It was one of those days that just felt blissful and divine, as though all was well with the universe.

I'm sure they happen all over the world, for different reasons, and with different recipes, but I felt like I could identify with great specificity the ingredients of this day's exceptional nature; it was the shade of the trees that lined the roads, it was the heavy dose of sunshine blanketing from up above, it was the wind surging through my car's open windows, the radio turned high and then turned higher still to be high over the wind, and the sense of speed as I cruised through rural New England on the top side of fifty miles per hour, heading west. The day's excellence seemed determined to manifest itself as an irrepressible feeling of bliss and bubbling joy. I couldn't stop myself from singing along at the top of my lungs, or tapping the heel of my hand on the steering wheel.

“Well, I had a dream last night,” I sang, my voice loud, nearly shouting, “and in my dream I took a knife to you.” Had I wanted to, it would have been impossible to stop my left foot from tapping out the beat. “I slit your throat from ear to ear, the wound was gasping for the air, and you screamed so clear.” There wasn't any way to keep the smile from my face, not a feeling capable of tarnishing the pure taste of singing in my mouth.

As a turn came along the road, I took it without losing a beat, splitting off onto a clearly less traveled, but just as rural, surface roadway, and continuing west. The trees formed a canopy over the road, their leaves filtering the sunlight into the roadway. I knew it'd be cool and shady if I weren't in the car, if I were just standing by the side of the road like one of the sparse mailboxes that lined the roadway. I found my eyes everywhere, taking in random details like the

green and red, a few hundred yards removed from the road at the end of a twisting driveway,

Christmas house on my left, the numbers

36, 51, 22, 134, a 17 spray-painted over what was once 19 on the mailboxes on my right

seven ate nine, and Superman

a plane seen above in a canopy-free stretch of road painted like a red and blue bird

flying above.

I wasn't entirely sure how I managed to keep myself on the road, but as the thought occurred to me, I realized abruptly that I was coming up fast on a purple sedan.

I tapped the brakes and slowed down before I could rear-end the other motorist. Their status as a senior was evident in the handicapped license plate, in the way they drove ten below the speed limit, and in the white hair visible through the rear windshield. Take the next left, I told myself, thinking of a way around the slow driver without passing them like an asshole, and confirming all criticisms the other driver might have of younger generations. As a road approached on the left, I found myself slowing in tandem with the driver in front of me as they used their brakes and blinker to navigate on to Tudor Road. Groaning, I did as I had told myself to and followed the driver. Next right this time, next right. I had made good time thus far, going further in six hours than I could have expected, wandering aimlessly along back roads all the while. I wasn't planning to interrupt my habit of taking whichever random turns I decided on in advance just because a driver had slowed me once.

When I found a road on the right only fifty yards along Tudor, I took it, freeing myself from the curse of remaining trapped behind the slow driver. “Shit.” The road that was supposed to lead to freedom wasn't anything more than a dead-end, an unmarked and unexpectedly early end to my momentum. I slowed, and instead of continuing on to the road's completion, turned into a driveway on my right. Shifting up into neutral and then into reverse, I started to turn back to look over my shoulder and back up when I saw that the garage door in front of me was opening. Instead of hurriedly moving out of the way of the departing resident, I found myself pausing to look into the garage. A teenager was moving out of the building and paused to manipulate a panel on its exterior. He turned as the door started to roll down and waved.

Stunned, I waited for him to reach the passenger's side door and enter the car, my foot firmly depressing the brakes. “Hey, Marcus,” Brad greeted as he began to buckle up. “Took you long enough.”

“Hey,” I replied slowly, cautiously and still more than a little surprised. How was my best friend here, in this house six hours west of the town we lived in? How could he be expecting me? I had traveled miles, hundreds of miles. I couldn't have just gone in an enormous circle. “I was waiting for the rain to pass,” I explained. This couldn't be the real Brad. No, this wasn't even the right road; the real Brad lived on One Door Road. “It's not like they're going to close by the time we get there.” Don't let him know that you don't know where we're going, he'll kill you when he realizes you're not his Marcus.

“Yeah, it's cool Marc. I was playing a game anyway. You actually had perfect timing,” Brad said as I backed out of his driveway. As I shifted into drive, I saw that he had hold of my iPod. “When did you start listening to these guys again?”

“I never stopped,” I answered before I could stop myself. “Well, not completely, I mean. But, they're good for a listen now and then.” I glanced over to see if he bought the lie but found no such indication in the strangely concerned expression on his face.

“Oh,” Brad said simply. “You promised you wouldn't. And you said you hadn't.” He switched over to a different artist, but continued to play with the device as I drove. I shifted my attention between staying on the road and watching him play with the device in silence until he glanced up and asked, “Where are you going? That was the turn.” I found myself suddenly slowing. “No, don't turn around, there's a car behind you. Just go the other way.”

“Wasn't paying attention,” I said, feeling a strange sensation. It occurred to me abruptly that the sensation was a cool sweat sliding down either side of my chest from the place where my shoulders met my torso. “Kind of spacing today.”

“You alright?” He looked even more concerned, alert.

I nodded and stammered, “Y-yeah.” He can't see the sweat. It won't show through your shirt. “I'm so spacy; how's the quickest way now?” I tried to sound convincingly nonchalant.

“To the music store?” Brad asked. He stared out the windshield for a long and silent moment. “Next left, left again, then next right.” Left, left, right.

“Alright.” Left, left, right.

I need to get away from him. Left, left, right.

How do I get him out of the car without him knowing? Left, left, right.

Do I just stop when we get there, let him get out first and then just drive off? Left, right.

What if he figures out I'm not his Marcus and tries to kill me? Left, right.

What if I can't kill him first? Left, right.

Should I just try to crash his side into a tree and play it safe? Left, right.

I've got to kill him first, before he can get me. Right.

I found myself throwing on the parking break after pulling into a dirt parking lot adjacent to a small building. Behind the building was the outfield of a small baseball diamond, and a playground was visible across the short expanse. That both were intended for children was as obvious as the fact that the store was clearly no longer in business. The obviously closed store's windows were adorned with antiquated looking musical instruments, rifles, and something that had to have been a bicycle. Music store? Did he lie? Does he know al-

He's going to kill me.

I found myself rapidly throwing myself free from the stopped car without even bothering to turn it off. I glanced over my shoulder as I tried to distance myself from the vehicle and saw that inside, Brad was calmly shutting off the car and pulling the keys free. For some reason, I couldn't seem to push myself to my feet, could only push myself away from the parked vehicle. Brad was moving around the car to my side, and closed the door. He wore that same damn concerned expression from earlier, and I couldn't help but wonder what it was about even as I found my way onto my feet and turned to run.

I connected abruptly with a solid body the size of my own, a person that I hadn't seen approaching from the baseball field. Looking up, I saw my own face looking down on me.

“I know why you're here,” He said. He extended a hand, wearing a smile.

“You're going to kill me,” I said instead of taking the offered appendage. Too late to run.

“I'd like to. Not literally. Figuratively. You know what I mean, right?”

'I want to kill myself for being so stupid as to leave that paper plate on the stove while I was cooking.' That's what I mean.

I took his hand and allowed him to pull me to my feet. I dusted myself off as Brad joined us. “Why am I here?” I asked. Things were clearly more confusing than that, but if I focused on the important questions, I didn't have to allow them to be.

“You're here for Jenna's address,” Marcus said.

I nodded. “Yeah. You have it, don't you?”

He nodded. Brad said, “He's not as far as you yet. This is what happened to you, right? This is what you were talking about?”

“Right,” Marcus said. “He's a couple months behind me.”

“If I'm...if you're an alternate version of me a couple months from now, how do you have her house number?” I asked. “You lost it too, didn't you?”

I watched my self reply, “Because I did the same thing to get her number back.”

“That's how you knew why I was here when I didn't.”

He nodded. “I told Brad what happened. That's how he knew to bring you to me.”

But Brad originally thought that I- don't make it more confusing that it needs to be. “What's the address?”

“I know why you're here; I won't give it to you, though.”

“You know me. You know us. You know I'll just continue on to the version of me that gave you the number, or the one beyond that. There are more, aren't there? Stretching all the way across the country, spaced every six hours, however many miles that is. This is the universe, isn't it? This just goes on forever. There's no Ohio, no Arizona, no California, just the same things again and again across all of infinity.”

He grimaced. “You're right that I know us, and you're right that you'll continue on until you get it. But, you and I aren't the same person, not exactly, not anymore. I'm different from the version of us on the other side, and you can be too. I don't know how any of the others but you, me, and him are but... This number... nothing good can come from it.”

“You're a better person now, Marc,” Brad pointed out to me.

“The point isn't what I had to go through to become this person. You can be different without having to go through it. Just trust me. Trust your self.”

“Kelly had no right deleting it from my phone. Jenna and I, we're still friends. She said we could still be friends. She put her new address in my phone. I just want to go see her in person and get her number, so we can talk on the phone. I just want to see her that once.”

“Kelly deleted the house number to stop you because everyone, including you, knows that if you go to visit Jenna, someone's going to die. This isn't how it has to be. I know that you'll turn around and head straight to her once you find out the address, and that's exactly how you planned it; that's why there's a knife in your glove compartment.”

“I...” There were no words for the sudden turmoil I felt, for the sudden knowledge that I wasn't entirely sure I was sane. Was I really going to kill Jenna if I knew where she lived? Where was I going today? This wasn't possible, this couldn't have been the expected result of this drive. I couldn't have planned this, couldn't have known that everything I knew about the world was just a lie, that it existed only as an illusion to keep me from myself and the true meaning of the universe.

There was sudden meaning to the dreary rain I sat through before heading out to the car and taking off on my long drive; there was sudden meaning to the unrivaled bliss that I had felt through the entire ride, in the feeling of waiting for completion to arrive.

“You need help.” The concerned expression that Brad wore was now reflected on the face that reflected my own. “You can beat this. This isn't the answer.”

“Just...give me the house number.”

“The way things are right now, you'll kill her.”

“It wasn't right of Kelly to take her address from me. I just want to talk to her.”

“You're not going to just talk to her; you're going to yell, and cry, and hit, and stab.”

“I'm supposed to have the address. It's supposed to be my choice.”

“You'll kill her, and the next Marcus on the other side, the next one behind you, will visit you in the asylum like I did. And you'll be a raving lunatic.”

The next Marcus over? “You don't know that I'm behind you. Maybe I did it already. Maybe I just think I haven't done it.”

“You don't have the number. You're here because you need it. That's why you drove six hours east to me.”

I found myself feeling suddenly relaxed, wearing a light smile even. “Just let me have the number.”

The two standing before me seemed abruptly confused, seemed even more concerned. Brad threw my other self a questioning look. “I don't...I can't tell what you're going to do anymore.”

Marcus met my eyes for a long moment. His expression remained thoughtful for a long moment before becoming sorrowful. “It's 21. The house number is 21.”

“I met myself today,” I said, finding myself unable to suppress a grin, and then laughter. “God damn, I met myself today. This is the universe.”

“Marc?” Brad asked, seeking my approval before handing me the keys.

“That's what he said,” I heard myself explaining with a sigh as I headed back to my car.

Yeah. That's exactly what I'll say to you when I see you again in a few months.