Pleased to Meet Me Read online

  Crouching, dead quiet, I peeked through the crack in the door as another walking ditto mark of me strutted into the room. Meticulous Me wore a charcoal-gray colonial outfit and a super-serious look on his face. He stood so ramrod straight I felt slouchy by comparison. Everything about this Me screamed “uptight.” Hollywood scurried in behind him.

  “Are you off your trolley, Hollywood?!” Meticulous walked over to his desk, and my nerves seized up. Was he looking for the flash drive I’d just swiped?

  “Great Caesar’s ghost!” said Hollywood. “Excuse the language, but this is very frustrating! I swear I picked you up from school! Remember the science fair? The trophy?”

  Meticulous grabbed the stack of MePads I’d left behind. “Like I care about some daft science fair? Next time you make a right mess of things, don’t bloody well hide it with some childish prank.” He headed for the door. “Grow up or I’ll find myself another assistant.”

  Hollywood stuck out his tongue at Meticulous’s back as he followed behind him.

  Once they’d left together, I crept across the office and opened the door enough to peek out. The coast was clear. At least, I thought it was. When I swung the door wider, I nearly bonked it into none other than Mr. Clark, the janitor from school. He’d ditched his denim work clothes for an expensive colonial business suit, like the other executives here wore. This version of Mr. Clark must have had some sort of important muckety-muck position with Me Corp.

  “Sir!” he said. “So glad I caught you. I’m just back from the Socialist Republic of Atlantis and need to talk to you about a few issues that came up there before the board meeting.”

  I didn’t stop walking. “Save it for later, okay?”

  “But, sir!”

  “Later!”

  I power-walked toward the elevator, mopping up my forehead sweat with a floppy silk sleeve as everybody gave me double takes. They must have just seen the real Meticulous pass by a few minutes before. Nothing I could do about that now. Only a few steps away from the elevator, I passed a conference room with big plate-glass windows and a bunch of people stuffed inside. This had to be the board of directors’ meeting, where the real Meticulous and Hollywood had gone.

  I covered my face with my hand and tried not to look too obvious going past. It worked. Almost. I’d just cleared the last window when Meticulous shouted loud enough that his words carried through the glass: “Are you questioning my ability to run this company?!”

  When you hear yourself telling off somebody, it’s impossible not to stop and have a look.

  In the room, Meticulous stood before a table of stern-looking adults. The sternest of them shouted right back at Meticulous. It was none other than Ms. Assan, the drama teacher. She’d ditched her usual aging-hipster outfit for a colonial power suit. “If you don’t start producing results again, we may have to rethink your running this company. Where’s the MindMe AI prototype you promised? Why isn’t RocketMe ready? And how come there’s been not a peep on this life-extension device you’ve been going on about from the MendMe team?”

  “They’re coming!” yelled Meticulous. “These things take time! Can’t you see that?!”

  I was so amazed to see myself shouting back to a grown-up that I almost missed Hollywood. He sat up in his seat near the window, looking from me to Meticulous and back again, awareness sinking in.

  Busted.

  I sprinted the rest of the way to the elevator and pounded the call button as Hollywood rushed out of the conference room. “Hey, get the fudge over here!” He ran toward me just as the door slid open. I hopped inside and punched CLOSE over and over until the door finally started rolling shut. Hollywood reached me and tried to shove his hand through the narrowing gap, but he was too late. “Security!” he shouted, the elevator closing in his face.

  I pressed the button for the parking garage and treated myself to a long, deep breath. Maybe I could find the limo that had brought me here, or sneak away on foot. Either way, I had to get off this Earth and never come back.

  Trapped in a strange world. On the run from a dim-witted rendition of myself. Feeling itchy and sweaty in frilly clothing. Maybe I shouldn’t have skipped school after all.

  As soon as the doors opened on the parking garage, I spotted Meticulous’s limo in the RESERVED FOR CEO space in front of me. Only when I grabbed for the handle did I remember I didn’t have the keys. I yanked at it anyway. “Open up already!”

  A red light under the handle pulsed along my palm, and the limo’s robot voice piped up. “Acknowledged. Welcome back, sir.” The locks clicked and the doors swung open.

  Before I could hop in, a pair of arms wrapped around me from behind. Hollywood Me.

  “No idea how you got to this gosh-darned world, but you messed with the wrong gosh-darned Me!” He tightened his grip, which didn’t feel much stronger than mine. “I trained in all forms of martial arts for my role in Pallin’ with the Shaolin! So don’t even think about it!”

  I didn’t know the first thing about wrestling, and neither did Hollywood. It was easy to break free of his hold, but he didn’t give up. He came at me again, and we went at it some more, sliding along the side of the limo. Our identical bodies got so tangled together we must have looked like conjoined twins.

  Just before we reached the back bumper, I managed to twist Hollywood around so his head hovered over the trunk. “Trunk!” I yelled.

  Nothing happened.

  Hollywood smirked. “You’re on British soil. They call trunks boots.”

  “Boot!” I screamed.

  The lid swung up, barely missing the back of Hollywood’s head. “Hey!” he cried, letting go. “That almost hit me!”

  I’d been hoping the lid would knock him out, but I guess that sort of thing only happens in movies. Now I needed a new idea, because wrestling was getting us nowhere. As Hollywood came at me, I shot my hand at his neck…and tickled him. There was a particular patch of skin just under the left side of my jaw that never failed to seize up my entire body whenever Mom, Dad, or Twig got me there. Something told me Hollywood might have that weak spot too.

  I guessed right. As soon as I touched him there, Hollywood squealed with laughter and curled up his body, shielding himself against more tickling. That left him unprepared for the shove that came next. I pushed his unbalanced body into the empty boot, just wide and deep enough to fit an obnoxious Me. I tucked in his feet with one hand and slammed the lid shut with the other.

  I wasn’t too keen on taking a limo with my look-alike screaming in the back, so I searched around for some other ride. In the next space sat a sleek red MeScooter sipping power from a charging box. It was so beautiful I couldn’t resist reaching out and touching it. A red light inside the handlebar grip scanned my hand, and the bike hummed to life.

  “Welcome, sir,” said the scooter’s robot voice. “Fancy a ride?”

  * * *

  —

  The scooter moved like butter on wheels, racing me far from Me Corp. headquarters in a matter of minutes. It was so fun to ride, I almost forgot I was supposed to be making a getaway.

  At a stoplight, I tried to figure out the fastest way to the Janus. A robot voice blared behind me: “Citizen, please move forward!” The words blasted from a MeCar convertible behind me. Rattled, I backed into the car’s bumper, setting off its alarm. “Collision! Collision!” I turned all the way around for a better look. An old lady snoozed in the back seat, oblivious to the racket.

  A British-style police siren split the air a block away. Great, cops were the last thing I needed. I cranked the throttle and zoomed off.

  Turns out it’s not so hard being chased in a world of self-driving cars. The robots were programmed to follow the rules of traffic, but Meticulous’s scooter let me drive however I pleased. I buzzed past countless cars obeying the speed limit without fail, their robot voices nagging me:
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br />   “Citizen! No weaving between cars!”

  “Citizen! No running a stop sign!”

  “Citizen! No going the wrong way down a one-way street!”

  Their warnings scared me at first, until I realized the cars and the people they carried couldn’t do a thing about it.

  But despite all my darting and dodging, the siren grew louder and louder. I looked back and saw the robot cars turn aside like a wave to make room for the police cruiser. The cop behind the wheel drove with no robotic aid. That meant she could bend the rules of traffic, just like me.

  “Pull over!” her partner shouted through a speaker.

  Even if I’d wanted to pull over, how could I ever explain myself? I kept going. Before too long I reached the sketchy warehouse district at the edge of downtown, which had plenty of alleys for losing cops. But no matter where I turned, the cops kept popping up. I was no expert getaway driver, but they really shouldn’t have been able to follow me that well. Then I noticed a flashing radar icon on the scooter’s view screen. It looked just like the Find My Device app on my phone. D’oh! They’d been tracking me all along.

  I zipped behind a store called Breath of Fresh Heir, full of items with pictures of the royal children on them, and ditched the scooter there. Dashing away on foot, I turned a corner just as the cops pulled up. It was only a few blocks to the Janus, but everything seems far when you’re wearing knickers and hose over jeans. A fresh coat of sweat covered me by the time I reached the hotel’s employee entrance and slipped inside.

  The empty hotel felt creepier than ever. Maybe that’s because now I knew this wasn’t just an old, abandoned hotel, but an old, abandoned hotel from another dimension. I rushed to the elevator bank and pressed the call button. The door couldn’t have rattled open fast enough.

  Right when I stepped inside, the cops reached the front entrance and pounded on the glass. Even without a code, they’d be inside in no time. I glanced over at the elevator control panel and realized with a wet-towel slap to my brain that I didn’t know how to get back to my Earth. I’d never paid attention to the “floor” I’d left from. Which of these hundred buttons would take me there?

  The entrance doors banged open and the cops burst in. Completely freaked, I pressed the first button handy: zero. It lit up like a green Christmas tree light.

  Only after the elevator started moving did I remember the last origami note, the one that had told me to press zero in the first place.

  That meant I was headed to Me Con, whether I liked it or not.

  You’d think piercing the barrier between realities in an elevator would be a bumpy ride, but the Janus elevator glided along like it was only going between floors, not whole dimensions. That didn’t ease my nerves, not in the slightest. It had already been scary enough in this crate the first time around, and that was before I knew it could travel the multiverse.

  I ditched the colonial outfit, but I couldn’t shake the weirdness of walking around in the shoes of another Me. The wealth, the power, the smarts, the popularity. Were all Mes of other realities so irritatingly awesome? Hollywood wasn’t—he was just irritating without the awesome. Still, hadn’t he said something about acting on TV? I’d only met two copies of myself, and they’d both accomplished more than I or my Achieve-O-Meter could ever have dreamed. There was no telling what impressive stuff the other Mes at Me Con had done.

  The elevator finally stopped, and the door opened on yet another Janus elevator bank. I faced a bench that hadn’t been in the other two Janus Hotels. On its armrest sat a coffee mug with WORLD’S GREATEST FARTER on the side and blue bubbles shooting from the brim. I stepped out for a closer look. The foamy blue liquid inside fizzed like a potion in a mad scientist’s lab. Who’d ever want to drink that? Then I noticed butt-cheek depressions in the cushion. Someone had just been here. A fellow Me?

  I peered into the lobby but didn’t see anybody, just a locked entrance and dark windows. Even though it should still have been daytime outside, the view was absolute black, as if the last shred of light had left and didn’t plan on ever coming back. I couldn’t tear my eyes away, until a noise snapped me out of it. The buzz of an electric motor.

  I looked down the hall and saw a kid coming straight at me in a single-rider mobility cart. The Me behind the wheel was yet another version of me: same hair, same eyes, same age, same height. The only difference was his weight, an extra hundred pounds at least. He was large. Really large. The kind of large that needs a motorized cart to get around. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror and not being able to walk away.

  Wheels whirring, engine buzzing, basket rattling, his cart got closer and closer. I tried to step back into the elevator, but the door had shut. All I could do now was stand there, frozen, as he pulled up to me.

  He held out a meaty hand. “Sorry I’m late.” He sounded more like me than Meticulous or Hollywood had. No accent, no attitude. “Don’t worry. We may be interdimensional doppelgängers, but we won’t explode on contact or anything. Welcome to Me Con.”

  My latest double shook hands the way I did—limp and floppy. He chewed on his lower lip like me too, and slouched the same way. He was like a living, breathing reminder of all my bad habits. Plus, he was huge. I’d like to think I wouldn’t judge somebody for their size, but since he looked like me in every other way, I couldn’t stop staring. How did somebody so much like me end up with a body so different from mine?

  His cheeks spread into a grin that looked familiar, despite the extra padding. “This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘Interdimensional doppelgänger? What are you talking about?’ ”

  I shrugged, hoping my shoulders weren’t shaking too much. “No, I pretty much get it. Parallel worlds and all that.” I shot a glance down the hall, just in case Meticulous or Hollywood was lurking there.

  The Me looked impressed. “Well, that’s a first. Normally I have to talk new Mes off the wall. But I can tell you’re playing it cool. I try to play it cool the same way, you know.”

  He hardened his jaw and scrunched his eyebrows. I felt my skin flame up. I’d been making that exact face.

  He laughed a deep belly laugh, the way I laughed, just with more belly. “Lighten up. I’m only joking.”

  This was getting more awkward by the second, so I changed the subject. “How did you even know I was coming here?”

  “The SecureMe cam in the elevator lobby. I’m on Welcome Committee duty. Can’t believe I get to meet the Me from Earth Ninety-Nine. That’s the last Earth the elevator can reach, you know. Feels like the end of an era. By the way, call me Motor Me.”

  “Motor Me?”

  “Yeah, every Me at Me Con needs one.”

  “Every Me needs a mobility cart?!”

  His face went a shade of red that probably matched mine. Great, now I’d gone and insulted myself.

  “Every Me needs a nickname, is what I meant,” he mumbled. “They’re how we tell each other apart, since we’re all Meade Macon. By the way, the other Mes aren’t plus-size like me. I’m a special case.” He pulled out a tube of cookies. “And on that note, want some?”

  The package read CHEMICALLY FLAVORED CRUNCHIES.

  “Weird name for a cookie,” I said.

  “Oh, that.” Motor opened the pack, and the smell of artificial figs filled the air. “Marketing is a little different on my world. Companies use honest names. It’s the law or something.”

  “ ‘Chemically Flavored’ doesn’t exactly make me hungry.”

  Motor offered me the tube. “Never stopped me.”

  Keeping an eye out for any sudden moves, I took a cookie. It looked like an Oreo, but with gooey fig filling inside instead of cream. “I’ve never seen a cookie like this.”

  “I always pack a few things I can only get at home.”

  I twisted apart the top and bottom wafers to scrape up the filli
ng with my teeth. It wasn’t bad at all.

  Motor clapped his hands together. “That’s how I eat them too!”

  Maybe it was just the sugar talking, but this kid’s goofy good cheer was starting to rub off on me. “Duh! Didn’t you say you’re me?”

  He laughed. “Differences do crop up. Like eating habits. The other Mes just bite into them whole, and only one at a time.”

  “Boring.”

  “I know, right? Why stop at just one?” Motor stacked three cookies atop each other and opened wide, sinking his teeth into the cookie sandwich with crumb-spraying bliss. He waggled his eyebrows as if to say, Top that.

  With no hesitation, I grabbed the last five Chemically Flavored Crunchies from the tube, gripped them lengthwise between my thumb and forefinger, and took a huge chomp from the middle. The chain of cookies held together.

  Motor’s jaw dropped. “I’ve always tried to do that, but it’s never worked!”

  I did my gruff-old-coach impersonation. “Just the right amount of pressure and slack in the fingers, that’s the key.”

  “That’s Tom Furst you’re doing, isn’t it?! The dude who ran the tennis camp? I haven’t thought about him for years!”

  “You knew him?” Here was one good thing about Me Con already: an audience that got my most obscure references.

  “Of course! Mom and Dad forced tennis lessons on me too.”

  The thought of Mom and Dad—my real mom and dad—stabbed me with guilt. After-school basketball and theater practice would be wrapping up soon, and they’d expect me home for dinner. They’d freak when I didn’t show.

  Motor glanced at a MeMinder on his lumpy wrist. “I came here to give you the standard meet and greet, but right now the opening party’s wrapping up and it’s every Me for himself when it comes to the cake. Grandma Sue’s recipe. You know the one.”