Page 30 of In What World

“I love teaching,” I say.

“Sure, but is it what you want?” she presses.

Our conversation is interrupted by the sound of Dallas clearing his throat. He’s leaned against the side of the Memory Machine with his arms folded across his chest.

“Hello,strangers,” he says.

This isn’t my Dallas. I knew that in my gut long before Cilla said anything about alternate realities, or I saw another version of me in the office. But now Ifeelit, this awful, scraping wrongness, like my insides are being dragged across concrete by a force I can’t see or control.

“What gave us away?” Cilla asks him.

“You did, darling,” this Dallas says. “Well, another you. The Priscilla I know sent me a text, telling me to break a leg during my last dress and saying how she so wished she could be thereto see it. It came through right as I watched you walk out of the dressing room.”

“How nice of her to make time for that text while she’s got so many lives to save,” Cilla says. “Where we’re from, you’ve gone missing.Walking through universes, according to something you said to me on the phone.”

This Dallas doesn’t appear surprised. It seems as though he’s already worked out as much for himself. “So let me get this straight,” he says. “The Memory Machine turned on, glowed green, did the countdown and all that, and when you got out, this is where you were?”

“Pretty much,” Cilla replies. “But it glowed red.”

“She’s not a doctor, by the way,” I inform him, just so he has all the relevant information.

“Interesting.” Other Dallas runs a finger along the door of the machine. “If I got a text from another Priscilla, that means you two didn’t replace yourselves in this timeline.”

“We definitely did not. We just left another Marlowe inside your office,” Cilla says.

Other Dallas’s face scrunches up, working through something in his mind as he opens the machine’s door to scrutinize what’s inside.

“Do you care to explain how you think this happened?” I ask. There’s a surprising amount of anger in my voice. More than I’ve ever directed at him before. Even if this isn’t my Dallas, I still can’t quite make sense of the differentiation enough to stop myself from taking this out on him.

“How did you get the passcode?” this Dallas asks, ignoring me.

“Everyone is so obsessed with learning how I got the passcode!” Cilla says, edging toward real exasperation. “It wasn’t thathard to figure out. Yes, maybe it involved spying on you when you didn’t know I was watching, but hey, I was like fifteen and I never did anything meaningful with the information until right now. And it’s a good thing, isn’t it? Because otherwise you—theotheryou, the one we know—would be lost forever.”

“I doubt he’s lost,” this Dallas says. “But you two sure are.”

Tears spring to my eyes. It’s hard enough to lose our Dallas so abruptly, but hearing from another version of him that it might have been intentional makes it worse. Why would he do that after all we’ve been through together? Wouldn’t he want to say goodbye?

“Can you please tell us what the machine is for?” I ask. “I think we’ve earned that much.”

Something in my desperation makes him relent, because the hard shell of his expression softens as he says, “It’s supposed to allow me to travel to an alternate version of my own memories to take over for myself. If you’ve seen another version of yourself here, that means this version of the machine may be operable, but it doesn’t work necessarily.”

Nothing he says sounds very good. In fact, it sounds very bad.

“What version of the world is he—are you—trying to find?” Cilla asks.

“That’s not for me to share,” Other Dallas says.

Cilla nudges his shoulder. “We’ve made it this far! And you’re him. He’s you. We are all one. The secret of the machine is safe with us.”

“I’ve told you plenty,” Other Dallas says. “Why don’t you tell me some things in return? How is it you two ended up doing this together? Are you from a world where you’re friends? Because that would certainly be the wildest thing I’ve heard all day. Two versions of the same person don’t compare.”

“We’re not friends,” I say.

“We’re adults,” Cilla overlaps. She looks at me. “Isn’t that right? We’re too old to be anything other than serious adults who do very serious things and have zero feelings about anything from our past.”

“That’s not at all what I said,” I tell her.

“I’m paraphrasing,” she replies.