On Your Own

3A

The "new" and "otherworldly" are words Kendall would use to desribe your work. "Insane" and "a god-awful idea" are words you would use.

The basic premise was to steal Beta's cash in ways he wouldn't notice. You doubt he would notice if he was being mugged, so it wasn't exactly high-stakes in that regard. Not that he could tell the police that he was being scammed by his alternate reality counterpart, but he certainly could take preventative measures.

I mean, it's not like you really steal from him, you just sorta make his life worse and make yours better. Using science. And being an asshole.

Here's the idea: there are maybe, like, six people involved. You, Kendall (your, er, friend and coworker), and a few helpers. The helpers are... interesting... Kendall talks to them better than you. They live in volcanoes? As far you can tell? You haven't seen them, so he could just be completely out of his mind. But it's not exactly like you have room to question secret causality assistants.

He used to have money from studying the earth. Layers and all that. Finding oil pump sites. Kendall was brought onto an expansive team of geologists trying to predict earthquakes when he began remembering things. He told you there was lots of field work and on one of the jobs he found himself on the verge of a discovery. But he doesn't talk much about the next part. His wife died. His money left. His daughter was taken away. And that's when he started to see them. That's when he called you.

You don't know all the details, but he introduced you to Beta, you suppose. By a whim of chance, you answered the unknown number. That was when you heard the voice of a raving lunatic and the voice of yourself. Only the other you had met with Kendall and believed him for some reason. Only he could do anything and everything and just have his life overwritten by your own. Only he had nothing to lose. After that you talked to him endlessly and thought of the possibilities. Just another contact on your phone, but someone with any sort of imagination can take advantage of this. You remember Kendall telling you something you've never let Beta find out: Beta was doomed. Incomplete. A sort of test world that could never pan out. The best part was Kendall knew how to force hours and days and years of yours to simply be throwaway possibilities.

So what if Beta had to buy all the lottery tickets in the store? And all the time on slot machines... and all the...

You had never tried to reset on anything other than gambling. That seemed too important. Except when you strolled to the casino to spend the monotonous hours of hits and misses it occurs to you that you've never done this before. And that the only thing you remember is receiving a call from Beta telling you what to do. It seems strikingly obvious to you that there is not really any reason that you should spend all your money so that some other version of you could reap the benefits. You are that other version, though. And...

You shouldn't worry about it. You've never worried about it before.

4A - You receive a call.

3B - There goes your cash.