And then there was Katie. How did Katie figure into all of this? My new memories told me that she did figure, but not the way she used to. In this world, we also had that secret conversation beneath the bleachers, but here, I didn’t kiss her. Our history in this world was similar, but none of it was sexually charged. I thought of Leo, whose reality was still as screwed up as it was yesterday. Would I somehow relate to him differently now? I would have to feel my way through the nuances of this place piece by piece, person by person.

In the morning I paid a visit to the Edwards. As I said, there was a fourth one now. We’ll call him Eduardo.

“I guess our secret’s out,” Eduardo said. “We’re not actually brothers.”

“So then what the hell are you?” I asked, although I was beginning to suspect the answer.

“We’re the same person,” Ed told me. “Just from four different space-time continuums.”

Apparently, each shift produced a new Edward, with his own skateboard that wasn’t a skateboard, and his own attitude, too, since they all bickered and disagreed on a regular basis.

Eduardo, who knew everything about this world, had been up all night with Eddy, comparing notes, trying to determine how this world was different from the previous one, because it seemed identical. They had no clue until I showed up to tell them. They were tickled by the news.

“Wow! So you absorbed the entire change yourself?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“And it affected the nature of your sexuality?”

“More than affected it.”

“That’s incredible!”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

The Edwards were entirely nonsexual beings, so they had limited empathy for my current situation.

“Six of one, half dozen of another,” they said. “No big deal.”

Eddy and Eduardo went to the QuIRT, and, in light of the new information, did some fresh calculations.

“This is an amazing thing you’ve done,” Eduardo said. “Entirely different from your previous shifts. This time you took complete control!”

The others agreed—even Edd, who said, “I will admit this wasn’t an entire disaster.”

“It’s a major step in the right direction,” Ed said. “If you had allowed it to pass around you, rather than into you, there’s a good chance the sexual orientation of all humanity would have flipped.”

“That would’ve been interesting,” Eddy said.

Edd furrowed his brow. “It’s normal for up to ten percent of an evolved population to have primary same-sex attraction—if it wasn’t a natural thing, it wouldn’t exist—but flip that, and you have only ten percent or less of the population attracted to the opposite sex. Major ramifications there.”

“Life always finds a way,” Eduardo pointed out.

“True,” said Edd, “but it would be a very different social dynamic.”

“Well,” said Eddy, “I would’ve liked to have seen it.”