A man looks up from the book he's reading. 

"Are you all right-- Lily?"

He's not Lily. 

The stranger looks kind of like Lily, if you put Lily through three hours of photoshop and studio makeup, and also if they were a drawing come to life; humans do not generally have faces that symmetrical, skin that flawless, eyes that large and bright. 

"...I'm sorry?" he tries. 

"I'm sorry, you just looked a lot like my husband for a second there, but as far as I know he doesn't get doors. --I'm Lev."

He doesn't — Lev isn't Pretty, it's obvious, Sasha didn't know they let Uglies get married — he doesn't say that. He tries to stand up. The floor is spinning under him but he can get to a chair without falling again. 

"I'm Sasha." 

Lev helps him to a chair.

"That's... odd," he says, "that's my husband's name. Have you gotten a door to Milliways before? I've been getting them since I was a kid."

"I don't know what that means." From the sound of it, this isn't an unusual occurence. (His voice, if Lev is listening for it, sounds very like Lily's.) 

"Welcome to Milliways!" He gestures, indicating the bar. "So it turns out there's more than one universe. Some of them have magic, some of them have far-future tech, some of them are just alternate ways history could have gone. Sometimes people in all the universes open a door and instead of whatever they expected to find behind it there's this bar, where they can meet people from other universes. Your first drink is free. --Does that make sense or should I try to explain things more?"

"...I feel like that would have implications I'm not thinking of but obviously I'm not thinking of them. I don't know. I've never been here before, though." 

"I can go get you a drink. What do you want?"

"...something with cherries? Something bubbly, I don't know what the options are." 

"The options are literally any drink that has ever existed in any universe! It's a convenient bar like that."

"There's a place near my apartment that makes a thing called a green cherry. One of those?" 

Lev goes up to the bar and says, "I want a black coffee for me and a green cherry for Sasha. --Is it possible that alternate universes contain different versions of the same people?"

Yes, the bar napkins. They are called alts. Sasha is an alt of Lily.

"Thank you."

Lev collects the drinks and is somewhat puzzled by the fact that the green cherry is bright blue and not even a little bit fizzy. He sits down and says, "apparently you're an alternate universe version of my husband."

He takes the drink — doesn't seem surprised by either of these traits — and looks at Lev's face. It's kind of fascinating, how different Lev looks from everyone Sasha has ever seen. "I don't think I know an alternate universe version of you, but I might not realize it if I did." 

"Because you're from a"-- he gestures-- "very pretty species?"

"It isn't a species thing, everyone gets surgery. But yes, that is why." 

"Yeah, I'd probably be unrecognizable. --Why does everyone get surgery?"

He blinks, as if the idea of someone not going through the operation had never occurred to him. 

"Nobody wants to stay an Ugly kid," he says, as if this is self-evident. 

"...I don't think not having gotten extensive plastic surgery makes you ugly? Like, I realize I'm biased here, but Lily is in fact very very pretty."

"It's a noun, not an adjective, that's just what it's called." 

Well, that's fucked up. 

"Why don't they want to stay, uh, Ugly? In my world, if we were that good at plastic surgery, a bunch of people would still want to keep the faces they started with, and a bunch of the people who didn't would want to be lizardpeople or something."

"Would you want to be fifteen forever? Or — never move out of your parents' house, stay a little kid forever? Stay behind while everyone you know becomes an adult and moves on? That's what it would be." 

This society is very fucked up!

"You have to get surgery in order to be an adult?"

"That's just what you do when you turn sixteen. I don't know what would happen if someone tried not to, because nobody does. 

There are people who can't, but it's not — nearly everyone has a friend whose friend's boyfriend's parents' other child never leaves the building and that's why but I've never talked to someone who knows someone." 

Not that he talks to a lot of people. 

Wow, this incredibly pretty alternate universe version of his husband is incredibly pretty. It's kind of distracting. Lev keeps having intrusive thoughts about kissing him. 

"I guess that's not any stranger than Cascadia's norm of people having babies when they're sixteen."