In the Beginning
Part 8
The
other me got it together first. "Jee-zus, man, you scared the snot
outta me!" she gasped in my scared tone, grabbing at her heart the way I
always do. "And put that thing away before you kill us!" she added,
grabbing the sword away from me.
"Who
are you?" I asked unnecessarily. The other me arched her eyebrow
sarcastically, then spread her arms out, looked down at herself and back up at
me. "Noooo," I said in disbelief. "Noooo, no, you are not
me. No. This is not at all possible. I am me and you
are..." I paused.
"Y'know,
I am the spitting image of you!" she chuckled, not helping at all.
"Who knew."
"You
can't be me..." I paused again. "...unless you're..."
"The
other You," said the other Me. "The one you've been getting in
trouble for."
"Really?"
I asked, once again unnecessarily.
"Would
this sword still be on if I wasn't?" she asked, quickly carving our name
into the side of one of the file cabinets.
"No,
I guess not," I agreed. "Well, man, it's incredible to meet
you!" I
gasped, shaking the other Daina's
free hand as she turned off the sword. "Have you been sitting here all
this time?"
"Yep,"
came the reply.
"Did
Chris know you were here?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well,
why didn't she take me to you in the first place?"
"Did
you ask?" asked the other Me. I frowned.
"Noooo.
Well, did you know I was..." She nodded before I could finish.
"How
do you think you got here?" the other Me asked.
"I
bumped my head and got knocked unconscious," I replied dutifully.
"You
think you did that on your own...or was it, maybe, a subconscious desire to get
to this alternate reality that caused you to start off waking up late in the
first place, making the rest of the morning fall in like clockwork?" the
other Me suggested.
So
this had been planned before I even woke up!, I thought. "Well, jeez,
why didn't you come help me? And why didn't Christine just tell me?"
"Well,
that would have been far too easy, wouldn't it?" she grinned. "How do
you expect to take over the place if you don't know what kinda stuff to
expect?"
"What?
What's this taking over stuff? I just wanna get back to the real world and
start living again."
"That's
the problem," said Me. "You can't go back to the way you were; that's
gone forever now. But, you're right, you can't stay here. That means we've
gotta find a middle ground between your subconscious (that's me) and your
conscious (that's you)."
"How
do we do that?" I asked.
"Simple,"
I replied to myself. "We make a merge. That way you can exist on both
planes."
"But..."
"Look,
it's not that big a deal. You still be able to go back to your known reality,
but when you wanna shift back to this one, you simply relax and come back. And
there's no point in both of us existing, right?"
"I
see you've already got this worked out," I sighed.
"Yep.
And, as usual, you just now found out." The other Me took me by the
shoulders. "Don't worry about it," she said, seriously. "Would I
steer you wrong?" I frowned and she added, "On purpose?"
"But
if I become you, then I'll have to do all the rescuing and heroic stuff
you do and I can't!" I said desperately.
"Did
you make it out of this Lady Wilira deal alive?"
"As
far as I know."
"Did
you use your head?"
"Yeah,
sorta..."
"Consider
that your training," said the other Me. Then she added, "You made me
the way you've always wanted to be in your head because you couldn't really do
that stuff in you world, right? Well, now you'll have a place to do all the
adventurous things that you want to and you'll have all the time in the world to
get the hang of it. Trust me, you'll be fine."
With
that, she walked toward me, smiled and phased right into my body. I felt woozy
for a moment, but I could hear myself saying, "Look at it this way;
now, when you wake up, you'll have even more realistic stories to write
about.........."
Daina woke slowly, the pain from her head reminding her of
her recent accident. From the other side of the door, she heard a moan.
"Kathy?" she called.
"Uh-huh," came the reply. Daina looked up as the
door opened and Kathy walked through it, rubbing her hand. "God, I hurt my
hand on the door when you...oh, my God, are you alright?"
"I think I passed out," Daina mumbled, as Kathy
knelt down next to her like a frightened mother hen. "I'm alright,
really."
"Daina, I'm sorry, really, I just came to tell you that
your class was cancelled this morning because the pipes froze over in Krebs
Hall and..." Kathy could see Daina's attention span was waning.
"You're not listening to me. Are you sure you're okay?"
"I had a weird dream while I was out, like I was gone
for a long time or something," she replied. "I feel like I'm in a
Twilight Zone version of 'The Wizard of Oz'."
They were both silent for a moment while Kathy eyed Daina
strangely. "Listen, Mouse, did anything...happen to you while you
were out?" she asked, using Daina's nickname.
Daina frowned, then suddenly had it dawn on her. "I'm
not sure," she said, as she began to grin, "but I guarantee it'll
make one helluva story!!!"