Daria and Mariam are walking in the park, arguing amiably about their latest job. There's some kind of shimmer in the air in front of them, but it's easily dismissed as just the setting sun playing tricks on them.

There's nothing to indicate the transition: one minute it's dusk in Central Park, the next midday by the side of a road somewhere.

"Brian?"

"You're supposed to be thinking about magic - what is it?"

"I see somebody over there. They look lost."

"Hitchhikers?"

"I don't know."

Brian slows way down.

"What."

"How did we...? where even is this? - someone's noticed us, maybe they know something?" She doesn't sound too confident of that, but waves at the slowing car.

Jackson rolls down the window. "Um, are you lost?"

"We were in New York? We are... obviously not in New York anymore."

"Montana. Which of you is the mage?"

Maybe they call necromancers that in Montana? "Both of us, but there's no way we could've done that, we're decades away from even the theoretical basis for anything that might've been. What's the date?"

"Decades? Wow," blinks Jackson. "Uh, it's June - sixteenth?"

"Seventeenth," corrects Brian.

...

"...sometimes I really hate being right. A minute ago for us it was October. The fifth, I think. Also not the middle of the day, it wouldn't have been this early in Montana even if you account for time zones."

"Whoa," says Jackson. "Mages with time travel."

"I don't know what you think we did but we didn't do it, it's impossible, I can't think where you'd even -"

"Daria," Mariam warns, in a tone that means priorities. "- what year is it?"

"...2006?"

"Two thousand and fourteen," says Mariam slowly.

"Whoa," says Jackson.

"What's it like then?" wonders Brian.

"Obama's President," she says, barely paying attention to the words. "Mariam, what if we try a call, I've got remains from people who aren't dead yet; that might tell us something. And then presumably contact - I don't even know who, we have information from eight years into the future - on second thought maybe do that first."

"I don't have cell service out here," says Brian.

"Do you mind giving us a lift? We don't need to do a diagram or anything, we can do the call in the car, wait until we get somewhere with service." She turns to Daria, "do you remember what phone number you had eight years ago? Or mine?"

"Hop in," says Brian, unlocking the back doors.

"Thanks," says Mariam, smiling automatically as she opens the door.

Daira reads a number out to Mariam, adding, "that was you before you got the new one, I'm almost certain that was before 2006."

After she's seated, she starts looking for something in the bottom of her bag. "Aren't you glad now that I 'always take my work with me'?" she teases.

"Yeah, yeah, you can be smug when it's actually helped, for all you know it just won't go through."

"What are your names?" wonders the driver. "I'm Brian, my sub's Jackson." Brian is generic-looking whitebread, short sandy hair; Jackson has a long dark brown braid and a leather collar tight on his neck.

"And are you guys doms or subs, it's hard to read," says Jackson.

"...excuse me?"

Jackson repeats himself more slowly.

"...I don't see how my sex life is relevant to this conversation?"

"...I didn't ask? I just can't tell what you're presenting as. Oh, are you switches, I forgot to say switches," says Jackson.

"Next time just say 'what role are you'," suggests Brian.

"Yes Brian."

Why did they have to get picked up by the weird kinky ones. "We're not... presenting as anything."

"What she means," adds Daria helpfully, "is 'stop shoving your kinks in our face.'"

"I guess 'what role are you' would cover nondynamics too?" says Jackson uncertainly.

"He didn't shove anything in your face, chill out," says Brian. "You don't want to make conversation, that's fine, just say that."

"...I think we're missing something."

"Maybe you just heard him wrong. No big deal," says Brian.

"'Are you doms or subs, it's hard to read," quotes Daria. "I can't tell what you're presenting as. Oh, are you switches, I forgot that.' I don't think she misheard." Then, to Mariam: "No, you're right, they're being... very casual about that."

"Um."

"Um?" says Jackson.

"Listen," she says, apparently to the roof of the car, "I had just about come to terms with some kind of inexplicable time travel bullshit, please tell me today hasn't gotten any more sci-fi."

"- oh. Do you really think...?"

"Inexplicable?" says Jackson. "You said you were mages."

"We assumed it was some slang term for necromancers! I can't believe I'm saying this but this conversation would make a lot more sense if I'm right. ...please tell me I'm wrong and you're some kind of kinky hermits who think everyone's like them and that necromancers can do time travel."

"Necromancers?" says Jackson, baffled.

"We're not hermits," says Brian. "We're roadtripping to visit Jackson's family. Mages can't do time travel but I'd expect it to be them, not psions..."

"Can you explain mages, psions, the role thing? Assume we're, I don't know, aliens or something."

"...mages do magic to stuff and psions do magic to minds?" says Jackson. "Roles are whether you're the sort of person who wants to be in charge or the sort of person who wants not that."

"Aliens?" says Brian, slowing down the car a little.

"We're not actually aliens," she reassures him. " - I think. We don't have any of that, though. Daria's theory was that we'd traveled to a different universe, dimension, whatever the word is. It's... really implausible, but not actually that much more implausible than time travel."

She notices Daria open her mouth to speak and makes a cutting motion with her hand that translates to something like do not tell the nice people giving us a ride the other option is that they're delusional.

"Uh, wow," says Brian.

"That's really wild," says Jackson.

"You're telling me," Daria mutters.

"How do you do that with necromancy?" asks Jackson. "Isn't that the zombies thing..."

"You don't, that's what I've been saying, I have no idea how we got here. Theoretically I could imagine modifying whatever it is that lets spirits be called instantaneously in a focusless ritual, but we don't even know if something's traveling or if spirits are omnipresent after they die. If anyone had made progress on that I would know, there's no reason to keep that kind of thing secret."

"Wait, is this magery or psionics," says Jackson.

"Neither," says Daria, rolling her eyes. "- actually, good question, does it count as one of those here? Can you tell? Does it even work here? Our link works, that's suggestive but not conclusive, maybe it's only passive but not active - I was going to try a call, I should really do that." She starts pulling things out her bag, continuing her questions as she does so. "How does magery work, how does psionics work, can anyone do them? Are either of you mages or psions? What does "do magic to the mind" mean, is it that they interact with what's left when someone leaves a spirit, can mages affect neurons or something?"

Eventually she has a bit of hair wrapped around a chunk of lead in the center of a complicated geometric figure drawn on lined notebook paper, the entire set-up balanced precariously on her lap.

"I'm a psion," says Jackson. "I've got no idea what you're talking about with the rest of it."

"I don't know what you're doing but no dead bodies in my car," says Brian.

"It's not a body, all this call does is confirms if the person this belonged to is dead or not. You shouldn't notice anything, it'll just be a brief flash of cold around the focus."

She reaches out absently for Daria when she sees she's ready, brushing the backs of their hands together skin on skin.

"This? I'm not looking, I'm on the highway - Jackson tell me what they're doing -"

Jackson cranes his neck and says, "It's not a dead thing it's just a hair. And some metal and a drawing."

"It's fine," says Daria, and pushes a flash of intent into the diagram. "Huh. No difference. Not sure if I was expecting that or not."

"It's Brian's car, it's only fine if he says it's fine," says Jackson peevishly, "and we don't know what your magic even is."

"I can communicate with the spirit impressions the dead leave, animate stripped bones, tell if someone's alive or dead, locate someone, get certain information out of remains about the person they were, make a d-" she cuts herself of at the glare on Mariam's face, and then continues, "make a connection with someone else that allows us to cast together and tell where the other is, identify if there is something that used to be part of a living creature in the vicinity... We're discovering a lot of new extensions, the intuitive applications are all related to the dead but some people theorize that's mostly because of the tradition we've been working in, though no one's sure why it got started like that. If I had to say what the fundamental limit is it's probably something to do with only being able to affect living organisms and that which is attached to them or used to be them, there's some interesting research being done with viruses."

"That's weird," says Jackson. "Not all psionics or magery."

"Your division makes no sense. Can you show me a bit of psionics? Could I do it?"

"Probably not? And nothing I do is for showing, anyway."

"You have magic but you can't show me." This is increasing her estimate that this is some kind of - joke or prank or delusion or something, except they're not in New York.

"Can I borrow your - oh, right, you don't have phones that do internet in 2006, do you." Ugh. Well, she can at least check if the phone looks like it's from the right time, and try to call... she doesn't really know who at this point. "Do you have service yet?"

Jackson checks. "Nope. I know lucid dreams and psionic tech, they're not flashy, you have to be artistic to make any money doing illusions or something..."

Well, she can catch a glimpse of the phone, it looks right. That's fakeable but would turn this into some kind of elaborate set-up and still doesn't explain the part where they're not in New York at a different time of day.

Daria glares at the landscape outside the window as if it's personally offended her. Why did the first people to notice them have to be so terrible at answering simple questions.

"What else can magery or psionics do?" 

"Uh, there's precogs... there's hypercogs... mages can fly or whatever..."

Precogs.

"Precogs? How does that work?"

"...magic," says Jackson. "I didn't learn it, it's really high stress I think..."

"You have a magic system that can do precog and you didn't learn it." How has your world not collapsed into some kind of time paradox or something. How are you this incurious. When can I get to someone that will answer my questions.

"Hey, running VRs is important, someone has to do it."

"VR? What's that?" Mariam interjects.

"Virtuality. For training new eclipsed not to wreck everything."

"'Eclipsed' are mages and psions, right?"

"Right."

"Why are they dangerous when they're new?"

"'Cause they can't control themselves. It's okay if they don't eat but you have to eat eventually so we invented VR."

"What happens when they get out of control?"

"...random things, 'cause they don't control it."

"Do you have examples?"

"Usually the precogs stop them in time... uh... I mean, if they didn't do that, people would die a lot... I think a girl in my VR batch would've set things on fire? They tell you what you would've done, if you would've done something."

"Huh, that sounds like a good system."

"Before VR," puts in Brian, "people who wanted to be eclipsed, or couldn't find a psion to lock them down and didn't have a choice, had to go out away from civilization and not eat much so it'd be safe."

"'Wanted to be eclipsed'?"

"You can get locked down so your powers don't do anything if you don't wanna sit through VR and learn magic," says Jackson.

Right, because there are some people that would turn down magic.

If this line of inquiry continues sooner or later Daria's going at say something that actually offends the only people they've met in this universe.

"I'm sorry, should I save the questions for later?  I'm sure you you didn't sign up to pick up interdimensional hitchhikers when you picked your route."

"It's fine," says Brian. "We just won't necessarily know all the answers."

"I still feel like we're missing a lot of things you'd take for granted... Can you explain eclipsed like you would to a little kid?"

"Uhhh," says Brian.

"Um," says Jackson, "...so if you were like, eleven, I'd be saying, soon there's going to be a shadow over the entire moon, and when that happens, people your age sometimes get magic, it probably won't happen to you but just in case you need to not eat for two days leading up to the moon shadow, water is fine though, and that makes sure that if you do get magic everybody's safe, and if you get it you can decide if you want to go to virtuality for two years until it settles down, or if you want to get a psion to come lock the magic away so it can't hurt anyone and then you can go back to normal and decide if you want to get unlocked later."

"Oh, eclipsed, I see. That's... weird. Kind of cool, but weird. Sorry, Dar, looks like there's no magic for you."

"Is that not how necromancy happens, then?" says Brian.

"Mostly anyone can do a little, although some people are less powerful than others. The hard part is knowing what you're doing, there are a lot of small details you need to get right."

"Is it the same for everybody?" asks Jackson. "The details?"

"...yes?"

"Oh."

"Your magic doesn't have consistent rules? Seriously?"

"It has some, just not so you can do a thing exactly like someone else."

They find a new dimension and the magic system has not making sense built in. Uuuugh.

"So what're the rules? How do you figure out how to do things, if someone else can't teach you?"

"Psions can only do mind stuff and computers can count as minds. Mages do other stuff. Uh, you can't precog more precognition. You have to work on stuff longer to get it to be better and it takes most people about the same amount of time to figure out how it works for them."

"Computers count as minds? - Daria, has there been any research about how necromancy interacts with digital stuff at home?"

"A little, April Adams was working on it, the short redhead from London? But everyone thinks she's crazy, you don't get anything off them."

"I mean they count for psions. That's how we do VR," says Jackson.

"Has no one looked into what that implies, at least? I'm not saying it means they're - people or something, but it feels like it could be significant."

"I don't really know," Jackson says. "It's pretty recent. I don't think computers are people."

"Neither do I, it's just I wouldn't have expected magic that works on minds to work on them."

"I think there's a technical definition that isn't exactly minds," says Jackson.

"Do you know anything more than that? Does it work on animals? Plants? How complicated does a computer have to be before it counts?" When they get out of the middle of nowhere Daria is going to find a library and see how long she can stay before they kick her out.

"I don't think it has to be a very complicated computer. Psions can do stuff to animals but I dunno why you'd want to."

"Checking what kind of thoughts animals have, having them do things humans can't physically do, borrow instincts? I don't know how much of that a psion could do but off the top of my head all of that sounds useful."

"I guess. I don't think it's very popular. Maybe it takes longer than picking up precog. It probably pays less."

"How does picking things up work?"

"You think about how it could work, till it does, and then you think about it more to make it better. Since it's per person, how everything works."

"You just... think about it and it happens? Really?"

"...is that weird? What else would we do?"

"If I want to do something with necromancy, no amount of just thinking about it will make me better at actually doing it. I can decide that there's a better way to do something, but then I have to test it to see if works, and probably make some more changes and gradual improvments when I'm testing it. I don't just - spontaneously know how to do it because I was thinking about it!"

"I mean, we just do magic by thinking about it, so there's nothing else to... do," says Jackson.

"Yes, but..." She isn't sure exactly what she's objecting to, but she sure objects to it strongly.

"Can you tell when you can do something, or do you have to try to do it first?"

"You can usually tell but you're supposed to wait a while to make really sure if it'd be dangerous if you're bad at it."

"What does it feel like?"

"Uh, like... knowing how to do a thing?"

"I mean, do you gradually figure it out, is it like remembering something, it is like something suddenly making sense where it didn't before?"

"Some of both."

"That sounds like it'd be fascinating to experience. I wonder if there are any psions that can share sensations like that..."

"They can but it doesn't let you learn faster. Uh, learn magic faster, it's probably fine for... math and stuff."

"Ooh."

"It's not really common though."

"How many eclipsed are there, anyway?"

"Uh, like... point one percent... of people eclipse on their eclipse. Fifty fifty mage or psion," says Jackson. "But I think most of them don't go straight to virtuality."

"Only point one percent? Huh. That'd make - bit less than 7 billion world population in 2006, so 7 million eclipse - about how many of those end up not being locked down?"

"I think most people get locked down. I dunno if most of them get locked down forever or if the locked down ones mostly finish high school then go to virtuality or something."

Most people have terrible priorities, but Daria already knew that.

"Why did you chose not to be locked down?"

"Uh, I don't remember exactly, it was years ago. I guess I wanted to do magic."

"Makes sense."

"Yeah. So... in your world, people hide their roles?"

Mariam had really been hoping to avoid this conversation for as long as possible.

"Not... exactly. We have some people who think like that, but it's considered a pretty niche sex thing."

"Niche? Really? Weird."

"How does your world do it?"

"Uh, practically everybody's a dom or a sub. And you can tell by how they dress and do their hair and walk and stuff. Some people are switches... one in, uhhhh..."

"Ten," says Brian.

"Like one in ten. And there's teeny amounts of nondynamics."

"Well, our world is mostly what you'd call nondynamics, then, and even the people who do have a - role mostly keep that only between them and their partner." She is rather suspicious of how a society set up like that would treat subs, but nothing between Jackson and Brian looks too worrying. They're not the best people to ask, in any case; she makes a note to look into it when they get somewhere with more people.

"...then how do you know it's mostly nondynamics?"

"If you go online, for example, the number of people who talk about that being a thing for them when they can be entirely anonymous and safe is definitely higher than the number of people that talk about it in person, but still much fewer than I'd expect if we were like you and hiding it. Or if I look at my closest friends, where if something like that was going on I'd expect to notice - only one of them has something like that and she wouldn't want it all the time like you seem to."

"...not all the time?" says Jackson, sounding bewildered. "Does... she have multiple personalities?"

Oh god she has no one to blame but herself this time why did she sign up to explain her friend's sex life to the kink dimension people.

"She doesn't enjoy her boyfriend to tell her what to do all the time, but sometime she thinks it's nice. It's maybe a little like how extreme sports are fun for some people sometimes, but even if you really like skydiving or something you probably don't want to do it literally all the time."

Jackson looks like that's the weirdest thing he's ever heard. "Subbing is like skydiving?"

"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."

"My name is Mariam Kasparian. I'm - you, I think, by the voice and the matching phone number - from a different universe where it's 2014 and we have necromancy instead of eclipsed and no roles. Daria and I ended up here somehow a couple hours ago. Um. I wouldn't believe that if I heard it either, um... I don't know how well any of this matches but I had a stuffed dog named Fluffy and when I was thirteen my mom decided I was too old for him and told me to give him to Aline and I didn't want to give him up so I hid him and told her I'd lost him, when my first boyfriend kissed me after I told him to stop I punched him in the mouth, I kind of hate the color of my eyes but the way my hair curls makes me really happy, one of my favorite memories is the time Daria got drunk and told me that whenever I smiled it felt like standing in the sun, uh, what else - I like doing portraits because it makes me look at every single detail of the person I'm drawing, I swim because it gives me time to think, my mother gave me a gold cross that used to be her mother's when I turned 18 and I feel kind of guilty when I wear it because I'm not religious and kind of guilty when I don't because it's important to her, I pretend to be annoyed when Daria gets so into something she forgets to eat, but it's actually kind of cute -"

"...you definitely sound like me, yes."

Jackson's barely even pretending not to be listening to her while she lists personal facts.

Mariam is kind of beyond caring about that at the moment.

"So. Yeah. Hi. We weren't sure if we had - versions of ourselves - here, but some public figures matched so we thought we should at least check. This is as weird for me as it is for you, believe me, I've just had a little more time to get used to possibility. Do you have a Daria?"

"...yes. Daria Osfell, she's a psion." She pauses briefly. "I've let her know about - this. Do you have yours with you? Where are you?"

Her alt has magic!! 

She's been leaning towards the phone to catch the other end of the conversation anyway, so she speak into the phone. "I'm here, yeah. We're in Montana, a couple hours from somewhere called Billings." 

"This highway goes through the Crow reservation," supplies Brian.

"The highway goes through the Crow reservation," repeats Daria, "if that tells you anything."

"We're in New York. One second..." There's the sound of some typing on her end of the line, and then she adds, "There's an airport in Billings with flights to New York this evening, I can get you tickets, though I'm not sure if you have identification the system will accept. It might be easier if we come over there, but we're both usually busy, it'll take a few days to clear our schedule."

Mariam puts her on speaker when it becomes clear they'll need to include Jackson and Brian in the conversation.

"There isn't any chance we could persuade you to stick around being people with credit cards that work and legal identities here for us until - wow this is weird - Mariam and Daria show up? We'll need hotel rooms and so on, even if Mariam's paying I'm not sure how this would work. Oh," to the other Mariam, "we got picked up by some people, they're giving us a ride, we ended up by the road in the middle of nowhere."

"We're going to Vancouver," says Brian. "I don't mind helping you out."

"Thanks, we really appreciate it."

"You're welcome," says Brian. "Do you need us to detour?"

"I assume you don't want to drive us all the way to New York. I think Billings still works fine - a couple days there, it looks like, if nothing else comes up - is there anyone in the area you know, other me? I really don't want to make them stay with us until you can fly over here."

"There's a couple people that're at least closer than the east coast. I'll ask Daria, her friends tend to be the kind of people that'd kill to meet visitors from another dimension."

"We weren't gonna stay in Billings," says Jackson.

"Oh, sorry, misunderstood you earlier. Then we'd appreciate if you could check us into a hotel room."

"Yeah, sure," says Brian.

"Daria says she's asking around, she can't precog it right now, she was working all day and forgot to eat, but she should know in half an hour or so. When will you get to Billings?"

"In like two hours," says Brian.

"All right. Daria should have an answer by then, is it okay if I give them this number if we find anyone? Worst case scenario I figure out how to get you a hotel remotely or hire someone or something, it shouldn't be too hard."

"Yeah, it's all right," says Brian, "just don't give it to anybody who robocalls."

"As far I know, none of her friends are robots."

"Cool."

"Can the - the you people - can they pay back the hotel?" Jackson wonders.

"The her people will pay back the hotel," says Mariam, laughing.

"They can send a check," says Jackson, and he gives Brian's address and full name.

She repeats it back to confirm she has it right.

"I think that's - it, really - god this weird."

"You could ask 'em what their roles are," suggests Jackson.

"I'm a dom, Daria's a sub."

"Seriously?"

"Is that not what you would've guessed?" wonders Jackson.

"I'm not exactly a submissive person or - obedient or compliant or whatever."

"My Daria isn't exactly obedient or compliant either," she says fondly. "Dom told her to get him some water at a meeting a couple weeks ago and she nearly punched him."

Jackson gasps softly.

"She didn't actually, relax. She was there in a professional capacity, he shouldn't have tried to order her around."

'My Daria'. Huh. That's interesting.

"But," says Jackson.

"If it wasn't their arrangement," murmurs Brian. Jackson subsides.

"Should've punched him," mutters Daria.

"That's horrible," says Jackson.

"What, you think she should just do whatever any random idiot tells her to? If someone at home thought I should be doing the fetching and carrying because I was a woman I'd want to punch them too."

"Wait, was this her dom or just some dom?" says Jackson.

"Not her dom, just someone we work with sometimes."

"Oh, that's different," says Jackson.

"Yeah, I wouldn't ask random subs to get me water," says Brian, "rude."

"I'm not sure I understand how roles work, socially."

"Uh," says Jackson.

"Kind of hard to explain," says Brian.

"Yeah, I can't really magine what it would like without them. It's kind of like... there's an assumption that doms are more comfortable making decisions and subs prefer other people to decide for them because it's easier, and then it follows from that, except there's a lot of people that don't really fit neatly into that. I think you'll find it easier figure out by people-watching, there's a lot of little details I'd never think to tell you."

"What's it like when nobody has them?" asks Jackson.

"You know, when you put it that way I can see why my question was hard. Um, we... don't do that? I guess you could argue sexism captures a little bit of the social assumption that one group leads and the other follows, except most places we at least pretend that isn't a thing anymore."

"Back when people thought guys were almost all doms and girls almost all subs there was some sexism but mostly there isn't now we know that's not true," says Jackson.

"Did that happen recently?"

"It's sort of still happening? Like, there are sexist kinds of Christianity, and stuff," says Jackson.

"That's another thing that's weirdly similar, it sounds a lot like our feminist movement. You'd think the differences would add up to more."

"This has been - absolutely fascinating, but I have an appointment that I'm already running late for. I'll be free around 6:00, call me back then or if anything goes wrong, Daria will hopefully find someone to get in contact with you soon."

"You need to call anyone else?" asks Brian.

"No, I can't think of anyone."

"Put the phone back for me," Brian tells Jackson, and he takes it from her and locks the screen and tucks it back into Brian's pocket.

"Well. That was - interesting."

"Yeah. Weird," says Jackson. "You gonna get along with yourselves?"

"If she's anything like me, yeah, especially once we catch each other up on our different magic."

"It seems somewhat narcissistic to compliment her, but - definitely."

"I'd probably hate a me from a weird nondynamic world," comments Jackson.

"Jackson," says Brian.

"What? I would."

"Write it down to mention to your therapist next time."

"Yes Brian." Jackson gets a notebook out of the glove compartment and writes it down.

She's just... not going to touch that, then.

"There doesn't seem to be that big of a difference between me and - other Mariam."

"Sure, but if I were from a nondynamic world -"

"Jackson."

"Sorry Brian."

Daria looks like she's about to say something tactless, so Mariam decides it's probably best to move the conversation on to something else.

"About how many nondynamics are there, anyway?" It might be worth the trouble to pretend to have a role, if they're particularly unusual and there aren't any hard to fake social cues.

"I dunno. Not many," says Jackson. "Probably less than a percent? Maybe they hide it though."

"How would you hide it? I'm wondering if it makes sense for me to try to present as something, two nondynamics seem like they'd raise some eyebrows."

"They'd dress like one or the other. You're not super legible, but I wouldn't've guessed nondynamic, switch is more likely - or laundry day -"

"How common are switches, do you think it'd be easier to pass as one?"

Daria is still bristling somewhat on her alt's behalf, and is eyeing Mariam in a way that makes it perfectly clear exactly what she thinks of going along with the alternative universe kink bullshit.

"Ten percent, I think?"

"Hmm. Which do you think it'll be easier for me to look like? - relax, Daria, I don't think you need to do it, just that it might make things a little easier if one of us isn't a statistical anomaly."

"I don't really know a lot about fashion besides stuff I wear," says Jackson. "And it's partly how you like, carry yourself, too..."

"Oh, that makes sense."

"Jackson's discernible as a sub in a peacoat carrying a flogger at thirty yards," says Brian affectionately.

"I think I see what you mean. The..." She waves her hand, trying to indicate Jackson's general demeanor.

"Yeah, that," says Jackson. "And Brian's pretty clear, too, I think -"

"Not 'thirty yards in a windbreaker wearing a collar' obvious," says Brian, "but yeah."

"Windbreakers are a sub thing?"

"Kind of? I'm naming coats because they cover up a lot of the other signals but I'd expect subs to go for windbreakers more and doms to go for peacoats more," Brian says.

"Is there anything else that's just for subs or doms? Other than a - flogger or collar or something like that." She's reminding herself that this is another universe where this is normal and almost manages not to trip over the words.

"Showing off your neck even if you aren't collared's a sub thing," Jackson says. "So turtlenecks are dommy, but kind of also an old person thing? Uh, heels are subby... long hair is subby, that one's obvious so I forgot..."

"Are skirts a sub thing, or just for women?"

"Both. I mean, I have one but if I was a girl I'd have tons," Jackson says.

"It's interesting how a lot of the things that signal sub are feminine in our world."

"'Interesting'," mutters Daria, "that's one way to put it."

"Well, people used to think girls were all subs," says Jackson. "And boys were all doms. And people pretended to match."

"That seems like a lot of people pretending, it's not like with gay people where it's only a couple percent of the population."

"What people?" says Jackson.

" - gay. Attracted to people of the same gender?"

"...are people usually monosexual where you're from too?"

"Um, If monosexual means 'attracted only to the opposite gender' then yes. It's kind of hard to gather statistic because the issue's been politicized to hell and back but the best guess I've got is definitely in the single digits for gay or bi people. I'm going to assume you usually aren't?"

"Monosexual means attracted to only one gender," says Jackson. "I don't think either kind is more common... it's weird though."

Um. "That doesn't make any sense, you evolved same as we did - er, I assume, please tell me you aren't secretly actually a creationist world or something, I'd have to apologize to so many people - it doesn't make sense that you're not preferentially attracted to the gender you could have children with."

"...it doesn't make sense that there's people who get like suicidal or whatever either," says Jackson, "but that's not everything that's going on?"

"Half the population isn't suicidal, you can call that a glitch or something, I don't know, I'm not a biologist. What percent of people even ends up in relationships that can have kids? I guess you had roles matched to gender for a while, but that couldn't have been everywhere, through all of history..."

"We figure some girl doms hooked up with boy subs and just pretended in public," says Jackson.

"It was everywhere? I mean, I guess you could say, uh, something something taking care of children something something vulnerability, but I could spin that as a dom thing in two seconds, 'lioness' is an archetype."

"I don't know a lot about the rest of the world," says Jackson. "Uh, doms in Asia sometimes have long hair?"

" - that is so not the point."

"What is?"

"It's not aspects of the presentation, it's how if half the population was pretending to be something they aren't, that sounds way too unstable for everyone everywhere to have picked it up independently. - actually, no, if only societies that forced men and women into relationships that could produce children survived that... kind of makes sense? People that're still alive really aren't my area, I should probably not speculate too much."

"There's probably like some tiny tribal society in Africa that expects women to be doms instead but they'd be wrong more of the time," says Jackson. "I guess switches can pretend either way just as well probably? So they'd be wrong about half the time and everybody else could get - seventy percent."

"I guess," grumbles Daria.

"Sixty plus ten or forty plus - yeah, fifty and seventy," mutters Jackson.

"Women are more likely to be subs?" She's suspending judgement on how skeptical she should be of this claim until she talks to her alt, but it's good to know what people think.

"Yeah."

Mariam is tired and overwhelmed and confused and scared that they'll never get home - she's been trying to be polite to the people who picked them up but it has been a very long day. She closes her eyes and tries to stay awake enough to react if someone addresses her, trusting that Daria will wake her up if she's needed.

Brian drives on. Eventually there's a sign for Billings.

"Mariam, wake up, we're almost there."

"What? Where're - oh." She shakes herself, trying to clear her head.

"Ten miles, but you probably don't just want to be dropped off within city limits, we can find you a motel or something," says Brian.

"Yeah, thanks."

"Will just any old motel do -"

"As central as possible, I don't want to be stranded with no way to go get dinner or something. Other Mariam - we really need nicknames or something - shouldn't mind paying a bit more."

"Mmhm. Jackson, keep an eye out once we're on a main street for places to put 'em."

"Yes Brian."

"Is there anything you can think of we're likely to trip over not knowing, with roles or eclipsed? I know that's a broad question, but if there's anything you think you haven't mentioned yet that might keep us from getting weird looks..."

"Uh," says Jackson, "eclipsed aren't that likely to come up... it's hard to say what might come up with roles..."

Yeah, she'd expected that. "Okay, I'm sure I'll pick it up quickly enough, we don't seem to have run into any dangerous misunderstandings."

"Uh, I guess if you see someone subbing high protocol style - like they have their collar on and are doing stuff for their dom but like less casually than me right now - then maybe don't try to talk to them?"

"That's good to know. Is there anything that'd make it obvious that it's more formal, or is it more inexplicable social intuition?"

Daria looks very unimpressed by the concept of people you're not supposed to talk to, but doesn't press the point.

"Uh, pretty intuitiony. Like they'd have collars but lots of people have collars... they'd be acting different? Like not necessarily looking people in the eye, maybe."

"All right, that makes sense."

"I can't really do high protocol in the car or I could show you."

"That's okay, I think it should be enough just to know it's a thing."

"Okay... and don't hit doms for asking you to get them water, you can just be like, 'I'm not yours' or whatever."

"I shouldn't need to clarify that some random person doesn't own me."

"Or you can ignore them, but don't hit them for flirting with you."

"I'm not going to hit them for flirting with me, I'm going to make sure they don't assume they can order me around!"

"Not by hitting them!" says Jackson.

"If they don't listen the first time" she catches a quelling glance from Mariam and glares at her too, "they deserve it."

"Nonconsensually hitting people is actually illegal," says Brian. "Someone telling you to bring them a glass of water doesn't make it count as self-defense."

"I'm not saying I'm going to. Just that they'd deserve it if I did."

Your alt is perfectly capable of defending herself, Mariam doesn't say, because personal conversations in front of strangers never go well and she has some measure of tact.

"Most likely nobody's going to parse you as a sub in any case, we're apparently confusing that way."

"You're a little confusing but people might guess anyway," says Jackson.

"There's nothing to guess, we don't have your -" Daria bites back the first few descriptions that come to mind "- role thing." 

"- they might... make... guesses?" says Jackson. "I don't mean they'll figure it out."

Daria crosses her arms over her chest and doesn't say anything.

Sigh. Probably she should try defuse the argument but she is tired and they won't see these people after they drop them off and she does not want to deal with this.

Jackson spots a motel. Brian pats him on the head and Jackson beams at him. They park.

Mariam gets out of the car and looks around briefly. "This looks good, thanks."

"I can put your room on my card and give you like -" Brian flips through his wallet. "Jackson, is any of your money in cash?"

"No Brian."

"Damn. Uh, twenty bucks - twenty-one - for food till your - people - get you?"

"Oh, thank you! Yeah, that'd be really useful. We can probably figure out how to transfer money somehow, or they'll find someone near here, but until then it'd be good to have at least a little cash."

"Long as they pay me back," says Brian. He hands over a twenty and a single. "Do you need one bed or two -"

"Two."

Brian buys them a room on his card.

"I think that's all - Daria, do you think we're missing anything?" When Daria shakes her head, she continues, "thank you so much, honestly, you've been extraordinarily helpful with having us dropped on you quite literally out of nowhere."

"It's no trouble. Hope you get where you're going all right," says Brian.

Her smile becomes slightly strained (they don't know how they got here, an unfamiliar unobserved phenomenon is the hardest to reproduce, and she's not hopeful for their return), but she manages a reasonably cheerful "and you!"

And Brian and Jackson get back in the car and drive on.

They go into their room and look at each for a moment before Daria pulls Mariam into a hug.

"We'll fix it. You sleep, it's late by our time. I'll call the - other Mariam and let her know to call us at this hotel if something comes up, we can figure everything else out tomorrow."

She mutters something inaudible into Daria's shoulder, lifts her head and says more clearly "I'll... be thinking more clearly in the morning, yeah." She leans into the hug for a moment more, then breaks away and heads for the shower.

And Daria calls the local Mariam, just long enough to confirm the motel's phone number and their room, and then sits cross-legged on one of the beds, thinking and idly sorting through the things in her bag to see if any of them might be useful. When Mariam emerges, she dims the lights and abandons her bag on the floor, but otherwise doesn't move until she falls asleep.

At least neither roles nor magic have affected the fact that the sun rises once every twenty-four hours in the east.

Mariam wakes up with the sunrise, notices Daria asleep on top of the covers, and pulls a blanket over her. Sighs. Considers going to get food, discards the idea of leaving Daria to wake up alone.

Daria had left her phone charger on the ground near her bag, so she plugs hers in and checks the signal - none - before opening a mindless puzzle game.

When she opens her eyes, she blinks briefly at the scene in front of her before putting the events of the previous day together.

"Mar, time's it? Uh, phones are working? 

"8:47. No signal, but they're charging fine. We should get breakfast, I'm starving."

"If we're eight years ahead of them we could sell those phones for a lot, assuming they can't precog future tech or something, should probably be careful with them."

She gets up, washes her face in an attempt to wake up fully, and then they head out to find a grocery store or someplace cheap to eat.

There's a convenience store a block down the road in one direction and a diner the other way.

Convenience store it is - they don't know how long they'll need to eat off Brian's twenty, though worse comes to worse they could pawn one of Daria's rings. As they walk, Mariam watches the people they pass, trying to catch the differences in how they carry themselves.

There are some! Short haired people tend to have longer strides and more confident carriage and sweeping gazes; long haired people have coy eyelash-batting habits and withdrawn or careless posture depending on what they're going for.

Hmm. Are there any that don't fit neatly into those two groups?

Some. That guy has an undercut; he's mostly doing the dom body language except when he winks at a pixie-cut girl.

Short hair seems to be a strong signal, so perhaps her longer hair and a dom presentation could be enough to be read as a switch?

She's not a good actor, as such, but she can match an archetype that's presented to her pretty well. She watches the short-haired people more closely.

Daria is looking around too, but with much less focus on the people,  trying to pick out any obvious differences around them.

Some of the people have collars. The collars vary considerably in style; buckles and locks and magnets and clasps, leather and webbing and metal and fabric. Many collars bear nameplates. Some people are pretty obviously subs but not claimed in this way.

Collars. Ugh.

Gawping like a tourist is probably conspicuous, so she tries to look subtly, pulling self-consciously at the ends of her hair and following Mariam closely. 

Mariam's stride becomes more confident as they walk and she has time to borrow cues from the short-haired passerbys. She straightens her shoulders, lifts her head slightly, brushes stray strands of hair away from her face. It's not a perfect copy, but she hopes to at least pass on casual inspection.

Nobody finds them remarkable enough to stop them and ask intrusive questions, anyway.

The convenience store has shelf stable junkfood. Milk, ice cream, juice, soda, overpriced bananas and red delicious apples. Donuts.

They pick something as close to a reasonable breakfast as can be found under the circumstances, then Mariam goes to pay with their lone twenty.

The lady behind the counter makes change and they get a receipt. It's a pretty normal interaction apart from the lady in question wearing a collar.

They return to the motel, Daria eating as she walks.

When they arrive, she pulls out a notebook and several small plastic containers out of her bag and announces that she wants to run some tests. With Mariam making suggestions and leaning against her to let Daria borrow energy to cast, she could happily spend the whole morning that way if nothing interrupts.

Nobody feels the need to burst into their motel room for any reason. Nor do any meteors fall, fires ignite, aliens invade, or tornadoes strike.

Everything with bone or hair or blood from people in the other universe they try works fine except location oriented casting seems to pick a direction at random. Their hair points at them. When Daria twists a diamond off her ring and tries a random pull, she gets a very confused spirit that tells them, after some prodding, that he's a switch.

Mariam heads off Daria before she gets too deep into trying to design a random pull for eclipsed specifically, and drags her out to get lunch when she gets hungry.

The lunch options are still convenience store, diner, or wandering farther afield.

Daria suggests they find a grocery store and buy bread and something to put on it; Mariam says if they don't get any news by the evening she'll call her alt to figure out the money problem. They head out.

Eyeing people in collars skeptically is probably a bad idea, but Daria doesn't like this world and its stupid status games.

People in collars do not like being stared at any more than people not in collars; she causes one sub to check her hair and another to walk faster.

Oh, for goodness sake, the subs are certainly not doing anything wrong.

Asking for directions might be useful if they take too long to find someplace, but they're not in any hurry and she's also people-watching, if in a less aggressive manner than Daria. They keep walking, paying just enough attention to remember their way back.

It's a pretty boring town, Billings, with pretty boring miscellaneous Americana. Occasionally they pass someone kneeling by their dom on a lowered structure next to a park bench - not generally directly on the sidewalk; there are bench accessories designed for the purpose. The jewelry store includes collars. The advertising is different; men are only a little less likely to be posed as subby objects than women, and there's even ads with sexy doms - anything more imperative than insinuating. There's a billboard with a hotline to call if you've witnessed something that should be forwarded to a precog.

Huh. Precog hotline, that makes sense. She repeats the number to herself a few times, fixing it in her memory.

Mariam is pretending very hard that she sees nothing unusual in any of this. She doesn't want to be uncomfortable around people who aren't operating on the same set of norms as her, so she won't, and eventually it'll be true.

They talk about relatively inconsequential subjects as they wander: what powers they'd want as eclipsed, a paper Daria had been reading. It's almost like home, except for the lingering surreality of the situation in the back of their minds.

Eventually they find a grocery store, manage to buy food without Daria offending anyone, and head back. 

Their conversation turns to the interactions of necromancy and eclipsed, and Daria pulls out her notebook and jots down questions and ideas for experiments - keep powers? mind or matter? psion telepathy and sprits(!), degradation effect y/k/n? healing?? PSION + MAGE + NEC - RESURRECTION? - she bumps into the occasional lamppost or other pedestrian in her excitement, but she barely notices. New magic!! 

"The implications of necromancy working across dimensions is itself fascinating, I wonder if could settle the omnipresence/imprint debate. And if we are reaching across dimensions, that's a possible avenue to getting us home, though I'd need to figure out how the hell we got here first - you think I should try a live pull? I don't have remains, it'd be a blank and dreadfully complicated - and if a psion can interact with spirits that would be  - if they count, I wonder if one could just shove a spirit into a body, if a mage fixes it or makes it or - I don't know enough about psions, I need to talk to my alt, maybe they already have a working resurrection, maybe this is bullshit in a thousands ways - I need a library, we should go find a library -"

"We don't actually need to solve all the world's problems today," laughs Mariam. "Wait until we've figured out money and we aren't burning scarce resources for anything complicated, and probably also until you have a workplace more convenient than the floor of our motel room. Then I can play battery all you like."

"The other one," says Daria, grinning, "is a precog."

" - oh, that's a good point. If she can help, anyway. In any case the really interesting stuff will need to wait until we're in the same room with them - is Mariam eclipsed, did she mention?"

"Statistically unlikely, but she works with Daria somehow, don't know if they tend to cluster - I can ask."

They get back to their room soon enough. Daria heads for the phone, dials Mariam's number -

- and the other Daria picks up before the first ring, and begins talking without waiting for a greeting.

"Mariam is taking care of the money, I think she's charming the motel people into converting some to cash for her. Your Mariam doesn't approve of us using Psion and Necromancer as distinguishing nicknames, I've picked Crescent, my Mariam is Sun. She'll have suggestions for you if you ask. She's a mage, you shouldn't be surprised by the coincidence, we met in virtuality.

I can do precog, an hour and twenty nine minutes; have an eidetic memory and can grant it to people, touch range only, sorry; single target communicative telepathy and single target illusions based off that, I'm working to expand those now; some work with psion tech you'd need to read a textbook before I can properly explain. Sun does mostly healing, she's trying to get deaging as quickly as possible, but she's picked up quite a lot of tricks with wind and fire, she thought it was cool when we were kids and now we're part of New York's firefighting response - and yeah, precogs are just as useful for that as you think they are, but we don't catch everything, she's gone in with search and rescue a few times, it's very safe for her between the precog and healing and elemental stuff; lately she's been trying to get something for ease of transportation, not sure what she's decided to try for yet. 

We don't have resurrection, or for that matter any way of communicating with the dead. If your thing works for us that'd be fascinating, I can't drop everything and fly over there because I'm precog on watch for the fire department and I need to have that covered first but I'm trying to find someone with a complimentary skill set until I can, at least some precog to make your experiments easier. The best way for you to get an idea of our limits is to just read about it, I think, it's not a good use of our time for me to explain. I don't know any introductory texts to recommend you, you should look that up or ask a librarian, but straight out of virtuality I read Mind Over Matter: An Overview of Magery and McErye's A History of Psionics. Unfortunately you can't recommend me books for the obvious reasons."

...Crescent is definitely her. If Mariam wasn't quietly miserable this would be the best thing that has ever happened to her. Daria's practically bouncing with excitement by the time Crescent is halfway through the description of her abilities.

"Necromancy is... hmm. Ritual based magic, drawing from an energy source almost everyone - in our world - has in varying amounts. There are theories that everyone has at least trace amounts, and that necromancy only works on someone with that energy; the other theory is just "living things", because there are people that don't register to a necromancer's senses if they're trying to check. Mariam is very powerful, I borrow from her - this requires an initial ritual and creates a bond between the two people proportion to how often you do it, we have a general location sense across the entire continental US, some awareness of strong emotions, a sense of the other person that's - hard to describe. I push that energy into a prepared focus, usually someone's remains - traditionally bone or hair or blood, but it can be anything that was part of them - and direct it through various diagrams and patterns."

And they talk like that for nearly an hour, trading information about each other's magic systems, until Crescent remembers she has somewhere to be and rushes off with a promise to put them in contact with someone either more local or more flexible.

"Thoughts on nicknames?" she asks Mariam after Crescent has hung up.

"Their magic has the obvious theme, ours is rather grim. Precious stones, maybe?" She looks at the rings and bracelet on Daria's left hand. "Gold Silver Copper Diamond Sapphire Amethyst Pearl Amber?"

"Amber fits you."

Mariam smiles. "I can be Amber, then. I like it. Hmm. Mythological references, maybe? I don't know much except the Greek myths, nothing's sticking out to me. Your middle name?"

"'Elizabeth' is a terrible name, I have no idea why my parents picked it."

"Yew, Cypress, Holly? Wood's a bit less twee than gemstones."

"Aspen." Often used for clarity in a casting, or when searching for something.

"Oh, that's nice. Aspen, okay. I'm going to go see what Sun figured out with the money and then I think I'll look around a bit, do you need me for anything?"

"I wanted to try a couple things Crescent suggested, but most of them I have the energy for and the ones I don't will wait."

"All right, I should be back in a couple hours at the latest."

After she leaves, Daria sets all the components she has with her in neat rows on the floor to see what she has to work with, and then pulls out her notebook and starts sketching designs for a diagram. She swears at it when she notices mistakes and taps her pencil with excitement when she thinks of something clever and generally enjoys herself quite thoroughly.

Elsewhere, the other Daria is as excited, if less capable of novel experiments. She precogs calls with various acquaintances, looking for someone who would be close by and willing to help the newcomers in exchange for getting to see new magic (!!), but most of the people she knows are on the east coast, or at least not anywhere near Billings and not willing to drop everything on short notice for such an implausible-sounding circumstance. Eventually, she remembers a psion she met during the last eclipse who had seemed like she'd be appropriately interested. Her pre-eidetic memory is pretty recent - she digs Isabella's phone number out of her old notes, and makes the call.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this is Daria Osfell, we worked the last eclipse together? I have some very weird news I thought you might be interested in and a favor to ask."

"Hit me."

"Yesterday Mariam got a call from someone who said," she quotes from the memory Sun had bounced her. "'My name is Mariam Kasparian. I'm you, I think, by the voice and the matching phone number, from a different universe where it's 2014 and we have necromancy instead of eclipsed and no roles. Daria and I ended up here somehow a couple hours ago.' The voice matched, she listed a bunch of facts that my Mariam hasn't really talked about to people, and when I called her Daria I tried to catch her in an inconsistency in precog. They seem - exactly like us, adjusted for the different universe."

"- okay. Can you think of any reason you'd be targeted by people with this sort of capacity?"

"I'm not doing anything high profile, impersonating me or Mariam won't get you an in anywhere better than the New York fire department, and if you can do that there are much better targets."

"They're not impersonating you, exactly, is there anything you can get them access to if you trust them - money, maybe, though not the most likely, eclipsed make bank - or an in with somebody or something like that -"

"Good point. We're paying for their hotel room, got them a couple hundred in cash, but it'd take more than just showing up and claiming to be - versions of us - to get us to hand over anything significant, at that point you'd be better off building trust the conventional way, I can't think of how this'd make sense financially. I don't think we have an in with anyone that would be worth this kind of complicated plot, any more than your average eclipsed - nothing we do is particularly unique in that sense. I do some research on eclipsed, I'm planning to do more once my contract with the fire department expires? but I'd share that with anyone, it's not secret."

"Huh. Okay. Well, worth asking the question, but it's good that it doesn't seem to be that. What's the favor?"

"I want someone to keep an eye on them. Mariam and I can't drop everything and fly to Montana, it'll take at least a week to arrange for someone to replace me, and they don't have any ID that's not from 2014, so they can't fly here or rent a car or anything. If they're who they say they are they'll be tremendously useful, the other Daria has a magic system that does communication with the dead; and if not it's probably better to make sure we know what they're doing."

"Gosh. Okay. Yeah, I can reschedule my visit with my dad. How are you planning to get them to New York without their having any ID, though, get them copies of yours via shenanigans? I can't fox the TSA, not that kinda psion."

"Haven't thought that far yet. Worst case scenario someone rents them a car and we hope nobody stops them to ask for a driver's licences, or there are buses."

"Sure. I'll change my flight."

"They're in Billings, Montana," and she names the motel's address and phone number. "When will you be able to get there?"

"Looking like three and a half hours."

"All right, I'll call and let them know."

"Give them my cell number -" She rattles it off. "- and is there anything else I should know?"