Walking into Professor Duval’s lab we enter a sparkling clean room, with all manner of shiny instruments and devices, some large, some small, some his size. I hadn’t seen this room several years ago, and most of the equipment that I couldn’t even begin to describe, were clearly specialized for very specific tasks.

I wave to the Professor and he returns the signal, smiling back, probably just excited to have someone to use his toys on…

“I’m glad to see you ladies, I haven’t seen you since the wedding!” Violet stops approaching the Professor and walks back out of the room.

“One second Professor, I’ll be right back.”

He looks a little confused but turns back to his equipment while I slip back out of the room.
“Violet… what’s wrong?”

She stands there, staring out the window, “If these tests are positive, I killed you… if they are positive, I never married the woman who I loved…” she rests her head on the glass, closing her eyes.

I get closer, but she reaches out her arm, “Go take the tests, we need to do this… I just hope they are all negative… and we can return to our lives.”

I sigh, “Alright Violet…” I turn and walk back into the lab, feeling a little shaken. I feel like this test won’t fix anything… if it’s positive, Violet might never get over it, and if it’s negative, Violet might never let herself think it’s real and manage to never get over it. Either way, she probably will never get over it.

I push Ganymede off my shoulder, pointing up to ask him to go find a place to relax, so he flies upward.

Professor Duval’s eyes first follow Ganymede as he flies up to find a place to perch, then he looks up at me, craning his neck a little, “Is Violet okay?”

I smile, and attempt to play it off, “She’s having a tough day, I hope she’ll be fine.”

The Professor rubs his hands together smiling, “Well, I hope so too, I understand we are doing a deep sub-cellular scan, right?”

I nod my head, “Yes sir.”

With a slightly less certain tone of voice, Duval inquires, “What exactly are we looking for though?”

I shrug my shoulders, “Not sure, just anything out of the ordinary.”

“I can do that let’s just get started,” he points to an exam table with a large flat apparatus hung above it, “Lay down there please.”

I sit on the top of the table, swinging my legs in, and sliding in, laying my head in the indent at the head of the table.

“Now, keep still, this scanner can be dangerous if you move.”

I don’t need to be told twice, I stiffen up and do my best to not move a muscle. Holding my breath…

“Alice… you can breathe.”

I let out the air and quickly try to normalize my breathing.

A high-pitched noise squeals into the lab as the scanner moves up and down, starting at my feet, and slowly moving across my body, running up to my head. Upon reaching the end of its track, the device splits in two and rotates around, one component on my left, the other on my right, and it runs back down the tracks toward my feet.

Professor Duval continued to monitor the scans as I lay on the table, this was most interested I had ever seen him be, he raised his little finger up and looked as if he was about to speak.

When the high-pitched squeal stops, the apparatus returns to its original position, but I don’t move. He said this thing was dangerous, I won’t do anything until I get an all-clear.

Then he paused again, taking another look. “Okay Alice… These readings are both incredibly fascinating, while also being terrifying.”

While I find the last bit of that statement worrying, I remain as still as I possibly can, his warning that the scanner could be dangerous if I moved continuing to echo in my head.

I see Violet step in, hovering over the Professor, “What do you mean by that?”

He jumps up, “I might be able to explain! I need a little while to look at this data!” He side-steps his chair and jogs along the catwalk he was standing over to the wall, before turning back and yelling, “I’m sorry Alice, you can get up now.”

I swing my legs over and step to the wall, looking up at the displays the Professor was manipulating, watching as he pulls in data from several scan analysis tools.

We watch as he works with the data, he yells periodically, like you would expect from a mad scientist, “What the hell?” then a few moments later, “Shit? What? Why is…”

“This is incredible, and only makes more questions…” His little fingers fly across the interface, until two complete image sets appear on the displays.

Two sets of images of cells.

He pulls out a laser pointer, brandishing it against the display, “Okay ladies, let’s look at the set of images on the left… and on the right…” he pauses and circles several things what do you see?”

Violet sits on the table beside me, not looking up, but I look closely, but quickly discover nothing of interest. “They look the same Doc.”

“Right, the one on the left is a normal human cell, and the one on the right appears to be as well. But if we take a moment and look deeper… it gets far more interesting…” he turns a dial and zooms the image in closer and closer, in past the cell walls, he focuses on the mitochondria, “now what do you see?”

I immediately see a difference, “The right one looks different, looks more pocked?”

“Correct, there are nanomachines embedded in your mitochondria Alice, they are very similar to Aurunian mass manipulation tech, but miniaturized to a scale we’ve never even attempted. It appears that they take energy from your Mitochondria and fuel some kind of mass manipulation systems tied into your nervous system.”

Incredible… what the fuck Aurora…

“So, if I understand what you are saying, I can grow or shrink myself on demand? I don’t need a mass manipulator at all?”

“That’s not all… I also have a brain scan, and there are structures within your neurons I have never seen before, but they generate EM signals… so, if you could turn around I’ll show you what I mean.”

I turn around, and notice Violet walking away from me, out of the glass enclosure I was in toward the outer windows, while I face what looks like a large aquarium full of dusty air.

“So… what do you want me to do with this?” I inquire, confused how this could possibly be relevant.”

He laughs, “Simple, think of something you love.”

I smirk, considering the dust wafting through the clear chamber, and think about something I love.

Suddenly the dust moves, reshaping itself into a miniature form, solidifying and resting on the bottom of the chamber.

A little doll sized figure of Violet.

Confused at how that happened, I simply laugh, “Good trick Professor, but you knew I would think of Violet.”

“It’s not a trick Alice, you did that, not me.”

“Seriously?”

He laughs, “Seriously.”

I think about something else, and a feeling comes over me, like I can push the object around mentally… it budges… I watch as the figure moves left and right, up and down, then I feel a fourth axis and I try to push against it… and the figure disappears for a few seconds before reappearing…

Did I just push it through time? Time is just another dimension… can I change the momentum of object through time?

As I consider what I can do with this power, I hear shattering glass. I spin my head toward the source, to see a blur of Violet dropping out the window!

“Shit!” I scream, as I jump into a full gallop toward the window, “No, no, no, no!” I grab my wings from the table in the main room and without another thought I jump.

Struggling into the pack, I grasp and lock the mechanism, but don’t materialize the wings, I scan downward, looking for Violet’s silhouette against the background. That’s difficult, and I don’t have any AR systems right now, I jumped without them.

I simply take a diving pose and cut through the air as quickly as I can, trying my best to accelerate downward.

As I reach half the way down, I finally spot her, about 50 meters down and several meters in, toward the building. Makes sense, she didn’t run out.

She is flailing as she falls. It slows her significantly, so I match her speed by reaching arms and bending my legs, getting within 10 meters, I reach out and grab her shirt, pulling her toward me, so I can reach my other arm around her, I grasp tight, and materialize my wings, pulling up as hard as I can to decelerate us.

It works somewhat, as we plunge downward toward a large garden, but fortunately I can pull us into a path with the decorative lake.

That works.

Somewhat.

Not well…

I turn and take the brunt of the impact with my wings and back, protecting Violet’s unconscious body.

Under the water I activate the jets, launching us up out of the water and shorting out the pack in the process. I struggle to get the sparking mess off my back, tossing it to the side and rushing to my wife.

She’s limp, I roll her to her back and listen for her heart. It’s beating. Good.

But she’s not breathing.

So, I tilt her head back, pinching her nose and locking lips, I breathe out into her mouth, and her chest rises.

Good sign!

I do this again, repeating every few seconds until she takes a deep breath on her own. She coughs slightly and opens her eyes, “Alice…”

“Dammit Violet, what the hell.”

She pushes away from me, “You’re not Alice, you’re a… copy!”

That hurts.

“I’m the only Alice you’ve got Violet.”

She pushes away again, backing herself away from me, her eyes focused on the ground, “Like hell. I killed you, this is all my fault. I ruined our happily ever after.” She finally looks up at me, “and for what, I got a copy,” she raises her voice, looking at me accusingly, “and you think this is all okay!”

I stare deeply into her eyes, attempting to inspire confidence, “So, what if my body is a copy, my memories are perfect. I remember everything perfectly, I am not just an assembly of molecules Violet. I am a person who is a collection of experience… That’s what really matters.”

She folds her arms, “Our first kiss.”

I raise my eyebrow, realizing she intends to test me, “We were fighting pirates and we had just defeated them, I got close to you, we searched souls, and I puckered up, and you closed the deal.” I cough, “I mean your soft lips enveloped mine…”

Her frown softens a little, “That was easy, how about when we were on the micro-planet, what was odd about the streets there?”

“They were repeating, almost like those videos beginner animators make. Where to make a city bigger they copy the original model and all its assets, so it’s twice as big and twice as obvious.”

She laughs at that one, she sighs and closes her eyes, “I thought I could escape this by just ending it, I didn’t think you would dive and catch me.”

“Violet, you should know better. I want to be with you for as long as the universe allows… please don’t leave me…” I scoot closer to her placing my hand on hers.

“You are pretty real for a copy.”

“It’s all we have dear…”

“Still I wish I could fix it and make everything better… but time doesn’t work like that.”

It was in that moment that I realized. I think I pushed that figurine through time. “Violet. I think I can fix this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, come on, we need to get back up to the lab!” I jump up, pulling her up, and grabbing my broken wings. “I swear, these always get broken…”

“You always break them when you save me.”

I laugh, “Yeah… and that just means you have to fix them again, come on let’s go!”