“Which can neither be created nor destroyed,” said Ivy.

  “And why would it respond to our presence, skipping stream to stream?” said Laz.

  “So my Laz and I talked about that all the time. No, that’s only how I wish it had been. Laz talked aloud about it all the time, and every now and then I’d ask a question, and maybe he’d answer it and maybe he’d wave it away like a gnat going for his ear, or maybe he’d roll his eyes as if the question was completely idiotic—”

  “In other words, he was a condescending asshole,” said Laz.

  “Not by nature,” said Ivy-O. “You’re not.”

  Laz looked at his Ivy. “She said I’m not.”

  “She meant that you’re not condescending,” said Ivy. “You don’t have a bunch of degrees, real and honorary. You’re still just a guy escaping from his teens and totally in awe of having a real girl who likes you.”

  “The real girl being…”

  “Me,” said Ivy, with a sassy wag of her shoulders.

  “But even though I’m not condescending, I’m still—”

  “An asshole,” said Ivy.

  “Don’t,” said Ivy-O. “Don’t do that to him.”

  “It’s just our way,” said Laz.

  “What’s just our way?” asked Ivy.

  “Calling him an asshole,” said Ivy-O. “Why would you do that to someone you say that you love?”

  “He knows I’m joking,” said Ivy.

  “Sure he does,” said Ivy-O. “But there’s a little frightened Laz living inside him who’s so scared of being lonely that he puts up with this contempt you constantly show him, while making him pretend to believe that you’re only joking.”

  “I’m already you,” said Ivy. “You don’t have to lecture me about how to become you.”

  “I always treated my Laz, the original real Laz, with respect,” said Ivy-O.

  “He was two decades and four college degrees beyond you by then,” said Ivy.

  “And he was still an insecure child looking for reassurance. Wishing he could go walking anonymously around Los Angeles, thinking his own thoughts and never having to impress anybody.”

  “How would you know that?” asked Laz.

  “Because he told me. Over the years, we pieced it together. This hunger for respect. Which you feel right now. Which is the only reason you’re working with Ron, because he treats you with respect and your Ivy doesn’t.”

  Laz put his hands over his ears with his little fingers holding his eyes shut. “Ivy, you’re doing just fine.”

  “Ivy,” said Ivy-O, “he’s eager to forgive you because he’s afraid that if he asked you to change the way you treat him, you’d leave. Or get worse. Taunt him for needing reassurance. Make him wallow in his own weakness.”

  Ivy had tears streaming down her face, though she didn’t actually sob or anything. “In other words I’m the asshole.”

  “You’re a young woman who doesn’t know how to deal with the love of a good man. For what it’s worth, most women don’t.”

  “Most women,” said Ivy, “aren’t partnered with a man with superhuman powers.”

  “And vice versa,” said Ivy-O. “I saw how much Zero-Laz missed Ivy-Z when he was forced to work with me instead. How he resented me.”

  “I tried not to be rude.”

  “You remember trying not to be rude, but that wasn’t you…. I know, if you remember doing it, you did it. But I choose not to be insane. Memories that are formed in different ways are different. Look, Ivy, all I ask is that you treat him as decently as you would treat a kindly stranger. Your life has meaning because he’s in it—”

  Laz was about to interrupt—

  “And his has meaning because he’s doing it with you, for you.”

  “So glad you could stop by today,” said Ivy. “We’ve got to do this more often.”

  “Don’t worry, Laz,” said Ivy-O. “She really is going to try to treat you better.”

  “OrigiLaz,” said Laz. He wanted to get back to something that mattered. “Nothing being something and everything being nothing.”

  “Just before he disappeared, he gave me a little speech. I memorized the outline, because I didn’t want to try to remember it word for word. So I’ve added a few bits as I figured things out. That last day, he said, ‘Creation is still going on. That’s what the timestreams mean. When we detect a new timestream, it was already real, it already existed, because every choice point that creates a new timestream actually creates a new world.’ ”

  “How wasteful,” said Ivy.

  “I raised exactly that point,” said Ivy-O. “Here’s what Laz said: ‘It’s only wasteful if you think there’s a natural law that says there’s a finite amount of matter and energy in the universe so there’s a chance we might run out of them.’ ”

  “Conservation of matter and energy,” said Ivy. “Basic science.”

  “In the Big Bang universe, that might be, probably is, true.”

  “What universe are we in?” asked Laz.

  “We had our Big Bang. They’ve detected the background radiation,” said Ivy-O. “But that’s not how the timestreams can be equipped with a full complement of matter and energy. Each new timestream is a new creation, right back to the choice point. New creation is seeping into existence all the time.”

  “Not a new Big Bang, but a Long Seep,” said Ivy.

  “Nothing is lost from our timestream just because another timestream comes into existence,” said Ivy-O.

  It all sounds like bullshit to me, thought Laz. He was still trying to fit this into a rational universe. “You can’t create a universe from nothing—”

  “Ex nihilo,” Ivy said. “Even the religious people have given up on the ex nihilo idea.”

  “Just because they believe or don’t believe has nothing to do with the nature of reality,” said Ivy-O. “That was Laz’s breakthrough. Matter and energy are being created all the time.”

  “The Long Seep,” murmured Laz.

  “I need a nap,” said Ivy.

  “You’re smart enough to understand this. After all, I was.”

  Ivy took Laz’s hand in hers. “Since we’re too polite to throw her out, why don’t we leave?”

  “I’m not afraid of what she has to say,” said Laz.

  “Dim, what I’m afraid of is all the anti-scientific claptrap she might persuade you to believe.”

  “I need to know what my genius original figured out.”

  “Simple,” said Ivy-O. “The rules are in flux. The rules aren’t what we think they are, and don’t have to remain as they now seem to be.”

  “Which is why when we need a Portal to end somewhere different from where it began, I can figure out how to do it and it works,” said Ivy.

  “And you can learn to do just a tiny bit of side stepping,” said Laz. “Because you really really wished for it.”

  “Don’t mock,” said Ivy-O. “It isn’t funny, it’s the most glorious thing about our universe.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Laz. “Imagine the horror of living in a universe where all decisions stay made, where there aren’t timestreams where things were decided differently, initiating another whole timestream. Where whatever happened stays happened.”

  “A universe without side stepping because there’s nowhere to step,” said Ivy.

  “A universe,” said Laz, “that can never, never allow anything or anybody to jump out of their original causal sequence and insert themselves in another.”

  “But that’s not our universe,” said Ivy.

  “In our universe we can step from stream to stream,” said Laz.

  “And maybe travel up and down the timestreams instead of just stepping across,” said Ivy.

  “And that’s where OrigiLaz went,” said Laz.

  “Where? Do you know where he is?” demanded Ivy-O.

  “I have no idea,” said Laz. “I haven’t done that same crazy thing because he never made it back, and I do want to stay in this world where I marry the love of my life and then we have children that I love even more.”

  Ivy-O looked off at the window, where nothing was happening except daylight. “I didn’t give him children.”

  “Did he ever ask for any? Did you have that kind of relationship?” asked Ivy.

  Ivy-O shrugged. “One of us might have wanted it, but the time was never right. And then he was gone, and I’d never have his babies.”

  “Time travel,” said Laz. “Maybe we can do it.”

  “Maybe we have brains enough to never even try it,” said Ivy. “OrigiLaz is still lost.”

  “So it seems,” said Ivy-O. “But I haven’t given up hope.”

  23

  LAZ AND IVY gave up trying to talk about what Ivy-O had told them, because they both got too frustrated by the fact that whenever either of them thought of an idea, the other one showed why it was impossible.

  “Unless nothing is impossible,” said Laz.

  “Or everything is impossible,” said Ivy.

  “Or both at once, which is the asinine paradox that Ivy-O started with.”

  “That OrigiLaz ended up with, so it’s your job to figure out what it means.”

  “Let’s please stop talking about this, because I’m about to get angry.”

  “What can you be angry about?” demanded Ivy. “You think this is somehow my fault?”

  “When you make ridiculous, illogical decisions like, OrigiLaz thought this up so it’s your job to make sense of it, then rational discussion is impossible and besides, you don’t get to decide what’s my job and what’s your job.”

  “Well, I wasn’t serious about that,” said Ivy.

  “Sounded serious.”

  “But that would be stupid, and I’m not stupid.”

  “When you said it was my job to figure it out, that was stupid,” said Laz.

  “I agree that we should stop talking about this,” said Ivy.

  “But Ivy, that was my idea, so it must be childish and idiotic.”

  “You have a really nasty streak when you’re angry,” said Ivy.

  “Speaking of Nasty,” said Laz.

  “Why? She has nothing to do with this.”

  “We don’t know what has what to do with whatever,” said Laz. “But Nasty was leaving us messages. Leaving me messages about things that hadn’t happened yet. Trying to prevent them.”

  “We don’t know anything about what Nasty was trying to do. And if she’s anything like Mumbo, nothing she said about it was true anyway.”

  “Or everything was true, because she’s nothing like Mumbo,” said Laz.

  “Do you know her address?” asked Ivy. “Because if you do, we can go call on her to ask her what the messages were about and how she was able to leave them.”

  “We know how. Strobing,” said Laz.

  “We know how she was invisible. We know how she got to be visible. We don’t know how she was able to write those messages without making a sound.”

  “Or being seen,” said Laz.

  “So you think we can’t find her,” said Ivy.

  “She can be completely invisible as long as she wants.”

  “But we know she doesn’t want,” said Ivy. “She didn’t have to appear to us that day. She didn’t have to talk to us. She showed herself to us on purpose because she does want to answer questions.”

  “So you’re mind-reading,” said Laz.

  “Everybody mind-reads all the time,” said Ivy. “Guessing whether a car is really going to turn or the blinker is still on from a previous turn. Figuring out what somebody meant by a terrible thing they said. We have to imagine what other people have in mind in order to make our own decisions, except that we’re all, as a species, very very bad at mind-reading.”

  “So everybody’s bad at mind-reading except you,” said Laz.

  “In the case of Nasty. She didn’t have to meet us at all. She chose to do it. She’s interested in us, maybe fascinated by us, so I think she watches us.”

  “I haven’t found her naked in my bed,” said Laz.

  “But you like thinking about it,” said Ivy.

  “I never, even for a second, think about any person, female or male, naked.”

  “You have crafted your answer to that question very well. Probably practiced it a few times already, too.”

  “When Mumbo wanted to talk to us, he found a way to do it.”

  “So did Nasty,” said Ivy. “And nowhere near as crudely.”

  “So we sit and wait for Nasty to show up?” asked Laz.

  “Of course not,” said Ivy. “We have a much better way to contact her.”

  Laz waited, knowing that the fastest way to get her to say what she was thinking was to leave complete silence.

  “She writes us messages in the dirt with a stick.”

  Now Laz understood. “Do we have to go out somewhere and write in dirt?”

  “I believe,” said Ivy, “that a clear, well-written memorandum on a piece of paper here in our house might do the job.”

  “You think she visits our house a lot,” said Laz.

  “She may be living here now,” said Ivy. “Do you think she strobes in her sleep?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Laz. “And I don’t think she lives here, or we would have heard the toilet flush.”

  Ivy giggled like a little girl, behind her hand. “Maybe her poo keeps strobing all the way down.”

  “Write your note,” said Laz.

  “What should I say?”

  “You’re the mind reader. Say whatever will get her to come out in the open and talk to us.”

  Ivy thought for a moment and wrote on a piece of paper, “Nasty. Please talk to us. We need you.”

  “Her messages were never that long,” protested Laz.

  “She was scratching words in dirt with a stick,” said Ivy. “Pens are faster and more legible.”

  “So where do we put it?” asked Laz.

  “Right where it is, in plain sight on the table.”

  “I guess you’re right. If she’s here, she’ll see it. If she doesn’t respond, we keep leaving new messages.”

  “ ‘Are you going to answer or not, Nasty?’ ‘Please read our earlier message, we need an answer.’ ”

  “And we’ll keep writing messages to her,” said Laz, “till she throws a wadded-up paper ball at us.”

  They stood there, looking at the paper with the message lying on the table.

  Finally Laz said, “I can stay awake worrying while lying in bed. It doesn’t take any more effort than worrying while walking back and forth along the roof of a five-story building.”

  “Yes, sure, go to bed,” said Ivy. “I’ll do the same.”

  “Or stay up and talk a little longer,” said Nasty.

  Nasty was in the room, standing by the table. Maybe she just finished reading the note.

  “Glad you showed up,” said Laz.

  “Do you check up on us often?” asked Ivy.

  “And wearing clothing, too. I’m not my brother.”

  “Look,” said Laz; and then, realizing his bad manners, he said, “Please sit down. This may take a while.”

  Nasty knelt on the couch and then twisted so she was facing front. “I saw what you did, Ivy, and it was brilliant. Mother never even thought of it, nor did Grandma.”

  Ivy looked puzzled. “What did I do?”

  “Making the Portal end in a different place on the surface of the earth,” said Nasty. “So that it didn’t just take you across the gap between timestreams, but also moved you in space, across the land. How far can you make it go?”

  “Is distance a goal?” asked Ivy. “I have no idea of the limitations. I could visualize the target location as I chose the stream, and handed it to Laz with that in mind. I suppose I gave him the destination right along with the timestream.”

  “I stepped, and it felt like every other side step,” said Laz. “But we were a click away from our starting point. Concealing us from the people on the bridge and in the town.”

  “It seemed miraculous to me,” said Nasty.

  “Your mother told us that you’ve changed names again,” said Laz. “I don’t know if we should keep thinking of you as Nasty.”

  “My brother is in a copromaniac mode,” said Nasty. “I don’t like either of the names he chose for us, so I’m not using mine. Nasturtium is still my name, and I happily answer to Nasty.”

  “And your brother?” asked Laz.

  “I’m not speaking to him for a while.”

  “All we want,” said Ivy, “is to know why you gave us those messages.”

  “Well,” said Laz. “I’d also like to find out how you did it. And don’t just say strobing. You were not strobing when you did the writing. But we still didn’t see you or hear you.”

  Nasty looked down, saddened. “I’m sorry that we’re such liars,” she said. “It’s part of our staying hidden, to withhold any truth that might damage us.”

  “What did you lie about?” demanded Laz.

  “She’s about to tell us, Dim,” said Ivy.

  Nasty twisted on the couch and swung her legs forward, so she was sitting normally, except with perfect posture. “Ivy, Laz, I lied to you when I allowed you to believe that those messages came from us.”

  “Who else?” asked Ivy.

  “I thought you would reason it out,” said Nasty. “We couldn’t have sent the message our parents received when we were still babies. Well, children.”

  Laz replied, “We thought—no, I thought—that you had a way to write in the sand or the dirt in the future, and then project it backward in time. To your parents, to Ivy and me. If such a thing is even possible.”

  “Fecis and I can’t do anything forward or backward in time, except to move forward at the rate of one second per second,” said Nasty.