Two Days Before The Wedding

It's funny how even with the wedding so soon I feel an odd wave of calm. Abigail is in the nursery, I think, or attending to some similar wedding related errand. I should probably be completing something on Jayken's checklist myself, but I get distracted by a device in the lounge room and end up talking to Graycien about it for way longer than I should.

"Soph," Kris prods me suddenly. "Isn't that your friend on the hill?"

I look out the window and sure enough, there's Beth, pacing around and looking out of place.

I head out to greet them and find that they are fully dressed in the fancy outfit that they showed me when the Knife Edge arrived, that they have picked out for one of the wedding events, but the upper half of it, and part of their face, is covered in ash. What on earth has happened to them?

I am almost upon them before they see me. "Beth! Are you okay? What happened?"

They step back and wag their finger at me. "Oh no! I'm not falling for that again. The last thing we need is another temporal paradox."

Oh. So that's what's going on. I watch as Beth runs their hands through their hair and start to pace again. I notice they are wearing a paladanian style belt. Weird. They adjust their glasses frustratedly.

"I should've known this would happen." They mutter to themself. "Why didn't anyone warn me? I could have at least taken my medication."

"You didn't take your medication?" I ask, wondering when they are coming from. Wondering what nonsense is going to happen over the next couple of days.

"Don't lecture me. You obviously completely fail to let me know this is going to happen."

"What is going to happen?" I ask. "And I'll head right over to the Knife Edge and tell you now. Remind you to take your medication."

"No you won't." Beth retorts smirking.

"Will too!" I insist.

"You're not gonna win this one." Beth crosses their arms smugly. "You obviously don't, because I'm here. QED."

"Maybe you just forgot."

They scoff, and then they get a weird look in their eyes and tremble a bit. "I think I'm going." They say, and then they're gone.

This doesn't bode well. I decide not to tell Abigail, but troop down through the woods, determined to tell Beth about their doppelganger and assert my version of the causal loop.

When I reach the ship I find Steve, ask, "Where's Beth?" and he says, "They went into town with Mickey to go shopping. They're looking for the perfect accessory for the wedding."

Huh. That's probably when they get the belt. I open my mouth to tell Steve about my Beth encounter but am interrupted by Zara.

"Ammi!" she engulfs me in a hug and I wrap my arms around her enthusiastically. She grabs my hand when she pulls back. "Can you come look at Zee? I've been trying to fix her up."

"Of course." I follow her into the ship's quarters and all thoughts of Beth disappear from my mind.

Alliance Base 17, and Flauraan, Sophie is 21, Abigail is 19

A lot of weird things start happening with Beth. There was a lot to sort out immediately post war. Me, Steve and Mickey obviously are pushing Beth to focus on their recovery, and the Alliance even gave them the option to do lighter duties, different hours or just straight up go on paid sick leave. Beth claimed they were fine, and that they would get bored at home, and told us all to shut up and stop treating them like they were fragile when all of us had horrible shit that happened to us and we needed to recover from. Which, like, is true, to be fair. I’m in the medbay a lot having my arm looked at, or being engaged by the psych team on the base, trying to make sure things are okay. And they are, mostly. I know that I’m pushing myself a little bit too hard but it’s because I want to make sure things are set up so I can get back to Flauraan, to Abigail. Beth has been pushing themself too hard too.

Beth describes their condition like this: their dad is a being that exists across time and in dimensions the rest of us can’t see. They have always had a sense of it, but because they’re half human their body always stayed causally present. They experienced time and dimensions similarly to the rest of us non-quantoformous beings. But when they got injured during the war the organ that balances their presence on our plane of existence got irreversibly damaged. They take medication that helps, and they have devices that can stabilise them. We’ve experimented with a few, although the engineering of these things is way beyond me. Beth claims one of them has a black hole inside it. I’m not sure I believe them but it’s not like I’m gonna check or anything. Most of the time they are normal Beth; they can walk and talk and their body is physical and solid. But sometimes, when they’re stressed, or they’ve had too much to drink, or they forgot to take their medication, their causality starts to slip. They will be carrying groceries and then it all smashes to the ground because their body has lost corporeality. They will slump suddenly, scaring us, and then a few minutes later jerk back into motion as Beth sheepishly admits they only just realised they left their body behind. They will glitch uncontrollably, as if they’re being pulled in different directions, in different dimensions. Their treatment is constantly being adjusted, titrated. It doesn’t feel like a big thing to ask, for body and mind and self to stay in one place. But for Beth, there’s a part of them that has genuinely always existed in ways that don’t make sense to wormiforms and such, and in a lot of ways their condition involves getting a glimpse of that. And it’s uncomfortable, disorientating for them.

When it happens, we are in the offices working late. The lights are in night cycle mode, so it’s dark, but Beth and I are both working furiously; drafting proposals, sifting through communications, continuing the backlog of work from before we uprooted our team and went to the Staarus System. A variety of snacks and volatile substances litter the table around us, although Beth has already consumed some of the more dangerous of them. Mickey and Steve have been helping, but they went out to get food so that we could have a proper meal. Beth looks kind of terrible in the light from their comms, paler than normal, and more tired. I know if I say something, suggest they take a break, they will snap at me. I probably don’t look great myself. I rub the joint between my flesh arm and my mechanical one; my prosthetic has been pinching more than normal, I probably need to make time to go over it properly, clean it, oil it, maintain it.

I try to reassert my focus on the incredibly long Alliance treaty document I am attempting to cross-reference with the informal notes from the meeting on Halapatov. I wonder what Abi is doing right now. The twinge of guilt continues to eat at me. I made a promise to her, and I have no idea when I will be able to follow through. I click over to the disaster resource allocation log, thinking of Werayne. That twinge deepens. I haven’t really been able to shake it.

I am pretty thoroughly distracted when Beth speaks up, saying something like “Sophie? Whuh?”

“Mm-hmm?” I say, not looking up.

“This is- I wasn’t-” I look up now, because they sound panicked, and their face has transformed. They rub their eyes. “Why do I feel like complete garbage?” They look at their comms. “Huh? What is going on?”

“What do you mean?” I say, confused.

Silence for a minute. Then, “Oh. I remember this.” Suddenly they are grabbing me by the shoulders, “Have mercy, Sophie.” They are grinning wickedly, and I am astoundingly freaked out.

Then they plop themself back where they were sitting before, and all of a sudden they are dead eyed again. They briefly shake their head as if confused, and then continue working as if nothing happened.

“Beth?” I say, but I’m not sure whether to be annoyed or confused. "What do you mean, have mercy?"

"Babe, what?" Beth looks at me incredulously, which is insane because they're the one acting weirdly and confusing me. "Have mercy?"

"Yeah, you just said that to me. Have mercy, Sophie." I repeat mockingly.

"I would never say something like that."

I am annoyed now, assume they are playing some sort of prank on me. I rub my eyes."Beth, I'm too tired for this."

"Too tired for what? I don't know what you're on about."

We are still arguing about it when Mickey and Steve return with a feast.

"What are you two all worked up about?!" Steve looks between us.

"Beth was acting weird and said a few things that freaked me out and is claiming they don't remember it."

Mickey looks at Beth sharply. "Have you had problems with memory since Werayne?"

I hadn't even considered that it could be a memory thing. My heart sinks.

Beth crosses their arms. "No! I've just been sitting here doing my work! I think Sophie imagined it. We're both just exhausted."

I feel a little frantic, and certain that we shouldn't gloss over this, that we need to get to the bottom of it. I stand up. "I'm gonna look at the office surveillance."

Beth follows in a huff, complaining that it's not a big deal, as we make our way to the monitoring section of the base, and Mickey sweettalks the clerk. He pulls up the footage from earlier and Beth watches, frowning, as I am proven the winner of our argument.

Steve is trembling. "Beth, this is terrifying!"

Mickey begins examining them. They're resisting only half-heartedly. I can see the worry in their eyes.

"I'm fine." They insist, but they agree to get checked out as soon as possible. There's a place near Staphas that does quantoformous brain scans, we find out.

A few days later, I am blissfully back on Flauraan when I get a call from Beth.

"Hey, Sophie, I'm sorry for freaking you out the other day babe."

"What? It's okay Beth, I'm just worried about you."

"Well, about that..." I am tense, fearing the worst. "It turns out my brain is fine. Or at least, it's not a memory problem. It's a chronology problem."

They've lost me completely. "What does that mean?"

"Well, I was just hanging out today, doing my thing, then suddenly I blink and I'm sitting there in the room with you the other night doing work. And I was really confused and didn't know what was going on. It was like a dream. But I was real! And I remembered the weird stuff you were saying the other day so I grabbed you and then I sat down just like I did in the surveillance footage and then I was back here and Steve said I blanked out for a second and he was all worried when I explained but I talked to my dad and he said time isn't linear for quantoforms so that's gotta be what's happening. Time travel Sophie!!! I'm the Time Traveller's Wife!!!"

My mind is reeling so I fixate on the least confusing part of what they're saying. "Wouldn't that make you just the time traveller?"

"Babe it's literally like a poem or whatever you wouldn't get it."

"I don't." I confirm. "So when I was talking to you the other day it was you from today? Are you sure? Is this going to happen a lot?"

"I don't know." Beth says. "But it's exciting isn't it!"

We chat for a while longer and when I get off the call Abigail asks me what happened and when I tell her she looks really scared.

"What's wrong?" I say, and she just shakes her head and presses her lips together.

After a minute she says, "Isn't it frightening to you? Existentially? That time is malleable like that?"

"I haven't really thought about it." I shrug. Time travel doesn't seem that big a leap from psychic powers, Lexie's future visions, or any of the extra-dimensional stuff I've come across.

Abi shakes her head again. "Maybe I'm overreacting. I'm going to go for a walk." She says simply, and I know without asking that she doesn't want company, that she wants to be with her thoughts.

As I stretch out in the room alone I start to properly think about it all myself, and as opposed to the fear that seems to have pierced Abigail I am filled with this overwhelming thrill and sense of wonder at the way the universe is shifting and changing before my eyes.

Halapatov, Sophie is 22

My communicator is buzzing all through the meeting. I silence it, ignore it, almost completely forget about it, then remember and look through the backlog. It's Beth.

I call back and Beth's voice is loud. "Sophie!! Thank fuck you called back! Sophie you're not ready for this new development aaah."

"What?"

"Turn on video Sophie!" Beth demands of me and I do and two people are grinning at me through the phone. I almost don't realise what the big deal is, I am so distracted by the fact that Beth looks more exhausted than I've seen them for a while, and their face is a little beat up. Although the other Beth looks normal. Wait, two Beths?

"Huh." I say and the better looking Beth starts rambling.

"Yuh-huh! It's me from next week! I was in my room and there was a crash and I look down and it's me on the floor knocked out! So I got them up on my bed and I got some ice and they woke up and they were like oh huh so that's how it happened. Apparently I'm going to have some weird symptoms and then faint or whatever and wake up here."

"Cool huh?" The other Beth says smugly. "I told them to call you. They were all worried when you didn't answer and thought you would miss it. Didn't believe me that you'd call back before I disappear again."

I've got to agree that this is a cool development. "What's next week like?"

"Just the usual." They say. "Nothing juicy."

"Is Steve there?" I ask.

"Nah he's out." Beth says. "We already called him and he was gonna call in sick and come straight home but we told him not to worry. He's pretty far away though anyhow."

"Yeah he won't be back until late. I ended up having dinner alone." the other Beth says.

"How long do you stick around?" I address the future Beth.

"Another twenty minutes or so." They say. My eyes linger on the bruise on their forehead.

"Are you gonna pass out again? Make sure you go to the medcentre when you get back."

"Nah, no passing out the second time." Beth waves off my concern and then frowns. "I just kind of am walking and then I disappear. It's very weird."

"Okay, well take care of yourself." I know I'm annoying them with my level of concern but I can't help it.

"Okay, okay, stop hogging me. So much to do, so little time. Talk to you soon babe." Beth hurries me off the line and I stare at my comms dumbfoundedly for a minute. Wait until Abigail hears about this.

Day One of the Wedding

I wander towards the prep rooms, determined to find Sophie, and I open a door and there's Beth, slightly sweaty and in a completely different outfit to the one I just saw them in. I glance instinctively in the direction of the main room where I last saw them chatting to someone. I guess that confirms my theory. Is this the present Beth or is it the other one?

"Oh, hiiiii Abigail." They say goodnaturedly, and I realise they're hiding something.

"You haven't seen Sophie, have you?" I ask innocently and watch their eyes flash.

They lean against the doorframe, blocking my way. "Maybe in the bathrooms?"

I sigh. I mentally prepare for a highly specific bit that these two have been planning. "Okay. Well if you see her, let her know Rachel wants her."

Beth agrees and I head back to the main event.

As I reenter the festivities I catch a glimpse of Beth in their final wedding outfit. My shoulders tense. A third Beth? They are striding towards the other end of the room, where the original Beth continues their conversation with Zax, oblivious to all the other thems.

I quicken my pace and catch up to the newest Beth, grab them by the sleeve. "Beth," I hiss, and they glance at me and shrug off my hand.

"Oh hi Abigail." They say, continuing to stride forward. "Can't stop to chat. Important message to deliver."

"Tell me what happens." I am matching their stride. I realise I am more worried than I've been allowing myself to think.

"There's really no time." The thing is that I do believe them. Their expression is strained; there really is something stressing them, weighing on them. I decide to follow them regardless, and they sigh and uncharacteristically begin to divulge. "I need to talk to myself privately, there's something... something I need to try to prevent."

The existential dread tightens around me. "But, surely you can't. Causality doesn't work like that."

They shake their head. "I have to try." This hall is large but we've almost reached the other end, the other Beth. Suddenly my Beth twinges. "Oh no." They say simply, and they stumble, and all the chattering and conversation around us disappears into the vacuum that accompanies Beth's trips, and they vanish.

I stare at the place they'd disappeared from, particles of displaced air shimmering without an obvious source of disruption, then sneak a look at the other Beth, who doesn't appear to have noticed any of this. Something tugs on the back of my mind as I observe them from this close, but there's so much about Beth that my mind struggles to contend with, so I put that thought back into the same part of my mind as I store the existential dread, and move on.