Pleased to Meet Me

by S. G. Wilson

  I scooted as far from him as possible. With no witnesses around, he could get away with murder. Nash reached into his pocket, and I tensed up, but he just pulled out a stylus. “I know this is daft of me, but can you sign the team holo? I want to remember this forever.”

  In a daze, I took the stylus but didn’t know what to do next. Nash tittered. “Feeling a little over-egged? I get it. That was one emotional day. Maybe you could just sign the spot near your head.”

  I reached out and wiggled the stylus in the air until it made something like my signature. “Cool!” I said.

  “Yeah, I really like your latest update to the stylus editing software. Writes a lot smoother now. Oh, and while I’ve got you here.” Nash fiddled with the phone again, and a new hologram appeared: a program for a historical rap musical called Washington! As in, George. Nash flipped the pages, stopping at the cast list. My picture was at the top, next to the words George Washington, leader of a failed rebellion and traitor to mother England. Played by Meade Macon.

  “What a hit!” said Nash. “You really brought the house down! Mind signing this too?”

  I air-wrote my signature again, more confused than ever. This upgraded model of me was captain of the best middle school cricket team and star of the school play on top of everything else? At this point I was starting to hate him.

  As soon as we stepped out of the car, something swooped down from above and hovered in my face. I flinched before realizing it was a drone. A MeDrone, naturally. It plopped a box straight into my hands. “Delivery complete,” the drone said in a British robot voice. I stared openmouthed as it hovered there like it was waiting for me to do something.

  “Confirm purchase, please,” it finally said.

  “Oh, right.” I opened the box to find a colonial-style suit like everyone else wore.

  “Uh, looks good,” I told the drone. “Purchase…confirmed?”

  The drone’s front section dipped as if bowing to me before it flew away.

  “Brilliant!” Nash eyed my new duds as the car parked itself down the street. “Looks smashing!”

  “Thanks. It was really thoughtful of you to get this.”

  Nash lowered his eyes, looking sheepish. “Least I could do for the hard time I used to give you when we were little tykes. I truly am sorry about that, mate. I was a right git back in my bullying days. But you helped me see the error of my ways, and I’m grateful for that.”

  “No problem.” So this Nash had been a bully too, once upon a time. That meant the Me of this world hadn’t always led such a charmed life after all. Had he always been rich? When had little Me Co. grown into ginormous Me Corp.? So many questions.

  Nash cleared his throat. “Yeah, color me grateful. Though I can’t say I’m grateful for what you did to my research paper this morning. Ha ha! Right proper joke! But hey, that was some bloody fine origami you made out of it. I’ll decorate my bedroom with your art, most like!”

  “Uh, my pleasure?”

  For just a moment, I saw a hint of anger flash across Nash’s face, but it passed and he was all smiles again. He pointed to a souped-up porta-potty with MELOO on the side. “You can change in there. One of your more useful inventions, am I right? I’ll just wait out here.”

  “It’s cool—you don’t have to.” I hoped to make a break for it as soon as he left. If I played my cards right, I could get back to the hotel and home to my Earth in under a half hour.

  “Oh, I insist.” Was that a hint of menace in his voice? Or did I just not trust any Nash, no matter how much he smiled?

  As soon as I stepped inside the MeLoo, a robot voice asked if I wanted a loo, a shower, a massage, a tan, or any of the other services it offered. I told it no thanks and got to work squeezing into the suit. Without a bag to carry my T-shirt and jeans, I had to leave them on underneath, which made for a tight fit. Once I snapped my buckles and arranged my ruffles (a little know-how I picked up from helping with costumes backstage at Benedict!), I stepped out of the MeLoo dressed more or less like everyone else. That didn’t stop people from staring as I followed Nash into the school gym.

  After all the whacked-out things I’d seen on this Earth so far, walking past the usual cruddy science fair projects kids made year after year felt like a comforting taste of home. Potato clocks, baking soda volcanoes, and endless experiments with magnets, mold, soda, eggs, and yeast. The posters screamed out the kinds of pointless questions people only ever bother to ask at science fairs: “How does salt water affect gummy bears?” “Do plants like music?” “Is yawning contagious?”

  As I made my way through the gym, dead ringers for kids from my Earth whispered about me in their British accents. I checked to see whether I’d made some kind of eighteenth-century fashion no-no, like tying my cravat the wrong way. But I hadn’t left a single piece of lace out of place. It had to be something else. Panic flooded my veins—maybe my double, the real Me of this Earth, had shown up already, and people here were confused to see us in the same place twice. Even worse, the Mom and Dad of this Earth might show up at any minute. They’d recognize me as an impostor in no time.

  “Why so shy today?” Nash asked. “It’s just your adoring public.”

  So that was it: I was famous. British Me must have attracted stares all the time. I never realized how nerve-racking that kind of attention could be, especially when I hadn’t earned it.

  I was seconds from fleeing the room, when someone behind me yelled, “Hey! I got your invite!”

  It was Twig, speaking in the same British voice she used for recaps of Doctor Who episodes. With her rainbow-colored colonial suit and gravity-defying hair, she stood out from the crowd here as much as she did in my universe. “I got your holo-message, and the dance sounds scrummy!” She gave me a fist bump. “We haven’t chummed around in forever, which is barmy! I can’t wait to go as friends!”

  “Uh, great.” My annoyance with the Me of this world ticked up several more notches. On top of everything else, he’d gotten Twig to go out with him too? Even if it sounded more like a friend-date than a date-date, taking Twig to a dance was way above and beyond anything I’d ever managed. Still, a little part of me was relieved Twig didn’t seem to worship him the way everyone else did. No matter what Earth she came from, Twig could never be a suck-up.

  Nash walked up behind us, his face a mask of jealous rage. That is, until he caught me looking. Then he switched back to chip-chip-cheerio Nash, my best British mate. But he didn’t fool me. This Nash hated my doppelgänger even more than my Nash hated me. I might have felt the same if I’d been a golden boy forced to play second fiddle to the smartest, richest kid in the world.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Nash said, “but Mr. Lunt’s about to announce the winner!”

  Lunt stepped up to the mic stand in the center of the room, holding the trophy I’d always wanted so badly. “There he is!” He beamed at me like I was his best student. “I must say, Meade Macon, you’ve really outdone yourself this year! Not only have you proven that cold fusion is quite possible, but you’ve also made it cheap and portable! Your MeFusion device will revolutionize the world! That’s why Meade takes the top prize as this year’s science fair winner!”

  Cheers filled the gym. I looked around to make sure Lunt wasn’t talking about someone else. Everybody whooped it up like I’d just made the best joke ever. It felt weird to have people laughing with me instead of at me. It felt even weirder taking the trophy, considering how a much better Me than myself had done all the work. But I staggered up to Lunt anyway.

  “Speech!” yelled Nash. “Speech!”

  Lunt thrust the trophy and the mic into my hand. My mind went blank. I’d never had to give a victory speech, because I’d never been victorious. What could I possibly say? Thanks, everybody. My alternate self couldn’t make it tonight, but I’ve come from a parallel Earth to accept this award on his behalf. Somehow I d
idn’t think that would fly with this crowd.

  Just then the emergency exit doors creaked open, and a kid in a glittery green colonial suit entered the gym. He wore a paste-on beard and a monocle squished into his eye, but the disguise didn’t fool me. I’d know that face anywhere. I saw it in the mirror every day.

  He was me—the Me of this world. The rightful owner of the life (and science fair trophy) I’d just stolen.

  And he wanted it all back.

  My living, breathing clone jerked his head toward the exit, the universal sign for Time to go. I looked around for another way out, but too many people stood between me and the front entrance. No choice. I had to leave with him.

  “Well, duty calls!” said Lunt, taking the mic from my hand. “Let’s have another round of applause for Meade Macon, everybody!”

  As Twig, Nash, and the rest of the crowd cheered, I followed my spitting image out the door, fully expecting him to beat me up the first chance he got. Instead, he led me to a robot limo. “Door!” he ordered. The passenger door obeyed, sliding open.

  “After you, Meticulous,” he said.

  Figuring Meticulous for some sort of British nickname, like mate or old chap, I crouched inside and took one of the back seats, plopping the trophy next to me. It was a sleek ride, with a leather interior, a flat-screen, a mini soda fountain, and a snack tray stuffed with British crisps and candy bars.

  “To the office,” the other Me commanded. He sat across from me, and the car glided into the traffic ahead.

  The Me popped the monocle out of his eye and pulled off his costume beard. Now he looked just like me, except with one of those fake-messy hairstyles that probably took him an hour to get right. “Fiddlesticks!” he shouted. “Sorry for swearing, it’s just—that was so exciting! How was my disguise? Guess I picked up a few things having my makeup done every day for Baker’s Dozen. Who would have thought you could learn anything useful on the set of a sitcom?”

  “Uh, yeah, great.” I barely registered what he’d just said. Turns out that talking to yourself is more than a little distracting. It’s even worse than listening to your own voice mail greeting.

  “And how’s my accent? Getting better, right? ‘ ’Ello, mate! I’m just your average citizen of the United States of the British Empire, guv’na!’ It’s all in the acting, you know. They don’t call me Hollywood Me for nothing. Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, what a rush! Oh, me and my dirty mouth again! Sorry!”

  “That’s okay.” I hadn’t expected the conversation to go anything like this. Hollywood Me didn’t sound like the wealthy, brilliant, multitalented popular kid I’d built up in my mind. He sounded more like an idiot.

  “Bet you’re glad the science fair’s over,” Hollywood continued. “Nice job winning that prize, by the way.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Why was he congratulating me for winning his prize? This whole situation made less and less sense by the second.

  “Sorry I had to get you out of there. When you didn’t reply to my texts, I saw the science fair on your calendar and figured you might have been at school. I don’t get it. You’re like a gosh-darned genius, if you’ll pardon my French. Why not just take the test that graduates you out of school early? Heck, you probably don’t even need to do that. You could just jump straight to a college degree!”

  “Uh, it’s complicated.”

  Hollywood gave me a sly grin. “Because of Twig, right? I get it. There’s a Twig on my world too. Holy cow, is she worth sticking around for! Oops, sorry. There I go again with my potty mouth!”

  His world? Of course! Hollywood was a Me from a different Earth, just like myself. He came from a place where they didn’t dress or talk like British people from 250 years ago. Apparently, they had a different definition of swearing too.

  “Man, you’ve really carved out a nice life for yourself here, Meticulous,” said Hollywood. That name again. Meticulous. Meticulous Me? Was that what the Me of this reality called himself? “Thanks for inviting me to be your assistant.”

  “Hey, the pleasure’s all mine.”

  Hollywood gushed as he opened up a calendar app on the flat-screen. “It’s just a light schedule today, but the big meeting with those reps from the China–Russia–North Korea Democratic Union is in a few hours. And of course you’ve got the board of directors’ get-together in thirty minutes. After that you have the fund-raiser for the Justin Bieber Senate reelection campaign, followed by the concert.”

  “Concert? Who’s playing again? I forgot.”

  Hollywood looked confused. “You are. With your band? Origami Drive?”

  Meticulous fronted a band on top of everything else? What couldn’t this overachieving jerk do?

  The limo stopped at a street dominated by a gleaming office tower of glass and metal. I could make out the Me Corp. logo way up at the tiptop, glinting in the sun. An entire skyscraper reserved just for a company that Dad had built. I stared at it in awe until Hollywood nudged my elbow. This must have been where we were supposed to get out.

  Strapping on his stupid beard and squinting into his monocle again, Hollywood ordered the limo to the parking garage, picked up the trophy, and led me into the busy Me Corp. lobby. We breezed past security guards who tipped their tricornered hats at us, and a crowd of employees stepped out of our way. I followed Hollywood into an elevator with a sign that read RESERVED FOR CEO.

  Hollywood pressed the button for the hundredth floor, and up we went, not making any stops until we reached the top. The doors opened on a fancy office suite made of metal, glass, and polished concrete. An assistant appeared on my left to give me a purplish-green smoothie while an assistant on my right handed me a stack of MePads. Before I could so much as say thanks, Hollywood dumped the trophy on them and dragged me to the corner office with CEO on the door.

  Dad wasn’t in the office, but I could imagine him telling me not to touch anything there. The place was crammed with paintings and sculptures good enough for a museum. Even the metallic desk seemed like a work of art. When I took a few steps for a closer look, a holographic projector switched on, shining a nameplate in the air: MEADE MACON.

  Dad wasn’t in charge of Me Corp. I was. That is, the Meticulous Me of this reality. My dad wouldn’t even let me run the dishwasher without supervision. How did Meticulous get to run a whole corporation as CEO?

  Hollywood lingered at the door but didn’t come in. “You seem a little off, or ‘knackered,’ as they might say here on this Earth. Want me to help you prep for the meeting? The board of directors is all hot and bothered for a progress report on the MindMe app you promised last quarter. I wrote up some excuses for the delay, the usual spiel about the tricky science of artificial intelligence and stuff like that. And I forced the RocketMe team to dream up some preliminary design specs for the spacecraft, just to give the board something to look at. Oh, you should also know that the initial medical test results on MendMe totally bombed. Absolutely no improvement in the patients. So we’ve got to figure out something positive to report there too.”

  “Uh, thanks. I’ll be fine. Just need a minute.”

  “Okay.” Hollywood looked far from certain. “See you in a few.”

  As soon as Hollywood shut the door, I looked around for a way out. I tried a door on the other side of the room and found a bathroom bigger than my living room back home. It had a shower, a tub, and a separate Jacuzzi, but no exit.

  I was trapped.

  I walked back to the desk and plopped myself in the chair, which molded to my body like I’d sat in it a zillion times. In a way, I had. Meticulous didn’t have much in the way of personal stuff on his desk, save for a tidy row of fancy pens lined up perfectly. The only thing close to resembling clutter was a small metal tray off to the side that held a pile of origami. Most were failed attempts at origami octopuses, each of them lopsided, flat, or just plain mangled. I could sympathize. I knew all too
well how hard it was to fold an octopus. As I rummaged through the pile and detangled their arms, I found other origami creations: a cobra, a honey badger, a caracara, and all the shapes from the notes that had haunted me back home. Was Meticulous the origami stalker? It was hard to imagine a preteen CEO with his own rock band taking time out to deliver some notes in my rinky-dink universe.

  My hand must have made a gesture or touched some hidden switch on the desk, because another hologram sprang to life: a life-size bust of Mom spinning in the air. A banner underneath read IN MEMORIAM.

  The Mom of this Earth was dead?

  I wasn’t so jealous of Meticulous Me anymore. As the hologram winked out, I thought about how I’d trade all the trophies and money and dates with Twig in the world for Mom. Losing her was unthinkable.

  Mostly just to take my mind off wondering how this world’s Mom had died, I snooped around the drawers, which unlocked at my touch. There wasn’t much in them beyond files, but I did find another origami octopus, the most decent attempt yet. When I picked it up for a closer look, I saw that it covered a small holo-projector with a flash drive stuck in the side. This had to be something important, but I didn’t have time to find out what. Voices approached from outside.

  “But I left you in the office just now!” Hollywood was whining to someone. “Are you telling me you don’t remember? It was only a few doggone minutes ago! Oops, sorry for swearing.”

  “I’ve been at the lab this whole bloody time!” said a familiar voice.

  It was my voice. Our voice. An authentic British replica of our voice. That could mean only one thing.

  The real Meticulous Me had returned.

  I yanked the flash drive from the projector, stuffed it into my pocket, and raced to the bathroom. It was a suicidal place to hide if Meticulous were to take a leak, but where else could I run?