by S. G. Wilson
He made an extravagant sigh to let me know how bored he was with this conversation. “As I told you before, the shapes are just a coincidence. They only happen to correspond with the numbers. Nothing more than pattern recognition. A trick of the mind.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple. Maybe if we get the right shape, we’ll get the right Earth too.”
“That’s bloody daft! The folds are just random blobs!”
“Are they? Of the folds you made to reach the original hundred Earths, how many looked like random blobs with no shape?”
He said nothing.
“That’s what I thought,” I said.
“Okay, so if what you’re saying is even remotely true, how could we possibly predict what shapes to try?”
Here’s where I had to be careful. “You said I had a connection to the multiverse, right? Well, maybe with your expert guidance, I could tap into that. Let’s try an experiment. Name an origami shape for one of the first hundred Earths, and I’ll guess the Me who goes with it.”
Meticulous rolled his eyes. “Okay. How about a northern spitting spider?”
My mind fizzed, and the answer came to me gift-wrapped with a bow. “Earth Thirty-Four. Hollywood Me’s world.”
Meticulous hardly even tried to hide his surprise. “How did you guess?”
“I didn’t. The multiverse told me. Go on, try another.”
“Okay, then. How about a Pacific banana slug?”
Another name buzzed into my head. “That’s easy. Mobster Me. Which is fitting, since he’s got the mind of a slug.”
Meticulous stared at me hard. “You’re like the village idiot who’s an unexpected genius at conkers.”
“No idea what conkers is, but thanks.”
“Come on, do you really think just folding some animal shape will get us to the Earth I need?”
“I think it’s worth a try. Otherwise we could be here all week.”
Meticulous threw up his hands in that familiar Me way. “Then by all means, be my guest. But I’m warning you, no dodgy business. I’m watching you, okay?”
“Whatever.” I reached into the origami drive and took hold of the energy again. At this point the stuff felt like Silly Putty left out in the sun too long. Maybe the origami drive needed a break as much as I did.
“Wait,” said Meticulous. “What shape are you even considering?!”
I forced my aching fingers to make the first folds. Though my hands wanted to fall right off, I managed to tease the energy into a body. “You want an Earth with spaceships and life extension and AI, right?”
“Well, any one of those would do for now.”
“If this works, I can deliver all three in one go.” I gave the origami a few final touches, then waved my throbbing hands with a flourish. “Voilà!”
“A crane?”
“Hey, I don’t make the shapes. The multiverse does.”
Meticulous arched an eyebrow, but the elevator started moving before he could protest more than that.
“And anyway, what’s the harm?” I added. “Whether this works out or not, at least we’ll have a chance to drain the water at our next stop.”
“We take a gander when we arrive, and if it doesn’t work, we do things my way again. Math!”
Meticulous played it cool, but you didn’t have to be a Me to recognize the greedy excitement written all over his face. He positioned himself at our next stop in front of the door, drone hovering beside him. He stared straight ahead, all his attention on the elevator door and the wonders it would show him when it opened. That’s why he didn’t notice me as I struggled back to my feet and waded through the water to stand behind him.
The moment the door opened, searing-hot air slapped our faces. Our ears roared with the buzz of a kajillion insects. Our noses filled with a stink stronger than a litter box for lions. We stood before a rain forest of vine-choked trees lit up by the brightest night sky I’d ever seen. The moon was huge, and there was no end to the stars around it. This was the biggest dose of raw nature I’d ever experienced. We’d reached the sort of “primitive Earth” Meticulous liked to pooh-pooh. No Janus, no city, no civilization.
Unless you counted the hairy, unwashed people in animal skins drinking water from the pond a few feet ahead of us.
Honest-to-goodness cave dwellers.
Nothing I’d seen about prehistoric people, from museum exhibits to cartoons, could have prepared me for them in real life. They weren’t big and beefy—more like short and skinny. They didn’t growl or even grimace at us, just stared in slack-jawed surprise, tilting their heads from side to side like bewildered house pets staring at a TV screen. The sight of a random magic box appearing out of nowhere with twins inside and lots of water spilling out confused them, but not in an angry way.
Meticulous hopped up and down in a panic. “Close the door!”
Which was when I tickled him in that certain spot of the neck. Like I’d hoped, he couldn’t resist it any better than Hollywood had. As he jerked away, his body off balance, I planted my foot on his backside and kicked him into Earth Three Hundred Seventy-Six.
Before Meticulous even hit the ground, I hit the Close button, but the door wasn’t fast enough. Meticulous regained his footing the second he touched soil and pivoted back toward the elevator, launching himself at the closing door. Just when it looked like he’d make it back in time, he tripped over a caveman who’d been napping in a clump of reeds.
Meticulous fell on his face right in front of me. Before the door shut, I saw the napping caveman sit up with a grunt.
I only got the briefest glimpse of him, but I could have sworn under all the grime that he was a Me.
Caveman Me.
I came back to Earth Ninety-Nine to find that the losers of Me Con had beaten the cool kids.
Hollywood, Motor, and Resist were tying up the Viral Mes with hotel bedding in the elevator bank. They’d even captured Click and Dare, who’d followed the bus to the hotel like Nash, only to get their butts whipped when they joined in the fight. They and everybody else in the room looked pretty dinged up, but my friends were the ones still standing.
That’s right, I called them friends. We may have been four vastly different reproductions of the same person, but only friends would stick together through a mess like the one we’d just survived.
“Well, if it isn’t All of Me!” said Hollywood. I raised my palm for a high five, but he brushed it aside and gave me a hug instead. I hugged right back, and Motor joined in too. When Hollywood waved Resist over, she pretended to tighten the pillowcase gags on the Virals.
“Oh, come on!” Hollywood told her. “Think of it as a huddle!”
Looking like she’d bitten into a rotten Bowel Blocker, Resist came over to pat us on the back a few times.
“You guys did it!” I said.
“No, you did it!” said Motor.
“And what exactly did you do?” asked Hollywood.
“Long story.” I broke off the hug when I noticed Twig and Nash in the doorway to the lobby. Back on their feet, they watched the four of us like we might sprout fangs at any moment. They stood close together, but more in a scared way than a romantic way, at least where Twig was concerned. When Nash tried to hold Twig’s hand, she slapped it aside.
“You guys okay?” I asked them.
They both nodded, dazed.
“You’re the real one, right?” Nash asked me. “I mean, the one from, uh, here?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Nash looked thoughtful. “The vandalism. The call to the cops about me. The prank with the homework. That was the other Meades who did that?”
“I know it’s hard to take in, but yeah. Thanks for showing up when you did to stop Meticulous. Um, even if you thought he was me.”
Everybody tensed up as Nash l
ooked me over. He’d stared me down plenty of times in the past, but this was different. Now it was like he was seeing me with new eyes. Whatever he saw, he must not have minded too much, because he broke into a laugh. “Anytime, bro.”
Relieved, I turned to Twig. “You were totally right in your video. I’ve been too caught up in all this Achieve-O-Meter crap. I mean, now I’ve seen where that kind of thinking got Meticulous. Oh, and thanks for kicking that jerk where it counts, by the way.”
She smiled. Not the full-fledged smile she used to give me, but it was better than nothing. For now, it was enough. “Just don’t go talking in a British accent and we’ll be okay.”
“What did you do to Meticulous anyway, Average?” asked Motor.
So I told them.
When I finished, Hollywood was practically drooling with excitement. “Gee willikers! You trapped Meticulous on a dinosaur world? That’s doggone cold, if you’ll excuse my language!”
Resist scoffed just like Meticulous had on the elevator. “There were cave dwellers. That means the dinosaurs were long gone.”
“Not necessarily,” said Hollywood. “Maybe the dinos never died off there, and they lived together with humans. Maybe Meticulous is riding a Stegosaurus alongside Caveman Me right now!”
“You think Meticulous will be okay for real?” asked Twig. “I mean, how will he survive on his own?”
Resist shrugged. “He’s probably picked up a whole mess of survival skills from Eagle Scout Me.”
“Yeah, I figure it’ll do him some good to live screen-free for a while,” I said.
“But what if this Caveman Me and the others try to kill him?” asked Nash.
“You know Meticulous,” said Motor. “He’s probably already got them worshipping him like a god or something.”
Nash and Twig looked like they didn’t buy this theory, but to me it sounded entirely too believable. “We don’t have to worry about Meticulous surviving,” I said. “We just have to worry about him coming back.”
Resist gave the elevator a swift kick. “Then we have to turn this crate off and never use it again.”
“After it takes us home, right?” said Hollywood.
“How?” said Motor. “We don’t have the right origami codes for our worlds. It’s—”
Resist cut him off. “Don’t say it’s hopeless!”
“I’ll get you all home,” I said. “Not just you, but these sellouts too.” I waved to the trussed-up Mes, who glared back at me over their gags.
“We also have to return all the Mes at Me Con,” said Resist. “Including the Missing Mes, of course.”
“You mean there’s more of…you out there?” Twig’s face went pale.
“Long story,” I said. “I’m sure I can re-create the folds that will get everybody home, but it’ll take time.” A new wave of exhaustion washed over my wet, cold, and creaky body. “And I may need a nap first.”
Hollywood started to panic. “What if the night watch finds us in the meantime? And for that matter, how do we occupy ourselves while we wait? This place doesn’t even have holo-TV!”
“Get a grip!” said Resist, though she looked pretty eager to leave too.
Twig spotted something in the elevator car and stepped inside to pick it up. She came out holding Meticulous’s MePad. “This was his, right? Would it help?”
“Yes!” Motor grabbed some of the wires from the busted keypad and got to work. In moments, he connected the MePad to the origami drive. “All the origami patterns for the Earths and their portals are still in this thing’s memory! Watch!” He spoke into the MePad’s mic. “Earth Eleven.”
The green octopus in the origami drive twisted and turned as if folded by an invisible hand. The next second it took the shape of a Lesser Antillean iguana.
“See?” said Motor.
Beaming, Resist slugged Motor on the shoulder. He winced but smiled back.
“What Resist means is that you’re brilliant and can do anything once you forget about being insecure,” I said.
Hollywood nudged Troll so hard the Me almost fell over. “That’s what I call hacking, eh?”
Troll scowled at him from behind his gag.
“Funny that Meticulous didn’t think of rigging up his MePad to the controls like this,” said Resist.
I shivered in my wet clothes, cursing the janitors for leaving the air-conditioning on full blast. “He’s smart, but he has tunnel vision. It probably didn’t occur to him.”
“Or maybe he wanted to take you along for the ride,” said Hollywood.
“Why would he want to do that?” I said.
Motor shrugged. “Being an evil genius must get lonely sometimes.”
“That’s more psychoanalyzing about Meticulous than even I care to do.” I said it like a joke, but no one laughed. We’d all realized at more or less the same time that this was goodbye. Nash and Twig must have sensed it too, because they slipped into the lobby to give us a moment alone.
Or maybe they just found all of this too weird.
We dragged the virals into the sea-stinky elevator, making sure they hit a bump or two on the way. After we lined them up along the walls, my friends stepped inside. I stood across from them at the door, none of us knowing what to say.
Hollywood finally broke the ice, tears welling up in his eyes—genuine ones this time. “I’ve never had any real friends until you guys!” he said, hugging me and then Motor.
I thought I might get weepy too, until Hollywood added, “Thank you for helping me on my actor’s journey!”
The rest of us fake-coughed to cover our laughs.
Hollywood moved on to Resist for a hug, but she patted him on both cheeks instead. That cracked everybody up.
“I can’t say any of you have helped me on my ‘actor’s journey,’ ” said Resist. “But it was pretty satisfying to stop Meticulous together. You Mes are all right.”
Motor looked thoughtful before speaking. “You know, I don’t think I’ll get another mobility cart when I get back. After all this running around, it would feel too…cushy.” He grinned. “But I will stock up on Diarrhea Delights. I mean, those things come in handy in any reality.”
At the mention of the dreaded candy, Hollywood made a sour face. But before he could gripe about allergies, I cut him off. “Guys and gals, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Then don’t!” said Resist. “This is getting sappy. We know how you feel anyway. We’re all Mes, right?”
Motor fiddled with the MePad. “The car should return here when we’re done taking everybody home. When it gets back, turn it off. That’s the only way to make sure Meticulous won’t get hold of it again.”
I nodded. “But you know, maybe I could turn it on from time to time and pay you all a visit?”
“I don’t know,” said Motor. “Awfully risky.”
“What’s the harm?” said Hollywood. “Come to Earth Thirty-Four! I can show you every episode of Baker’s Dozen!”
“Pass!” said Resist.
“I wasn’t just thinking about a social call,” I said. “The first world Meticulous took me to was totally flooded from climate change. I kind of wonder if there’s something we could do to help it. And maybe help other Earths too.”
“Definitely!” said Hollywood. “It’s just like what Resist was telling everybody at Me Con: we Mes could actually accomplish something if we worked together! Especially us four!”
“This is the part where I’m supposed to say, ‘I doubt I’m up to the task,’ ” said Motor, smiling. “But I’ll save that for a later date.”
“We do make an okay team, sort of.” Resist shrugged. “Sure, sign me up, I guess.”
I almost started bawling like Hollywood right then and there, but I kept myself together. “It’s settled, then. I’ll check in soon.”
A
s the doors closed, Motor waved goodbye, and Hollywood gave me an overblown bow. But it was Resist who got in the last word: “See you later, All of Me.”
Then the elevator carried them away, leaving me alone in the room with nobody but myself for company.
The MeMinder chose that moment to pipe up yet again. “You have been sedentary for more than five minutes.” It started listing the many things I was supposed to be doing at the moment, with no mention of all the stuff I’d already done.
But I didn’t let it finish.
I hit the Reset button instead.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the family of raccoons that terrorize me every morning on my predawn jog. The way they appear in the dark, staring me down with their beady eyes and forcing me to turn around and shuffle in the other direction, really gets my adrenaline going and jump-starts my brain. I thought up many of the scenes in this book after some raccoon or group of raccoons scared the crap out of me in this way, so they’re kind of like my muses.
Otherwise, I owe undying gratitude to many other life-forms across the multiverse:
Agent extraordinaire John Rudolph
Editor supreme Diane Landolf
My very thoughtful sensitivity readers, Cris Beam, Tavi Tragus, and Sharane Wang
Erin, Wilson, and Oliver (plus the cats and the bearded dragon)
Mom and Dad, Julie, Debbie, Clay, Skye, Kaley, Ken, Maggie, Willow, Steve, Pam, Eric, and Anna
All the great folks at Random House Children’s Books
Kim at Paradigm
Matthew, Mike, Spike, and Yoni, plus Mr. Mullins and Mr. Myers
And a special shout-out to the people who invented the assorted brands of allergy nasal spray I used to ward off Austin allergens while under deadline
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