“If you clone yourself,” he says. “Or brought versions of yourself in from the different timelines, you would begin to see how completely not fucked things can be. You would gain that perspective which, in this line of work, is so crucial. It’s so critical to have that.”

Steve is talking to Esfir. She is the same Esfir from that other story only more grown-up. It’s a different Steve though.

“Myself, I sleep on therapeutic fog tech. It is and it isn’t like Memory Foam ®.” Esfir says, “that’s how I get through it.”

They are walking through corporate, up and down, along the miles of brocade carpet. Above them, the LED lights approximate the sun. Occasionally, a house centipede scuttles in a shadowy corner. To the left and right the office doors are locked and dark. It is and it isn’t like unspeakable evils occur behind those doors. It’s a little more humdrum than all that.

Corporate is in a windowless building by the dusty tracks. Sometimes there are condoms on the tracks. Old dead voles, old dead shrews. But these two haven’t been outside for some months. Corporate is the shape and color of a toaster oven the size of a medium city. Corporate is a microcosm of the world. Sometimes they come to a staircase and when they come to one, they take it.

It was springtime when Steve first met Roy. They were both at the dog park flexing their corgis. They knew, at a glance, they were versions of one another from across the multiverse. Maybe slight variations in origin story, accounting for the visions of their different directors. They began a relationship that was and wasn’t strictly sexual.

Roy took Steve out for gelatos. Steve took Roy to the batting cages.

Now Roy lives in a nice studio apartment that doubles as a library. It’s known for its collection of books on and by the US presidents. It’s a step down, perhaps, from the Palisades, but it’s a coveted spot. You have to enter a lottery to get in.

Now it’s Roy walking the brocade miles with Esfir, not Steve. Blink and the timelines converge.

“I’m from Stevie Sherman’s.” He says to her, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember much on fog tech, which is how she likes it, she says.

He wonders what it would be like, her cunt wrapped around his cock. His mouth framing Steve’s asshole. All that pumping, draining, pushing, straining. 80’s work-out music. Fleshfleshfleshflesh.

“This is me,” Roy says, and he motions towards one of the locked doors.