Page 79 of What If It's You?

“Nothing, just…relieved it worked out,” I said. He smiled absently and turned back to the screen. “Can you see whether my real profile is fully set up?”

“Already checked, it should work now. And no sequences running, checked that too, but you should be able to start a new one now if you want. Or one of the ones you were trying to start during your calibration. Though…I wouldn’t run the one youwererunning…” He coughed, awkward, suddenly very focused on the code on his screen.

“Don’t worry, that’s not a question I have any interest in pursuing further.” I physically rolled my chair back, raising both hands. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Drew’s lips quirked, a quick exhale the only tangible sign of relief. Tenderness squeezed me for a moment, but that was all. No desire, nowhat if. Just appreciation for my brilliant and kind and thank-god-not-still-pining friend. “Well, once you’ve dug out, just say the word if you want to play around in here again. And I’ll let you know if I figure out more about the mysteriousLoEverett.” He grinned hugely and turned back to the screen, already absorbed in his work again.

I made my way back to my desk, thoughts flying by so fast it almost made me dizzy. Not vertigo dizzy, thank god, but close.

I couldn’t say why, but I was certain I was right, that the all-important change hadn’t been my decision to stay with Ollie—I’d made that days ago—it was something bigger, more fundamental, it wasmechanging. The moment I’d been willing to lose him? Or the moment I’d decided to tell Drew the truth? Or later, my telling Ollie that he should look for a jobheloved, and I would be the oneto make it work for once? It could have been any of them, or all of them, or something else entirely.

Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to question it, not when I’d finally realized what really mattered to me.

Besides, I needed all my focus for finding a local writing group. One that could push me to keep at it, whatever “it” wound up being. Though I had the start of an idea…

“And no one has been able to access the user profile since?”

“Nope. I mean, I could probably solve the mystery of my own password if I put my mind to it, it’s clearly some version ofme,but I honestly don’t have much interest in engaging with AltR again in the near future. Or ever.”

Dana tilted her head to the side, acknowledging that, and took a long, slow sip of her latte. Her eyes were narrowed, gaze fixed on some point in the middle distance. I could almost see her brain whirring and spinning, as complex as any quantum computer and possibly even more precise. She’d emailed the day after AltR had miraculously resolved its processing issues, her message characteristically no-nonsense:Would love to know whether your problem sorted itself out. If you have no idea what I’m referring to or who I am, please do let me know that as well, as it will be highly informative to me. I’d imagine a search of our recent correspondence would clarify things some, but not fully, in that instance. At the very least I hope said correspondence would prompt you to respond to this message.

“The only thing I could come up with—and I know this sounds a little ridiculous,” I said, cupping both hands around my mug of cocoa, letting the warmth ground me. In the last week and a half, the weather had seesawed from the “lingering glimpses of summer” phase of fall into the color-leached chill of winter-is-coming, and the windows of the coffee shop were fogged, the late afternoon light fading rapidly outside. I thrust my tongue into my cheek,trying to excavate the words. “I think the program…maybe recognized a new version ofme,if that makes sense?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like…that last day with Ollie, I realized that it’s not just about who I want to be with, it’s abouthowI want to be with them?” I scrunched up my face, shaking my head, unable to express myself precisely enough to meet Dana’s scientific standards. “I think maybe…something important about our relationship changed—or about meinour relationship—and that’s what the program responded to. Sorry, I know that’s vague, but it’s the best I can do.” I shrugged.

“It is. But this isn’t an undergraduate course.” She smiled slyly. Then it slipped away and she squinted again, clearly turning over what I’d said. “And honestly…I think you might be on to something. After all, the problem, as far as we can tell, is that the computers were running far too many versions of you, and the overlap between them was too great for the program to accurately parse you anymore.”

“Right.”Parse mesounded highly detached and vaguely sinister, but then nothing could get more literally detached than I had been recently.

“Maybe simply making a firm choice wasn’t enough to extricate you by the end.Youneeded to change enough for the program to recognize where you belonged. It functionally needed to see you as anentirely new person.”

“So you agree, then? I basically just…personal-growthed my way out of Schrödinger’s box?”

“If you want to be reductive about it,” she said tartly, rolling her eyes. Then she took a deep breath and bit her lower lip. “But I do thinksomethinglike that must be in play here, yes. If that’s the case, the implications for the multiple worlds interpretation would be profound.” The light flickering on in her eyes was familiar, remarkably similar to Drew’sshiny new puzzlelook. “The breadth of possibilities for how to split off universes—and how they mightoverlap—could be even wider than we imagined. I wonder, if you were willing to access that new profile—”

“I’m sure nothing like this would happen again. Especially since it’s possible the whole thing was just some fluke of the AI training itself in the background until it finally, you know…learned whatever it needed to.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Dana said, her knowing smile returning. “For now, of course, it will all remain in the realm of the theoretical.”

“Where it belongs,” I said.

“Hear, hear.” She raised her mug and I clinked mine against it. The sound of a church bell tolling in the distance managed to cut through the buzz of the coffee shop, and I clicked my phone to check the time.

“On that note, I should get going. Ollie’s going to propose tonight, I want to pick the right outfit. He’ll probably have a photographer waiting in the wings.”

Dana cocked her head again, eyes questioning.

“Sorry if I’m being dense, I’ve always found certain social rituals tedious, but if you know he’s planning to propose…isn’t that knowledgeitselfthe proposal?”

“No, it’s proof that we understand each other well enough that I’d be an idiot not to say yes.”

“If you say so.”

When I showed up at Mother Hen two hours later, ten minutes early and practically bouncing with excitement, Ollie was already waiting, perched on the edge of the narrow bench just inside the door, tapping his fingers rapidly against his thigh. Occasionally he’d give a quick nod, like he was reassuring himself. Part of me wanted to sit out there and watch him for a few more minutes, take the opportunity to really see the person he was apart from me, recognizable but shifted from the Ollie I knew. But the longer I waited outside, the longer it would be before I got to see all the love in Ollie’s eyes, the promise that for us, forever wouldmeanforever, atleast as long as we kept making the effort to find each other, toseeeach other. To take risks and give each other the space and trust to try big new things and fail hugely and just be instead of trying to so carefully tend to our lives that we wound up choking them off.

Well, really, I’d been the one doing that.

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