Jenny could now see images of a desolate, war-torn country. The bombed-out shells of buildings. Streets filled with dust and debris, grey rubble everywhere. Craters in roads. Columns of stationary vehicles that had been scorched and were never going anywhere. And beyond the skeletal remains of the city, under ominous skies filled with dirty rain, Jenny saw endless refugee camps. Line after line after line of grimy-looking tents stretched away into the distance. Queues for water and food. A group of kids wearing rags for clothes kicked a drinks can for a football as detonating bombs flashed like lightening on the horizon.
She’d seen images like this many times before on the TV news, but this was as vivid and real as the multiple views of the Bleed’s advance they’d watched previously. This was a window into another time and place. She could smell the sewage in the gutters and could hear the pitiful cries of the terrified and the starving. Was this somewhere in the Middle East? Syria or Iraq, perhaps? Or some other flashpoint she’d forgotten the name of? It wasn’t that she didn’t care, it was just that there’d been so many wars in so many places that it was hard to keep track.
“Where is this?”
“New York,” Maddie replied. “The big rotten apple. See, my version of Earth didn’t have a chance to get destroyed by the Bleed; we’d already destroyed it ourselves. Who needs interdimensional demons when you’ve got human beings?”
Jenny was stunned into silence. There was no doubt Maddie was telling the truth—the pain was writ large across her face—and yet Jenny detected something else there too. Anger. No…it was more than that. Hatred. “So what does this have to do with me?” she asked.
“Everything.”
Maddie returned her attention to the machine. As Jenny watched, the images of devastated New York were replaced with a collage of pictures and media reports. It was like watching the life she remembered filmed through a slightly different filter: news programs and websites she recognized, but all viewed from an alternative angle. The BBC was the EBC—English Broadcasting Company—for example, and Google had a more authoritarian, state-sponsored sheen. Maddie’s Earth was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Jenny asked. “We don’t have time for this, Maddie. The Bleed is closing in. If we don’t start working together and fast, then before we know it the whole world will be completely fu—”
She stopped talking when she saw images of her own face.
A mugshot.
A newspaper front page.
A website report.
People wearing T-shirts bearing her image.
Other people burning effigies of her and flags emblazoned with her face.
People fighting in her name against armies fighting to bring her to justice.
“So, can you see why I’m pissed now?” Maddie asked.
Jenny was struggling to process this latest development. New images continued to flash in front of her. The enormity of what she was seeing was beginning to sink in, but Maddie couldn’t resist stressing the point, just in case.
“It was all your fault. Apparently, you were the mastermind behind a terrorist attack that triggered the war. Granted, it was a different version of you, but it was you all the same. You’re the one who started the war that tore my world apart.”
Tears were running from Jenny’s eyes but her hands were still chained-up and she couldn’t wipe her face. Maddie stood less than a meter away and stared at her, seeming to demand a response.
“What do you want me to say?” Jenny sobbed.
Nothing from Maddie.
“Come on! Tell me what you want! Do you want me to apologies? Want me to say sorry and beg forgiveness? Want me to repent for something I didn’t do? If what you’re saying is true, Maddie, and I have no reason to think otherwise, then that’s not me. She might look like me and talk like me and have the same name as me, but she’s not me.”
“I know that.”
“Then let me out. Even if your Earth is lost, let’s try and save this one.”
“I can’t. Because even though you’re right, and she’s not you, it’s pretty clear you’ve got a heck of a lot in common. Same face, same eyes, same hair, same DNA. And it’s no coincidence that both you and she are involved in situations that have resulted in whole planets being destroyed. It makes me think you and her might both think the same way, so that leads me back to my first question: are you guilty? Is it your fault this planet’s dying?”
“No.”
“And how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. I guess the only way is by setting me free so we can fight this thing together.”
“Don’t know if I can risk doing that.”
“And I don’t know if you can risk not doing it. Time’s running out.”
“I know.”
“Maddie, if you truly thought I was capable of the things you’re claiming, I think you’d have got rid of me already.”
Maddie paced the room again, now looking everywhere but directly at Jenny. “You’re half right,” she eventually said.
“Only half?”
“Yes. I’m seriously tempted to get rid of you, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because this machine won’t let me do half the things it’s capable of. Whether you realize it or not, I think you’re the only one who can fully control it. I understand it and I can operate it, but you’re the only one who can use it to its full potential and
