Greta looked at Peggy, and Peggy looked at Greta. They both looked behind themselves, trying to see back into where they’d come from. It was the kitchen. Just the kitchen. Greta and Peggy were looking into the kitchen. The rules were, there were no rules that anyone involved had access to. It was an open world, but not their open world. Whether they were Margaret or Peggy and Greta, and no matter how hard they tried, they had never been able to wrest any control out of it. New decision points and victory conditions were generated through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power – somewhere. Somewhere outside of the place where they were doing all this, somewhere far in the future, something was playing. If two, then. If one, then. If two repeats, then.

‘We forgot the cake,’ Peggy said to Greta. Both of them were empty-handed.

‘Don’t try to change the subject.’ Heidi looked at her phone. ‘There’s not a lot of time.’

‘We brought cake,’ Greta blurted out, looking at Peggy, who shrugged.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ Heidi said again.

Peggy and Greta looked at Ash and Bisi, who seemed unfazed. Margaret becoming two again had been quickly assimilated into the joke of it. It was like all that had happened was someone had sneezed. A function had run over the top, making it all normal again – settling it all into place. New task: now she is two.

‘How long have you had this?’ Bisi reached out so that Heidi would give the phone to her.

Greta answered, ‘Like. Twelve years. We found it under our bed – in that old flat. We thought it was funny. It doesn’t work.’

‘Do you carry it around all the time?’ Ash said.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Bisi said. ‘Why would you lie about a thing like that?’

‘Such liars,’ Ash said.

‘Who are these messages from?’ Bisi asked.

‘We don’t know. That’s why we kept it.’

‘That and the monster,’ Ash said.

‘Yeah,’ Peggy said. ‘And the monster.’

Ash and Bisi laughed. Ash laughed the most and reached out so that Bisi would hand them the Tamagotchi phone. It looked strange in Ash’s hands, odd out in the open. Peggy and Greta felt ill, like they were watching a TV show for too long and it was getting late and they were tired and should have gone to sleep hours ago. Maybe they were watching all this unfold from their bed late at night. Maybe this was game feel. Maybe it was a TV show, and they were lying down in a way that blocked some nerve that was vital to send blood all the way around their bodies. Ash took a photo of the Tamagotchi phone using their smartphone. Then they made a small video, moving the phone back and forth in front of the camera.