"I mean, not exactly, it was the first comparison I could think of. But yeah, most people have no idea why anyone would want it, some people think it's fun but wouldn't want to do it a lot, a few people center their life around it."

“We don't center our lives around it," says Brian. "There's all kinds of people, just mostly they're subs or doms too."

"Right, sorry. I meant more that very few people make it part of their identity - think that they are a sub, not just a person who subs sometimes."

"Weird," says Jackson.

"You're kind of weird to us too! I have to say if I'd been told to guess some possible differences between our world and an alternate universe I wouldn't have though of roles and eclipse magic. I wonder how similar our world are, aside from that. You're close enough to have, oh, cars and trees and Montana, which implies more of parallel universe sort of thing, but I'm really not a physicist..."

"Who's the President? Was there a Shakespeare? What're some famous eclipsed, what do they do? Some famous doms, subs? Did you have WWII, Vietnam, 9/11? - I can hardly ask you about the outcome of specific murder trials, most people don't follow those - what do people know about the Kennedy assassination, that was a ridiculously high profile case involving a necromancer, though admittedly several years too late to get anything too coherent out of the assassin."

"Uh, Bush - junior," says Jackson, "there was Shakespeare, uh, he was a dom -"

"At least supposedly; some people may have pretended back before social equality got better," says Brian.

"We had world wars and a Vietnam war but I don't know what a nine eleven is... unless you mean nine one one? For like calling the cops?"

"Kennedy was shot, precogs didn't have the coverage for the Secret Service to have one on the president twenty four seven back then, it was before virtuality. I think postcogs've confirmed it but there were some wacky theories and some people don't believe the postcogs..."

"Most famous people are doms... famous subs are, uh, like... that's a really hard category to answer about? Like I'm sure there was a month in school about famous subs or something but I'm coming up totally blank. Famous eclipsed are like... Donna Hart and Melissa Chong are a psion and mage team who do movie effects, uh, the... head of eclipsed affairs in the US military has... a... name... I wasn't eligible I'm Canadian..."

"Who's that precog -"

"Oh yeah the really longrange precog's name is Vihaan something I can't pronounce," says Jackson. "There's the sculptor with the Polish name... there's the inventor of virtuality, uh, somebody Newton-Harris?"

"We have an almost identical history, some of the same people, that's - are there versions of us here? It... makes sense you didn't have 9/11, I guess, if they'd had some warning they could've shot down the planes or something. Uh, 9/11 was in 2001, a group of terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Did you have the war in Afghanistan?"

"I think there might be a war in Afghanistan," says Jackson.

"That's in the Middle East, right, isn't there always a war over there one way or another?" says Brian.

Sigh.

"Social equality got better" doesn't really mesh with there being no famous subs, but that's probably not the most important part of what they said.

"I don't get how the history's so similar, you'd think eclipsed or necromancy would throw things off more than that. I guess you had a lot fewer of them until recently, and necromancy doesn't work on quite the same scale, but still, it only takes one person who can look into the future to throw things off enough that the course of history should've been entirely different."

"I mean there are some way old eclipsed who got de-aged a bunch?" says Jackson.

"It does immortality?" Daria buries her face in her hands. "I need a couple hours alone with some books and the internet, there is way too much here to convey like this, every single thing you say is making me want to ask fifty new questions."

She flips to a fresh page in her notebook and starts scrawling notes.

History - alternate universe, same people??? me, Mar? phone?, recent divergences? both necrom. and eclipsed more recently, why? connection? eclipsed can do: precog(!!), postcog, hypercog(?), deaging(!), VR, etc etc. psions: "mind stuff", but can do computers(?!), plants?; mages: "everything else", but why - neurons? eclipsed and kink thing - connected? how? prob. not but only dif so far. what're we missing?

"We can drop you off in Billings," says Brian. "Coming up in a few hours."

"We have... whatever we brought with us and nothing else, I'm not looking forward to sorting that out."

"Do you have signal yet?" says Daria, without looking up from her notebook. "I need to test something."

Jackson checks. "I don't -"

"Check my phone," says Brian.

"Yes Brian -" Jackson fishes in his pocket, gets his phone, checks. "Like one bar. Might work. Why?"

"You have Bush, Kennedy, Shakespeare. There's no good reason why Mariam or I shouldn't exist here either."

"...I don't wanna think about a me stuck in your universe," says Jackson. "It sounds like it sucks."

"Works for us. Can I have the phone?"

Jackson looks to Brian for confirmation; Brian nods and Jackson hands it over.

Daria enters Mariam's old number, presses the call button, then passes her the phone.

It rings once, twice - "Hello?"

"Um. Hi. So this is going to sound completely unbelievable, can you give me five minutes before you hang up?"

"...go on."