Page 57 of What If It's You?

“Because the computer is doubling the people it’s solving for?”

“It’s not really doubling, it’s more…extremely exponential? Luke alone could have infinite other conclusions by changing that single moment, but so could JaeHo. And infinity times infinity, is…”

“Right. Got it.” My stomach churned. Lately, the idea of infinity felt verypersonallythreatening. “And…could that be happening now?”

“It’s not, it was the first thing we checked. And even if it were,logging everyone off would functionally force stop the problem anyway. The program isn’t running any of us right now. At least not that we can see.”

I nodded, exhaling heavily. I feltmarginallybetter, at least.

“But if the computerwerestill trying to run a duplicate sequence…I guess the only way to stop it would be for the users to terminate the request,” Drew mused, gaze going distant in his familiargenius seeing something mere mortals can’tway.

“What do you mean?”

“Like…Luke would tell the AI that he had made a fixed choice about sitting with JaeHo. Then it would stop thinking it had to spin out every possible alternative option for him. Because that specific moment is no longer an inflection point, right? It’s just…set.”

“Got it.”

“But yeah, like I said, that’s not what’s happening. No one’s logged on.” Drew shrugged and blew out his cheeks again. “On that note, I should really get back to it. If you’re staying late this week, let me know, yeah? I’m gonna be here…pretty much indefinitely.” He flashed a smile that looked more like a grimace.

“I’ll hit you up if I am. And Drew…hang in there, okay? I know you’ll figure it out.” I reached across the table to squeeze his hand once, lightly. His body tensed ever so slightly, and I realized, belatedly, that it wasn’t a gesture I’d make here, in this world. Somehow, in just a few days, I’d gotten used to the casual touching that couples took for granted…but with a person who I’d never really been a couple with, at least not as far as World O Drew knew. Swallowing hard, I left my hand there.It’s not that weird to show support for a friend. And it’ll be way weirder to acknowledge just how weird this is forus.

“Thanks, Laurel. Fingers crossed.” With another grimace-smile, he stood and hurried away, leaving me with my cold coffee and an even colder feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The computer must be runningmein the background. But Drew couldn’t see it, there was no reason why it should be, I couldn’t even get past the setup sequence to tell it to abort the sequence, and if Ididn’t find an answer in the next few days, the program was going to be wiped. When that happened…where would I wind up?

I didn’t recognize the phone number flashing on my screen as I made my way to the bus stop several hours later, but I picked up out of habit. A lot of the external clients I worked with were either in different time zones or simply didn’t respect the idea that I might eventually want my workday to end.

“Laurel? Excuse the late call, I was in the lab all day so this is the first chance I’ve had to respond to your email. Frankly, I felt a conversation would be more effective.”

It was Dana,finally. And her tone was somehow even more no-nonsense on the phone than it was in person.

“I just appreciate you getting in touch at all,” I admitted. “I’m officially out of ideas. Again.”

“I take it my doppelgänger suggested you attempt to alter the program itself?”

“She did. But in that world I wasn’t even a user in the first place. And in this one, the program is convinced I never finished setting up my profile.”

“That makes no sense,” she snipped.

“I agree,” I said, fighting to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “But that’s the situation. And I talked to Drew today, as far as he can see, every user has been logged out.”

“Drew?”

“The head of the project. My…partner in the other world.”

“Right. Interesting.” I could almost hear her eyebrows reaching for each other across the bridge of her nose. “And he had no other valuable information?”

“I mean…he said something about the program not being able to process the same request from two different users.”

“Really? Could that be happening here?”

“Maybe,” I said, the flush on my cheeks even more apparent against the chilly winter air. “The question I asked was…was whether I should have said yes when Drew asked me out just after we started at Pixel. It’s possible he decided to run the same sequence.”

“Possible? You can do better.”

“It’s not like I asked him.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t want to beembarrassed.”

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