I’m in the Depths again, holding the door open so that my injured dolphin friends can get through. As the last of them makes it, I let go of the door and come apart.

Then I’m looking at myself, or what’s left of me, from the outside. 

The dolphins have adapted to the Depths much faster than I did. Their wounds are gone, and they’re swirling around, trying to contain me, to keep all of me there and safe. We aren’t the only ones here, though. There are others nearby. Like the octowhatsits I saw before, but, not exactly bigger, but more substantial, more there. They, or maybe it—I can’t tell for sure if it’s one being, spread out, or many—are observing us. 

There is something familiar and unnerving about them. The things I'd seen on my first trip through the depths seemed mildly curious at best. Not these. They are observing with an intense attention that borders on hunger. I wish they'd go away. The only good thing is that they’re paying attention to the me that the dolphins are surrounding, not to me-me.

"Don't get too comfortable."

It’s me again. I’m floating just to my right.

"That's us, and you'll have to deal with all this ourself in a minute."

"But this already happened, right?" I ask, "It's all over and we won."

"It's not that simple."

Of course it isn’t. Why would it be? But I don’t get how it could be that it isn’t over. I survived. This whole scene happened two months ago.

"Like I said," Doppel-me continues, "Not that simple. This part is memory, sure."

She gestures at the frantic orbiting of the dolphins around the fragments of past-me.

"But you’re too far gone. And they don’t understand you well enough to put you back together properly. They need help from someone who does."

But who could that be? Doppel-me looks at me like I’m the densest person I’ve ever met.

Oh.

"Exactly. That's why you're here."

The dolphins are trying their hardest, but the looming presences are interfering. Not directly, as far as I can tell, but their very attention is making the dolphins' job harder. I can barely get the gist of what the dolphins are chattering to each other. They know they’re failing. Then they have the idea. Time flows differently here. They can use that. Two of them change tasks; leave my fragments in the care of the others.

They send something like sonar clicks back and forth between them. Where the clicks meet, the substance of the Depths changes, shimmers. A door forms directly between me and past-me.

That’s my cue. I take my doppelganger's hand.

"I guess it's time to pull ourselves together."

I step through the door.

I’m not just an observer anymore. I’m there. In the flesh, or what passes for it in the Depths. I can feel myself expanding immediately. Not fragmenting, not yet, but that will come soon, unless—

The dolphins who opened the door rejoin the others, changing the pattern. Now there is an opening into the not-space they surrounded. The space where past-me is barely being held. I dart into it.

Better. 

I’m in the ocean. Almost. When I look carefully, I can see that I’m still in the Depths, but the extra dimensions are folded mostly away. There are a lot of me here. But none are all here. Some are mostly here, others are barely here at all. I’m the me that is most present. I’m still partially in the Depths, but just enough to elevate me to Parker 3.0 or so. My thoughts are faster and clearer than usual, but I’m in no immediate danger of fragmenting. 

The dolphins are here, too. Leaping and swimming around me. They’re also still fully in the depths, weaving this haven of infinite ocean with their minds and bodies. They give me a moment to get my bearings, before my old friend Whistle-click-snort approaches.

She explains to me what they’re doing, and even how they’re doing it. I understand, mostly, in the moment, but I won’t once I’m back in the waking world, I’ll be Parker 2.0 (or maybe 2.1) again and most of this will be a blur. What I will understand is that the dolphins are taking advantage of the fact that the dimensions of the Depths don’t match up directly with the four dimensions of waking world space-time. It’s a little bit like the way I backdated some of my actions in the Halloween dream blitz, but also completely different. Even in my enhanced state it’s confusing.

On the bright side, I finally understand the dolphins' arguments about the number of dimensions of the depths. Clearly the number of dimensions in the Depths is neven ( a pseudo-integer directly between three and seven). I get the feeling that that is not going to make a lot of sense to me later. 

So, using this flexibility of the mapping between here and there, the dolphins had opened a door to after they had already succeeded, and I was whole. That me (that is, I), can use myself as a template to pull all these partial fragments of myself back together, and then step right back out where and when she (I) came from. The reassembled past me can then be dropped back where she had come in and make her way back to land.

Piece of cake. Now that my task is clear, it’s time to get to work. I look for the most substantial past-me to use as a base. 

The mes are not all the same. Or even the same kind of thing. Some are memories. Some are habits. Some are desires, or whatever the opposite of a desire is. Some are ways of looking at the world. And two are physical. Ugh.

I had hoped never to see him again. Parker 1.0. He isn’t nearly as substantial as Parker 2.0, but he’s there. What am I going to do with him? I probably waste too much time agonizing over what to do. He’s part of me, or at least he was. But I don’t need that part. But . . .

I put off a decision. Instead, I push that part of me off to the side and take Parker 2.0 as a place to start pulling myself together. 

The dolphins are mostly just letting me be as I work, but something else is watching. Oh, the other presence. Once I think of it, it’s easy to sense that it is still out there watching us (and it is one thing, although it’s also many). It’s even bigger, or more solid, or whatever, than I'd realized at first. It’s no octowhatsit, or any other playful name. A name comes to my mind. Leviathan. 

A little dramatic, maybe, but it suits. As best I can, I ignore it as, piece by piece, I collect myself. I don’t intentionally leave anything else out. At least, I try to tell myself that, as a memory drifts out of my grasp toward the edge of the safe zone. It’s from just before I ran away. Me looking in the mirror at myself and crying. There are plenty of those. What’s one more or less? It isn’t worth going out of the safe area to retrieve, at any rate. I reach for a happier memory and fit it into place.

"You're going to need this."

If I had shoes in my current state, I would have jumped out of them. 

Although the leviathan is still watching from the Depths proper, she is also floating right next to me. And she looks just like another one of me. Ugh. I’ve had quite enough of that, lately. She is holding the memory I just let get away. 

I put the piece in place and try to calm myself. It seems like a good idea to not offend the immensely powerful, possibly godlike, and probably ancient (and definitely annoying) being right next me.

"Excellent idea," she says, "Good luck with that."

"Don't do that! It's bad enough when I do it to myself!"

She shrugs, "Sorry."

She isn’t.

"Why do I need it?"

"Do you remember it? Is it still part of you?"

She clearly knows the answer.

"So let's say you leave it out. This you," She indicates past-me, "goes back to your world, saves the day (or maybe not, who knows), and is pulled here to pull this mess back together."

I’m not clear where she’s going with this.

"Think about it. Is that you? The same you that is here now? Is she going to make the same decisions about what to leave out?"

Well . . .

"Maybe she'd leave out your next saddest memory. And then when that you got pulled back (assuming she made it long enough to do so), what would she leave out. And then—"

"Okay, I get it."

"Are you sure? So you're not thinking of how you can fix a few things that went wrong between her time and yours?"

I had been. I could leave myself some clues. Clues that could let me give Jay more of a choice. That could get me to break up with Valeria before it would hurt so much.

"And then that you would have other things to fix."

It wouldn't be nearly as annoying if she weren't right.

"Your little friends are trying to make a loop. They've done a surprising good job, but they just don't have the experience or raw power for what they're trying to accomplish."

"But it worked. Right? I mean, I remember finding myself back in the ocean, and I'm here now."

"It doesn't have to have worked. It all depends on you making the loop self-consistent. If you don't do that, then your friends' sacrifice will have been wasted. She," pointing at past-me, "will never have made it back to your world. This you will never have existed."

"So what happens in my world? To my friends there?"

"I have no idea. If you don't make it out of here, you aren't there to be pulled back, and I don't have any information."

"But the past two months would be undone?"

"Not undone, they just wouldn't have happened."

"How's that different?"

"This," her gesture encompasses not just the ocean, but the near Depths beyond, "is just one of a uncountably infinite number of possibilities. They aren't a sequence, because there's nothing for them to be a sequence in. From an outside perspective, the system will collapse into one of them, and then that will be the only one that ever happened."

I’m trying to take all this in while still reeling in the various aspects of past-me for reassembly. It isn’t helping.

"So who are you? Why are you here telling me all this?" I ask, "And what do you want?"

"I want what's best for you."

That is not what I want to hear. Grown-ups, starting with my father, have said almost exactly those words to me so many times in my life, and I can’t remember a single time it has ever worked out well.

"Well, there was that one time—" she starts, but actually stops when I glare at her. That’s worth something. 

"And what do you think is best for me?"

She doesn’t answer. Not with words anyway. She reaches out and puts a finger into my forehead, and I am her.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I can see everything. I know everything. I am in the Depths and I am the Depths. I am each of the dolphins, and the octowhatsits, and the fish-a-macallits, and the whale-a-majigs. I can see what I thought of as the real world, and the outpost where the impostors are trapped. They are just two among an uncountable infinity of shallow worlds. I can see them, but not into them. Something is missing there. They are just out of reach. Most amazing of all, I can still see me. I can still be me, without coming apart into something else. 

And I know there has to be a catch. She wouldn't let me keep this. Not for long. Not without a price. She is going to take it back. But I have idea. Something I remember. I just have to act before she—

"That," she says, "Is what I know is best for you."

We’re separate again. I’m not a goddess anymore. I’m barely anything.

I had known how it all worked. I'd had the power to make everything better. 

"And you can have it again. All you have to do is accept this gift, and step back into your own world. Then we can become one, again."

I would be a goddess. I could fix everything there. Everything. 

"And when things are perfect there, we can move onto the next world. Then the next. We will make them all perfect. All you have to do is open a door and take me through it."

She makes so much sense. I reach out toward my world. Feeling for a door—

not yet

My attention slides off of something. 

"Will I be able to do anything I want?"

"Of course."

I take a moment to savor the possibilities. I’ll fix all the kids at Promise. I’ll fix all the trans kids, everywhere. And the people who have hurt them? Well, I’ll fix them, too.

too much?

My attention is pulled away again.

"Maybe we should start with the Impostors' world?" I suggest, "I don't want them interfering, and if the last two months won't have happened, they still could."

"That isn't necessary. We can take care of them once we're finished in your world. Just open the door."

"I'm still not sure."

"I am offering you everything. Why are you even considering—"

now

I open the door. 

In the same instant, as far as that means anything here, I shove my other self through and slam it shut. There. Whatever happens next, the last two months are secure. Parker 2.1 is out there, fighting, winning, hurting, and healing. Going through everything it will take her to get here and be me. Leviathan does not look happy about that.

"What did you do?"

She has to ask. That’s a good sign.

"I picked myself up by my bootstraps. She," I wave in the non-direction of where my other self had vanished, "Has the tools she needs to fix herself, when the time comes. And the tools to resist you. At least long enough to get her up to this point."

Not that she, or I, that is would know it. Doppel-me went along for the ride to keep her from thinking about all this until she ends up back here as me. Consistency, after all, is key.

"You gave me access to almost unlimited power. Did you expect me to just stand there gawping at the wonders of the universe until you took it away?"

Apparently she had expected just that. But that isn't what I had done. I had remembered Kelly's story about getting admin rights, and done the same sort of thing here. While I'd had the power, I'd split off another me. When Leviathan had de-escalated me, the other me had stayed at close to full power. While I stalled Leviathan, not fully realizing what I was doing, Other-me patched the earlier, scattered Parker back together. 

When I realize that Leviathan is waiting for me to go on, I explain all of that. I leave out the rest of what the other me had been working on.

"If I can't have your world to play with, I suppose I'll just have to make do with you."

She reaches for me and I feel the shields I'd managed to make for myself crumble almost immediately.

"Don't worry, I'll keep you around for a nice, long time," she smiles, "Parts of you anyway."

The shields fall away.

NO

The Dolphins are suddenly between us. Although calling them the dolphins isn’t really accurate anymore. There is little sign of Whistle-click-snort, Chirp-whistle-chirp or the others. There is one being here, protecting me from Leviathan’s fury.

YOU ARE DONE HERE. GO AWAY.

Leviathan glares at me.

“You did this!” she practically spits out.

True. My other, upgraded self had done for the dolphins what Leviathan had briefly done for me. It did more than just make them stronger, though. They have merged into one and become something different. Something more. 

Leviathan is done with words (or whatever it was we’ve been using). She lashes out at me. Before I can even flinch, the Dolphins reach out and twist. Leviathan is gone. 

I’m alone with what is left of the dolphins. Something that is of them, but isn’t them. Not anymore. Something I can’t understand. I destroyed my friends.

1. YOU GAVE US THE CHOICE. WE MADE IT.

“Did you make it so that you could help me?”

They don’t respond.

“I thought so.”

WE ARE ALL STILL HERE.

It isn’t the same.

“Can’t you get rid of the power? Be yourselves again?”

YES.

But they don’t. And they won’t. They are something new. Why would that new being destroy themselves? They aren’t coming back.

“Would you just open the door, so I can go home? Please?”

WE CAN NOT.

Of course not. If they could, Leviathan wouldn’t have needed me. As powerful as Leviathan had been, as powerful as the Dolphins are, there are rules in place to protect the shallow worlds. I’d known this while I shared Leviathan’s power, but even then I didn’t know where the rules came from. Natural law? Something more powerful still? Does it matter?

“Thank you for saving me.”

WE COULD DO NO LESS.

There’s nothing left to say. I open a familiar door. There’s the wood-paneled hallway. At its other end I can see the other side of the bathroom door I opened to get here.

YOU COULD STAY. YOU COULD BE AS US.

I can’t. I have a life to live out there, in my real world. I love my new life. My family. My friends. I take a step into the hallway. Suddenly I have a real body again. I hadn’t even realized just how abstract I had gotten, out there in the depths. 

WAIT. WE HAVE A GIFT.

I turn, and a plastic water bottle hits me in the forehead. Whistle-click-snort and the others are swimming just outside the door. They trill and click at me, laughing. 

I’m not fooled, but they aren’t trying to fool me. They just know I would want to remember them like this. And they still think my joke was hilarious, apparently. The best translation I can come up with for their message is “Something to remember us by.”

I’m not crying too much when I step back into the hotel room.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Only a couple of minutes have passed out here in the real world. Crap. That just isn’t right. It’s still hours until our plane. Life is so unfair.

I take advantage of hotel wi-fi for a little bit, but I quickly get tired of staring at a screen. What I really want to do is just shut down for a while. I lie down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. 

My mind spins. Thoughts of what I’ve gone through race through my head. They aren’t really coherent thoughts. My experiences in the Depths were too strange, too complicated, too dense for me to fully understand. And that’s fine, I don’t need to understand right now. I just want to sleep.

But my thoughts won’t stop. There are my scattered earlier selves. There’s Leviathan. There’s the being that had been my friends the dolphins. I don’t want to think about them. I just want to sleep. And there are the shades of the dolphins, throwing the water bottle at my head.

“Something to remember us by.”

Oh. I feel it now. When the bottle hit me, there was a change. Not a big change, in the grand scheme of things, but an important one. I close my eyes. I let go of my guilt. It’ll be there later for me to pick up. I let go of my fears. They aren’t going anywhere, but I don’t need to hold them so tight. I even let go of my hopes and my plans. I know where to find them when I need them. For the moment, I just let go.

And for the first time in over two months, I drift off to real sleep. Wonderful sleep.

I have the weirdest dreams.