IT’S A HELL OF A TOWN
“JOEL? JOEL? CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
“Yeah,” Joel2 answered as the blinding white light subsided. “We’re here.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I had to do some tricky calculations there. Your friend’s telemetry—”
“You did a good job, Julie. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know as things progress. Right now we have to get moving. If you monitor a peep from Sylvia’s comms, let me know right away.”
“Will do! Good luck.”
I wondered if Julie knew as she analyzed our telemetry data what it meant that I was Joel2’s “friend.” She had access to almost everything Sylvia did and saw. Would it matter if she knew?
Joel2 nudged me. “Stop thinking and start moving.”
I felt like we were quite the sight. At least Joel2 looked somewhat like he belonged in a hospital, with his bloody patched eye and healing head wound. I just looked like a doctor who had fallen into a muddy puddle in the woods.
“I gotta hit the head,” Joel2 said, which reminded me I needed to go as well. It would also be a good opportunity for us both to clean up our faces and make ourselves slightly more presentable for a walkabout in New York.
Fortunately, the restroom was close to the vestibule. The room itself was a basic deal—a single white-tiled bathroom with rows of quartz basins beneath mirrors, leading to two faux-wood-grain toilet stalls, where one’s waste would be magically transformed to reclaimed water vapor and discarded dust.
After finishing our business, we did our best to clean up. As I washed my face, Joel2 gingerly removed his various bandages and wiped off the dried blood. There was a first aid kit hanging on the wall opposite the door. He took out a few fresh bandages and antiseptic lotion, but couldn’t quite get it over his ruined eye. I reached toward the wound, but he recoiled.
“I got it,” he said defensively. “Just no depth perception, that’s all.”
“Don’t be dumb,” I said. “It’s not like I don’t know my way around your face.” I reached for the bandage again. This time he grudgingly let me take it. Gently, I affixed it to his forehead, taking care not to brush up against his numerous gashes. It was a strangely intimate moment, made more bizarre by the fact that I was interacting with myself.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Joel2 said once his eye was covered.
I knew immediately. “Halloween.”
“Yeah. That party senior year in college. I—”
“We—”
“We went as the Dread Pirate Roberts from The Princess Bride—”
“Nobody knew who we were supposed to be,” I finished. “I remember. Wearing the eye patch didn’t help.”
“Can’t be a pirate without an eye patch,” he said reasonably. “Sylvia got it, though.” We both smiled at the memory. “Even though we’d never met her before, when we asked if we could fetch her a drink—”
“She lifted our eye patch and said, ‘As you wish.’” I shook my head, still impressed that she knew the obscure 1980s movie well enough to quote it. “We knew right then, didn’t we?”
“We did,” he said, and nodded. “Also, it didn’t hurt that she was hot.”
“Brains, beauty, and a knowledge of 1980s pop culture,” I said. “She was the whole package.”
We both grinned sentimentally for a moment. Then Joel2 grew serious. Contemplative.
I took my hand off his face. “We’re going to get her back. We’ll worry about what happens after, after.”
“Right. Maybe she’ll just copy herself so Frankenstein can have his own bride.” He turned back to the mirror, pretending to adjust the eye bandage so he’d have something to do.
“We will figure it out,” I promised him. “If anyone can grapple with something like this, it’s her.”
He seemed like he might say something else, but instead he simply nodded. I realized then that nobody had ever experienced what the two of us were going through at that moment. Sure, we’ve all been alone with our thoughts plenty of times, but we’ve never been face-to-face with our independent three-dimensional selves. As I regarded the injured version of myself, a man who, like me, had been forced to question his entire existence but was still managing to soldier on, all I could feel was pride. Pride at the strength and resolve that Joel2 was showing, and the knowledge that that strength must also be hidden somewhere in me.
I clapped my doppelgänger on the shoulder, smiling at our two cleaned-up reflections. “Not bad for two unholy twins birthed from the valley of Gehinnom.”
“Yeah, I totally don’t look like a guy who was blown up, reconstructed from a partial backup, kidnapped, half blinded, and almost killed twice.”
“At the very worst, I’d say you look like you’ve only been half blinded and almost killed just once.” We shared another grim smile.
“Okay, I guess it’s time to put on our big boy pants again,” Joel2 said. “Do you have any idea where we’re going to find this Moti guy?”
“I do,” I said, repacking the first aid kit. I was rolling what remained of the bandage back into its dispenser, when—Is that what I think it is?—my eyes landed on a white metal box. It had a lightning bolt prominently printed on its bottom front panel.
WARNING: ELECTRIC SHOCK.