catastrophe-prevention was a coping mechanism, this would be exactly the massive responsibility Connie needed to reach his potential.
He said, “But you have to stay here in my room. Mom won’t be home until tonight, so you won’t run into anyone. You also can’t call anyone. Or post anything on the Internet.”
“I won’t even eat any of your food,” I vowed, meaning it, honestly. My mind was way too blown to think about eating or stepping outside. For the rest of the day, I just wanted to lay back and try my best to understand what was happening.
“All right. This could work.”
“But there’s a big hole in your plan,” I said.
He scrunched his brow for about a nanosecond before it hit him. “Right. Damn it. You can’t stay in my room forever.”
“Exactly.”
Connie put a firm hand on my shoulder, something else he never did before. He said, “It’ll work itself out, I think. Yes.” Subtext being: this is a load of crap I’m feeding you, but you’ll totally lose your mind if I don’t offer some lame consolation to get you through the day .
We could’ve listed concerns for another few hours, but the clock ticked on. A glance through the blinds verified that Russ 2.0 was sauntering down the sidewalk toward Connie’s house. Connie had to be down there, ready to go, as always.
“Don’t get in any trouble,” he said.
“You either.”
I took my post at the window again and there he was, down at the foot of Connie’s steps, my clone, the first recruit in my storm trooper army. There was no sudden mind-blowing infinite regress, no split consciousness or slow fade of my body to transparency and then nothingness. I watched my hand for five seconds to be sure it stayed solid, and it did.
All the science fiction was wrong, or at least, failed to capture the weird duality. Like imagining my funeral, or what my life would be if I were born to other parents, or if I lived in California in the 1950s, or even something as minor as standing two feet to the left of myself, an out-of-body drift. You are an active mind at an instant in space and time, projecting yourself into another space and time where you are not . It is and it isn’t. Everything totally comprehensible, perfectly normal, but at the same time impossible. A reality just out of reach. Every dream convinces us of something ridiculous until we wake up.
Watching myself from this angle, I remembered almost exactly what my thoughts had been when I stood down there yesterday—the other yesterday. I’d been thinking how Connie’s father’s death in Afghanistan left this huge house way too empty. But now, in my new, separate self, I stifled a weird urge to leap out the window and pounce onto 2.0 so hard that we’d merge into one body again. It was a wacko idea, but logic had become a lost cause.
Connie actually went out to meet him. I couldn’t hear them talk, but all the gestures and movements seemed right—a rerun of the day before. Good continuity. Just like last time, Russ 2.0 offered over the “Take the Leap” script, and Connie accepted it, reluctantly. It almost tore me in half watching them this second time, knowing what torture I’d soon put Connie through, all over again.
But that was how the story played out. Had to be. It was the only way to avoid triggering some paradox that would erase my existence. Or worse, open a black hole in the mid-Atlantic seaboard, sucking the whole galaxy into dark-energy nothingness.
Hypothetically.
As they turned to leave, Connie looked back at his window, at me.
I flinched away from view, thinking he’d just screwed up and created the first major discrepancy. But then I remembered that Connie actually had looked back at the house that first time. And when I called him out for it, he claimed it was déjà vu.
My mind was really reeling now. Maybe all of this had already been accounted for. Maybe when I was in Russ 2.0’s place, another version of me was here in this bedroom, hoping