“Are you hungry?” Flabbergast asked. “I’m hungry. After we drop off this one, we should get some food.”
“Did you label these two?” Thesis leaned over the two red-headed humans trying to spot the difference.
“No. The one on the left is from 639, and the one on the right is from 640.” Flabbergast used his gray tentacles to draw serum out of a vial.
“Your right or my right?” Thesis asked.
Jeremy’s head throbbed as he skimmed the emails he’d received overnight. His sleep had been restless and spotted with a vivid dream he could only partially recall. The confusing emails didn’t help. They were the standard company updates and notifications about processes that had run successfully overnight. The strange thing about them was that they were all addressed to Leonard.
Leonard was a database admin like him, and he suspected he’d wound up on someone else’s laptop, except he’d used his thumbprint to log in, and it was in his cubicle. He was not looking forward to talking to IT about the issue.
“You coming to the stand-up meeting,” Nathan asked as he passed Jeremy’s desk.
Jeremy’s eyebrows raised as he checked his watch. This would be the first time Nathan wasn’t late in at least a month.
Soon most of the team trickled in, and they were ready to start their morning check-in meeting, informing each other of their progress to make sure the project moved forward smoothly. Patrick was the last to walk in. Jeremy was surprised at his delay, especially since he typically ran the meeting and was the manager in charge of organizing the whole project.
“Yesterday, I started implementing the UI changes,” Nathan said, starting off the meeting. “I’ll continue doing that today. No blockers for me.”
“I finished writing the script to migrate the data into the warehouse. I will probably spend most of today testing it to fix whatever I missed.” Jeremy smiled at the team. Everyone looked back at him, confused.
“What warehouse?” Patrick asked.
“The data warehouse we’re building this whole analytics tool on top of,” Jeremy said.
“I thought you were going to update the tables I needed for the client’s UI changes yesterday. If you didn’t do that, I can’t finish their request.” Nathan said.
Jeremy ran his hands through his thinning red hair. Confusion like this made him anxious. He didn’t even know which client Nathan was talking about, but that was the whole point of the stand-up meeting. “If you need some tables updated, I can do that. Just send me what you need.”
“I sent it over Monday,” Nathan said with little patience. “But I can send it again.”
“Wait, what analytic tool are you talking about?” Patrick asked. “You know we’re building a custom ticketing system for North Sentry Construction, right?”
That explained the customer that Nathan mentioned. “Yeah, of course,” Jeremy said. Stand-ups were supposed to be fast, and he could see this one dragging out. “Just having a foggy morning.” He rubbed his head, which still ached.
Patrick didn’t press the issue, and soon another team member gave their update. Jeremy understood having to switch projects quickly, but usually, he was notified beforehand.
One of the red-headed men lying on the bench blinked at Thesis. “Did you use the mushali to ensure their memory wipe?”
“Of course. I’m not an amateur,” Flabbergast replied. “If we want food, we should drop 639 off first. The restaurant near his house has those disgusting soggy potato sticks.”
“Humans are so strange in their eating preferences,” Thesis said as he injected more serum into the vein of the blinking human. Soon the man relaxed and went to sleep.
“Turns out you did take care of those DB updates yesterday.” Nathan leaned on the opening of Jeremy’s cubicle.
Jeremy’s ticket was still waiting to go through IT, so his morning was slow. The laptop had all his familiar programs installed, but it went against the company’s security policy to use someone else’s computer, especially since he could log in and run everything.
“Oh good,” Jeremy said. “I’ve been having a slow morning.”
“Don’t tell Patrick. He’s already talking with a customer about another delay.”
“Didn’t we just start this project?”
“No,” Nathan laughed. “With all their minor change requests, it feels like the past five months have been five years.”
Jeremy checked his watch. He felt like he’d woken from a coma without anyone telling him how much time had passed. But it was the 22nd, and he remembered wishing his friend a happy birthday yesterday, the 21st.
“Leonard Kowalski?” a young man in khakis and a polo asked. “You have the email issue.”
“Anyway, thanks for the table updates. Let me know when you grab lunch.” Nathan backed out of the cubicle so the IT guy could come in.
“I’m Jeremy Kowalski. But something happened to my computer, and it keeps saying that Leonard Kowalski is logged in.”
“Strange. Seating records say this is Leonard Kowalski’s cube. Is Jeremy your middle name or something?”
“No, I don’t have a middle name. Parents had a hard enough time agreeing on the first one. Maybe something got messed up in the backend?”
The IT guy opened up his computer and logged in. “I can change your name to Jeremy, but HR will have to approve it. Have you talked to them about it?”
“HR scanned my ID when I got hired here five years ago. They know I’m Jeremy.” He tried to keep his tone level, but the whole situation was frustrating.
“Sorry, sir, I am looking to see if there are any changes to your personnel records. Have you left your computer unattended and logged in?”
Jeremy fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I’m certain I haven’t.” He hadn’t left a computer unlocked and unattended since grade school when Thomas used his account to look up pictures of girls in bikinis and then tattled to the teacher.
The IT guy looked at him skeptically but didn’t press the issue.
“The consciousness signals of these two beings are quite different.” Thesis looked at the floating ball of light in front of him. His eyestalks wiggled around to inspect different angles.
“Those are just anomalies. These two are identical,” Flabbergast said. “That’s why I didn’t bother labeling them.”
“Are you sure the one on the left is from 639? We need to make sure they get back to the right universe.”
Flabbergast stiffened his eyestalks for a moment to show his indifference. “Their universes are basically the same. They won’t even notice the differences.”
“This one is blinking again. Are you sure you used mushali on him?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I would never skip that step,” Flabbergast said.
“Frynman’s Burgers for lunch?” Nathan asked.
“Definitely,” Jeremy agreed. With the chaos of the new project and the mess with his name, he wanted to go somewhere familiar and comforting. He hadn’t made any progress with the IT guy, and there wasn’t anyone at the company named Leonard Kowalski, aside from his misnaming.
Nathan drove, and they talked about company drama in other departments. Nathan talked about his boyfriend’s excitement around their upcoming wedding. Jeremy didn’t remember Nathan getting engaged or having a boyfriend. He distinctly remembered meeting his girlfriend at the Christmas party last year. But they were coworkers, and Nathan didn’t owe him any updates about his personal life. Nathan was happy, which was all Jeremy wanted for the guy.
Jeremy ordered his favorite: the QED burger. It was a mess of a meal topped with queso, a fried egg, and dill pickles. Nathan ordered Schrodinger’s catfish sticks, a meal Jeremy never enjoyed because whoever fried stuff never got anything crispy enough.
“What was all that with the IT guy?”
“I don’t know, man.” Jeremy rubbed his head. A half dozen Advils hadn’t done as much as he’d hoped. “I just hope it gets sorted out soon. Otherwise, I’m not going to get anything done.”
“Patrick isn’t going to be happy.”
“He’s not the one getting someone else’s emails.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. IT has problems but—”
The waiter interrupted with their food.
“I don’t know how they messed it up.” Jeremy cut into the messy burger. He’d eat the fries later, if at all, since they were always a soggy mess. “But I’m getting this guy Leonard Kowalski’s emails.”
Nathan gave him a funny look as he bit into his fries. “And you are?”
“Jeremy Kowalski.”
“Did you change your name?”
“No! I’m Jeremy Kowalski, I’ve always been Jeremy Kowalski, and I always will be Jeremy Kowalski!”
“Then I’m sorry I’ve been calling you Leonard for the past few years.”
“You called me Jeremy yesterday. We were on a different project yesterday too. And Patrick showed up to stand-up on time.” Jeremy cursed as he took a bite of his fries. They were crisp shoestring fries, precisely what he’d always wanted from Frynman’s. He took another bite. “Have these fries always been this crisp?”
“Yeah, that’s half the reason we come here.”
“No, we come here for the burgers, and I’ve never seen you order anything other than the Quantum Spice Burger.”
“Do you need to go to a doctor? I’m not trying to be rude, but you sound crazy.”
“I feel crazy! How many kids do I have?”
“Two.”
“That’s good; the girls are still in my life.”
“I thought you had two sons.”
Jeremy dropped the fries out of his hand and stood up. The chair’s metal frame clinked to the ground as he paced back and forth, muttering the most elaborate curses he knew.
“Leonard—” Nathan started.
Jeremy gave him a look like a bull facing down a matador.
“Jeremy,” Nathan said, “sit down. It’s going to be okay.”
Jeremy saw the wait staff and other customers looking at him. He picked his chair off the ground and sat down. He hated causing a scene.
“I had a dream last night,” Jeremy whispered, “and I’m starting to think it happened. But it’s not going to make me sound sane.”
“If sharing will make you feel better, let’s hear it. Especially if it keeps me from going back to making those UI changes.”
“One down, one to go,” Flabbergast said as the tractor beam dropped the human off in the bed where they’d initially abducted him.
Thesis flipped some switches on the ship’s console, and they flashed into a parallel universe.
“Mrhm mrrm brm,” someone said from the back of the ship.
“They don’t usually wake up this much,” Thesis said. “If we give him much more sleeping serum, he will have a splitting headache tomorrow.”
“Well, we’ve got to put him to sleep. Otherwise, he’ll start thrashing around and mess up the beam.”
“When they have mushali in their system, they sleep better.” Thesis rearranged his gills and shongdin to indicate he doubted Flabbergast’s statement.
“I definitely used the mushali on one of them.”
“They both need it!” Thesis threw half his tentacles into the air. “What are we supposed to do now? What if he lands in the wrong universe, remembers our faces, then reports us to the Galactic Council?”
“We all look the same to them,” Flabbergast assured him. “Besides, this species isn’t a part of the council. Which is why we experiment on them.”
“That still doesn’t make it right,” Thesis said as he injected sleeping serum into the human’s boney arm.
When Jeremy finished telling Nathan about his abduction dream, both had finished their food and paid their bill.
“Well, that didn’t make you sound any saner,” Nathan said. “And if what you say is true, what are you going to do? Find this Galactic Council they mentioned?”
Jeremy buried his head in his hands. He’d been mulling this over since Nathan mentioned his kids had changed. Telling anyone else would make him sound crazier and land him in a mental hospital or as a test subject. And after last night, he didn’t want to experience that again.
“Maybe I go on an epic space adventure to take on this advanced alien civilization and force them to return me to my original galaxy?” Jeremy laughed at how ridiculous it sounded.
“They pay us well… but not that well,” Nathan said with a smile.
“I just have to go back to work and hope Leonard does the same. Take care of his family and hope he takes care of mine.”
“Patrick will be glad to hear that. We’re certainly not going to be able to finish this North Sentry thing on time without you.”
As they left, Jeremy hoped that Leonard’s database structure wasn’t as messy as previous data structures he’d previously cleaned up.
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