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“Right?”

She leans her head against my shoulder.

“Thank you, Jason.”

“For what?”

“Not letting me freeze to death out there.”

“Does this mean we’re even?”

She laughs. “Not even close. I mean, let’s not forget, this is still all your fault.”

It’s a strange exercise in sensory deprivation to sit in the total darkness and silence of the box. The only physical sensations are the chill of the metal bleeding through my clothes and the pressure of Amanda’s head against my shoulder.

“You’re different than him,” she says.

“Who?”

“My Jason.”

“How so?”

“Softer. He had a real hard edge when you got down to it. The most driven human being I’ve ever met.”

“Were you his therapist?”

“Sometimes.”

“Was he happy?”

I sense her pondering my question in the dark.

“What?” I ask. “Am I putting you in a doctor-patient confidentiality quandary?”

“Technically, you two are the same person. It’s new territory for sure. But no. I wouldn’t say he was happy. He lived an intellectually stimulating but ultimately one-dimensional life. All he did was work. In the last five years, he didn’t have a life outside the lab. He practically lived there.”

“You know your Jason is the one who did this to me. I’m here right now because several nights ago, someone abducted me at gunpoint while I was walking home. He took me to an abandoned power plant, drugged me, asked me a bunch of questions about my life and the choices I’d made. If I was happy. If I would’ve done things differently. The memories are back now. Then I woke up in your lab. In your world. I think your Jason did this to me.”

“You’re suggesting that he went into the box, somehow found your world, your life, and switched places with you?”

“Do you think he was capable?”

“I don’t know. That’s crazy.”

“Who else would’ve done this to me?”

Amanda is quiet for a moment.

She says finally, “Jason was obsessed with the path not taken. He talked about it all the time.”

Now I feel the anger coming back.

I say, “There’s still a part of me that doesn’t want to believe it. I mean, if he wanted my life, he could’ve just killed me. But he went to the trouble of injecting me, not only with an ampoule, but ketamine, which rendered me unconscious and blurred my memories of the box and what he’d done. Then he actually brought me back to his world. Why?”

“It actually makes a lot of sense.”

“You think?”

“He wasn’t a monster. If he did this to you, he would have rationalized it somehow. That’s how decent people justify bad behavior. In your world, are you a renowned physicist?”

“No, I teach at a second-rate college.”

“Are you wealthy?”

“Professionally and financially speaking, I can’t hold a candle to your Jason.”

“There you go. He tells himself he’s giving you the chance of a lifetime. He wants a shot at the path not taken. Why wouldn’t you? I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying that’s how a good man works himself up to do a terrible thing. It’s Human Behavior 101.”

She must sense my rage building, because she says, “Jason, you don’t have the luxury of freaking out right now. In a minute, we’re going back into that corridor. We’re the controls. Your words. Right?”