Page 63 of What If It's You?

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 outrunMark 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 wasDrew. 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 asupercomputer programmed to create alternate worldsto 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 earlierthere,” 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…eventyou 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 upbeingat the end of it—we could deal with our relationship problems then.

“Then whyareyou 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 couldhear 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 clearlysomethingbad 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 notworkingthere 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.

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