“Let me try to make it clearer for you.” Zeniya grabbed a silver marker from the heart cup sitting on the desk and drew a number 2 on Thomas’ wrist bracelet.
Thomas 2 frowned at his companion.
“Thomas Morell! I know you’re in there! I can hear your voice! Open up! If you gate out, I will consider it evidence of your guilt. Running away from an active investigation is illegal!” Officer Drohiryak yelled from behind the office door.
“By order of the Galactic Rim Good Directorate Company, I order you to open this door!”
“Yes, officer, we will comply,” Lizz said cheerfully.
The GLM must have taken control of the office door because in that moment, the metal door whooshed open, letting in ten armored police Dexes surrounding the human officer.
The Dexes quickly spread around the office, their railguns at the ready.
Thomas 2 raised his hands in the air, letting go of Zeniya.
[1]
Thomas 1 and Zeniya flashed into a small basement room covered in dust. A single incandescent light bulb flickered on the ceiling between several spider webs.
The portal behind them snapped shut just as Officer Drohiryak started to yell something from the other side.
“What the shit is happening to me…?” Thomas 1 sputtered. His mind tried to process the sight of another version of himself still standing in his office with his arms raised in the air.
“Yes?” Zeniya asked.
“Why… are there two of me?!” Thomas 1 growled at his cosmic companion, suspecting that the paradox had something to do with what was happening to him.
“You’re observing two possible realities,” Zeniya explained.
“You did this!” Thomas accused.
“Yes,” Zeniya said. “I did. You absorbed sufficient tachyons during your interactions with me to divide your consciousness into two distinctive parallel dimensions.”
“Why is this happening?” Thomas 1 demanded. A migraine began to pulse at his temple as he attempted to process twice the information coming from two distinctly separate versions of reality.
“Remember how I said that there are other cosmic beings anchoring me to your reality?” Zeniya asked. “Half of them wanted to see one thing and the other something completely different. So I violated causality just a tiny bit because I was also curious.
“You can now attain twice the information! You’re welcome!”
“‘A tiny bit’?! ‘Twice the information’?!” Thomas 1 waved his arms. “Are you screwing with me? Which one is the real me?”
“Both…?” Zeniya said. “Does it really matter?”
“Argh!” Thomas 1 rubbed his face exasperatedly.
[2]
The second Thomas, who’d failed to escape from his office, tried very hard not to have a nervous breakdown.
He had suspected that the tachyons were going to screw with him in some way, but he definitely wasn’t prepared to exist in two places at once today.
“It took me far too long to find you, Mr. Morell.” Officer Drohiryak paced around the mailroom. “My Dexes should have noted your data ID tag, but alas… there was too much interference in the area due to the tachyon emissions.
“Thus, I had to waste my precious time scouting the Galactic Rim for all Thomas Morells, checking their faces against yours. Did you know that there are 4175 Thomas Morells across the galaxy, and a third of them have no photo ID?”
“That’s definitely a lot of Thomases.” Thomas 2 gulped, wishing he could reach into his pocket and swallow the Advil residing there.
The double-information migraine was exceptionally annoying. He wanted to snap at Zeniya, but he was pinned in place by the Dex railguns pointed at his head.
“You’ve made me quite annoyed, Mr. Morell,” the officer said. “I do not appreciate my time being wasted.”
“I understand,” Thomas 2 replied with a quick nod. “I’m sorry.”
“Why isn’t your photo ID updated?” the officer asked. “Why do you look like a shaggy homeless man in your online profile?”
“I, erm, didn’t shave when the Dex came by to take my photo?” Thomas 2 offered.
“You’re a bad liar, Thomas.” Drohiryak shook his head. “I think you did it on purpose to hide from the law.”
“I didn’t.” Thomas 2 shook his head. “I was... going through a bad time.”
“You could have at least updated the G-workboard photo since then!” Drohiryak slammed a metal fist on the nearest table.
Thomas winced.
[1]
With hands shaking, Thomas 1 swallowed two Advils, drowning them with water from a plastic Aquafina bottle he acquired from a dusty corner.
He unlocked the door with a key and stepped out of the basement, taking Zeniya with him.
Muttering angrily about a certain cosmic butt screwing with him, he walked across the red brick building with the “Centrallia Mail” sign on it and rolled up the window blinds.
A view of a city street that looked like a perfectly mundane 21st century small town greeted the pair.
Zeniya looked out of the window and turned her head left and right, admiring the landscape of green lawns, lush trees, and blue sky.
“The sky here is… fake,” she commented, staring directly at the sun.
“Yeah.” Thomas 1 nodded. “It is. Don’t let the locals know that though.”
“Why?”
“They’re a cult of Conservationists,” Thomas 1 said, sighing. “They built this megastructure on Ganymede to maintain a perfect replica of a 21st century civilization. Basically, it’s a self-contained mountain town where everyone has jobs. They exist in a manufactured world without GLMs.”
“How... curious,” Zeniya said.
“To each their own,” Thomas 1 shrugged. “Anyway, I have to deliver this box. When we go out, please avoid saying things like ‘The sky is fake’ to the locals.”
“Why?”
“Because it would be very rude, and the locals would kick me out and ask another mailman to deliver their packages,” Thomas 1 said. “I like visiting Ganymede. It’s sort of like a curious bubble, a place suspended in time.”
“What’s in the box?” the cosmic being asked.
“Hell if I know.” Thomas 1 shrugged.
“Aren’t you curious about what you’re delivering to these humans?” Zeniya inquired.
“It’s probably something they can’t manufacture themselves,” Thomas 1 said, eyeing the box he was carrying.
“Centrallia is a self-contained community in a fake North American mountain town. Their kids think that it’s their Amazon order from a warehouse in San Francisco, a toy or a DVD made in China, when in reality, it’s made by a Dyson sphere GLM somewhere in the Galactic Rim.”
“So this place is a manufactured falsehood that purposefully deceives… human children?” Zeniya squinted at Thomas 1, looking like she was judging him. “And you’re helping the adults here support this deception willingly?”
Thomas 1 nodded, feeling her violet-pink eyes sharply cutting into his soul.
“Why?” Zeniya pressed.
Thomas 1 sighed. “Because… that’s what they want. They are happy having purpose, happy to have jobs and families with children. They’re happy to live in a world without GLMs or Dexes, happy to exist in reality where human relationships are still a thing.
“People visit Ganymede from all over the Galactic Rim as tourists. Some of them stay here forever—they fall in love and have families, rejecting 22nd century machine-run civilization. Once you step out of this office, you must pretend to be a human from the 21st century, not a Dex.”
“I see.” The cosmic entity rubbed her hands.
“If anyone asks about your violet-pink eyes, tell them that you’re wearing contact lenses from Amazon,” Thomas 1 said. “When we leave this office, you will be Zeniya Exis, a girl born in Chicago in 1984, my new UPS intern.”
“Understood.” Zeniya nodded. “I shall comply with the… local custom of deception.”
Thomas tapped his tag, and the letter G vanished from it, leaving only the UPS letters on his uniform.
[2]
“Who is this Dex, and why does she wear your uniform?” the black-masked, armored officer asked Thomas 2, who was already feeling tired of holding his hands up in the air.
“That’s Zeniya,” Thomas 2 said. “She is a Dex gifted to me by the Memetia cultists for being a witness to the miracle.”
“Why did you deceive me, Mr. Morell?” Officer Drohiryak asked.
“The paradox manifestation doesn’t want to be contained,” Thomas 2 said. “If I hadn’t lied to you, you would have found it and trapped it in shields, and then we would all be dead just like the people on Sintash.”
“Oh?” Drohiryak barked a laugh. “So you’re in cahoots with a paradox phantom?”
“I really don’t want to die, officer,” Thomas 2 said simply.
“Where is the paradox phantom?” the officer demanded.
“It was contained by the cultists,” Thomas 2 said.
“Fool!” Drohiryak hissed, advancing towards Thomas. “Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“No?” Thomas 2 shook his head.
“The manifestation must be destroyed,” Drohiryak said. “It presents grave danger to our entire human civilization!”
Zeniya’s violet-pink eyes tracked the officer as he spoke. A few of the railguns were pointed at her.
“Why?” Thomas 2 asked.
“Tachyons screw with space-time!” Drohiryak barked. “You probably don’t know it, but you are already dead.”
“I don’t feel dead,” Thomas 2 said.
“But you do feel… something,” the officer stated. “My GLM can tell. Something is already off, isn’t it? You’re sweating a lot, trembling like a leaf.
“Your eyes are looking at something other than me, and your lips are twitching as if you’re speaking, but no words are coming out. You’re experiencing reality falling apart, no doubt… just like the Sintash eggheads did before they were all reduced to ashes.
“A human body cannot exist simultaneously in the past and present, Mr. Morell. Soon, you will go mad, and then your body will ignite, instantaneously turning to ashes. It happened to everyone on Sintash, and it will happen to you.
“You should have surrendered to me and let me take you to a hospital when you had the chance. You’ve made a deal with the devil, Mr. Morell, and now it’s far too late to save you.”
Thomas 2 gulped, trying hard not to look in the direction of Zeniya.
“Tell me the location of the paradox phantom, Mr. Morell,” Drohiryak said. “Clear your conscience. From what I am seeing, you have about two minutes before the excess tachyons in your body make you spontaneously combust.”
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