On Saturday, December 9, I summoned Victoria and brought us into Mona’s world, and that night, I went to sleep in my bedroom in Mona’s castle with Victoria and managed to transform her into Aries while remaining there on the morning of Sunday, December 10. In my mind, this proved it was possible for me to stay in Mona’s world indefinitely. Did I want to?

I wouldn’t want to cut myself off from the real world entirely. I still wanted to contact my parents, for example. But as long as I had some place that gave me permission to install a door, like in my parents’ apartment, I could spend my life primarily in Mona’s and Aries’ worlds, sometimes in the dream worlds, and sometimes visiting my parents or going out into the real world from there. And Mona could get me to other places if I needed it.

There was also the question of what would happen to the other versions of me and Victoria in the other worlds. Would they spontaneously decide to do the same thing at the same time? Alt-Victoria seemed to have made completely different decisions from me since we discovered the power, and it was only because I was getting a copy of her world rather than the real thing that I wasn’t wrecking everything for her every time I went there. But all the Jodys seemed to do the same thing. Had they all proposed to and married all the women? Aries claimed that human Jody was the only one who had proposed to her, which counted as marrying her in their culture, but she had treated it as if Sea Man Jody had done it, since he was going to carry the child we would someday have.

But then, I hadn’t been to the worlds those other Jodys were from since the weddings. I needed to fix that. At this moment I realized another thing that might be different in one of the other worlds, and made a note to check it out at the next opportunity. I found Aries out playing with Bruno, and she gave me the information I needed from this side.

I spent some time with Mona on Sunday discussing what the television appearance would be like. It was going to be an interview on a program that focused on celebrity news. Even though we weren’t king and queen, the wedding was still celebrity news. I was expected to wear a suit for it, and the silly crowns would be on display but we didn’t have to wear them during the interview.

This made me less certain whether I wanted to be in Mona’s world all the time. Some of my world’s celebrities took crazy measures to hide from paparazzi. I guess it was pretty safe if I stayed within Mona’s magical property; she’d told me about some of the protections to keep nefarious people out. And I could always go out to the other worlds if I just wanted to be a nobody. I could spend time in the dream worlds and be completely ignored!

Monday, December 11 I made myself alt-Victoria together with Nathan in the world of the Sea Men. Unsurprisingly, we awoke on the artificial beach “bed” within the house, as it was too cold even for Sea Men to be outside naked. This meant that I put on cold-weather gear in addition to safety clothing to work out at the wells.

It had been months since I had done this, and a good while since I had even been alt-Victoria in the human world, but today I had a mission. Aries had given me her phone number, and was going to be at her phone at 7 AM my time. She had explained to me yesterday that they had phones, but they often left them in their houses, and always did so during sleeping and sex times, as they didn’t want to be bothered by outsiders. This also let them charge overnight as they didn’t have electricity down on the beach. In any case, Aries was going to carry hers today.

Before I left for the well site, at 7 sharp I called her, and a male voice answered.

“Victoria?”

“I was looking for Aries.”

“That’s me.”

This confused me for a moment, but then I remembered something from alt-Victoria’s diaries. She had a male version of Aries named Ares.

“Oh, you’re A-R-E-S. I was looking for A-R-I-E-S.”

“Why would she...”

Ares trailed off, and it was about 30 seconds later that he continued.

“Oh, right. Her. Wrong world, Victoria. But I can remember being her, now.”

Apparently he was like Nathan and Manuel in that he could remember being Aries, even though he wasn’t her right now. Once I spurred his memory, he remembered that human Jody had asked Aries to do this chore yesterday, and that I had used Sea Man Jody to order for her the pearl engagement ring that also served as a wedding ring for her people, since weddings didn’t have the same meaning or formality for them as they did for humans. Ares had not done such things himself.

I got the feeling that my copy of this world had never gone as far as Ares’ village, since I’d never actually dreamed of Ares and only read about him in my copies of real alt-Victoria’s diaries. Aries had never mentioned having his memories, either. But I’m sure she will now.

I ended the call with Ares and focused on preparing for work. I discovered that there was a large supply of salted fish in storage now. This made sense, though, given that the pond was frozen over, and too cold even if drilled open for Sea Men to dive into. You could have fished in the human way, but it didn’t make sense. Presumably at some point after I stopped coming here they let people start taking extra fish to salt for the winter, to allow for the time that they couldn’t fish at all.

I went to work, Sea Woman alt-Victoria’s version of the work I do, which as usual was the same work I do. While they were very amorous in the camp, at work it was all serious, and there wasn’t even as much as kissing on the job. I wondered just how similar the work was, though, and in a physical paper logbook that we used to record all incidents (which were subsequently entered into computer systems) I made a small X below the date of the first entry anybody put in the log for today. Would this X persist across all the other versions of the world?

In the evening I thought about this further. I believed the X would persist. And even though I would not experience it as my other selves, I believed that when I got there, I would find they had all made the X, just as they seem to make the other same decisions as I did. If I stopped working here, my Sea Man version would as well, and while the alt-Victoria in the diary probably would not, the versions I lived as on some days, both the human and Sea Woman versions, would stop and would go to wherever I had gone in my world. Or the equivalent in the world of the Sea Men, anyway.

Tuesday, December 12, I summoned Mona, but I tried to make us both portal people and put us into the portal world. Mona had been to this world in dreams, to save me from whatever I had gotten myself into, but she’d never been one of the portal people. And it turned out, she still wasn’t. She was just normal Mona. She’d told me once that she had never been a member of these other species I can become, but this was proof. Fortunately, she could use the doorways to get to a bathroom when she needed to.

At work, the X on December 11’s first entry was there, but it was slightly different. Written with a slightly different hand. But the text near it was the same.

Mona explained Manuel’s recent warning to me as best she could.

“I’ve labeled all the doorways in my castle now. There are none from alt-Victoria’s worlds. Manuel has access to all my memories and understanding of how to use my style of magic. But as himself, he doesn’t have memories from within his own castle, only of the times you’ve summoned him.”

“Because he’s just my copy of a character from alt-Victoria’s world,” I inferred.

“Yes. But that door doesn’t simply enter her universe. It might try to, but it’s something too powerful for your magic, trying to imitate my magic, to create. What Manuel felt on the other side was chaos, something not fully formed.”

Wednesday, December 13, I was alt-Victoria again, but the human one, and with Aries. This was partially a test of whether I could do it. Does Aries, with her penis-like ovipositor, count as male enough to be summoned along with alt-Victoria? Apparently, she does. And even though alt-Victoria had Ares in her world rather than Aries, I could summon Aries to this world.

This was her first visit to alt-Victoria’s world, and when I mentioned Ares, she got memories of my call on Monday, but there wasn’t much there, confirming my version of Ares had just come into existence when I forced him to Monday. I passed on Mona’s warning to Aries, and put her to work catching up on alt-Victoria’s diary.

At work, the X on December 11’s first entry was there, very subtly different.

When I got home, Aries declined my offer to make food for her for dinner, saying she’d already eaten.

“Where?” I asked, knowing the pond here was frozen over and Mona’s was inaccessible.

“In the dream world.”

“Oh, right. In the dream world, if you just started walking, intending to travel to a fishing pond, you’d get there shortly, even if it was miles away. And nobody would bother you. Makes sense.”

Aries had also read the entire diary from when alt-Victoria discovered the power up to yesterday, since it was her first time to see the diaries. As I ate, she went over many events, most of which I already knew about. She gave me a big pout when I explained I already knew about those events, but this confirmed there were no disturbances in her routine after marrying the men.

That night I tried something I hadn’t attempted yet. I got in bed fucking Aries, but I also put Victoria’s male doll behind me, taking it into my ass. I dreamed of being in the Pasthru world, where marriages were threesomes, with me as the emale, Nancy as the female, and Manuel as the male.

Thursday, December 14 I indeed woke up between Nancy and Manuel in bed. I had confirmed in the past that alt-Victoria dreamed of Pasthrus and Sea Men, all the same varieties I had while growing up, but it wasn’t surprising that she eschewed them after learning our ability, as she never learned all the variations she could perform by simply bringing the doll to life as a man. This was the first time I had brought one of her characters to the Pasthru world, though. I doubted it would affect anything, as I had brought Manuel and Nathan into my world in various combinations before, and either they didn’t tell alt-Victoria about it, or more likely, the versions in her world did not know. But in a way this was a subtle test.

The X was still there in the work log.

The last variation was waking up in Mona’s world, which as before left me to go to work from my world via the doorways. I left Manuel alone to become Victoria’s doll again, and I summoned Victoria with me into Mona’s world when I did this on Friday, December 15. I went back to my world for the work day, and found the doll there where Manuel had slept. As in the other worlds, the work log still had the X I had made on Monday. Each of me had very minor differences in the way he drew the X that I would never have noticed except that I was paying special attention to it.

But the bigger news came when I got back from work. They were getting some new people in, and my time in Alaska was ending. They would pay for me to relocate, and the new position they were offering me was in Oklahoma. I was still going to be a bit out in the middle of nowhere, but not nearly so much. There were towns around and I would live in one, in a real house, and I could buy it. I would no longer get the bonus pay I got for working in Alaska, but I was getting a raise based on my experience, so it was only a slight cut, overall. When you balanced in cost of living, it was about the same. When you balanced in quality of life, it was a huge improvement.

It was an offer, but the alternative was quitting, and based on all my thinking, I was strongly considering quitting. Still, getting down there and buying a house I could call mine, a permanent base in the real world the doorways could go to, and working another few years before I quit would get me set up better before I retreated into the other worlds semi-permanently. I could make enough money to pay off the house, pay taxes, bills to keep the house running, etc. indefinitely. I would need to do some calculations to figure that out.

It wasn’t happening right away. This was advance notice of the plan to end my job here in three months’ time. I had time to consider it on top of time to plan the move.

They were going to ship my stuff. Like most of the guys, I had come up here with just suitcases and a few shipped boxes, but I’d accumulated a lot more, and they would expect me to have many boxes worth of stuff to ship back down. There wasn’t furniture, as that all came with the houses, and it wasn’t enough to hire a moving truck for myself, but a few of the other guys were also leaving and they would put our stuff together on a single truck, as we were all being offered jobs in the same location. So, while I could easily move all my stuff via Mona’s magic anywhere, I would actually send a lot of it that way, so I looked normal.

We would have to figure out what to do with our vehicles. Sell and buy again or ship? Well, there wasn’t a question for me; I would drive to a remote area and have Mona teleport it down there. Mona needed permission to make permanent doorways, but as I had seen when we went to New York, one-time teleports did not need anything but open space. Anything I didn’t want them to see would go the same way. Mona could remake the doorway connecting the real world to the other worlds once I bought the house, and then I would be able to access the dream worlds and Mona’s and Aries’ worlds as I did now.

I would need to go visit all the other worlds again, once my other selves had had a chance to think about the offers they had also received in their respective worlds. Ideally I would do that once I had written-out plans for how I was going to travel and where I was going to go, to confirm the others were doing the same. I was pretty sure they would, except alt-Victoria, who would come down the slow way. But that was going to wait, as I had Christmas vacation now.

It was going to be my first Christmas with my parents in three years. I hadn’t looked forward to the long travel to see them when my father’s state was pretty miserable and I wouldn’t even have space to stay with them. Each of the last two Christmases, I had flown down to Portland, Oregon and visited some of my college buddies who still lived there. That was a place I could reach in one day’s travel from the camp including the long drive to Fairbanks. I did call my parents on Christmas morning, well, west-coast morning, but Christmas dinner was with one of my friends and their family each year. After last Christmas, I had wondered what I was going to do this year, since I’d already visited all of those friends who lived in that area who I considered close enough for that kind of visit. I could visit some of them again and plan eating with someone else, or I could just go somewhere else.

Now that I could get there instantly and sleep overnight in my own bed, there was no question I’d visit my parents. But we’d confirmed, on days like today, when I woke up in Mona’s world, that my parents weren’t there, so I had to wake up in the real world, somewhere. I could rent a hotel there, or anywhere, for that matter, if Mona made a door from the hotel room to my parents’ apartment, but I didn’t really mind using the house in camp for sleeping.

On Saturday, December 16, I woke up in my bed in the work camp with Nancy. After breakfast, we went and got Mona, and called my parents to set up the doorway that we were leaving there a whole 13 days this time. I had the television interview in Mona’s world later today, but that was early afternoon camp time, which made it late afternoon at my parents’ place. I set myself a reminder to head back to Mona’s world half an hour before the TV crew was supposed to show up.

I was with my parents merely a few weeks earlier at Thanksgiving, but then I’d been on a whirlwind tour of marriages. This time was for relaxation. Also, my parents thought having all the women over was a bit much, so this time, only the woman I’d summoned each day would come through with me. Except Christmas Day. I was going to summon Victoria that day so that all the women could be here. We would figure it out.

It meant less rearrangement of things to fit four of us at the table for meals, and it meant I would only have the person the real world saw as my current wife with me, so if we went out places, it wouldn’t be a problem even if Aries was with us.

But we didn’t. In fact, much of the day was spent with my parents grilling me and Nancy about our entire history together, all the way back to the beginning. I recounted those stories as best I could remember, and Nancy helped fill in some details. When it got to the part about how it had been Nancy who invited us to look at each other naked, Nancy was very embarrassed and red in the face, so I had to tell that story entirely on my own. When my parents asked Nancy if it was true, though, she sheepishly admitted it was.

But Mom said, “Hey, you go, girl! You saw what you wanted and you took it.”

After more stories, when I felt myself getting hungry because it was lunchtime in Alaska, I realized the interview in Mona’s world was coming up, so I went back into my house, got a snack to tide me over until after the interview, when it would be dinnertime for my parents, and headed to Mona’s world. I left Nancy with my parents so she could continue telling more stories, and because it would be really awkward to tell the TV people that Nancy was also my wife. No, I was not going to mention any of the other women at all if I could help it, apart from them being present at my wedding.

In Mona’s world, Cecilia led me straight to my bedroom, where there was a suit waiting for me. I also picked up the wedding band for my marriage to Mona in this world and the silly crown, and Cecilia led us near the door to the outside where the wedding was held here, but from there into a room I hadn’t been in before that had two thrones and a bunch of empty space. I imagined there being throngs of petitioners there before the king and queen in days long past, or a fancy party, or any number of kinds of live entertainment for us, but today, clearly the TV crew was going to use much of that space for their cameras, lighting, etc.

Mona and I talked for a bit. Mostly, she told me about what the public here do and don’t know about her and about me. They know very little about me. They know Mona discovered a person who is both strongly male and strongly female, but so far she’d left the other details untold, and they do not know that person was me. They don’t know anything about there being other worlds.

Before long Cecilia informed us the TV crew had arrived, and Mona asked her to lead them in and let them start setting up. It took about half an hour for them to set up all the equipment and test the lighting. They even had someone who applied a little makeup to my face to make it look nicer on TV.

The interviewer, a woman named Nell, focused on me, and how Mona had come to marry someone the public here did not know. So I told a story that was the truth with lots of details left out.

“I was 9 years old when I first met Mona. I had gotten myself in a sticky situation and Mona helped me out.”

“Ah, yes, she does that,” Nell responded.

“Her rescues are famous?”

“Yes. Mona is seen as the most altruistic of the magic users of the world, often helping people when they need it most. She has saved dozens of lives and prevented countless catastrophes. And those are just the ones reported in the media.”

“She’s actually saved me more than once.”

“Is that how you got romantically involved?”

“No. We ran into each other earlier this year, and we each did a favor for the other. Not sexual favors; I’m talking about the kind of magical favor she might get paid for doing, but I paid for it with another favor. It was after that encounter that we got romantically involved.”

That was the the truth if you exclude a little sex we had before I provided her the sea dragon egg, though it left out a lot of details, and when Nell asked about details of the favors, I declined to answer, thinking it was getting more into my life in the real world than was easy to explain and more than I wanted to say. And I wasn’t sure how the people of this world felt about people having pet sea dragons, though what Mona had explained about being outside the laws of other countries here at least meant that she wouldn’t be in legal trouble for it. But Mona did answer for her half.

“I’m not going to say what I did for Jody; it is a private matter. But Jody helped me to acquire a sea dragon egg. No, he did not acquire the egg himself, and no part of my rescues involved saving him from a sea dragon while trying to take their eggs. I always wanted a sea dragon like the sorcerers of old and some of those even today have and I am raising it to be my protector and companion.”

“Wow, that is quite remarkable, Mona. Even if he didn’t obtain the egg for you, I can understand how helping you to acquire one could be considered payment for quite a large magical favor. I’m imagining you, years from now when your sea dragon is grown up, riding it into water rescues.”

“It will take some time before it’s ready for that, so don’t expect me to be doing that next week. But it could happen someday.”

Mona used this as a way to redirect the interview from delving further into my history that for the most part was outside of this world and involved concepts that in many cases they didn’t even have here. She started talking about times she rescued other people besides me.

Those events weren’t in my dreams. Was she totally making stuff up, or was this more of how the worlds of my dreams were becoming more solid over time? Practically her entire world fell into that category. I had been in her castle after some of the rescues and seen her red theme there, in addition to her clothing, but in less than six months since I first summoned her into my real world, her world acquired a history and an actual world beyond her castle and a couple magical creatures she may have saved me from when my dreams ventured that way. There were a bunch of countries, most of which she had never named for me, but the ones she had named did not match anything from my world, nor was there any resemblance in the land masses on a map she showed me.

That was another thing I hadn’t figured out. Why were all the other worlds copies of my world, modified according to their specific quirks, except Mona’s? I hadn’t thought Aries’ world was that way until recently, because I had always dreamed myself into her little fishing village. But after I went there in real life through my power, I discovered that it does have the same places and people as my world, but the culture and a lot of resulting aspects of life are very different. I had similarly only seen specific places in the worlds of the Pasthrus and portal people, but I was able to go there in real life and discover that they have similar amounts in common with my world. Conversely, the dream worlds had always been copies of the real world with a few things and people changed.

I was awakened from this daydreaming when Nell asked me a question directly.

“Jody, how do you feel about having a child with Mona and raising the heir to the magic of Galbreath?”

Crap. I wished I’d been paying attention to what Nell and Mona had last said. I thought for a moment and then answered, “That’s something I can see doing someday, if Mona wants to. But we haven’t really talked about it. Mona was more worried about having an heir she could identify, rather than an uncertain person from a distant branch of her ancestry, and marrying me with a proper magical oath satisfied that.”

Mona chimed in, “Jody’s right. We haven’t had time to think about that. There are things to consider before we have a child, but I like the idea.”

At least I hadn’t missed Mona saying she wanted a child, but she said it. Now I have both Aries and Mona wanting to have children with me. Was I going to have one with Nancy, too? With both Nancys? At least I’d agreed that because Victoria and I were probably related genetically as much as double first cousins, we should never have kids.

Mona answered a couple more questions and then the interview was over and Nell and her TV crew started packing up their stuff. Cecilia took me back to my bedroom and I changed out of the clothes Mona provided into the regular clothes I had worn this morning at my parents’ house. When I was changed, Cecilia led me to the area Mona often relaxed in which was where she had made the doors, and after a moment Mona showed up.

“Jody, I got your keys made.”

“The keys for these doors?”

“Yes,” she said, handing me 5 keys that looked like key blanks for door keys, ones not cut to fit a lock. Of course, there were no keyholes, either.

“Do I just hold it up to the door to open it?”

“Yes, try it.”

I took one of the keys at random and held it against the door into my dream world, and heard a click. It made an audible click, but it sounded to me as if the key clicked, rather than the door. I pulled on the handle and the door opened.

“The key clicks?” I asked Mona.

“Yeah, there isn’t really any sound when the magic stops holding the door shut, so I made the key click when it succeeds in engaging with the magic to make it temporarily stop locking the door.”

“Thanks,” I told Mona as I went through the door.

I made my way back to my parents’ apartment where I had left Nancy, and she was in the middle of telling my parents a story about one of the other guys she dated in high school, which surprised me. That never happened in my dreams, but our relationship did change. In junior high, in the dreams Nancy was present in, she was my girlfriend. But in high school, after I had other girlfriends in real life, I had those girlfriends in dreams, occasionally, and Nancy was no longer my girlfriend... I guess. Sometimes she was giving me advice about who I was currently dating, and sometimes we were more friends-with-benefits. So I guess it made sense that if I dated other people, she did too, but I never encountered her dates. I never knew any particular person besides myself and Victoria whom she had dated. That was probably for the best, since if I ran into Nancy’s boyfriend in real life it would have been awkward if I said something to him about her when the real-life guy had no idea who she was.

When she finished that story, I handed her one of the keys, but then I thought about how to properly distribute them.

“Nancy, this key opens all the doors to Mona’s realm. Hold it up to the door and it opens like with an electronic passcard. But this one needs to stay in the real world for whoever I have summoned each day; it will be Victoria’s only key when she’s here. I have more keys to get to you, and the other you, and Aries in the respective worlds.”

“Gotcha,” she said, pulling a key ring out of her purse (which was the one all the women shared while summoned) and adding the key I gave her, while I put my own key away on my own key ring.

Mom got up to start dinner, and Nancy went in there to help her. I didn’t join because there wasn’t room for more than two people to work on food in the small kitchen. Dad shared with me his condensed versions of some of Nancy’s other stories, which at least were familiar to me. Mom and Nancy came back while things cooked, and I told a story that involved Nancy while we were all together. Then Mom and Nancy finished dinner and we ate.

After dinner, I mentioned to Nancy how I didn’t remember her dating anyone during my dreams in high school while I was dating other girls.

“Huh. It’s like I said, parts of my life have been becoming more clear ever since you started summoning me. But you’re right; when you first summoned me, even though I had general knowledge better than even you, I couldn’t remember any of my past except when we were together in your dreams.”

We spent the evening trying to go over all the ways things had changed in the last several months, and my parents got tired and sent us back home so they could go to sleep before we could enumerate them all.

I went into my dreamworld with Nancy, and set one of Mona’s keys down near the front door of my house.

“When you are no longer summoned, you can come back here and retrieve this key as your own.”

“Thanks.”

I did the same in Victoria’s dreamworld. Victoria’s Nancy would remember the conversation with today’s summoned Nancy and be able to retrieve her key when she wanted. After passing through more doorways, for the first time not needing Mona’s help to do it, I found Aries lying on the beach having sex with some Sea Man, but she came over when she saw me and Nancy arrive, and I gave her her key and explained how it worked.

Nancy and I went to bed early, our time, but we were going to adjust to my parents’ time during the weeks I was with them.