Page 64 of What If It's You?

“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 inthisworld 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 wouldhaveto 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 theotheranswer. 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 worldandthat 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 alreadyrunningthe variations of me I was asking about, but viayourinflection 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 scaffoldingforit 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 couldfully access entire other worlds.

“But ifyoujust 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 whattimeyou removed that inflection point?”

“It would have been…oh jeez, when you said threea.m.it didn’t register, but with thetimechange…”

“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 itdidrespond 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 inthatworld,” Drew said. “Specifically, through other-me and other-you. Or…I guess other-youisyou.”

“Okay, so I was thinking about that. You told me—other-you, I mean”—I pinched my eyes shut, shaking my head once—“thatDrew 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?”

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