There is a girl sitting at a table. 

She looks human enough; her hair isn't long enough yet to tie back properly but she has it in clips away from her face while she embroiders the beginnings of a word onto the back of a jacket. She is not obviously an alien, or obviously a miracle, except for how she's sitting in a bar with supernovae out the window. 

She looks very much like Sasha. 

This is an annoyingly humanlike alien, he thinks, before he processes who exactly she looks like and feels a sense of warmth go through his entire body. 

Good job, Jesus. 

"Hi," he says. "I'm Lev. --Where are we?"

She looks up. 

...okay, so, not her Lev, because he introduced himself, therefore either a time traveling Lev or a completely different Lev, she can't decide which she thinks is more likely. 

"We're in a bar. I think time is stopped outside whenever the door is closed, I did some experimenting with my phone when I first found it. — my name's Raine." 

"...this is a really weird miracle. I guess I'm glad He made sure time was stopped but it really seems like overkill. I'd say 'it's like an email forward' but I feel like most email forward miracles are less... overengineered."

...a Lev who isn't an atheist. That didn't sound particularly Jewish either to the extent that Raine knows things about Judaism which isn't much, so probably not a time traveler. Also he's older than her Lev. 

"See, my first thought was Doctor Who style sci fi." 

"...I'm not a physicist but I'm pretty sure that a door to a space bar opening spontaneously in my office is impossible. Especially if the other person there is a female version of a guy from my church. --You really do look like the sister of this guy from my church, it's really striking."

Oh no poor other her. 

"Doctor Who has a lot of physically impossible things, there's a reason I didn't say Asimov and it's not just that I've only read half of one of his books. Want to sit down?" 

"Yeah, I can do that."

He's very conspicuously averting his eyes from her. 

(Oh gosh, Raine is really pretty. Jesus really could have sent him someone who was less pretty.)

That's.... really worrying. She doesn't know enough about Christians to be able to tell exactly how worrying that is but she's worried. She's also worried about other her, who is apparently living as a guy and going to church, but other her isn't right in front of her, so. 

"I'm kind of curious about the person from church I look like," she says as neutrally as she can. 

"I don't talk to him much," Lev says in a soft tone of voice Sasha might recognize. "But he's a freelance translator. Works from home. He likes poetry and he sketches and he leaves before the coffee and cookies the same way I do."

So she's probably not eating. Great. Every single thing Raine hears is just more and more concerning. 

"....he sounds nice," she says, instead of that. 

"He's really nice," Lev says softly, staring at the floor near Raine's feet. "It's really weird that you look like him. --I guess we should check that we're from the same universe? Maybe you're an alternate universe version of him. Uh, it's 2045, I live in Gilead--"

"I'm pretty sure we're not from the same universe, I know another Lev. It's 2019 and I'm from the United States and I have never heard of Gilead. — I think. The name sounds kind of familiar? But it's definitely not a country." 

"--oh my god I'm so sorry. Stay out of the Pacific Northwest."

"...I was planning on that anyway but what happens." 

"Gilead used to be the United States. There's a coup in 2020, the Gileadites take over the government, the Pacific Northwest decides to secede, some genius Commander decides that the best way to get them to stop is by nuking Portland and Seattle and San Francisco, millions of people die and there's a horrible refugee crisis--" He adds as a second thought, "And you probably want to stay in the country where they don't murder babies or old people or sick people and don't force women to be sex slaves and don't let three men pretend to get married."

"....what is a Gileadite."

(She's pretty sure everything he just said about the Pacific Northwest is evangelical homophobic nonsense but she'll deal with that later.) 

"Uh, the largest denomination of Christians in the United States? --I guess you're not from the past."

"Probably not. The biggest denomination of Christians in the United States is, uh, I'm bad at keeping track of what kinds of Christian there are but I have never heard of a Gileadite so I'm guessing it's not them." 

"Where do you go to church then?"

Ugh.

"I don't and never have. I used to go to synagogue for the high holy days and classmates' bar and bat mitzvahs but I don't really do that anymore either." 

"...okay I'm really confused."

"I was raised pretty much secular with a thin layer of Judaism spread reluctantly on top, and now I am an atheist and also possibly a pagan depending on where you draw the boundary of paganism. I am not and have never been and will never be a Christian. I don't know if that helps or not." 

"Okay, so, this is a weird miracle thing, so it is probably arranged by God? And it's intended to get someone to accept Jesus into their heart? This really seems like heavy-duty stuff to use for, like, me, He could have just given me a really faithful wife probably, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. But you are not the sort of person who would convince anyone to accept Jesus into their heart, no offense, and you'd be only slightly better at convincing me I'm supposed to be Jewish-- which isn't an impossible thing for God to want, my parents converted from Judaism, but again it seems like it could be arranged more simply somehow-- and this implies that I'm supposed to be evangelizing you. Except God is omniscient so He definitely knows I'm not much of one for ethics or, uh, faith. So He couldn't possibly have chosen me for evangelism, like it's not some weird Moses 'I'm not worthy' thing, it's-- I'm not saved? I'm definitely going to go to Hell unless God has some sort of provision for things because He is omnibenevolent and made me the sort of person I am and presumably would not make me unable to have faith and then get tortured? Unless the Calvinists are right, I guess. Anyway, this was kind of a ramble but I have no idea what God's plan is here at all or how this is supposed to work towards His greater glory at all and I realize this is the way everyone is most of the time about, like, car accidents and things but I feel like it is a significantly weirder situation to have about interdimensional bars!"

This entire monologue is delivered to the floor.

.....wow okay that's a lot. 

"I... honestly think that 'not the kind of person who would convince anyone to accept Jesus into their heart' might be the best compliment I've gotten this month, so, thank you. And I still think this is a weird sci fi thing that has nothing to do with any gods Christian or otherwise, but I'm an atheist pagan so that is unlikely to convince you of anything."

Also you're not going to go to Hell because Hell is fake and they made it up to make everyone too scared to step out of the rules they set, but guess what Lev is not going to believe. 

"Also I specifically asked God to send me a psychologically interesting alien and once again my prayers are not granted."

"Are you calling me boring?" 

"Never. I'm just saying that it would be cool if you came from a species that never Fell, or a species where babies appear spontaneously in the forest instead of being produced through pregnancy, or a species that has chips in their brains so they can't die, and instead it seems like you're a normal human. --Please correct me if you're any of those things, of course."

"To the best of my knowledge I am a normal human, although one cannot entirely rule out the possibility that I am a fairy child switched at birth with my parents' human baby. Seems pretty unlikely, though, I can handle iron and lie." 

"You could be from a weird fairy species. Have you tried crossing running water?"

Oh no she's great.

He tries to figure out whether he should shut down his crush on her. But probably he should be doing what God wants from him because of the whole interdimensional bar situation, which is probably talking to Raine. --Oh, no, she's a girl, maybe he has a crush on her because God wants them to get married, which is definitely nice to think about, but also definitely terrifying, and really not the sort of decision he wants to make in the next five minutes. He wishes there was a bathroom he could go scream in for a couple minutes, or alternately that he could pray and get a sense of inner peace instead of a sense that the Divine found him fundamentally wanting.

"I have and it worked fine. Are you okay?" 

...forget it.

"I noticed I, um, like you."

"...you're very cute about it. 

You can look at me, you know, I won't turn you to stone." 

"Um. If I look at you I'll, um." Intense blushing.

"....you'll?" 

"Lustafteryou."

".....if you stare at my tits I will ask you to stop it, but otherwise that honestly sounds... fine?" 

He blushes even harder at the phrase "stare at my tits."

"Um, well, even if you don't mind it's bad... in general? For women and for my future wife."

"I really don't see how you looking at me would be harmful for women in general but if you think your future wife will have opinions about it then feel free to not." 

"Well, if men look at women with lust, then they'll objectify women and it'll lead to pornography use and sexual violence and sex trafficking and adultery and sexual harassment and other things that are bad for women? And in the case of my wife specifically she might be jealous if she knew I had been attracted to other people, or worried that I was going to compare her to someone else. And it might tempt me to kiss someone else or, um, other things. And if I discipline my mind so I only think of my wife in a, um, sexual way, then she'll be my standard of beauty and I'll always think she's the most beautiful."

Lev is looking at the ground for reasons that have nothing to do with whether Raine is pretty.

What the hell do you do with that set of sentences, Raine is so unqualified for this 

"...sexual violence and sexual harassment and especially sex trafficking are largely systemic problems that really do not seem best solved by individual people refusing to look at other individual people, and the evidence seems to point to pornography use actually just being fine for women, when porn was more widely available rape rates went way down although there's hella confounding factors there and I don't know any good studies off the top of my head, my Lev looked and then started yelling about validity and replication -- admittedly I am probably not the most qualified to talk about adultery -- and that is really not how being attracted to people works in my experience but I guess if it works for you?" 

"I don't... really care about the other things. I just want to be the best husband for my wife that I can be. And I want to treat you with respect."

Honestly Raine knows how to deal with that even less. 

"...okay," she says, because she isn't sure what else to say. 

"...why are you not qualified to talk about adultery? Because you're not married, or...?"

"That, and also I kind of have two and a half boyfriends." 

"Is that... okay... for you?"

"...sorry, I'm not sure what the thing you're trying to imply here is. I love all three of the people I live with and they love me and each other and we like the arrangement we have, yeah." 

"Oh. I guess I'd want to know that you're... happy, and not being taken advantage of or exploited, and that sort of thing. Um. I haven't really talked to Cascadians very much, I don't know... how to be polite around polygamous people."

Raine is taken three times over, he should shut down his nascent crush on her right now. He tries to think about her flaws. She's not chaste (but he could forgive her and maybe she'd be grateful and happy). She's not a Christian (he doesn't really care about that). She's vulgar (he doesn't really care about that either). This is difficult. 

"Polyamorous. But considering everything I know so far about Gilead you're doing great at it. If you have questions I can try and answer them, or alternately you could tell me more things about what Gilead and Cascadia are like?" 

"...........also I think I'm getting a crush on you and I have no idea what to do with that at all."

"Neither do I," she says when it becomes clear that she's not going to think of a better response. 

"Because, um, I'm not supposed to get crushes on people? Because my entire heart is supposed to belong to my future wife?"

"...that sounds terrible. I'm so sorry." 

"Why is it terrible?"

"The — trying to hold yourself back from liking someone because if you like them too much it would be really bad? I've had to do that, it was terrible, I wouldn't wish it on anyone." 

"It seems weird that you'd have to, if you're an atheist. Atheists don't normally care about emotional purity."

"....it was not because of anything to do with emotional purity but I can't imagine it would have sucked any less if it had been." 

"What happened?" he asks with empathy.

(Bad! Bad idea! Emotional intimacy leads to affection and affection leads to crushes and then he'll have to tell his wife someday that he wasn't faithful to her always.)

She's not sure she wants to talk about the whole "I'm gay, and I'm trans, and I was at an ex gay camp" thing to the fundamentalist. 

"...long story," she says, in the tone of someone who doesn't want to talk about it rather than the tone of someone who's warning you of the ride you're in for. 

"I'm sorry," he says.

He wants to give her a hug but, all things considered, that is probably a bad idea. 

Instead he says, "so if this is a bar, can we order drinks?"

"I assume so? I haven't tried or anything, I don't really drink and I haven't seen anyone behind the counter." 

Lev goes up to the bar. "Hello? Is someone there?"

A napkin appears with writing on it.

Hello. Welcome to Milliway's. May I interest you in a drink? First one is free.

"...do you have ones that aren't alcoholic?" Lev says, for lack of anything better to say. 

Yes.

"...are all the worlds Earths or are there a bunch of weird alien worlds somewhere?"

Not all worlds are Earths, although Earths are very common in the multiverse.

"Uh, okay, cool, I want something alien and"-- he thinks about it-- "safe and not mind-altering in any way or something that in any way causes any unexpected effects on my physiology. Just an alien drink. One that tastes good."

Enjoy. 

A glass of something neon purple and slightly pulsating appears. 

"...what the fuck," is the most eloquent response Raine can produce to this. 

"...I'm not sure it's any weirder than the interdimensional bar to begin with?"

He takes a cautious sip of his drink. It tastes strongly of umami. 

"Seeing a drink appear from nowhere is more viscerally weird even if it's not actually weirder." 

"The first one's free," Lev says, still trying to figure out whether he likes his drink, "and if you want more than one-- or some food? it's a bar, I bet they have food-- I can cover it probably."

"I probably should eat something, yeah." Does this bar sell pizza and lemonade -- oh it super does that's nice. 

She sits back down and -- isn't really sure what to say to Lev, now. 

"Do you have kids yet?" Lev asks. A nice safe topic of conversation. One that will remind him that she's definitely taken.

"Nope! And not planning on it. I'm eighteen, it would be really weird for me to have kids. I'm assuming you don't either from how you mention your future wife." 

"Yeah, but I'm a man. Lots of women get married as soon as they're done being Handmaids, but men have to establish a career. And you're not religious, you don't have to be married to have kids."

"....okay so outside of like, Utah, most people wait until they are in their twenties to have a kid. That goes for women too. Also I have no idea what 'handmaid' means in this context unless you're about to make a joke about feudal lords." 

"Oh, sorry, it's a Gileadite thing. Handmaids have kids for infertile couples. --Your total fertility rate must be abysmal. Unless you surrogate?"

"N....o? The average family has two point something kids?" 

"Oh wow how did you pull that off?"

".......uh, by not having a one child policy like China had? I don't think it took much pulling, honestly." 

"Have you ever heard of bitoxiphosphene?"

"I have not but I assume from context that it fucks up people's reproductive systems." 

"It's a pollutant. It fucks up women's reproductive systems. They can't conceive, or they miscarry, or their children are born sick and die young. And even if they're okay when they're sixteen they're probably affected by the time they're thirty-five."

"...guess I can see why it wouldn't be weird for an eighteen year old to have plural kids, then." 

She sounds very dubious about the prospect of having kids at all. 

".......yeah I think I was very mistaken about what your relationships are like."

"Probably! Most people are, though." 

"There are, uh, polyamorous people in Cascadia, but I assumed if you had two and a half boyfriends all to yourself it was because you're very fertile and you could make sure all three of them have kids."

"...I'm enjoying the mental image of men being a scarce resource that women fight over by displaying their fertility like weird reverse birds or something, but no." Even leaving aside that Raine couldn't get pregnant even if she did want to which she doesn't. "And it's not really me having three people all to myself, it's more like four people of which I am one living together and dating in various combinations." 

"If a man had three girlfriends that would be remarkable too! I'd just expect he was wealthy instead." Lev blinks. "Oh! Your boyfriends are same-sex-attracted?"

I'd sure fucking hope so. 

"Yep! One of them is bi and two — or one and a half I guess if we keep doing the half thing — are gay." 

"...I'm not sure how that works with you being a girl but maybe they're better at healing homosexuality in your world?"

And this is why she doesn't talk to evangelicals other than Marlo. 

"Nobody can make gay people straight, which is good, because it's not a fucking disease and it doesn't need curing. 

Lev makes an exception for me because he's weird like that and that's why the thing I have with Marlo is half dating and not entirely dating." 

"...you're dating a me? Wait, other me is homosexual?"

Lev has grown up in Gilead his entire life and is therefore too prim to think the relevant string of curse words.

"I'm dating a you, and other you is gay and also wonderful." 

"Uh, I'm same-sex-attracted but I definitely... like... girls. Maybe some things don't match up? I mean, Sasha's a guy."

How sure are you that your Sasha is a guy, Raine doesn't say. "Some things might not match up," she says instead. 

Right. Like for example the other him is wonderful and Lev is kind of pathetic and gross.

"Homosexuality is a sin either way but probably it matters less in your world because it doesn't matter if some people don't have kids. And you can't really get married in our sense of the word marriage but I think the thing I'd mean by it and the thing you'd mean by it are so different they're completely unrelated anyway. And... I'm not going to try to convert you. I'm not saved."

She's not really sure what to do with that facial expression. 

"Good, we've all had more than enough of hearing about how evil and degenerate our lifestyle is." 

"Even if I were inclined to convert you I'd be better served by being saintly and happy in your general direction, I'd think. I mean I can't because I'm not full of the joy of Christ's love, but all the research suggests it's best achieved by showing that Christians are kind and the Christian life is appealing. And calling you evil and degenerate seems like neither of those things. --Besides, sins of the flesh are the least bad, it's not like you're me."

"...I mean I'm also an atheist pagan and Lev and Asher are atheists and Marlo is complicated but rounds off to agnostic, but the chances of any of us deciding to give that up and go be evangelical Christians are at this point approximately zero, so. Not like you how?" 

"Oh, I'm too intellectually proud to accept Jesus into my heart as my personal savior. So I'm going to Hell. It's much worse than anything you can do by spreading your legs."

Hell isn't real, they just made it up to keep people in line, you're not too intellectually proud to accept Jesus you're too intellectually honest to lie to yourself about him, hell isn't real, hell isn't real. 

"...can I hug you?" 

"Probably shouldn't."

"Yeah, fair. Just." 

"Not much point being upset about it, really, there's nothing I can do about it."

Nodnod. (She's going to hug Lev extra much when she gets home.) 

"...is he happy? The other me. What's he like?"

"He's okay. — he was really, really miserable when we met, I don't think he had ever had a friend and he was constantly tearing himself up about his parents' expectations for him and he was still Jewish at that point and not being able to have arguments about whether his beliefs were right or not was just really bad for him. And now he has us and he's an atheist and he's so much happier, he bounces and it's adorable, he's so interested in things that I can listen to him talk about something he's researching for hours and hours. 

He's happy and he's very good and I love him very much." 

He curls up a little.

He... didn't expect to be envious, when he heard that. He knew how polygamy was supposed to work. People were treated as interchangeable, things you assemble to get an ideal boyfriend made out of a little of Person X and a little of Person Y. There was always jealousy simmering under the surface, and hatred and competition, because people weren't secure in knowing that the people they're with loved them and only them. He thought the other him would have been settling for the best that he could get. 

He didn't expect that Raine would sound so much like she loved him, and... it hurts to hear that. There's another him somewhere out in the universe who does everything wrong and is loved and he, who was trying so hard to be worthy of love, is not loved at all.

He doesn't know what God's playing at.  

"It... sounds like you do."

"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "....offer of a hug is still open if you change your mind." 

"Yeah," he says. "Okay."

He doesn't move.

Raine gets up and stands behind his chair and hugs him. 

He breathes out slowly.

"You smell nice."

"Thank you," very quietly. "Your hair is soft." 

He stands up clumsily and gives Raine a full-body hug.

"You're warm."

"You're warm too." 

On impulse he kisses her, a quick peck on her lips.

She pulls away, just a little bit, so she can get a look at his face. 

He looks happy at first--

and then he says "Sorry, did you not want to, I thought--"

"I don't not want to, I just happen to know that you're an evangelical Christian with a lot of weird ideas about how my relationships in specific and also relationships in general work, and I feel like we should maybe have some conversations about that if we're going to be kissing." 

"That makes sense."

(She doesn't not want to!)

"..what do you want to talk about?"

"...so if we start kissing, like, more than once, what does that... mean. You talked about not having crushes on anyone except your future wife, are you expecting to marry me, what's going on with that." 

"If I were expecting to marry you I wouldn't kiss you."

"...okay, you are going to have to back up and explain to the clueless pagan what the hell you're implying there." 

"I'm not implying-- if I were planning on marrying you in the sense in which I mean marriage, then I wouldn't kiss you because I wouldn't want to lust after you before we get married. I was kind of planning to save my first kiss for my wedding day? But really it depends on what she would want, I'd be happy to kiss once we were engaged if she felt that was right for us."

Weird and bizarre and bizarre and weird. "Okay, so what kind of commitment level are you thinking there's going to be here." 

"...nothing? Because you're a girl from another world who's already dating three people, including a me who seems much better than I am, and so there's no real reason for you to want to have a relationship with me at all?"

"— this is a terrible idea and I'm not going to do it and it's not because I don't want to kiss you it's because I don't  want to make you cry." 

"...oh. I guess that makes sense."

(She is probably telling the truth, because she's dating another him, and it seems pretty unlikely that the other him would be that much better-looking. Raine and Sasha are both equally beautiful aaaaand that's a thought he should probably not continue having.)

"Can we still hug or is that also a terrible idea?" 

"We can hug." Squeeze. 

"...can we cuddle on like a couch or something because that would probably be more comfortable or is that getting too close to..."

"That sounds fine." Raine can navigate them to a couch and then she and Lev will be cuddling on a couch. 

He attempts to arrange his head in hairpetting range.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"...no, but my Lev was incredibly touch starved when I first met him so I'm pretty sure it's worth the risk." 

"Touch starved?"

He had a point but it's increasingly hard to remember what it was.

"People don't do very good if they don't have physical contact." Pet pet. "Babies can die from it but it's not good for teenagers or adults either." 

"Oh. Well. I don't really touch people."

Mmmmm hairpets why did he think this was a bad idea

"I can tell." 

More petting? More petting. 

"But it might end up-- mmm-- impairing my judgment--"

"I'm not going to decide to date you unless you're in your right mind about it. And probably not even then, I meant it when I said it would be a bad idea." Pet pet pet. 

"No, I mean, you start cuddling on the couch, and then you start kissing on the couch, and then you start touching on the couch, and then you wind up having sex on the couch-- which would maybe not be so bad for you because you've already had sex and you're probably on some kind of contraceptive-- but you said you didn't want to or at least-- mm-- implied it."

"I am not going to have sex with you even if you are in your right mind, not without a whole lot more talking about it than we are likely to do on this couch." 

"I didn't say you'd mean to, it might just happen."

"...sex doesn't work like that. At least one person needs to decide to have sex before sex happens and I am not going to decide that sex and if you decide to rape me we will have a completely different set of problems." 

"What! No! I'd never do that!"

"Right, so we aren't going to have sex unless I decide to, which I won't." 

"But lots of people think that and then change their minds after they start cuddling? Which is why you don't cuddle people."

"I have ever made an impulsive bad choice, but I'm not incredibly horny from not having had sex at all in my whole life which gives me a one-up over unmarried Gileadites, and also all of my impulsive bad choices were made on purpose." 

"I think people are worried about it once they're married too. That's why a bunch of people won't have dinner with people of the other gender. And anyway if you don't feed your lust then you won't have that much of it."

Christians and straight people and especially straight Christians remain incredibly concerning. 

"Be that as it may, I have never accidentally had sex with someone and I sincerely doubt you'll be the first." 

"All right," he says, and closes his eyes, and lets himself think about how nice it would be to kiss Raine and then get a little bit carried away.

She continues to pet his hair and not kiss him. 

Eventually he recovers from "there's a pretty girl and she's touching me and we kissed and she is maybe theoretically willing to have sex with me if a bunch of things were totally different!" enough to remember that he is supposed to not be objectifying women and imagining touching Raine while she's naked is definitely objectifying women.

"...I could tell you about my work," Lev says, "since you like when the other Lev talked about his, but I think you might be considerably more unhappy with what I do for a living."

"...why, what do you do for a living." 

"I develop curricula for the Gileadite prison system to teach people who have been arrested for blasphemy." 

"Jesus fucking Christ I hate your country." 

"...see I was not really expecting this to get a positive response."

"...sorry, I think -- I don't hate you I just -- fuck." 

"If it helps our prisons for most criminals are nice. Like, actually nice. They get to wear normal clothes and work jobs out in the community and the guards aren't armed and they can rent TVs or minifridges."

Yeah well I got to wear normal clothes and nobody was armed and I had plenty of food access and yet. 

"I. Don't super want to hear about how well you treat the people you lock up for blasphemy or sodomy or whatever else your theocratic hellscape criminalizes." 

"That's fair. Sorry."

"I really hope the me in your universe makes it to the pacific northwest." 

"...why?"

"Because it's a theocratic hellscape that almost definitely would put me in jail for basic parts of the person that I am and when I was in a place that was even kind of similar to it I stopped eating? Because it's a country based on the kind of people who hate me most? Because it's the kind of place that jails people for blasphemy? Because even the nice people from it say things like 'probably you'll want to stay in the country where gay poly people can't pretend to get married'? Take your pick, they're all true." 

"Sasha might not be eating? --I guess if I were going to help I'd have to, like, talk to him which is not really a thing I do--"

"If they're anything like me they're almost definitely not eating." 

"'They're'?"

Oh christ did she really say that out loud.

"...gender is complicated, my gender is particularly complicated? I don't know anything for sure obviously, the other me could totally be a cis guy, just." 

"I don't know what 'cis' means... do you have a disorder of sex development or...?"

Augh why. 

"I... guess you could say that. Cis is when, whichever gender the doctor wrote down on your birth certificate when you were born, that's the one you think of yourself as. I'm...... not that." 

"I'm worried I'm going to say something that'll make you sad."

"If you're about to ask whether I'm a man pretending to be a woman, from the inside it feels much more like I spent seventeen years pretending to be a man." 

"I actually wasn't sure what I'd say that was wrong, I'm just sure I'd say something."

She makes a noise that might, if her facial expression were not what it is, have been a laugh. "That's probably not wrong." 

"--I'm sorry, I don't want to hurt you, I'm just. Clueless. --I didn't work with the Feminine Boys Program. It seemed. Cruel." 

"Yeah, I know you personally don't want to hurt me personally, evangelicals just have a really shitty track record of dealing with queer people in a way that doesn't make me want to scream or cry or hit something. -- I'm pretty sure I shouldn't ask what the feminine boys program is but I am registering a desire to kidnap everyone in it and put them somewhere that doesn't hate them." 

He has several questions he wants to ask and then decides on reflection to ask none of them because then Raine will want to scream or cry or hit something and that's not very gentlemanly.

Instead he says, "there are a lot more canonically Jewish characters in movies now."

...Raine hugs him tighter. 

"Because they want to sell the movies overseas, and Gileadites will complain if a Gileadite character doesn't pray or quote the Bible, and atheists don't want to see people pray. But Gileadites don't know anything about Jews so they can just put a menorah in the background of one scene and no one will complain."

"Guess that's a way to do it. -- you can ask whatever it was you were going to ask, knowing there's something you want to say but having my brain make something up is probably worse than just hearing the actual thing." 

"--Um, so, my understanding of the issue is that people have various sorts of sexual identity malformations that happen probably because of trauma or poor gender role modeling in childhood. It's unclear to what extent it's caused by sex and porn addiction, versus both being caused by a failure to develop an appropriate sexual identity, but probably both play a role. And in secular countries they use dangerous drugs and surgeries to turn some of the people with this problem into a simulacrum of the opposite sex. And I'm inclined to just ignore all of this and treat you like a girl because that seems to be what you want and also it'd be really hard to treat you like you're a.man. But. That's what I believed."

"So my understanding of the issue is that sometimes brains will decide that they're a different gender than they're expected to be, and we don't know why they do that any more than we know why brains do any other things. It correlates at all with sex and porn use but mostly because people who transition and talk about it are disproportionately in places that accept queer people and those places also tend to be more okay with sex and porn use, surprise surprise, and it correlates with trauma because trans people are treated really badly in most places. And it's really really upsetting to be in a body that it feels like you shouldn't be in and feels wrong and feels like it isn't yours, and it's really upsetting to look in the mirror and see a face that feels like it doesn't belong to you, and so people take hormones -- which are not really that dangerous -- or get surgeries to approximate the bodies they want as well as they can. -- I'm not on estrogen but mostly because I'm androgynous already and I'm still debating whether I want it; I'm not planning on surgery but if I was really upset about having a dick, which I'm not but some people are, I would at least consider it." 

"...if the Gileadites are right about how gender works you could have female souls in male bodies, also. You... I don't know you very well but you don't seem like you have a male essence you were traumatized away from. You seem like you have a female essence and people hurt you about it and tried to get you to stop. --This would also explain why you like men, maybe." He thinks. "But not all people with SSA, I'm definitely a male soul in a male body and I am attracted to some people who are men both ways."

"I don't pretend to know anything about essences but that basically sounds like gender identity theory, yeah. And for me it's tied to liking men in ways I'm still figuring out but Marlo for instance is definitely a cis guy and he's just as gay as me, some people just are gay." 

"Oh, God made men and women to be equal but basically different, and men are to lovingly lead women, and women are supposed to be submissive and help them."

"......sure sounds like evangelicals." 

"I don't know. It's nice to think about having someone to protect and keep safe and love and make happy and sacrifice for and-- be to them like Christ for the Church."

"You personally can be protective of someone without making an entire society go 'uwu men are strong women are submissive men lead and women follow, separate but equal'." 

"I think the idea is that men want to have someone to protect and take care of and make happy, like, naturally, and society just recognizes that."

"Well someone should maybe let my Lev know that, because he seriously missed the memo." 

"He should take care of you."

"......he does. But it's not — you will lead and I will follow, it's we take care of each other because we care about each other." 

"Men are supposed to lead through serving. Like Christ and the Church-- the most famous thing Jesus did for the Church was get tortured to death, he washed the disciples' feet--"

"...ah. You're a sub. That makes sense." 

".............I don't know what that is but I hope it means that I don't have to try to convince you that you should break up with your Lev because you deserve better."

"Nope, it's a kink thing. Let me guess, you probably also really like the idea of your future wife owning you or ordering you around or causing you pain or not letting you orgasm." 

"No!!!!!!"

Shrug. "Then maybe I'm wrong. You seemed very invested in this idea where your sexuality belongs entirely to someone else, though, it's not that weird of a guess." 

"Yes but that's-- the way relationships are supposed to work-- I'm not a sex addict!!!"

Where to even begin.

"You... don't have to be a sex addict to be kinky. Some people just are, and lots of other people watched Star Wars or the Jungle Book or whatever at a formative age and imprinted.

People talk about it more in sex-positive places because there's less stigma and they're more likely to have figured themselves out but we exist everywhere actually and not all of us are hypersexual sluts." 

Also, there is nothing wrong with being a hypersexual slut, but maybe don't pick that fight with the evangelical. 

"There is more than one kind of sex addict and I am not any of them! I'm not a sadomasochist! I just... want my future wife to be happy. --I mean I guess I did just kiss you and cuddle you and think about having sex with you so I am not doing, like, perfectly on making my future wife happy but. Humans were designed so the only context for sex is marriage, men were designed to take care of women as servant leaders, this is the normal way for things to be."

".................kay." 

This is the most openly skeptical Lev has ever heard Raine — or Sasha, for that matter — be. She very cautiously puts her hand back on Lev's hair. 

He rests his head on her chest and makes a soft happy noise and tries to figure out whether this counts as Too Close To Second Base if Raine, despite being a woman, does not technically have breasts, and if it does whether he cares.

In that case she'll go right back to petting his hair. 

"You're still very soft." 

"Thank you. --Is Marlo like six feet tall, Asian, very handsome, very quiet, maybe works as a police officer or a soldier or something--"

"Six feet tall, Asian, very handsome, very quiet, works as a welder but was planning on joining the military when I met him, surname Lane." 

"...Huh. I know a him. Didn't know he was same-sex-attrac-- uh, gay."

"Chances are, neither does he." 

"...Mine is a member of the secret police."

"...christ." 

"He works in enhanced interrogation. --I used to, I quit, that's how I know him."

"And ten to one says he's miserable and hates himself and refuses to admit it to himself -- I'm going to put off the raging about how much I hate Christianity until you're not in the room --" 

"Yeah. It's a terrible job, I had to quit because I kept having nightmares and I couldn't eat and I couldn't stop thinking about what I was doing to people and I was just in, you know, research and development, I wasn't doing anything to people. I thought Marlo was just better than me though."

Hug. Hug hug hug. "No. Just -- better at hiding things from himself. Also, not being able to hurt people doesn't make you a bad person! This is why I hate Christianity." 

"Well. If they're bad people, and it's for the safety of Gilead as a whole... I mean, it's okay to torture a terrorist to get them to tell you where a bomb is, right? But I was just. Tired of spending the entire drive home from work thinking about what it would be like if the person were me."

Hug hug hug hug. 

"I also don't think it makes you a bad person to not be able to torture a potential terrorist to get you to tell them where a bomb is. I don't think people should torture potential terrorists. I don't think anyone should torture anyone." 

"Well, that would be nice, but it's hard to do when your country has Mexico posed to invade, and Deseret and Canada taking in illegal emigrants, and Cascadia with enough nukes to turn the entirety of Gilead into radioactive slag..."

".........I'm glad there are countries that accept refugees, anyway." 

"You wouldn't like Mexico or Deseret either, they're Catholic and Mormon respectively."

"Sounds like Canada's fine, though. And -- options is better than not options even if I hate all the options." 

"Canada's fine for you except that they average less than one child per woman and in sixty years they're going to be an outpost of Gilead. Cascadia-- uh, I actually don't know what you'd object to about Cascadia, but what I object to is the sex trafficking and drug addiction and institutionalized rape of teenagers, and the fact that murdering babies and disabled people and old people is legal. Also they eat their pets which I guess is not wrong but is kind of gross."

"...institutionalized rape of teenagers sounds bad but it also sounds exactly like the kind of lie I'd expect evangelicals to tell about a country of -- I don't really have a word for the whole group I mean except my people, I don't just mean mentally ill people and I don't just mean trans people and I don't just mean queer people but 'people who conservatives on Twitter would call deviant freaks' is kind of rude -- and sex trafficking sounds bad except that I'm pretty sure if I asked a Cascadian they'd say 'no, we just have legal sex work.' And I'd have to learn more details about the old people and disabled people thing but I don't object to abortion being legal."

"...oh no they kill babies that are born. Severely disabled ones, usually but not always ones that are likely to die anyway. And you can request euthanasia if you're disabled-- including mentally ill-- and if you're old and you have dementia and you don't know what's going on your guardian can request euthanasia for you without your consent. And there are a bunch of situations where... well, the government isn't saying that you have to request euthanasia, but the state medical system won't cover the care you need, and treatment could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars you don't have and no one will give you a loan since there's no way you could pay it back..."

"...yeah that's not great, but I live in the United States so I can't exactly throw stones about expensive medical care that the state won't cover." 

"The age of consent in Cascadia is twelve and there aren't a lot of twelve-year-olds having sex but there are a lot of fourteen-year-olds having sex. And it's just... acceptable for a fifteen-year-old girl to have a boyfriend in his early twenties, or to have sex with dozens of them, and for them to get her pregnant. They have daycares at every school there. --Also they sell babies, if the mom doesn't want her baby she can sell it, the going rate is about eighty thousand dollars."

"...yeah, that's. Not great. I can see why they'd rather make that tradeoff than die out or ban abortion but it's not great. -- wait didn't you say most women in Gilead have kids while they're still teenagers, how does that square with it being weird and bad that Cascadia has daycares in schools --" 

"Artificial insemination, and then they give the baby to a family that's ready to take care of it. Some girls stay at home and do that, and others move in with the family they're going to have a child for. The latter is called being a Handmaid, and it's really great for girls. They get some freedom, there's a way out if they're being abused where they still get taken care of, and it's often a lot easier for a girl to have an adult relationship with her parents when she's not still living with them. --My parents converted so they could get a Handmaid. Another ex-Jew, of course."

"...huh. Cool. I think I'd want to talk to a Cascadian before I decide what I think about Cascadia but that's actually pretty cool." 

"...I mean this is pretty theoretical, right, you're going to go back home to your dimension with the people you love in it so probably you do not have to have any sort of opinion of Cascadia at all. I guess unless you want to give advice about how and whether I should rescue Sasha."

"I was assuming that was the point of telling me stuff, yeah." 

"...I'm making conversation while I get petted by a pretty girl and wait for God's plan to show up."

"....fair." 

She's just going to keep petting him and not protest that if there's a god who can do this he should have fixed a lot more things by now.

There is a weird door into a weird place. Weird doors into weird places are not actually that weird, considering Sasha's life for the last while, but they're weird enough that he can be pretty sure that this is the erogame specifically depositing him into a problem it wants solved, and not just a regular everyday occurrence in a life that is also a magic sex game. 

He... doesn't happen to have clothes on, due to the vampire-related misadventure that just ended, and he's still bleeding a little bit, but it's whatever, he's the erogamer, he gets to not have clothes on if he doesn't want to. What's through this door. 

His Sasha is going into a weird door into a weird place, and so he's going to follow.

Lev's also naked and covered in blood, which is a more normal occurrence than it should be, although it's still not something he's fully comfortable with. 

"WHY IS THERE SUDDENLY A NAKED ME IN THIS BAR."

"Why is there suddenly a naked me in this bar. — cool tattoos, by the way." 

"I'm just sort of assuming that the magic video game that has become my life dropped me here for inscrutable reasons as it sometimes does. Hi, I'm Sasha, I assume you are also Sasha?" 

"Going by Raine, but yeah." 

Naked Lev suddenly disappears. 

Clothed Lev does not know at all where to look and, for lack of a better option, has shut his eyes closed very very tightly. 

A skill has been created by a special action! Opening the door has created the skill Milliways Door!

Info/Skills/Milliways Door

Milliways Door. Lvl 1. Passive.

Any door you open has an ERO/20% chance of being a door to the interdimensional bar Milliways. (This skill does not apply to doors deliberately opened to attempt to summon a door to Milliways.) You are likely to meet alternate universe versions of yourself and your harem members, or people from a variety of interestingly kinky species and societies. First drink is free. Be careful on Valentine's Day.

Quest available: Where No One Has Come Before

Fuck an alien.

1 alien: +5000 XP, Exotic Becomes Erotic status effect
10 aliens: +10,000 XP, Tentacle Slut skill
100 aliens: +50,000 XP, Seduce Contain Protect perk,???????
1,000 aliens: ????? XP, ??????, 1 perk point
10,000 aliens: ???????????

Quest available: Narcissus

Have some fun with your alt. (Group sex counts.)

Success: +500 XP. 
Failure: seriously?

Quest available: Rod and Staff

The alternate universe Lev has never masturbated or watched porn, averts his eyes from attractive people, and attempts to avoid having crushes to protect his emotional purity. He quite desperately needs some help-- and if you work well enough you'll save more than one person. 

Success: +10,000 XP, ????
Failure: Depression status effect

"So this is Milliways, Lev and I are from different versions of the planet Earth; he's from an evangelical theocracy in the 2040s and I'm from the United States in 2019. Time is stopped while your door is closed, I have no idea where your Lev went that hasn't happened while I've been here, and we haven't really done more poking because we've been talking. Sit down?" 

He sits down. 

(There are tattoos all over him — a water lily on his ribcage, wisteria dripping down his thigh, a sun and moon on one shoulder. He has scars that Raine might recognize as having come from top surgery but Lev definitely won't. And he's weirdly, bizarrely, has-been-playing-the-erogame-and-leveling-up-BOD, beautiful.) 

Lev very cautiously opens one eye, sees the wisteria dripping down Sasha's thigh, and then immediately closes it. 

"Hi. They have drinks from other dimensions."

"I'll keep that in mind, thank you," he says sincerely. 

(Yes, yes, yes.) 

Formerly Naked Lev reappears wearing blue jeans and a plain black shirt. 

"What? Sasha, they didn't make you wear clothes?"

"Of course not, I'm the erogamer, I have a passive skill that means nobody ever requires me to have clothes, I've told you this." 

"...sorry, you have a what?" 

"Passive skill, because my life has become a magic sex video game for reasons unknown to me." 

"I feel like it was not obvious that this skill applies to magic interdimensional bars instead of just, like, the police."

He drapes himself over Sasha.

He makes a soft happy noise as he's draped over. (Raine looks faintly jealous next to him.) 

"Well. Apparently it does." 

Does Raine want to be draped on? They can be draped on. 

He very cautiously opens his eyes and then looks at Sasha's face. 

"...sex... video game...?"

"My life, for reasons unknown to me and resistant to being poked at, has become analogous to a video game or maybe a tabletop RPG. I have a stat block and ability scores, there are perks I can buy and skills I can level up, there are quests I can take or turn down and rewards for fulfilling those quests and punishments for failing at them, and for some reason this particular video game is themed around sex and romance, so guess what my quests and skills and perks and stats tend to be about." 

"I was promised an explanation! I was explicitly promised an explanation. But I think the Erogame is holding the explanation hostage until we do something extremely sexy."

"...what the heck."

"Good question! I don't know what the heck. And probably won't until we make an extremely hot effort towards finding out." 

Lev has dozens of questions but the one that comes out is:

"...how do you even find enough different sex things for an entire game?"

His eyes are still fixed very very firmly on Sasha's face.

"There are enough sex things for so many games. I personally have a vampires and mind control themed game because that's what I like so those are the perks I picked but I could have gone for superheroes or being a pop star or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or secret arranged marriages or any number of other deeply improbable scenarios." 

"...I am sufficiently confused that I do not know how to frame my confusion into an actual question."

"...sorry, I can back up — one of the things it lets me do is pick the genre of the story I'm in? Like, it's always going to be erotica, but i could have gone for superhero-themed erotica and instead i went for vampires, because I would rather live a vampire erotica plotline than a superhero erotica plotline. Does that help?" 

"...so I'm imagining it as being sort of like Pokemon-- does your world have Pokemon?-- except instead of trying to catch all the monsters you're trying to catch all the sexual partners. And you can reflavor it so you're trying to catch all the superheroes or all the vampires or whatever? That kind of sounds like a terrible thing to have take over your life."

"My world does have Pokémon, yes, but this is not at all like Pokémon. It's more like a, I don't know what you'd know about, maybe a choose your own adventure novel but with video game stats? And I'm the protagonist, and I get to decide what choices I make and which plot threads I follow, and it's going to be about sex but it is fundamentally about the plotline, not about collecting 'em all." 

"I would say 'my guess is that our pop culture mostly matches up' but I'm not sure-- do you know what bitoxiphosphene or Gileadites are--"

"I do not! Gilead is a biblical location but I only know that because of Marlo and I assume a Gileadite is a person who lives there but I don't know what relevance they might have." 

"In my timeline it's the largest church in the world."

Lev briefly explains the fertility crisis and the rise of the Gileadite government. He keeps accidentally glancing down at Sasha's chest and stomach and legs and dick and then wrenching his eyes away.

"Huh!" 

Sasha shares enough of his timeline to establish that it was the same as Raine's as far as any of them can tell, and then the Erogame happened to it and now there are vampires. 

"Not just vampires," Lev says. "Also the anime club that turned out to be a mind control cult. And the library that turned out to mind control anyone that was in it. And the mind-control letter jacket. And the mind-control computer virus. And that guy who mind-controlled you into being slutty and then it turned out that 'you drop as quickly as your panties' was a literal warning and the sluttier you were the easier you were to mind control and the easier you were to mind control the sluttier you were and then Marlo had to rescue you and lock you in your bedroom for two days to detox. There's a lot of mind control. --why did you take Hyperhypnoslut."

"Because it was objectively the most written-specifically-to-appeal-to-me perk on the list? Obviously?" 

(Raine is trying not to laugh.) 

"The vampires have mind-control powers," Lev says. "Obviously. Because why would they not have mind-control powers?"

"...why do you want to be mind controlled."

"If you're being mind controlled into wanting to be a girl it's not weird and you don't have to feel weird about it?" 

"It's just about the subbiest thing you can possibly do and I have a vulnerability kink more generally, and also I imprinted hard on a handful of urban fantasy books I read as a preteen?" 

"Also that!" 

It's really hard not to look at the extremely beautiful naked man sitting like two feet from him.

It's also really hard not to think about the extremely beautiful naked man having sex.

Lev's life is really difficult. 

"I'm clearly not a sub," he says into the couch, "because that sounds awful."

"...no, I'm pretty subby and I also think the amount of ambient mind control is awful. Although I've gotten used to it."

"Yeah, it's definitely not everyone's thing, but the way in which I am subby and the way in which I personally kink on it are very related. Also sorry Lev. To be clear I did not personally design the computer virus or the Letterman jacket or the library or any of the ambient mind control that is not happening to me specifically." 

He kisses Sasha's forehead. "It's okay, I love you."

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Eeeeeeeeeeee Levkisses. 

"And I also love this," he says, and thinks Sasha's root password and zaps him with a wave of the most intense physical pleasure humanly possible for, let's say, ten seconds.

The noise he makes would, under Gileadite law, be considered obscene and censored. 

"Mmmmm love you." 

His face is buried in his Lev's neck and he has a wide loose smile that Gilead Lev has definitely never seen before. 

"Prooooobably we should stop sexually harassing the evangelical. --Sorry, uh, other Lev, we've been living in a magic sex game for the past year and a half so we have a weird idea of what is acceptable public displays of affection."

"You can't sexually harass men."

"What? Yes, you can. --Sasha, go put some clothes on."

"— fuck, I'm sorry," where does one go to put clothes on here and also how does one acquire clothes. 

"It's okay," he says, and almost presses his face into Raine's shoulder from overwhelm before he thinks better of it and instead presses his face into the arm of the couch.

That's chill, Raine is following Sasha anyway; when they come back she's wearing the same shirt and leggings she was before but he has her skirt and her sweater. 

"Still. I'm sorry anyway." 

...this is an overall improvement in the number of places that he can look although he's gaining a new understanding of why leggings are considered a stumbling block. 

"Okay, so you're from a weird sex game universe that... you don't understand but you think you will understand in the future because it promised... and you can be naked wherever you want including in Milliways, and there's lots of ambient mind control and the other me can mind control you and you're... dating? not dating? I don't know what non-Gileadites do-- uh, I'm sorry if this is a rude question but are you a man or a woman?"

"We are dating, and I'm a man but I'm also an 'it's complicated.'" 

"He is a guy in the same way that I am a girl. I think." 

"Okay. --This is a really really weird thing for God as I understand Him to do."

"Demons, maybe?"

"No, God is all-powerful. If demons are doing something it works towards His greater good in some way. --And it's also a weird thing for demons to do? I guess they're tempting you to sin but it's just. Really overkill for that. If God is letting demons decide whether vampires exist why would they wait until some random human agreed to let vampires exist because it's hot."

"It probably will not make matters less confusing if I tell you that I had a quest to deconvert Marlo from evangelical Christianity so that he would be less pervasively miserable and date him, and was rewarded with experience points and several new skills for managing it." 

"That does seem like the sort of thing demons would do. It ameliorates one of the weird things which is-- why focus on one sin-- do they seem to reward you for, I don't know, being cruel to poor people or bragging or being envious--"

"It eradicated malaria. And tuberculosis. And measles. And HIV but I guess that's sexy."

"Demons wouldn't do that."

"And it doesn't seem like it's rewarding me for sins other than having a lot of sex and deconverting people and it doesn't really seem like it's doing much deconversion." 

"This is the wrong approach-- I'm assuming the model of the world I had was right-- what I know is that there are at least two very powerful beings with extremely mysterious agendas, which are Milliways and the Erogame-- so all the reasons I have to believe God existed, the miracles and the fact that the world's existence can't be explained without God, could just be... another local very powerful being. Who is going to torture me for not worshiping him. Doubly so now. "

"Or you could go to a world where that being isn't and where you won't be tortured." 

What comes out of his mouth is, "Sasha's in my world."

"Then we can find them. — I'd be inclined to get Marlo too, and Asher if you have one." 

"If your world's like mine Creationism and miracles might also just be a lie."

"There is also that but his me is trapped in an evangelical theocracy and his Marlo is a member of the secret police of said theocracy and we should rescue them from that whether creationism is a lie or not."  

"Asher's dead." 

Hug. 

"I didn't know him. He was an Eye-- secret police-- and he had sex with men and he got away with it until he didn't. --You don't normally get executed for being a practicing homosexual but Eyes have their own internal politics."

Hug hug hug hug hug. 

"Yeah. That sounds like Asher. ...and now I'm even more sure we should get other me out." 

"Probably instead of asking about it we should just grab him and then if nothing else the three Sashas can fuck while we talk about Creationism."

He has a face like he's eating a lemon.

"Probably we arent going to have to grab anyone but Marlo. Do you happen to know where they are, the game does coincidence management but it's still easier if I kind of know what I'm looking for." 

"Not... really? I'm not friends with either of them. I, uh, don't have friends."

"...Same, before my life got taken over by a magic sex game."

That sounds like a profoundly hug-requiring statement. 

"I wonder what other traits all of us Levs have in common." He glances significantly at Sasha.

"I think that might be the sort of thing that is sexually harassing the evangelical, at least if I say it out loud. — for context I have a skill that tells me people's kinks, I have to actively decide to use it and I haven't since a while before I came into the bar." 

"...see, I was hoping to be able to pull you over in the corner and then you could tell me and we would not be sexually harassing the evangelical."

"It'd probably be really boring, anyway, I don't have any of those."

"...right, somehow I had managed to forget standing up was an option, I can do that," and what does that skill tell him. 

Service submission, praise kink, obedience, masochism, bondage, orgasm denial, cuckoldry. 

...'I don't have any of those,' he says. 

Sasha will stand up and move to a corner and quietly tell his own Lev the (extremely cute) results. 

"So that doesn't match up. At least for us. --Do you match up with Raine, I wonder."

"...mostly? She has more of a forced fem kink than I do, obviously, and she imprinted less on Interview and more on Lee Pace and David Bowie, and her vulnerability kink is differently shaped but it's recognizable." 

"...huh. And you're both trans, but different directions. --I want to give all of us psychological quizzes."

Meanwhile--

Lev closes his eyes and smooshes his face into Raine's shoulder, which is probably not the best thing for thinking, but has the virtue of involving Raine's shoulder.

Hey, Jesus, he thinks. So a lot of things have happened in the past like thirty minutes. 

Christians exist in both Raine's and the Erogame Sasha's worlds, and in principle that's evidence in favor of Your existence. You didn't make a fallen world without knowledge of Your saving grace. But I notice that there are several mes and several Sashas, and it wouldn't be that weird if there were several Yous even if You were nothing but a carpenter from Galilee. So it's not as big as I thought it was.

And there's Milliways, and the Erogame. Two seemingly all-powerful beings with inscrutable, probably-benevolent motives. It really makes me think You're a third. 

Raine's world is compatible with You being who the Gileadites say You are. Erogame Sasha's really really isn't. Magic sex games are not the sort of thing demons do really. If a demon had that much power, from the theology I'm taught, they'd have some sort of magic game that would get people en masse to stop worshiping you, not cure malaria. Either You lost to the Erogame somehow for control of Sasha's world, or You exist in my world but not in theirs, or You don't exist at all, or Your plan is much more inscrutable than I would have thought. 

It's not really making me inclined to worship you either way.

I don't know whether leaving my world will make Your rules stop applying to me. The Erogame still governs Sasha's behavior when he's in Milliways, and naively I'd think Your rules apply to me wherever I go. But I'm going to get tortured no matter what so I think I should probably commit the amount of sins I feel naturally inclined to commit and at least get the enjoyment out of it. 

I followed Your commandments about sex because the Gileadites told me I would get practical benefits. My wife would feel more loved, my sex life would be better, and my marriage would be happier. But I observe that I am not really at all loved and the me that has two husbands and a wife seems to be loved, at least by Raine. And this could just be that we're both outliers but-- I have questions, Jesus. Maybe I am unusual, maybe Raine is unusual, maybe Raine's relationships are bad in a way I can't see. Maybe You made me to be married the way that the Erogame made the other Lev to be promiscuous. 

But if I have questions I want to answer them, Jesus. I guess Raine doesn't want to have sex with me because she has her own better Lev at home, and probably the same thing is true of Erogame Sasha. But if I have the opportunity I am going to see what it's like and see how I feel and-- if it's bad the damage won't be much from one time, I think, when I've been so good for so long. And if it's good that's important to know. 

There are still STIs and pregnancy but I bet the Erogame has a solution to that.

So basically I want to give You a chance here. I know you should not put the Lord your God to the test but You made me the sort of person who wants to test everything, so here it is. Send me a sign. Show me some convincing evidence that You are the omnipotent creator of all the worlds, or I am going to make the decisions I want to make, which go very much against Your will. I know You don't really give in to blackmail but... I guess this is the sort of person I am. 

That's all.

Raine quietly pets his hair. 

This is not really any sort of sign, except for the fact that he feels warm and safe and relaxed and happy, which is probably a sign pointing the opposite way.

He can't stop himself from looking at the door.

No one comes through.

He waits.

He stands up and says to Raine, "I'm going to go talk to the Erogame people."

....this is almost certainly a bad decision, but trying to stop people from making their bad decisions doesn't tend to end well. 

"Okay." 

Whatever Sasha was talking about, he stops when Gilead Lev is close enough to hear. 

"Hi!" 

He mumbles something while blushing. 

Erogame Lev thinks for a moment and then translates "...he wants to have sex with you."

"Are you sure? That's not a no," he says to Gilead Lev. 

"Obviously he's sure, it just turned out that his God is maybe just a local absurdly powerful being and one of the other ones is obsessed with sex and also you're really pretty."

"...having someone to translate for me is really weird."

"Fair but I still wanted to check. — we should probably ask for a room or something first, can we do that —" 

It transpires that in fact they can; Sasha reaches out for Lev's hand but doesnt start walking upstairs. 

Handholding is. Nice.

"I'm going to go fuck the other you," Erogame Lev says, "it'll be nostalgic. A reminder of those bygone days when you weren't supernaturally good at sex."

"Cute. Have fun!" 

And then he turns to Gilead Lev and smiles and starts walking. 

"Um. He wasn't. Right about all the reasons."

"...okay. Do you want to tell me which ones he got wrong or missed?" 

"--I was taught, uh, a lot of things. About what I shouldn't do before I got married because if I do them my wife will be sad and I won't be able to love her as deeply and such. And I tried to do them as best as I could and I'm-- not perfect but I'm better than average? And then I ran into you and Raine and it seems like all the mes in alternate universes are not doing that at all and. Are loved. And I was not really. So I am, uh, wondering if the things I was taught were as accurate as I was led to believe and I felt like I needed to, um. Test."

".....that might be the most Lev thing I've ever heard." 

In the room is a bed, and also some other things, but mostly a bed. 

"Is there anything specific you'd want to try, or —" 

"...........well the other me reminded me that you were supernaturally good at sex and, um. I was like 'even if everything I was taught was right then having sex once won't hurt me that much and there's a lot I can learn from it' but I think probably having sex with someone who is supernaturally good at sex could hurt me because I might be comparing all the sex I have in the future to it and. Um."

"I can do my best to tone it down if you're worried about it but I don't — the way in which I am supernaturally good at sex works really strongly on story logic? 'I had sex with a guy and he regretted it for the rest of his life because nobody else could compare' would be a really bad story, and really bad stories don't want to happen around me. If that makes any sense which it probably doesn't." 

Maybe they should be sitting on the bed. Maybe Sasha should be hugging Lev, on the bed. 

"...at least they were wrong about how likely it was that cuddles would make me get carried away and have sex without meaning to."

"That is not really a thing that happens, no. Sometimes people make bad choices but even so they mean to make them, and they don't make them around me unless it would be a good story. Which with you it very much wouldn't." 

"Well, I mean, I might have, with Raine, except that she didn't want to."

Maybe they should be lying down on the bed and Lev should have his head on Sasha's shoulder.

What a good plan. Sasha puts his hand on Lev's hair. 

"Milliways would have poofed you away from each other and given you clothes like it did to my Lev, I'm pretty sure." Lev's hair is soft. "Do you mean to now?" 

"Well, I am lying with you in a bed."

"That's true." Sasha debates whether to explain to explain the vague feeling that it would make a better story for Lev's first to be the kind of person who checks even when he's almost entirely sure, and elects not to, and kisses Lev's forehead instead. 

"That's nice," he says. "... I have no idea what I'm doing at all."

"'S okay. You don't have to." 

Maybe they should be kissing on the mouth now. 

Whimper.

"You're doing good," very softly, and then back to kissing, and Sasha threads one hand through Lev's hair and deliberately doesn't pull on it yet. 

Having thoughts is really very difficult. 

He feels so warm and safe and happy and needed and wanted and--

"Good boy," he whispers, and tugs gently on Lev's hair.