by Scott Meyer
Phillip said, “It’s not just her. We were both dumb.”
Brit the Younger said, “Oh, I know. Believe me, I understand that. All I’m saying is that it’s surprising for her to do something this stupid.”
Phillip said, “I deserve that.”
Brit the Younger said, “Again, I know.”
They all lapsed back into silence, allowing the constant drone from Brit the Elder to reassert itself.
Brit the Younger said, “We could stuff a towel in her mouth.”
“Brit!” Phillip scolded.
“Oh, shut up! It’s not like she’s breathing.”
Louiza and Gwen emerged from the office. Louiza had been a doctor before she found the file and became a sorceress, so she acted as the de facto primary care physician of the entire magical community.
Martin asked, “How is she?”
Louiza shrugged. “What do you expect me to say? She’s frozen. Stuck. I don’t know what else to tell you. What’s wrong with her isn’t medical. No pulse. No circulation, no brain activity, and no respiration. I should declare her deceased, except that I know what dead looks like, and that isn’t it.”
“Why not?” Gary asked.
“Well, she’s making noise, for one thing. Also, when a person dies, their tissues start deteriorating immediately. She’s not. Her body’s in perfect order, aside from the fact that it keeps phasing in and out, and doesn’t seem to be functioning at all.”
Brit the Younger turned to Phillip. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. She had a memory that didn’t match what really happened, and her feet started looking weird.”
Phillip held up his right hand, palm forward. All of the wrinkles, folds, and creases on the front of his palm and fingers briefly disappeared, replaced by smooth planes and sharp folds. “They did this. Her feet were doing this, just like the rest of her and her desk is doing in there.”
“And the wall,” Louiza said.
“Yes,” Phillip agreed. “And a small part of the wall.”
“No, not a small part.” Louiza said. “Most of the wall behind the computer is jumping in and out like she is.”
“I must not have seen how far it went. I was a bit distracted.” Phillip turned his hand to look at his palm, made a fist, and lowered his hand to where he wouldn’t have to look at it.
Brit the Younger said, “Whatever. So Brit the Elder has this terrible problem, and she tells you about it. But you chose not to inform me, even though you knew it would affect me in the future.”
Phillip said, “Well now, I—”
“Do not,” Brit interrupted, “tell me about free will. You know that I believe she’s me in the future. So, you know that whatever happens to her, I believe will happen to me.”
“I wanted to tell you. I was desperate to tell you. But they told me it wasn’t safe—”
Brit the Younger shouted, “They?! You didn’t tell me, but you did tell someone else?”
“No! Brit the Elder did before she told me! And it doesn’t really count because . . . oh no! I’m so sorry. I need to check on someone. I’ll be right back. Transporto al la oficejo!”
Phillip disappeared.
Brit the Younger let out a long, frustrated grunt.
Phillip reappeared with someone else in tow. “Everyone, this is Brit the Much Elder.”
Brit the Much Elder nodded. “Good to see you all again. I don’t like being called much elder, though. Please, just call me Brit.”
Brit the Younger said, “No. Why haven’t I met you before?!”
“We have. I mean, I’ve met you. You’ll meet me again, someday, and that’ll be the first time we meet, for me. I try to stay out of your life. You’ve got enough on your plate with Brit the Elder, who I hear has done something stupid. I’d like to see her.”
Phillip started to get up. “She’s in her office. I’ll show you the—”
Brit the Much Elder put up a hand to stop Phillip. “You stay there. I remember where the office is. I used to live here.”
Brit the Much Elder excused herself and disappeared down the hall.
Gary said, “Another Brit! Jeez, how many of you are there?”
Brit the Younger said, “I don’t know. I’ve never met this one before. How did you meet her, Phillip?”
“Brit the Elder introduced me, I swear.”
“You say that like you think it’ll make this better somehow.”
“Brit, I wanted to tell you what was going on, but I had two people who you believe are you, telling me that the two of you being in the same room might lead to a crash that would destroy the world.”
“And the fact that there were two of them in the same room didn’t do anything to disprove that idea for you?”
“No! I mean, yes, at first, but then they said that made telling you more dangerous, because then there’d be three of you. Look, it made sense when they explained it.”
“I doubt that.”
The constant high-pitched whine from the other room stopped abruptly. All conversation ended as every head turned to look at the office door. Brit the Much Elder came out.
“Did you fix her?” Phillip asked
Brit the Much Elder said, “I stuffed a towel in her mouth. It’s not like she’s breathing.”
Brit the Younger allowed herself to smile for half a second before she went back to glowering at Phillip. “So all this time, you’ve been sneaking off to hang around with two other Brits and work on this problem.”
“Not just us.”
“Who else are we missing? Brit the Elder Still?”
“No, not another Brit.”
“Who, then?”
Brit the Much Elder said, “You should tell them, Phillip. In fact, I’ll go get him. He’s more likely to know what to do than either of us.”
Brit the Much Elder disappeared.
Phillip bit his lower lip. “Okay. I want everyone to be ready for a shock. Please know, I didn’t want to involve him to begin with.”
Brit the Much Elder reappeared with Jimmy, who was wearing his old green-and-gold wizard robes. Phillip put up his hands in a futile effort to quiet the howls of shock and protest he anticipated. The effort was futile, because the howls didn’t come.
Phillip asked, “Why aren’t you shocked? I don’t think you understand. We didn’t go back before Jimmy died to get him. This isn’t Jimmy from the past. This is Jimmy after the whole slog with Todd. He faked his own death.”
Tyler said, “We know, Phillip. You’re the one who told all of us that you didn’t believe he was dead.”
“Well, here’s proof!” Phillip motioned toward Jimmy. “Right here!”
Gwen said, “We didn’t need proof. We were sure.”
“No, you all thought he was dead.”
Jeff said, “At first, but then Roy and I tracked him down. I check in on him every now and then, just to make sure he isn’t causing any trouble.”
Gary said, “Me, too.”
Martin pointed to himself and Gwen. “We went together. Kind of made a long weekend of it. Reno can be a lot of fun, if you have the power to warp the laws of probability.”
Tyler said, “And I haven’t been checking up on him, per se. I’ve just gone to visit a few times.”
Jimmy said, “And you’re always welcome, Tyler.”
Phillip didn’t understand. “What?!”
Tyler shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, the first time I went, it was to make it clear to him that he hadn’t fooled me, but then we got to talking, and it turns out we share a lot of interests.”
“Like what?”
“Fantasy literature, for one thing.”
“Well yes,” Phillip said, “I suppose that checks out, since he killed everybody in a small town try
ing to turn them into hobbits, and made you disappear when you found him out.”
“Yes, but he took his punishment, which lasted decades, from his point of view. When he came back, he proved that he’d changed his ways and put up with us still treating him like a monster, then he saved my life—yours, too, Phillip. Heck, he saved most of our lives. That doesn’t erase anything he did, but, you know, you’ve got to let go of your anger eventually.”
Phillip said, “So, you’ve all known that he’s alive, and none of you told me or Brit?”
Brit the Younger said, “I suggest you think very carefully before you act mad at them for keeping something a secret from you, Phillip.”
Phillip thought very carefully, then nodded. “Point taken.”
Brit the Younger said, “Okay, so Phillip’s been keeping his activities with the two elder Brits secret from me. We’ve all been keeping Jimmy secret from Phillip. Jimmy tried and failed to keep himself secret from all of us. Is there anything else anybody’d like to get off of their chests?”
Several heads turned to look at Martin, who shrugged. “Yeah, okay, I’ll be right back.” He disappeared, then rematerialized. Future Phillip appeared beside him, slouching and scowling. His face turned beet red, his oily hair whipped around, and spittle flew from his mouth as he unleashed a prolonged series of insults, obscenities, and threats, none of which could be heard since he was still trapped in Martin’s mime box.
Phillip pointed at Future Phillip, but looked at Martin. “What? What is this?”
“It’s you,” Martin said, avoiding eye contact.
Phillip stepped closer, studying Future Phillip, who was now silently shouting directly back in his face. “Yes, I figured that part out. Why’s he here, and why can’t I hear him?”
“He’s the Jawa. I said someone was messing with you. I was right.” Martin pointed at Future Phillip. “He was messing with you. So I captured him.”
Future Phillip ran out of breath and finally stopped his silent shouting. He put a hand out and leaned against the invisible wall of his prison, panting.
Martin smiled and touched the end of his staff to the force field. “Now that he’s calmed down a bit, I’ll let him talk. Unmute.”
Future Phillip’s loud panting became audible. He glared at Martin and in a hoarse growl, said, “You idiot! This is exactly what I was trying to prevent.”
“What is?” Martin asked.
“This! This problem. This meeting. Brit the Elder being stuck midword in there. You all trying to figure out what to do about it.” He pointed at Jimmy. “Him being here. Martin, if you had just stayed out of my way, I would have gotten in my own way, and we might have prevented all of this!”
“Well how was I to know?”
“I told you! Repeatedly!”
“You said you were trying to prevent a tragedy. You didn’t say it was this.”
“This isn’t it. Not all of it. Just the beginning.”
Phillip asked, “Okay, what else happens?”
“You’ll find out,” Future Phillip said. “It can’t be prevented now, so we’ll all just watch it together, and when it’s done, we can all thank Martin.”
Martin said, “That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair, Martin. And, by the way, I knew about your stupid mime box. I’ve known about it ever since you told me about it, just now, all the way back when I was him.” He pointed at Phillip.
“Then how’d I trap you in it?”
“You caught me by surprise. I didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to trap me when—”
Martin blurted, “Mute.” Future Phillip’s voice went silent, despite his mouth’s continued motion.
Martin grinned at Phillip. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
Phillip asked his future self, “Can you please show me your right hand?”
Future Phillip held up his right hand.
Phillip asked, “The front of the hand and all of the fingers, please? Not just the middle one.”
The older Phillip obliged, showing a perfectly normal hand with no sign of a glitch.
Brit the Younger said, “Well, this is all a fine mess.”
Tyler said, “Or maybe it isn’t! Maybe everything is fine. I think we’re all looking at this the wrong way. I mean, Dirty Phillip says that there’s going to be a tragedy, but Later Brit says otherwise, just by being here.”
Phillip asked, “How so?”
Brit the Much Elder said, “What Tyler’s thinking is that, since I’m a later version of Brit the Elder, and I seem to be okay, then everything must turn out fine. She has to either come out of it on her own, or one of us figures out how to fix her.”
“Exactly,” Tyler said.
“And he’s wrong,” Brit the Much Elder continued. “Brit the Elder was suffering a glitch. We can’t know just how much of the timeline was affected. We can’t assume that because I’m here, everything’s fine.”
“And Grungy Phillip’s hand is okay.”
“That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.”
“No, but it is a good indication that everything works out. Look, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do anything. I think we have to do something. I’m just saying that whatever we do, it seems like it will work.”
Jeff said, “This whole thing started because Brit the Elder had a problem with her memory, right? And now she’s messed with her memory. She might have caused her own problem, retroactively. We could find the part of her code that applies to the memory that was out of sync. I’m betting it’s the one she deleted anyway. Then we compare the code in her memory file to the code in both of you Brits’ files, and make it match. In theory, that should restore her memories and fix the damage she did.”
Roy stroked his chin. “It’s certainly a simple solution.”
Jeff said, “Thanks.”
“And a damn sloppy one. Just rushing in and making changes is how she ended up the way she is. When you blunder your way into a problem, the solution’s almost never to blunder your way back out of it.”
Jimmy said, “I agree. We have to do something, but we have to be smart about it. We need to set up a simulator, or if we can’t figure that out, test ideas out on rats or something. I wouldn’t feel good about it, but it’s Brit the Elder’s life we’re talking about.”
Louiza said, “There are well-laid-out protocols for testing things on animals. I think, in this case, it could be done humanely. We’d be teaching them mazes and changing their code, not any painful medical procedures.”
“How long would that take?” Brit the Younger asked.
Louiza and Jimmy looked at each other and shrugged. Jimmy said, “Weeks, if we’re very lucky. Probably months. Maybe even years. There’s no way to know. But we’re time travelers. We can take as long as we need.”
Brit the Younger shook her head. “You all keep saying we when you talk about someone doing all of this work, but let’s be honest. We’re talking about me. I’m the one who’s going to have to do it.”
“We’ll all help you,” Gwen said.
“Yes, you’ll help me while I do it. It’s not going to be as urgent to all of you as it is to me, because I’m the one it’s going to happen to.” She pointed at Brit the Much Elder. “It’s not as important to her, because it already happened to her, and she’s come out unscathed. We’re talking about my problem.”
Brit the Much Elder said, “You’re right. She’s right. It’s her future we’re talking about. She should decide what we do. So, what’ll it be?”
Before Brit the Younger answered, Phillip put a hand on her shoulder and said, “There are only two options. Sure, one will take a tremendous amount of time, effort, and discipline, but it’s the safest, wisest choice. The faster option Jeff suggested is just too risky, despite being far, f
ar easier. Really, Brit, you have no choice.”
Phillip smiled at Brit the Younger, who scrunched up her face in irritation without looking at him. He cast his eyes over the rest of the group, none of whom looked impressed. The only one making eye contact was Future Phillip, who stood in his invisible prison with a look of contempt and disgust.
Brit the Younger sat up straight. “Sorry. One second. I have a call. It’s Nik. I should take it.”
Roy said, “I didn’t hear anything.”
“It’s set to vibrate.”
Martin asked, “Nik can make calls?”
Brit the Younger glared at Phillip. “He might need me to pick up something for dinner. He knows he can count on me for that kind of thing.”
She swiped her finger through several menu items only she could see and jabbed at the item she wanted. “Hello?”
Nik’s voice, clearly under great stress, said, “Brit! Thank God! Brit the Elder isn’t answering.”
“Yeah, she’s indisposed. What’s up?”
“What do you mean, What’s up? You don’t know?”
“No. What’s going on?”
“Get somewhere that you can see Brit the Elder’s house! Half of it’s acting weird. It’s . . . I don’t know how to describe it. All the edges are going all weird, and they’re changing back and forth. Just go look. You’ll see.”
Brit the Younger said, “I’m in Brit the Elder’s house.” She and all of the others turned to look down the hallway, toward Brit the Elder’s office. Martin, predictably, had risen to his feet and started toward the office, but stopped short when the entire hallway flickered into low-quality polygons and back.
Phillip said, “It’s spreading.”
Brit the Younger said, “We noticed.”
The hall flickered again. This time part of the living room wall and floor flickered with it.
Phillip said, “And it’s getting faster!” He looked at his hand and saw that the error had taken over the backs of all of his fingers.
Again, Brit the Younger said, “We noticed.”
“I just wanted to make sure we’re all up to speed.”