34 The Ending

They’re ready, love.

I cried, and held Joseph. “I hope she loves him,” I said.

“Oh, she will,” he said, “the returnees have been adjusting remarkably well. They find that their dopplegangers have made decisions that fit very well with their own natural inclinations.” I cried again at hearing myself called a ‘doppleganger’. “I love you!” I said.

“And I love you,” he said, stroking my hair.

“You’ll like your life there, you know. We have debriefed the later returnees, and they say that the people there, just like the people there, are doing remarkably well.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know, love, and I don’t want you too. But you know we have to.”

“Tell me again, why,” I pleaded. I had it memorized, but i needed to hear it again, to steel myself to what I have to do.“

“Because we had you all, we were able to figure out how it works. Once we send you back, then the government will never be able to get that information. You are the most important one, because you changed the most. And the inforation that the others bring back, we have found it disappears fairly quickly. The less change, teh faster they forget it. The brain has all of the new information, and everything just snaps into place.”

“So, once I am back, I fill forget all of this, and never be able to give my secrets to the government.”

“Yes love.”

I sat up, “So how did it start, anyway? Who did it?”

“We don’t know. But we actually think it wasn’t anybody from either world, but somewhere inbetween. That is why your memories of it are so fuzzy… they don’t fit either world.”

“Oh, Caleb. Tommorrow then?”

“Yes, we still have tonight.”

It was a long night, but eventually I fell asleep.