Page 49 of What If It's You?

I typed a quick text to the number below her signature:this is Laurel Everett, I’m very interested in meeting up with you whenever it’s convenient.Within seconds she responded.ok. meet here at 10:30,with a pin marking a tony coffee shop near MIT’s campus.

“Is the coffee ready?” Drew padded into the kitchen, in his work uniform of dark jeans and a grayscale crewneck T-shirt, still barefoot.

“Oh, umm…you have this cup,” I said, handing him the mug I’d abandoned beneath the coffee spaceship’s exhaust pipe.

“Everything okay?” he said, frowning at my phone.

“Yeah, just…work stuff.” I tried to look casual, like someone whose entire bodywasn’tsparking with anxious energy.

“What, like…from an editor?” He raised an eyebrow, clearly skeptical.

“No just…a critique partner,” I said, hoping he couldn’t see me flailing. “I’ve been waiting for her notes on my latest chapter.” Was that even how people did it? But Drew simply nodded, already moving toward the toaster.

“That’s great, Laurel,” he said, his lack of interest palpable. A flare of anger lit in my gut.How dare he make my life so small.The fact that it wasn’t my life—either in the moment or in an existential sense—didn’t make it any easier for me to unclench.

By the time I gave Drew a perfunctory peck goodbye, my whole body was thrumming with a single need:Dana had better be able to help me get out of this life.

I spotted Dana the second I walked into the coffee shop, perched at the edge of her chair, spine straight, a Stephen King paperback open in her left hand as she sipped from a takeaway cup in her right, elbow raised to shoulder height. I don’t think I’d ever been more aware of posture in another human in my life.

“Dana, hi,” I said, sliding into the seat across from her. “I’m—”

“Laurel. Hello.” She slipped a bookmark into her book and bent to slide it into her bag.

“Love the book choice. I didn’t take you for a Stephen King reader.”

“There’s more to life than a unifying theory of quantum physical reality, Laurel. Anyway, you don’t know me. Or…well, I don’t know you.” She frowned, blinked twice. “Clearly you recognize me, though I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find a photo online.”

“True. But I promise, this isn’t a joke. We met. Yesterday, actually—I caught you in the physics building and we walked over to your lab together. Though…maybe you weren’t there in this world?”

“I was. Though that only proves that I’m a workaholic in allpossible universes where I exist.” She flashed that wry half-smile I’d spotted briefly the day before, then steepled her fingers, gazing levelly at me over the top. “So? Are you planning to tell me what’s happening?”

I gave her the same brief summary I had the day before, adding in our own meeting.

“…and you told me to mention The Rock to you. I think you called him ‘universally beloved,’ but apparently you don’t tell many people he was your first crush.”

“I don’t. And he is, of course. That’s…interesting,” she said, tapping her joined fingertips against her lower lip. “So in both worlds Pixel is developing this technology?”

“Apparently. In this one I don’t work there anymore, but my—Iguess my boyfriend?—does. It feels weird to call him that, but apparently we live together here.” I shrugged, unsure whether the tickle in my throat was a threatened laugh or sob. This was so ludicrous, either would have been appropriate. “Anyway, he’s heading up the Lightning team that’s creating AltR. In both worlds. Which is apparently glitching in both worlds.”

“Glitching how, precisely?”

Fear of revealing too much twisted my stomach briefly until I realized thatherethere was no NDA to breach.

“It’s maxed out its processing power, but from what Drew can tell, it’s not actually running anything. At least not actively.”

“And you said there were problems completing your user profile, yes? In the other world?”

“That’s right. But the next morning I woke up in the wrong bed. Or…you know, the wrong universe. I washere.”

She stared at me, unblinking, joined fingers tapping rhythmically against her lower lip. After several long seconds, she nodded sharply.

“Right. So if I had to guess—and this is wildly speculative—Ithink the computer inthisworld has become entangled with its counterpart in your…original world, let’s call it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I could go into the relevant theory for you,” she said, raising an eyebrow. I grimaced and she let out a single short laugh. “The Cliff’s Notes version, then. Basically, quantum computing might be able to…amplifyitself across universes.”

“But I thought you said they’re not supposed to be able to contact each other.”

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