so far, no dice.”
“I’m sorry,” I said slowly, then tensed my stomach muscles, steeling myself for what came next. “But actually…the program is sort of why I wanted to talk.”
“Before you say anything, I don’t know when I’ll be home, so if there’s some… event you want me to go to, just—”
“No, that’s not why I’m calling,” I said, blinking at the immediate annoyance in Drew’s voice. But he must be tired. And frustrated. It didn’t necessarily mean we bickered that readily…right?
What did it actually matter anymore? This wasn’t a comparison anymore, now we were just in survival mode. If we wound up together at the end of all this—if I wound up being at the end of it—we could deal with our relationship problems then.
“Then why are you calling?” Drew sounded genuinely baffled.
“What I’m going to say will sound…really weird, I know that, but hear me out.”
“Okaaay,” Drew said.
Then I just launched into it, haltingly at first, feeling like the whole “I’m not really your girlfriend, in my real life I’m with someone else, and by the way, I’d like to get back there” discussion required some delicacy. Eventually, though, I picked up steam, urged along by occasional specific questions from Drew: And you didn’t remember anything from this life? What about the other one, while you were here, I mean? Was the time you were here…missing, so to speak? I couldn’t read his tone of voice, and by the time I was getting near the end, it didn’t really matter anyway. The need to divulge all this to someone, anyone, was so intense, the relief of letting it flood out unchecked so intoxicating, that I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. I’d sketched things out to Dana, of course, but compared to this, she was a sink faucet slapped onto the front of the Hoover Dam.
“So this last switch happened while you were sleeping?” Drew said, voice still carefully neutral.
“That’s right. I have no idea why, until now it’s been when I was in the same place at the same time in both worlds, at least as far as I can tell. But you said that if the program thought an inflection point ended in a fixed choice, it would stop holding it in both states at once. Other-you said that, I mean. Apparently Luke and JaeHo—”
“Inputted the same inflection point separately. Fuck.” I could hear a sharp slap, skin on skin. “Fuck,” he repeated, more emphatically.
“Drew?” I wasn’t sure whether the sudden nauseated tinge to his voice or the completely uncharacteristic profanity was shaking me more, but clearly something bad was going on over there. “Are you okay? What’s going on?” I added when he didn’t speak for several seconds.
“I can’t believe I didn’t consider this. But then…you’re not working there anymore, why would I ever assume you were…but of course I should have considered that there would have to be another version of you if I was going to ask it that in the first place…” Drew’s voice was devolving into mutters, his anxiety palpable over the phone. I sat up straight on the couch.
“Drew, what’s going on?”
“So, funny story,” he said, his tone screaming “tragedy” instead. “One of the early inflection points I input was…the day I asked you out?” I could almost see his wince.
“Wait…what? Like…you wanted to know what would have happened if I’d said no?”
“I guess? Honestly I hadn’t thought about it in months, the sequence stalled out before either of us even made it to the end of the hallway. This was like…way early days, the AI was barely starting to train itself, the program could only create maybe…thirty-second glimpses. Max. But I needed to think of a choice point that was memorable to me, and it had to—”
“Happen at the Pixel offices,” I finished in a groan.
“How did you—Oh, right. Right, because in that world you still work there, yeah?”
“Yup.”
Drew exhaled heavily, and I could almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose.
“So I just want to make sure I get this straight,” I said. “Right now, in the other world, both you and I fed the same inflection point into the computer. And in this world you also inputted it.”
“From what I can tell, yes.”
“So the computer is multiplying infinity…three times? Four?”
“Honestly? No idea. I can honestly say that this is a possibility that I never anticipated.”
It wasn’t good news, that much was certain, but I could still feel the seed of something like excitement starting to germinate deep down near the base of my spine. Until now, no one had been playing with a full deck, but knowing everything would have to change the game, wouldn’t it? I licked my lips as puzzle pieces started to slot into place.
“Me sliding between the two worlds, that’s because of this, right? Because in both worlds the program is trying to sort out how things would have gone if I’d given you the other answer. In that world, the answer is us being together, and in this one…”
“It’s you being with Ollie, I’m guessing. It’s the other timeline. After all, you guys had already gone on a couple dates when I asked you out.”
“So maybe it’s not really infinity times…whatever, it’s just the fact that this one question is coming up in all the places.”
“That’s not—” Drew stopped short, and I could almost see him frowning, blinking rapidly, his hard drive whirring in the effort to rapidly process the new information. “Actually…that could be it, yes.”
“And it would explain why in that world I can’t sort out the login. If I’d picked a different inflection point, maybe it would have been fine, but in both this world and that one, the program had already created a version of me to answer the exact same question I was trying to ask. So the computer was already running the variations of me I was asking about, but via your inflection point. Doing it for me, too, would create…a duplicate sequence.” Wasn’t that the error the program had spat at me way back at the start? My leg started jiggling, the sense that we were finally starting to understand this electrifying.
“I can’t say for sure that’s what happened, but it would make sense.”
“Isn’t there some way to check?”
“I wish. We honestly aren’t a hundred percent sure how the AI develops, we’ve just built the scaffolding for it to develop. From that point forward, it’s a black box.”
Jesus, if I managed to survive this, all of the Drews and I were going to have a serious talk about the dangers of creating something that you didn’t fully comprehend when it could fully access entire other worlds .
“But if you just told the computer that you’d made a fixed choice around that inflection point, that could stop this, right? That’s what worked for JaeHo and Luke?”
“Possibly…but…no, I don’t think so,” Drew said, defeat creeping in. “Or at least it’s more complicated than that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I manually stopped my original sequence last night. The one where I asked about you turning me down.”
“You manually…sorry, what?”
“That was Martin’s idea, the one we’ve been working through all night. Not just logging out individual users, going back into each of the inputted inflection points and manually removing them from the program, one by one. The thinking was that if one of them was causing the problems and we just couldn’t see it from our end, we’d still be solving for it.”
“Do you know what time you removed that inflection point?”
“It would have been…oh jeez, when you said three a.m. it didn’t register, but with the time change…”
“It was when I swapped, wasn’t it?”
“Somewhere around there, yeah. Which means…I think the program is trying to fix you in the right place. Which…it sounds like it got that dead wrong, so that’s not great.”
“But it did respond to that,” I said, wheels still spinning. “And it acted on the only version of me it could find, the one who had created a login. But for it to actually fix my consciousness in the right place…”
“…you’ll need the program to deal with the fact that it’s almost definitely running the same sequence from two different users in that world,” Drew said. “Specifically, through other-me and other-you. Or…I guess other-you is you.”
“Okay, so I was thinking about that. You told me—other-you, I mean”—I pinched my eyes shut, shaking my head once—“ that Drew said that if the computer thought that a sequence had a fixed outcome, it would solve for a double input.”
“That’s right. It’s how we eventually sorted out the Luke and JaeHo thing.”
“I can’t input an answer in that life for myself, my login never worked right, I guess because of all this. But I was thinking if I sort of…forced the issue?”
“Forced it how?”
“If I broke up with Ollie, that would be the end, right?”
“How do you figure?”
“So it’s not just you and me that are different because of this, right? Ollie is too. But if I ended things with him, maybe there’s a way that he could get back on the same track he’s on here. And you and I could…you know.”
“Get together?”
“Exactly. It would close the loop on the question that started all this in the first place. The timelines might be out of sync, but in both worlds I’d wind up with you…right?” I said, ignoring the leaden feeling it brought on. I don’t want to be with Drew. But better to try it from that starting point, knowing how we turned out, than wind up in the wrong life altogether. Or just…not wind up.
“It’s possible. It would at least give the problem sequence a hard end point,” Drew said, tone distant. “Honestly…I don’t know if it would work. But it’s…what you want?” As always with Drew, I knew the question wasn’t loaded. He simply wanted to know.
And the answer was no, of course. It’s not what I wanted. But I needed to fix this any way possible, not just for me, but for Ollie. Knowing what I’d stolen from him—a life in which he achieved everything he’d always hoped for, managed to live out what had always seemed like an impossible dream—how could I not at least try to give him a chance at that? Maybe if I did, there would be some point in the distant future when we could find each other safely. And build something even better.
“Yes,” I lied. “It’s what I want.”
“In that case—yes. There’s at least a solid possibility this could work. If you want to do it, I’d say it’s worth a shot.”
“The only problem is I don’t know how to get to World O. The other world,” I said, collapsing into the couch. That was rather a large problem.
“I might be able to help with that, actually,” Drew said.
“Seriously?”
“I told you that stopping the individual sequences wasn’t working, right?”
“Right…”
“Well the reason it isn’t working, as far as we can tell, is that there’s an unidentified user in the system, which means we can’t see what sequences that user is running and therefore can’t manually stop any of them. Just guessing at the user’s identity might cause even more problems, and if—”
“It’s okay, I don’t need the full picture, just the high level.”
“Right. Sorry, I think I’m like…ninety percent caffeine right now.” I smiled, an echo of tenderness for my friend creeping in even in the midst of the chaos. Just because I now knew that he wasn’t my person, that didn’t negate why I’d asked the question in the first place. “Anyway. Now that we know who the user is, I can assign it, then log it out.”
“Because it’s me?”
“Who else could it be?” I could almost hear him shrug. “Shutting off my original ‘What if Laurel had said no’ sequence wouldn’t have pulled you into this world in the middle of the night if this computer weren’t still interested in you. But if we’re right, and it is you, then logging you off fully in this world should terminate all your sequences here. Which should send you back to that world.”
“Permanently?” The excitement seed that had been sitting dormant through most of the conversation started shooting out roots, a tiny stem, miniature ovoid buds…
“Maybe. But if other-me hasn’t fixed things on his side, I can’t predict what will happen. I can tell you that after we try this, if you somehow wind up here again …I won’t have any more levers to pull.”
“So in that case…I’d be staying. In this world.”
“Yup. And at this point, the program has gotten so mixed up over where you’re meant to be, there’s every possibility you will wind up back here. That computer and this one have clearly become entangled. Even if what we’re talking about fully solves for what my computer is doing, it won’t touch the other one. That computer might still have major bugs that could result in it kicking you back here. Or it’s possible in that world they’ll wind up scrapping the entire thing, and if that happens…”
I couldn’t let him finish that thought. Dana had outlined that worst case very chillingly already.
“So I have one shot at this?”
“If that. I’m eighty-five percent sure I can send you back to that world right now, after that…honestly, we’re so far outside the realms of what’s even theoretically possible at this point, who knows.”
I smiled sardonically, Drew’s unintentional echo of Dana amusing…or it would be if we weren’t talking about me winding up in the wrong life, or in limbo, or dead in the theoretical box he’d gone and actually created.
“So…do you want that? To go back?”
“I do,” I admitted. “It’s not because I don’t care about you, Drew, I do. But…I’m not this me, I’m not actually the person that wound up with you.”
“You don’t need to explain, Laurel. Anyway…I never would have asked the question if I wasn’t wondering the same thing. Whether we were right for each other, I mean.” The gentleness of his tone, the rough edge of what might be tears deepening his voice, split something open inside me. I heard him take a few deep breaths as I blinked furiously against the tears stinging my own eyes. There were a lot of ways to love someone. And to hurt them. “Anyway,” he finally said. “Ready to head out?”
“I am,” I murmured. “And Drew…I hope you know that in all the worlds, no matter what, I care about you. A lot.”
“Me too, Laurel. Hell, maybe there’s another universe out there where we wind up together and don’t make it complicated with all these stupid what ifs, right?”
“It’s not only possible, it’s plausible, ” I replied. He sniffed out a laugh.
“Alright. I don’t know how you prep yourself for this, but I’m opening the user profile right now and renaming it to you. When I log it off, you should blank out. I’m doing that… now .”
For a second nothing changed, the vertigo didn’t hit me, and I groaned, frustration deep and dark as oceans swirling through me, dragging me into the depths.
Then, in a wave so huge and hard I couldn’t even catch my breath before it slammed into me, the world went dark.
What could have been minutes or hours or years later, I opened my eyes.
I was back in my apartment, my real one, the morning light just starting to seep in around the curtains. Ollie tossed in his sleep at my side, as though he could sense the rush of me reentering my body.
This was it. One shot to get it right, or else…well, I didn’t want to think too hard about the or else.