Pleased to Meet Me

by S. G. Wilson

  “German chocolate.” My mouth watered a little.

  Motor launched the cart back in the direction he’d come from. “You can follow me or go back to your Earth. Either way, thanks for showing me the cookie trick.”

  Swallowing the last of the fig goo in my mouth, I watched him leave. I wondered what to do next. Just because I shared a face and some memories with Motor didn’t mean I could trust him. Plus, I didn’t know what waited for me in that ballroom. On top of everything else, I’d eventually get ratted out by Hollywood once he came here.

  Still, how would he and Meticulous know it was me? This sounded like the sort of crowd I could blend into, and Motor seemed like a decent guy. How could a person who ate cookies with so much gusto be all that bad? If other Mes were more like Motor and less like Meticulous and Hollywood, maybe this Me Con thing would be okay. Besides, I’d come all this way.

  What was the harm in a quick peek?

  When I caught up with Motor, he smiled around a mouthful of chips called Sodium Headachies. “Other Mes usually take longer to decide,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many nearly end up going back.”

  “But they all stick around in the end?”

  Motor cleared his throat the way I did when somebody asked me a question I didn’t want to answer. “Well, we’ve lost a few since the first Me Con.”

  “The first Me Con? How long has this thing been going on?”

  “Some of us from the low-numbered Earths got the invite when we were ten. We’ve been meeting every other month ever since.”

  My mind would have been even more blown by all this at age ten. I had about a zillion other questions, but I settled for “So what universe are you from?”

  Motor stopped his cart again and pulled out a lanyard hidden in the folds of his shirt. A laminated name tag dangled from the end: MOTOR ME. EARTH ELEVEN.

  “And I’m from Earth Ninety-Nine? Is it really the last Earth out there?”

  Motor snorted. Did my snorts sound so…snorty? “You didn’t pay much attention to Mom’s lectures, did you? Don’t worry, neither did I, not until I came here. The Earths the elevator can reach are just a small sliver of what’s out there. The truth is, there’s no end to them.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Scads of new universes get birthed every second of the day.” He held up the bag of Sodium Headachies and scooped a handful into his mouth. “We decide to eat these and BAM! That’s a universe.” He held up a chocolate bar labeled THE BOWEL BLOCKER. “We go with this instead and BAM! That’s another universe.” He tore open the packet and ate the bar whole.

  “And if you choose to eat both, what does that make?”

  Motor waved at his belly with the drama of a stage magician. “A very fat Me.”

  The joke seemed forced, and I forced a smile in return. It’s not always easy to laugh at yourself.

  “So you’re saying there’s just one Sodium Headachie of a difference between Earth One and Earth Two?” I said.

  “There’s no rhyme or reason to the Earths the elevator can access. It’s a random selection, near as I can tell. Some of the Mes at Me Con come from Earths that split off from each other way before we were born. Like on Earth Sixty-Six, where Escape Me comes from, the Belgians were the ones who built the ancient pyramids. Surely you’ve heard of the Great Pyramid of Antwerp?”

  “So what did the Egyptians do? Invent Belgian waffles?”

  Motor laughed. “Aside from little details like that, most of us come from pretty similar Earths. I mean, sure, the Roman Empire never fell on the Earths where the Toga Mes come from, and the Old West stayed wild where Cowboy Me hangs his ten-gallon hat or whatever, but those differences haven’t changed their worlds as much as you’d think. Technology developed about the same, give or take a self-driving car here or a holographic projector there. It’s actually a little boring sometimes. I’d kill to meet a Me from an Earth where they’re still cave dwellers, or magic is real. You know, really far-out stuff.”

  “You’re bored with Me Con? I’m still on the verge of a heart attack just from the elevator ride to get here.”

  Motor gave me a thoughtful look. “You’re actually taking this really well. Most new Mes are too freaked out to even ask where the bathroom is.”

  We passed some graffiti scrawled on the wall. It was written in my—our—handwriting: ALL OF ME WILL RETURN!

  “All of Me?” I asked.

  Motor scoffed. “It’s just a dumb legend. All of Me is a mythical figure at Me Con who some Mes believe in. Supposedly, he can do anything that any Me can do. The legend says he’ll ‘save every Me in our greatest hour of need.’ ”

  “Is that a joke?”

  He shrugged. “To most Mes it is. Some take it kinda seriously.”

  “How about you?”

  Motor looked surprised, like he wasn’t used to someone caring what he thought. But before he could answer, speakers in the ballroom up ahead started blasting music. I could just make out people moving around.

  “Dang it!” said Motor. “The music’s already started! That means we missed the cake!”

  Thinking about a room full of Mes stopped me cold.

  Motor rolled his cart up beside me. “It’s weird, but you get used to it.”

  “But what if—”

  “What if they don’t like you? What if you’re not as good as them? What if they reject you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take my advice and be yourself.”

  He was just as bad as me at trying to sell a lie.

  Stepping into the Janus ballroom and its wall-to-wall Mes was like being blasted with every embarrassing photo and video of myself a zillion times over. Was that how I walked? Was that what my neck hair looked like? Did my nose really make that noise when I sneezed?

  What must have been a hundred Mes either stood around in clumps or sat together at tables. The curved walls and tiled floor of the ballroom bounced their voices—my voice, I should say—back to me over and over. I’d never felt so self-conscious.

  “Just focus on how they’re different from you, not the same,” said Motor, reading my mind. “It’s less weird that way.”

  He was right. The Mes might have looked and sounded just like me, but at the same time, they were nothing like me at all. They had different hairstyles, clothes, and glasses. Some stood up straight; some slouched. Some Mes even had muscles, which they flexed as much as possible.

  Motor watched me gawping at them and chuckled. “Yeah, the Fit Mes do stand out.”

  “Fit Mes?”

  “This place is kind of like a school—everybody’s in a clique, but the cliques are different variations of the same person. The Play Mes, for instance.” He pointed to a cluster of Mes at a table, dealing cards in an intense round of a game from another Earth called Magic: The Blathering, which seemed to involve a lot more talking than Magic: The Gathering did. Pasty-skinned and frail, they looked like a Me after a few weeks in a food dehydrator.

  We passed a pack of puffed-up Mes in clothes my parents could never have afforded. “The Money Mes,” Motor whispered. “Mom and Dad struck it rich on their Earths.”

  Nearby, a group of shaggy Mes played Hacky Sack (“Chill Mes”) next to Mes wearing dress shirts and ties and making spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations on their laptops (“Work Mes”).

  “How could these guys possibly be me?” I said. “I have nothing in common with them.”

  “It’s all perception. If you’re a Fit Me who sticks with other Fit Mes all the time, of course you’re gonna think you have nothing in common with the Alterna Mes.” He pointed to some sullen Mes in the corner with creative hairstyles and black clothing.

  I definitely didn’t see anything I had in common with the pack of Mes dressed like clowns, mimes, and stand-up comics from the nineties. Th
ey practiced walking up and down invisible stairs and doing ventriloquism using each other as dummies. “The Silly Mes,” Motor said with a shudder.

  As we passed more Mes, some nodded at us, a few smiled, but nobody actually said hi. What had I been expecting, some sort of hero’s welcome? Look, everyone, a new brother has arrived! Hurray! I was nothing but another Me in this crowd, and a pretty pathetic one at that.

  More than a few Mes smirked at the sight of Motor, and I got the impression he was a joke around here. The idea of Mes laughing at other Mes behind their own backs seemed both sad and completely bizarre.

  “So what exactly made everybody turn out different?” I said. “Aren’t we all supposed to be the same?”

  “Sure, but our worlds aren’t. A little variation in any given environment can tweak DNA, and it just takes a tweak for a Me to turn out big or scrawny, arty or science-y. And after that, nurture takes over. The Fit Mes stay in shape by playing sports or whatever all the time. The Play Mes hone their gaming skills through constant practice.”

  “But what makes them want to devote all that energy to sports training or game playing or whatever they’re into?” I tried not to sound too desperate, but I had to know how we Mes actually got good at something.

  Motor gestured toward the stage, where four Mes bickered with each other while setting up their guitars and drums and turntables. “Take them, the Tune Mes, the musicians of Me Con. They don’t actually play when they get together—too busy arguing about who gets the first solo and stuff like that. How do you think they’re different from the Fit Mes?”

  “I don’t know. Music in their DNA?”

  “Yeah, but another thing too: Weezer.”

  “You mean that old band Dad’s always going on about?”

  “The same. Except they got to go to the Weezer concert when they were nine.”

  “Really? Dad got sick and couldn’t take me. He was so bummed.”

  “Dad got sick on my Earth too.” A cloud passed over his face, but it lifted once he stuffed his mouth with a handful of Cavity Pellets. “The Tune Mes got to go, and the show was so good it inspired them to take up music.”

  “So that’s all it takes? A couple of genes and a concert?”

  “No, but it’s those pivotal moments that pushed us in different directions. Plenty of Mes who wound up seeing Weezer never got into music. But they got exposed to other, totally different things that shaped them instead.” He nodded toward a bunch of decidedly less cool Mes practicing some dorky Broadway musical routine. “Take the Look at Mes, the actors of Me Con. Grandma Sue played them the soundtrack to Brigadoon every day in the car during that week we spent with her the summer after first grade.”

  “Ugh! She did that to me too. Seven days of ‘Down on MacConnachy Square.’ Scarred me for life.”

  Motor chortled. “Me too! But they liked it.”

  I felt a pang of jealousy toward these talented Mes. Whether it was soccer, drums, computer programming, or whatever, my laziness and general incompetence had kept me from sticking with anything. I’d barely dabbled in stuff they’d completely mastered. Even among my different selves, I was a nobody.

  The MeMinder naturally chose this moment to announce, “Science fair project not yet complete. Student Showcase tonight.”

  Motor chuckled and raised his own MeMinder, a more advanced model than mine. “If you want it to shut up, just reset it.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?!”

  He grinned. “Sometimes two Mes are better than one.”

  In a weird way, that made me feel better.

  Motor and I moved past a long line of Mes waiting outside a door guarded by an impossibly huge Me. He wore a black suit with white pinstripes, a fedora to match, and black-and-white dress shoes.

  “What’s that thing?!” I asked.

  Motor groaned. “Mobster Me. He does security.”

  “He’s a mobster?!”

  “I guess. Or everybody on his Earth dresses like that all the time. He doesn’t talk much, so nobody knows.”

  “What’s he guarding?”

  “The Viral Me Lounge.” Motor ripped open a bag of Diarrhea Delights. “They’re Mes who think they’ve done something important just because they’ve gotten some notice on the internet or TV. They’re so ‘famous’ they worry they’d get mobbed if they didn’t have their own private hangout. As if.”

  “But isn’t Me Con supposed to be about everybody sharing and talking and stuff?”

  “Tell me about it.” Motor tossed me two bags of Diarrhea Delights. “These have pomegranate in them. You’re not allergic, are you? Some Mes are.”

  I didn’t care to find out, so I shoved the bags into my pocket. “Thanks.”

  The crowd parted for a pack of four Mes who strutted out of the lounge like they owned the place. The Me at the front of the group wore leather armor with a thick chain mail belt and a long mane of hair that made him look like an extra from Game of Thrones.

  “Is his Earth stuck in the Middle Ages?” I asked.

  Motor scrunched his nose like he smelled something stinky. “Ren Faire Me? He claims his Earth ‘clings to the old ways.’ But then, he claims a lot of things, including that he’s the most famous actor on his world. All I know for sure is he’s a real jerk.”

  “What about the ones with him?”

  “The skinny one is Click Me. He’s built a huge audience making those kinds of internet videos that sound cool at first but turn out to be completely stupid and boring, like opening product packaging to see what’s inside. The one with the arm cast is Dare Me. He does idiotic stunts on camera, like jumping off roofs or getting bitten by bugs on purpose.”

  “I’m so glad I’ve never tried to go viral.”

  The Me who followed behind them looked like he hadn’t bothered to take off his mask after Halloween. His nose had the shape of a stress ball stuck in midsqueeze, and his overbite would have made him right at home on The Simpsons. But all I could focus on was his ears.

  “They’re…pointy?!”

  Motor made a barf face. “That’s Troll Me. He insists the ears are real, that everybody on his Earth has them. But he’s not exactly a trustworthy kind of guy, so he’s more than likely just messing with us. As for the nose, I’m convinced he gets punched in the face a lot back home for being a jerk.”

  “What’s he done to go viral?”

  “When he’s not busy trolling people, he posts videos of himself hacking video games. People will watch anything, I guess.”

  “And these are the most famous Mes?”

  “Well, there’s Hollywood Me. He started the Viral Me Lounge. But he hasn’t been around for a while. My theory is he collapsed under the weight of his own ego.”

  I faked a chuckle to mask my panic. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood escaped from the limo on Earth One, made his way to Me Con, and ratted me out.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Motor.

  “Nothing. So how do you know so much about all these Mes?”

  Motor gulped down a handful of Diarrhea Delights. “Panel discussions. Every Me shares his story at some point. So will you. It’s sort of mandatory.”

  “What if I don’t have anything worthwhile to tell?”

  “You’ll think of something. Which reminds me, you need to do your interview.”

  “Interview?”

  “To find out what you’re good at so you can talk about it in panels.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “It’s mostly a quick checklist you’ll go over when you register with the Me who runs this whole shebang.”

  “And what Me is that again?”

  “He’s over this way.” Motor led me past another row of darkened windows toward a table in the far corner of the room. The sign above it read REGISTRATION AND PROGRAMMI
NG. A Me was just sitting down at the table as we approached, a Me I recognized in an instant.

  That tidy hair, that perfect posture, that pressed suit…that pressed colonial-style suit.

  Meticulous Me.

  The Me who ran Me Con was the same Me whose life I’d just stolen.

  Somehow, I doubted he’d be thrilled about that.

  Meticulous Me waved me over like a king ready to receive his next audience. Motor practically had to prod me forward with his cart. “It’s just an interview. Nothing to worry about.”

  Yeah, just an interview with an impossibly powerful guy I’d impersonated on his home turf. Me Con probably had rules about stealing another Me’s life, and I’d broken all of them.

  “Look, it’s a brand-new Me,” Motor told Meticulous when we finally reached the table.

  Meticulous rolled his eyes at what had to be a tired joke among Mes. “Thanks, mate.” He pulled a handful of pens from his bag and lined them up on the table just so. “That’ll be all. I believe you have a panel to moderate in a few minutes?”

  Motor gave me an encouraging wink and rolled away.

  Meticulous was all business as he pulled out a pristine MePad and tapped at the screen. “So, you’re the Me from Earth Ninety-Nine, the last stop on the elevator.” He sounded annoyed as he said this, like it was my fault the elevator couldn’t go higher. “Welcome to Me Con. I see you got my invites.”

  “Yeah.” Out of nerves, I pulled a bag of Diarrhea Delights from my pocket and ripped it open. Then I remembered I didn’t even like fruit-flavored candy, so I let it sit there in front of me.

  Meticulous rubbed imaginary dirt off his fingers as he eyed the screen. “Have you been having a good time so far?”

  I didn’t hear any edge to the words, no hint that he was about to scream at me. Mostly he just seemed bored. Maybe he didn’t know the truth after all.

  “Sure, it’s great here.”