“I know all that better than he does. Come on. Why does it get to be you?”

“You’re the one who said Figueiredo’s not me—”

“You know what I mean. I deserve this and not you.”

She’d seemed stone cold sober for a second, like she’d knocked back a few of the Antilixir pills that de-drunk someone and they piss out the alcohol they’ve sucked down. It must drive her crazy, still, that the thread of her isn’t somehow important enough—strong enough—to tether her to the Envisioner throughout the tapestry of the whole multiverse. Like her ego, her entitlement is so overblown that it’s not enough for her to run the Envisioner Initiative in this universe. She should’ve been the one to invent the machine in the first place.

“Welcome to the nondescript club,” I said.

A dark edge crept into her eyes. For a second, I thought she’d dump her drink on my head. Until her cool mask slipped back into place, the moment gone, and I left her at the table. Alone.

*   *   *

I’ve had plenty of time to snoop for different versions of her on my end-of-the-multiverse beach—using government databases and weird DNA-based social media—and only found a few. So few that I almost thought that she’d jumped to other universes and killed off her alternate selves, leaving her as the only one. Until I found a universe with her as a pottery teacher. Another with her face plastered on bus stops in Miami promising that she puts the real in realtor.

When I can’t sleep at night, sometimes I think about what I’d say to her if I saw her. You’re just a bit player that the multiverse barely bothered revisiting. Unless she was right about being the final draft.

*   *   *

Silence in the car. Silence in the hallways. Over the green concrete to Yusuf’s house, I asked if he wanted to talk. He said he wasn’t ready, but that I could stay over if I promised not to ask about it. Or talk too much, since noise was overwhelming him right now. I appreciated the honesty, since other guys I’d been with would’ve just quietly seethed at my yammering. We tucked into bed and barely said goodnight.

Hours later, I woke to him slipping out of the room. I sucked in a breath and held it until I could see him out of the window, pacing back and forth over the green concrete. The predawn sky threw dishwater light into the room and over pages on the floor, where columns of blocky words filled his notebooks like they were carved stone tablets. Earth. The Solar System. The Milky Way. The Local Interstellar Cloud. He’d tried to calm his brain by ordering the universe and our place in it.

*   *   *