“Come on, Ivy,” said Laz. “Would we lie to us?”

  “They don’t think of us as being them. We’re annoying younger copies—who, they think, must be idiots.” Ivy rolled her eyes like the teenager she was.

  “Ron,” asked Laz. “Was that losing-their-children nonsense the excuse they gave for going on strike?”

  Ron gave a little smile—somewhere between Mona Lisa and sticking his tongue out. “They’re not on strike, really. They retired. Isn’t that right, WoJo?”

  WoJo shrugged. “On strike, retired, emeritus, on hiatus, laid off, fired, lazy, cowardly—whatever we think it is, whatever we call it, they won’t make any new passages, period.”

  “Which keeps all the human worlds in a kind of limbo,” said Ron. “Changes are needed, and we can’t make any.”

  “In all of human history,” said Laz, “the human race was stuck on one planet, in one timestream. Our originals only popped up when Shiva made them essential for human survival. Ditto with the Zeroes. But however urgent you think new Portals might be, Ron, the human race will muddle through.”

  “I don’t like the track record of the human race on Earth,” said Ivy, “but somehow we didn’t destroy ourselves. We were still around to hop over to different timestreams. People will work it out.”

  Ron nodded. WoJo looked out the window at the passing countryside.

  “Why were we really revived?” asked Ivy.

  “Or, we might say, ‘vived,’ since this is our first time around,” said Laz.

  “Revived,” repeated Ivy.

  “As we already explained,” said Ron.

  “No, you didn’t,” said Laz. “You said routine maintenance, some new Portals, new habitats, maybe whole new timestreams, you never clarified.”

  “Did it occur to you,” said WoJo, softly but with an edge to her voice, “that we don’t know every single thing we need you to do?”

  “But you know something,” said Ivy. “Which is more than you’ve told us.”

  “What I hear you saying,” said Ron, “is that you’re ready for your first assignment.”

  “Assignment?” asked Ivy. “Have we been enlisted in some kind of military or police organization?”

  “Yes,” said Ron. “You have. Bringing you back was not cheap. Your vivification took resources that were needed elsewhere.”

  “Everything takes resources that could have been used elsewhere,” said Laz. “Basic economics.”

  “We need to be able to count on you,” said WoJo.

  “And we’d like to be useful,” said Laz. At Ivy’s eye roll, he amended, “I would like to be useful. I can’t and don’t speak for Ivy.”

  “I want to accomplish good things,” said Ivy. “Things that in my judgment are good.”

  “Fortunately,” said Ron, “the things we know we need you to do, at present, are all good.”

  “In your judgment,” corrected Ivy.

  “In the judgment of,” said WoJo, “the people charged with making such judgments.”

  “I can hardly wait,” said Ivy.

  “Why are we waiting?” asked Laz.

  “Didn’t you hear your predecessors’ diktat?” said Ron. “You are never to side step from their stream.”

  “So they make the rules?” asked Laz.

  “It does not benefit the human race in any way to defy and antagonize them,” said WoJo, even more softly.

  “But you can piss us off as much as you want?” asked Ivy.

  “You haven’t made us any Portals,” said WoJo. “You haven’t saved the species many times over. We don’t even know if you can side step.”

  “Neither do I,” said Laz. “We haven’t tried anything since we woke up.”

  “Why not?” asked Ron. “Your predecessors did it constantly.”

  “Nothing has gone so wrong,” said Laz, “that we needed to look for a way out.”

  * * *

  Ron and WoJo took them back to the rooming house where they had spent their first night in Central Time. They were shown to identical rooms. Adjoining rooms. Connecting rooms, if they chose to open the door between. But still separate sleeping quarters.

  When Laz and Ivy were each alone in their rooms, they headed straight for the connecting door and opened both sides of it. They realized that they had both made the same decision without even consulting about it, and it made them laugh rather ruefully.

  “I don’t remember the two of us getting, you know, married,” said Ivy. “So Zero-Laz and Ivy-Z must have got married after their brain states were recorded. But there’s nothing to prevent us from getting married now ourselves.”

  Laz looked at her as if she were a little crazy. “What are you talking about? We barely know each other. We’re straight from the creche.”

  “We spent that year together in Greensboro. We learned to rely on each other,” said Ivy.

  “No, we didn’t,” said Laz. “The two Zeroes did that, not us. We haven’t had a week yet since they brought us out of the box.”

  “Come on,” said Ivy. “You woke up talking about how in love with me you are. I was the one who talked about not really being us. But that was stupid.”

  “Of course I didn’t sign on to the idea until you decided it was stupid,” said Laz. “But just because we have memories of a year together, starving with the dogs, doesn’t mean we did that. We are still strangers. Strangers who haven’t even cooperated in a single side step yet.”

  Ivy shook her head. “If we remember that it happened, then it happened.”

  “Of course,” said Laz. “But not to us.”

  “So we have to do the whole dance all over again? Why?”

  “Zero-Laz and Ivy-Z earned each other’s love and trust,” said Laz.

  “I know,” said Ivy. “I remember.”

  “But you’ve done nothing to earn my trust or my love, and I’ve done nothing to deserve yours.”

  “So you don’t feel anything toward me?” asked Ivy.

  “Don’t act all hurt and disappointed,” said Laz. “Pouring the previous brain state into our heads doesn’t make us duplicates of our predecessors. The neural pathways didn’t grow organically. Our memories were force-fitted into our brains, carving very different pathways. Do we still have the habits we formed in Greensboro? Or do we need to make new ones?”

  “Do you really think we’re that different?” asked Ivy.

  “I don’t know,” said Laz. “I think I feel exactly the same things I felt before. But can I believe that feeling? Those memories?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” asked Ivy.

  “I don’t think we should count on our being perfectly identical with the Zero-wights. We need to find out what abilities we actually have, rather than the ones we remember having. We need to find out if we still trust each other, or even like each other.”

  “I liked you just fine, until you started this nonsense about distrusting our memories,” said Ivy.

  “And I like you fine,” said Laz. “So if it turns out that we develop a relationship as strong as the one I remember, great. I’m not against that. I’m hoping for that. I just refuse to act as if we already had those strong ties.”

  “Why are you putting this wall between us?” asked Ivy.

  “Look,” said Laz. “We’re genetically identical with our predecessors. But when they recorded our brain states, they crammed in more years of memories. They had all the muscles they developed by walking for so many kilometers a day, a week. We don’t have any of them. Don’t you remember the time it took to get our legs used to walking so far and so fast?”

  “Those are muscles, not our brains,” said Ivy.

  “I remembered walking all over Los Angeles County, but I didn’t have those muscles till I earned them again.”

  Ivy thought about this for a long moment. Then she took a couple of steps toward Laz, caught his cheeks between her palms, and kissed him with firmness and then with abandon.

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t want to do that,” said Ivy.

  “I enjoyed that little amuse-bouche,” said Laz. “But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for the banquet. Haven’t you noticed that there are other people in this world now? We’re not the two humans in an empty city. This whole place is teeming with humans. And if we want dogs, we can train puppies to be our companions.”

  “So it really hurt your feelings that we didn’t get dogs when we woke up,” said Ivy.

  “It’s not about hurt feelings,” said Laz.

  “Yes it is,” said Ivy, “because it hurts my feelings that you don’t want me.”

  “Ivy,” said Laz. “In Greensboro, before you woke up, I trained myself to be pretty accurate at throwing stones. But I can’t think of a reason to believe any of that skill transferred to this body. I don’t have any of my kinetic memory. I would have to start over from the beginning.”

  “So loving me was an acquired skill,” said Ivy bitterly.

  “Of course it was,” said Laz. “Maybe we’ll acquire that again. But maybe our relationship will grow naturally and organically, different this time because we’re not playing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Greensboro.”

  “You thought all this through in the few days since we woke up,” said Ivy.

  “I certainly didn’t come up with it before that,” said Laz. “Please, don’t be offended—”

  “Of course I’m offended and hurt and… pissed off,” said Ivy.

  “There,” said Laz. “That’s quite similar to the way we began things in Greensboro. Now let’s learn to depend on each other all over again.”

  Ivy turned her back on him, went into the other room, and closed and locked the connecting door behind her.

  Laz left his connecting door partly ajar. So if later she wanted to open her side, she’d find no barrier on his side. And if she didn’t want to, she wouldn’t know that his door had not been locked.

  Then he leaned his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes and cursed himself for denying all his feelings toward Ivy. Why should he think those feelings couldn’t be trusted?

  Why do I come up with all these clever reasons to make myself miserable and lonely?

  And why didn’t I, why don’t I side step into a timestream where I didn’t come up with all these reasons to keep us apart? Why don’t I side step into happiness right now?

  Because I’m not sure if it would end up being all that happy after all. This is the choice I’ve made, and for once in my life I need to stand by my choice and live with the consequences instead of taking the coward’s way out.

  Does this prove that I’m not the same person that I remember being? When in my life did I ever resist the impulse to side step when I thought it was in my best interest?

  I’m a new man this time around. Maybe a worse man, maybe a self-breaking man. But definitely not the same man I remember having been.

  3

  WHEN LAZ WOKE up the next morning, he had already realized that he was quite possibly the stupidest male person who ever lived. He had spent yesterday worrying that because he had not lived through or made the choices he remembered making in Greensboro during their exile there, or for that matter the choices he made in junior high school, in banishing Stever from his life—because those were not his choices, though he remembered making them, he had no right to live his life now as if it were a continuation of the lives he remembered living.

  But sometime in the night, he came to understand the source of his feeling of illegitimacy, and it was not as rational as he had supposed. The memories implanted in his brain came from two genetically identical versions of himself, and there was nothing wrong in living this life as if it were a continuation of his memories.

  What had prompted his doubt was his anger, his unconscious fury at the way Ron and his bosses believed they had the right to recreate him out of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, speed-grow him, implant memories, and then expect him to be their servant, obeying their commands, carrying out their plans—plans he had never been consulted about and wasn’t sure he agreed with.

  That was the conversation he should have had with Ron Smith, hashed it out and renegotiated the terms of his indenture.

  Instead, he had taken out his anger and confusion on the only person whom he trusted, the person who, if she didn’t actually understand him, understood the men who made all his memories.

  Of course he woke up in love with her, right from the start. Her presence in the reawakening room had reassured him, had made him feel that whatever was about to happen would be fine, as long as she was with him.

  He got out of bed, cleaned himself up a bit, emptied his bladder, dressed, and then went to the connecting door. Since his side was already wide open, he only needed to knock on her door and, if she had unlocked it last night or this morning, enter her room and apologize. “You already knew I was stupid,” he would say. “I can’t imagine it came as a surprise to you.”

  No. No joking. He would say, “I’m sorry. I woke up frightened by how desperately I loved and needed you, but I will never let my anxiety turn me away from what we remember creating together.”

  Even that speech felt stilted to him.

  It didn’t matter. When he pushed on the door, it didn’t budge. She had not unlocked her side of the connecting door.

  He raised his palm to slap at the door, to waken her and plead with her to open her door.

  He did not do it. Because he was afraid that she wouldn’t open it. That she wouldn’t listen to him. He was, in fact, letting his anxiety turn him away from this feeble attempt to reconnect with her.

  Instead, he came out into the corridor and walked to the main door of her apartment. He knocked softly on her door, waited for her answer.

  Knocked again. Waited again.

  Tried the door handle. Tried pulling the door open. No, these outer doors opened the other way. He pushed at the door. He knocked again. He gave the door a loud slap, so loud it stung his palm. Then an even harder slap, which hurt so badly he had to tuck that hand under his arm to absorb the pain.

  Nothing from Ivy’s side of the door.

  He leaned his forehead on the door and thought about how the things he said must have hurt Ivy. He had been thinking only his own thoughts, making no effort to imagine hers. To her it must have felt like he was rejecting her, when in fact he was only rejecting himself, this new self full of memories that he had not earned. Why should that be a reason for them not to continue as trusting partners, as each other’s beloved.

  And finally, for the first time since he was reawakened, he reached out for another timestream, one in which he had not said any of his stupidity to Ivy, a stream in which he had kissed her good night and they both left their connecting doors ajar.

  There was such a timestream. In fact, there were far more timestreams in which he had not hurt her than streams like this in which he had. A step to the side, and last night would not have happened that way after all.

  But he did not take that side step.

  Ivy would know. Just as she had known the first time they met that he had seen her naked in her awakening chamber and side stepped to a version of reality in which all the clones in the coffins had been dressed. She knew he had seen her. So if he changed to a timestream in which all was well between them, it would not be well, because she would still remember this timestream and all the stupid things that he had said.

  And she would not ignore it. She would not forgive it. She would always hold it over his head, even though he had done all he could to undo it. In the space between timestreams, Ivy saw everything, remembered everything. He could not deceive her about the side steps he had made, or why he had made them.

  Someone was walking along the corridor. He heard the scuffing of shod feet and knew from the step and from the fact that shoes were on those feet, it could not be Ivy.

  He assumed that when he lifted his head back from the door, he would see Ron Smith coming toward him. But it was not him, nor was it WoJo. It was the MIT grad student that he had met first thing upon leaving the reawakening chamber with Ivy.

  “Now that you’re awake, a breakfast has been prepared for you,” said the pretty, sophisticated young woman. “An offering of all your favorite breakfast foods, from which you may select as many as you want.”

  “Very kind of you,” Laz murmured. “Not hungry though.”

  “You should eat to keep up your strength,” said the young woman.

  “You’re sounding like a robot more and more,” said Laz.

  “How do you know what a robot sounds like?”

  “Why should I keep up my strength?” Laz asked. “What is the point? Without Ivy I’m worthless.”

  There was no answer for a moment. Then MIT Student said, with a kind and patient voice, “You are not worthless to yourself. You are the only self you have, and so your value is infinite.”

  “Metaphysics?” asked Laz. “All of the metaphysics in history is worth less than a single wild strawberry, tiny but tart.”

  “Poetic,” said the MIT grad. “Do you want me to tell you all the poets who have used that very image?”

  “No,” said Laz. “I don’t believe in originality and so I don’t try for it.”

  “I believe you believe that because Ivy is not with you, you cannot work together. But of course you can. You don’t need to be physically present with each other for her to pass timestreams to you.”

  “How would you know?” said Laz.

  “Ivy told me so.”

  “You’ve seen her? Where is she?”

  “She is not here with you. That continues to be her choice. But she does not intend that to be an impediment to your working together.”

  “How angry is she?”

  “She is very calm. Her heartbeat is healthy and normal, and she is showing no outward signs of strong emotion—nor of trying to restrain strong emotion.”

  “Calm,” said Laz.

  “It took her much of the night to achieve that state,” said Ms. MIT, “and when she came out of her room a few hours ago, she reported that she had not slept and would like to be taken to a private place in order to get her much-needed rest. How did you sleep?”