“I know it’s not,” said Dana. “But the question was, given that we know about other branches, whether making good choices is worth doing. I think it absolutely is. None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you’re shaping yourself into someone who’s more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.
“And it’s not just your behavior in this branch that you’re changing: you’re inoculating all the versions of you that split off in the future. By becoming a better person, you’re ensuring that more and more of the branches that split off from this point forward are populated by better versions of you.”
Better versions of Nat. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s what I was looking for.”
Ornella had known it would be awkward when Nat and Scott met, but it was even more so than she expected. Scott had hardly spoken to anyone who wasn’t a family member or close friend in months and was out of practice at wearing his public face; the prospect of seeing Roderick alive again was making him particularly anxious. As for Nat, she seemed distant, which was not what Ornella had expected from someone who stood to make a lot of money in the next few minutes.
Nat set the prism up on the coffee table again. Ornella switched it to video and saw Morrow’s face; then it was her parallel self, who looked as nervous as she felt. For a moment Ornella had an impulse to call the whole thing off, afraid that Scott would only be hurt more, but she knew they couldn’t pass up this opportunity. She gestured for Scott to sit down on the couch next to her at the same time that her parallel self gestured to someone offscreen, and then Ornella turned the prism so that it faced Scott.
On the screen was a face that was doubly familiar, first because it was Roderick and second because his face was worn from months of grief, the same pattern of wear that Ornella saw on Scott’s face every day. Scott and Roderick must have had the same reaction because simultaneously they started to cry, and never before had Ornella felt so strongly that these two men were meant to be together, the way that each one could look into the other’s face and see himself.
Scott and Roderick started talking, their words overlapping. Ornella didn’t want strangers to hear what they said, and stood up. “Can we give them some privacy?”
The woman, Nat, nodded and made to leave the room, but Ornella heard Morrow on the other side of the prism speak up. “They can have all the private conversations they want once the prisms are theirs. But first they have to buy them.”
At the same time, the two Ornellas asked, “How much?”
Morrow named a figure. Ornella saw Nat react, as if the number was higher than she expected.
Scott and Roderick didn’t hesitate. “Pay them.”
Ornella took Scott’s hand and looked at him, wordlessly asking, Are you sure about this? He squeezed her hand and nodded. Earlier they had talked about the finiteness of what the prism offered. No matter how much he and Roderick tried to conserve, the amount of data left on its pad wouldn’t last the rest of their lives. They wouldn’t be satisfied with just text; they would want to hear each other’s voices and see each other’s faces, so the pad would eventually run out, and then they’d have to say goodbye. Scott had been willing to go ahead with it; any extra time they had together was worth it, as far as he was concerned, and when the end came, at least it wouldn’t come as a surprise.
Ornella stood and turned to Nat. “Come with me and I’ll issue the payment.” She could hear her parallel self telling Morrow the same thing. The screen shifted away from Roderick’s face to Morrow’s, and then the screen went dark; he wasn’t going to let his prism out of his sight until the money was in his account.
Nat, by contrast, was content to leave her prism on the table with Scott. She looked at him awkwardly for a moment, and then said, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Scott said, wiping away tears.
Nat followed Ornella into the room where she had her desk. Ornella unlocked her work phone and opened the digital wallet. She and Nat exchanged their account numbers and then laid their phones next to each other on the desk. Ornella entered the dollar amount and hit SEND. Nat’s phone acknowledged the offered transfer, but Nat didn’t touch the ACCEPT button.
“I suppose Scott has a lot of fans who would have given him that prism for free,” said Nat, staring at the screen.
Ornella nodded, although Nat wasn’t looking at her. “Yes,” she said. “He absolutely does.”
“There are probably people who aren’t even fans of his who would have done the same.”
“Probably.” Ornella was about to say that there were still good Samaritans in the world, but didn’t want to offend Nat by implying she wasn’t one of them. After a long moment, Ornella said, “Since the money’s right there, do you mind if I make a personal observation?”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re not like Morrow.”
“How do you mean?”
“I understand why he’s doing this.” How could she put this tactfully? “He sees a grieving person as an opportunity to make a profit.”
Nat gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, he does.”
“But you’re not like that. So why are you doing this?”
“Everyone needs money.”
Ornella felt emboldened enough to be frank. “If you don’t mind me saying it, there are better ways of making money than this.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve been thinking the same thing myself.”
Ornella wasn’t sure what she should say. Eventually, she said, “Scott’s happy to pay you for what you’ve done. But if you wouldn’t feel good about taking the money, no one says you have to.”
Nat’s finger hovered over the button.
For the past several weeks, Dana had made sure that in her sessions with Jorge she didn’t bring up the vandalism incident. Instead they talked about his efforts to recognize his own good qualities and ignore what other people might or might not think of him. She felt they were making progress and thought that she might be able to broach the topic in the near future.
So she was surprised when Jorge began a session by saying, “I’ve been wondering if I should go back to Lydoscope and ask them to contact my paraselves again.”
“Really? Why?”
“I want to know if they’ve acted out since the last time I checked.”
“Was there anything that prompted this?”
Jorge described a recent interaction with his manager. “And I felt really angry, like I wanted to smash things. And that made me think about what we talked about before, that it was like I had gotten the results of a medical test when I went to Lydoscope. I started thinking that maybe the test wasn’t sensitive enough.”
“And if you learn that your paraselves have acted out recently, then that would mean there’s something serious that the first test didn’t pick up?”
“I don’t know,” said Jorge. “Maybe.”
Dana decided to push him a little on this. “Jorge, I want to suggest something. Even if your paraselves haven’t acted on their anger recently, maybe it’s worth thinking about what happened here in this branch.”
“But how can I know if it was a freak accident or not unless I check my paraselves?”
“It was obviously out of character for you,” said Dana. “There’s no question about that. But it was still something you did. You, not your paraselves.”
“You’re saying I’m terrible.”
“That is absolutely not what I’m saying,” she assured him. “I know you’re a good person. But even a good person can get angry. You got angry and you acted on it. That’s okay. And it’s okay to acknowledge that you have that side of your personality.”