"Let me get this straight: Say I come to Texas with you. We go back in time, to two weeks ago. At that point, there'll be two of you, right? The one who is back there now, and the present you. Once you return to the present, there will still be two of you, right? because the one who is back there now will have caught up. How do you handle that?"

My first impulse was to tell Dan, Sorry, I can't. I'll be washing my hair. In fact, I almost said it out loud.

Why would I such a nonsensical thing? Put it down to my teen hormones. That whole business (the "raging hormones") is something you forget as an adult, and something you don't understand as a teenager: you get a lot of opportunities to work on your impulse control, and most of the time, you lose. Luckily I was mature enough inside to keep a lid on my whimsy.

My inner pause — where I metaphorically bit my tongue — made me think: I had to watch what I said to Dan. Sure, only an idiot would ask what he'd asked, but on the other hand, this idiot was my only resource. He was my only way out of this mess. I needed to keep Dan on my side, or at least not offend him. There were still at least four hours left. Enough time to find a solution, hopefully. In the worst case, I'd give up, climb in the lifeboat with Carla and Kristy, and go back to being Fred. We'd disappear, along with my memories of my life as Dexie, so I'd never know what I'd given up. Thankfully, Kristy's tantrum and rage would disappear as well, along with the confusion and fear it left in me. It would all fade away, because it never would have happened. Nothing like it had ever happened in our life together before, thank God.

I enjoyed my life as Fred. Apart from my recent medical problems, it was a great life; a very lucky life. As far as my medical issues were concerned, the aliens were going to fix that.

In other words, I wasn't desperate. I certainly wasn't desperate enough to take Dan's offer.

Still, if there was any way I could remain as Dexie — any way that made sense, I mean — I was ready to do it. Until I could come up with a sensible plan, I needed to keep talking to Dan. I needed to stall for time. Although *I* didn't need to talk; I needed to keep Dan talking. He loved the sound of his own voice, sure, but he also knew a lot about the alien technology. So far, he'd been pretty good at explaining how things worked. Maybe I could find a possibility there. I just needed to stall. I needed to keep pedaling.

And so, in the spirit of stalling, I stood up and asked him, "Do you mind if I have a drink?"

Dan took that as an encouraging sign. He smiled and held his empty glass toward me. "Why don't you get me a refill while you're over there, darlin'?"

I gave him a little smile (but not too much), and slowly walked to the liquor cabinet. I poured him another two inches of bourbon, walked it back to him, and then returned and considered my poison. I settled on an ounce of Jameson's. The bottle had never been opened, so it made a very satisfying crack! when I twisted off the cap.

While I stood by the liquor cabinet, I asked him, "Are you inviting me to Texas two weeks ago, or Texas now?"

"It would have to be Texas two weeks ago," he replied. "Does it matter?"

"I guess not," I replied. "But why does it have to be back then?"

He took a sip of bourbon, swilled it in his glass, and frowned. "What difference does it make? Do you want to come with me or not? I don't think you'll be getting many offers in the next four hours."

"I have to think about it!" I protested. "I hardly know you!"

He smiled again, and his eyes twinkled. "There's a remedy for that," he laughed. When I gave a puzzled frown, he explained, "There's a bed in the room back there," as he gestured to one of the doors.

"That's not what I meant," I replied in a soft voice. "I have to think about my life. For instance, what about my identity? I'll need a name, a birth certificate, a social security card, and so on."

"Oh, yeah," he said. "No problem. The aliens and I have worked out a system for generating documents and identities. Did you know, the aliens make extended visits on Earth? My alien counterpart, actually went to college in Chicago, Illinois! Can you believe that?"

"Sure, I guess I believe it," I shrugged. "How's it work?"

He sighed.

"Hey, look," I told him, "I need to ask questions! Can I point out that I haven't said no yet?"

"You don't seem too excited, either."

"Give me a little time. I have to think. I need to consider."

He grunted an unwilling consent. Then he picked up the iPad from the table and looked at the blank screen as if he were reading. He frowned, blew out his cheeks, and then stared intently at the pad for a few moments. His lips moved slightly.

"What is that thing?" I asked.

"It's a means of communicating with my alien counterpart," he explained. "It's tuned to my brain waves somehow, so only I can read it. He sends me messages, and I hear a ding. You haven't heard it, have you? A light little ding? Very soft?" I shook my head no. "If I look at the pad and pretend I'm writing on it, or pretend I'm talking to it — not out loud of course, just pretend — then what I think gets written there, and my counterpart can read it."

"Handy," I commented.

"Yeah, I guess," he said. "Sometimes. Most of the time it's just a big pain in the butt."

I nodded and took a tiny sip of whiskey. A warm, sunny sensation flowed over me, filling my whole body. I guess I was pretty sensitive to it.

"Okay, now," I said, sitting down at the table, "let me get this straight: Say I come to Texas with you. We go back in time, to two weeks ago— no wait, let me finish! At that point, there'll be two of you, right? The one who is back there now, and the present you. Once the mission is complete, and you return to the present, there will still be two of you, right? because the one who is back there now will have caught up. How do you handle that?"

He gave me a sly smile and a slow wink.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, don't be coy! You know what," he smirked.

"Let's not do this again. I have no idea what you're thinking."

"You're asking whether there will be two of me, because you're thinking of a threesome!"

"No!" I said. "My God!"

He grunted in annoyance.

"So?" I asked.

"So what?" he responded.

"So, how do you handle these duplicates that pop up when you go back and forth in time?"

"You don't handle it, because it doesn't work that way," Dan replied.

"Oh!" I interrupted, struck by a sudden thought. "And what about all the dead people from that accident? The forty-five people who died on that other spaceship?"

"What about 'em?" he asked.

"Their bodies will go back in time and then return. What if the accident doesn't happen the second time around?"

"Okay," Dan said, and rubbed his face with both hands, the way a person does when they're tired. "Let's take your ideas one at a time: If we brought the bodies back and forth, and the accident didn't happen, you'd have a bunch of corpses for a bunch of people who are still alive. You follow? There'd be the dead one and the live one.

"Also, if we carried the corpses into the past and back, and the accident happened again, we'd have two corpses for each person.

"In fact, if it worked like that, everybody on this ship would have at least one double. If I went back and forth in time for this mission, at the end there would be two of me. The captain of this ship has gone on two dozen time missions (give or take). If what you're thinking was correct, there would be a small tribe of him now, but there's not."

"Why not?"

"Because time travel is a local phenomenon. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. It wasn't even possible until they could generate enough energy to encompass a whole planet. Imagine that the time-travel field is a big balloon. The aliens only have enough air (or energy) to blow that balloon up to Earth-size. That's the limit.

"When they move backward and change something, it only changes inside the balloon: on Earth, or whatever the target planet is.

"Think about time inside the balloon as a mass of threads, all woven and tangled together. If any of those threads extend outside the balloon, it breaks the balloon. The air (or energy) just keeps leaking out. That spaceship accident? That's big. That's a huge event, but it has nothing to do with Earth. That event is not going to rewind and play again. It's too far out of range. It's not going to be affected by our mission.

"The only people who have to worry about doubles are the four of us from Earth: you, your family, and me. That's why none of us can go back.

"The rest of the people on this ship are from other planets, far off. Or if they visited Earth, it was long ago. So we won't be running into their doubles in Earth's past."

My eyebrows popped. "You can't go back either?"

"Nope," Dan admitted. "When you three get put into a lifeboat heading for home, they will put me in one, heading for my little corner of Texas. The ship will start peeling back time, and the four of us will vanish. We will never have happened."

He sniffed and took another sip of bourbon. He twitched and blinked, and his body gave a quick shudder. The effect was far from reassuring — I had to wonder whether he'd taken something other than a drink during the brief time he'd been away.

"On the other hand, if you want to stay with me in Texas, you could go back in time and stay there. It's true that there'd be two of you — you and the original Dexie — but as you said yourself, that's the idea."

"Why would I stay?" I asked him.

"It's just easier that way. Do you remember when I told you that I have to witness on your behalf? I have to witness the rescue, when they rescue Dexie."

"Yes," I replied, puzzled. "I remember, but I don't see the connection."

"I can't go into the past, or come out of the past again — just as you said. There would be two of me, forever after. So what I do each time I'm on one of these missions, is to prepare some instructions for myself; the myself of two weeks ago. Now, this is a little tricky, but it works.

"The aliens go back in time. They pick me up, they give me my instructions (from my future self), and I go along to witness the event and do what amounts to paperwork. Do you follow?"

"I think so. So you're saying you'll include in your instructions, Take this girl home?"

Dan grinned. "Yes, exactly!"

"That sounds pretty sleazy to me," I observed. Dan's grin expanded and he laughed. He actually slapped his knee and hooted.

I asked him, "How do you know that the you from two weeks ago will accept me and do what you promise?"

"I know," Dan replied, "Because I have recently been that man, and I know that he is a low-down, dirty, woman-chasin' dog, just like me."

I sighed. He looked at me in silence, smiling.

He took another sip of bourbon, which reminded me that I, too, had a drink, so I took an infinitesimally small sip and let the liquid warm in my mouth. I rested my chin in my right hand and looked down at the table. I wanted to think — I needed to think, but no thoughts were coming. I rested my glass on the table, but held on to it, toying with the liquid inside, tilting and rocking and turning it, this way and that. Dan put his hand on mine, and I let him. What difference did it make? I wasn't going to go with him in any case.

Surprisingly, his fingers were calloused. His touch made me aware of how soft my skin felt. His nails, however, were clean and well kept. I looked at his face. He smiled. At least he had enough sense not to talk. He figured his odds of catching me were pretty good, and he didn't want to blow it.

My mind wandered over the ship, or what I imagined the ship to be. I didn't have much material to go on. I didn't know the size of the crew or what sort of machinery they had. In fact, the only thing I knew was that somewhere was an alien attorney, and somewhere there were forty-five alien bodies.

"Dan? Where do they keep the bodies?"

"Who? What? Are you talking about Texas, now? What bodies?"

"The people who died in that spaceship accident."

"Oh!" he scoffed. "I wouldn't know. Probably in a cargo bay."

"Won't they stink? I mean, bodies decompose."

"No. They've got ways of preserving things. Like food, you know. They've got these generators that kind of freeze things in time. They can ship fresh fruit across the universe. They keep the dead folks fresh, too."

"Couldn't they save some of those people? The way they saved me?"

"Uhhh—" Dan had to think a bit before he understood what I was saying. His eyes were red as if he'd been up all night. "You mean take somebody's soul and put it in another person's body?"

I nodded.

"Maybe they did, for all we know. In any case, that's another legal mess. I didn't mention that it's one reason we have to undo what the teenage aliens did after your accident. They never should have put you into Dexie's body in the first place. She was not, uh... You see... erm... Let me put it this way: are you an organ donor?"

"Yes."

"Being a body donor is similar. You have to opt-in. You need to make an active decision and a legal declaration that you're willing to have a stranger use your body after you're dead. Dexie never did that."

My jaw dropped. "Then why did you ask me go to Texas with you?" I demanded. "Were you just scamming me, to get me into bed?"

He denied it, with evident irritation. "No, of course not! Remember, the original idea was to turn you back into Fred. That would be the remedy for the teenagers' crime; for that specific crime. Now, on the other hand, now that Dexie will be restored to herself, if you keep this body, it will be seen as a separate remedy for Fred."

"I guess I see," I admitted.

I took another sip of whiskey, and a light began to dawn, some bits of an idea... a way out for me, possibly.

However, it would completely derail Dan's idea of hauling me off to Texas. Could I trust him to bring it to the aliens on my behalf? I mean, he was a living example of conflict of interest. There was no way I could trust him to faithfully represent my interest.

Abruptly Dan sat up and made an irritated noise. He took his hand off mine and picked up the little pad. Another little inspiration hit me.

"Dan," I whispered, "I want to talk to the alien attorney."

With his eyes glued to the screen, he mumbled, "She wants to talk to the alien attorney." He barely knew what he was saying.

Then, he knew! His eyes popped open wide as the words appeared on his screen. He began swearing a blue streak, and I imagine those words began appearing on the screen, as well.

Dan slammed the iPad face-down on the table.

"That's torn it!" he shouted. "You've really done it now, haven't you, Missy?"

"Take it easy," I told him, as a blush came over my face. "I think I have a way that we can both be happy."

© 2014 by Kaleigh Way