Page 62 of What If It's You?

But just because he wasn’t where I expected him to be, that didn’t mean he wasgone. I’d seen him in this world, had solid proof that, even if we weren’t together, at least hewas, full stop. I opened Google, tried Ollie Hughes. The results were a mix of high school championships and “find your classmate” ads, so I tried again.

Oliver Hughes.

That hit. In a shockingly big way. Frowning, I clicked the Wikipedia link at the very top of the page.

Oliver Michael Hughes, better known by his performing name, Synesthesia, is a musician known for eerie, haunting songs that have gained both critical attention and a rabid cult fanbase…

My stomach twisted like a wet rag as I continued to skim the article. A recent Grammy win, a spot on the soundtrack of a major film that catapulted him from underground fame to more widespread attention, his notorious protection of his private life. And there, buried in theEarly Careersection, the stiletto blade that went straight through my viscera.

Before Synesthesia, Hughes played with Don’t Tell Nadine. While their first national tour didn’t lead to the widespread success the band hoped for, it did pave the way to Hughes’ future as a solo artist.

When opening act Mirabella dropped out of a showcase at LA rock staple The Echo just an hour before showtime, Hughes offered to fill in, playing a set of solo compositions Don’t Tell Nadine had deemed too “strange” for their indie-pop sound. Those songs caught the ear of legendary producer Eli Marlowe, in the audience that night, and eventually resulted in Synesthesia’s first album, “The Shape of Colors.”

I knew that tour. I knew thatband. Not Synesthesia—the name was vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t immediately place why—Don’t Tell Nadine. It was the band Ollie had been playing with when we started dating.

I was the reason Ollie was never on that tour. At least not in World O.

Which meant that I might know that I was better and happier with Ollie than I was without him, but now I was just as certain that he was better—so, so much better—without me. In this world, he’d achieved everything he ever hoped for. And the article made it clear—it wasn’t just in spite of me, it wasbecauseI hadn’t robbed him of that pivotal, all-important moment.

Then it hit me—the show. The one we’d gone to together just Friday night, the one that had a “special unannounced opening act” in World D, but not World O.That’swhy World D Ollie had been hurrying through Central Square that night. To open for his friend’s band—the same friend who’d been in Don’t Tell Nadine with him all those years ago. Ollie had somehow managed to make it through the labyrinth of failure and near-success most musicians never escaped, had managed to build a hugely successful career specifically around the songs that Jason had deemed “too strange” for Ollie to play with him in the band they’d built together. And yet fame and (presumably) fortune were nowhere near enough to trump loyalty to a friend. In every world, Ollie was good. He was kind. He showed up for the people he loved. Shame oozed through me anew.

“Man, Ollie should have had the login for AltR,” I muttered to myself as I continued to rabbit-hole through his discography. In the life that I couldn’t stop thinking of as “real,” Ollie and I were together, and the price he’d never realized he was paying for that was this. He’d traded a future together, and my success, for his own.

I stopped midscroll, the thought jolting me upright on the couch.

I couldn’t change the past, not in either world…but could I still changemyOllie’s future? I could envision Drew’s “distant genius” face, could hear his voice sounding the words in my head:

If the AI thought one of the users had made a fixed choice, it would stop thinking it had to spin out every possible alternative option. That specific moment is no longer an inflection point, it’s just…set.

Whatever was happening right now, it was clear the computer was stuck on me somehow. That I was the adhesive making the timelines “sticky,” in Dana’s word. Clearly, answering my ownwhat ifwith “I choose Ollie” wasn’t going to be enough to pull them apart again—I couldn’t even manage to log in to the program toinputthat. But maybe there was another way to end the sequence, one that no one had considered yet because the program shouldn’t be able to run anything as complicated as what I’d been experiencing.

What if I made anewfixed choice, one that aligned with just one of the possible answers to the question I’d asked in the first place? It would bypass the whole “Your choice doesn’t show up in the first place” problem while simultaneously using the same tactic that had fixed things once in the past. Could a fixed choice now, in the program that was very clearly running, regardless of what Drew and his colleagues could see, be enough to convince the program that I was no longer a problem it had to solve? Would it spring me out of Schrödinger’s horrorshow box once and for all?

Hell, at least it was an idea. The only one I’d had so far.

One that felt like rippingmyselfin two in order to wind up in just one life.

If I chose Drew in the past here in World D, and in the present in my real life in World O, then the answer would be fixed. It would be Drew in all timelines, from that point on. And then maybe, just maybe, I could stay in one place, in onelife.

But first I would have to let Ollie go.

Actually,veryfirst 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 itnow,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 untilmes collide, and hope for the best.

Break into Pixel again and hold the entire Lightning team hostage until they give me my ownfunctionallogin, which will lead to control over my time slips…somehow?

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