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"This isn't happening. This can't be real."
It's the third time Marshall's said this, but it's with enough conviction Simon has to pinch himself again just to make sure.
It still hurts.
He shakes the sting from his arm and with the movement, Simon's eyes are once again drawn to his own reflection in the hallway mirror. He should really stop letting it distract him, but he can't get over how tall he is now. Taller than Dash, something unexpected which gives him a small, secret sense of satisfaction. Still not quite as tall as Marshall, though.
Just how much shorter he is than Marshall now is difficult to estimate. His best friend is curled up on the very edge of the living room couch, arms folded, scrunched up like he's trying to avoid coming into contact with anything in here for fear of contamination.
Simon runs a hand through his curls, still thick and a little unruly even in the future, though he's somehow learned to style them in the past ten years so they frame his face in a messy-yet-flattering way. His clothes aren't anything special—just jeans, a t-shirt, and a blazer he thinks his adult self may have added for extra professionalism—but they're almost new, free of stains and holes, and look like they were bought to fit him specifically, not handed down from anyone else.
To his own eyes, grown up Simon looks kind of handsome.
He also needs to focus.
"Mars—" he begins, once again surprising himself with the sound of his own adult voice.
"This isn't happening," Marshall interrupts, not looking at him. As an upset adult, he sounds an awful lot like Edgar Teller describing the latest Things, Inc. experimental failure. "This is the worst thing that could ever happen. This is all wrong. It's, I don't know, a nightmare or an illusion or something. This can't be the real future. This can't be where I live."
"It's the address on our driver's licenses, Mars," Simon points out gently.
They have driver's licenses now. And a car, if they can just figure out where in town their future selves may have parked it. He wishes Marshall could be even a little excited about any of that.
But his best friend just shakes his head. "No."
Simon doesn't even bother enumerating the rest of the evidence. The kitchen full of dishes he recognizes from the Teller house. Dash's haunted toaster on the counter. The huge, padlocked closet Marshall's key unlocks, full of evidence of Eerie weirdness, all carefully tagged and numbered in their own handwriting. Steve Konkalewski's retainer is in there and Mr. Wilson's hand—probably everything from the Teller attic—but there's so much more Simon hasn't even seen before. Ten years worth of adventures.
Then there's the picture of the three of them on the living room wall.
His own room, which Simon has barely been inside, is a place he couldn't help but recognize immediately as his. He's got a shelf full of action figures, some of which he knows from the childhood he left behind just this morning, the rest of which seem new—some even mint in the box—unbroken, unbitten, and possibly even entirely untouched by a destructive little brother. He's got albums full of stamps from a hobby he always meant to take up when he had the money, and an autographed poster of famed professional wrestler Algernon the Invincible, evidence of at least one part of his personal timeline he regrets skipping over. And that's not even getting into all the high tech camera equipment he seems to own now. The computer that looks like something out of a science fiction movie. The phone that fits in his pocket.
A small, selfish part of him wishes he could be in his room right now trying these things out instead of out here trying to talk his best friend out of a meltdown.
"Look at our TV." He gestures toward the big screen dominating their living room, bigger than any he's ever seen outside of the Loyal Order of Corn, and attempts to get Marshall to see at least a little bit of the silver lining. "It's huge! Do you think it means we're rich now?"
Marshall looks up for a moment. "I don't know, Simon. I wonder if—"
There's a crash from the direction of the master bedroom, followed by the sound of swearing in an all-too-familiar voice.
"I don't know," Marshall repeats as he folds back in on himself. "I don't care, either. All the money in the world wouldn't make living here worth it. Not if he's here."
Because that's Marshall's biggest problem with all this.
Him.
Dash.
Dash, who'd been with them when they got zapped by the milk truck back in the past and is with them now here in the future. With them on at least a semi-permanent basis, from what Simon can tell.
He looks again at the picture of the three of them. They're posed under the sign in front of the building, arms around each other, Marshall in the middle, smiling and happy. Simon, beside him, looks thrilled. And Dash…Dash looks content, Simon decides. Half-smiling. Like he's not 100% comfortable in front of the camera, but not like any of the discomfort comes from his proximity to Marshall.
"I think maybe we're all friends now," Simon ventures. "I don't think that's impossible. I mean, a lot can happen in ten years. People change."
"No, they don't!" Marshall practically shouts. "Not this much they don't!"
"Oh." Simon's not sure what else to say.
Marshall picks a few small, rectangular pieces of paper off the table by the couch and studies them, avoiding looking Simon in the eye. "We're mortal enemies, Simon. That means I don't want him in my life. I don't want him in my house. And I especially don't want him in my room!" He swallows audibly, then continues at a lower volume. "This can't be my future. In a future that makes sense, I wouldn't even still be in Eerie."
"Oh."
He tries to keep the emotion out that syllable, but Marshall looks up suddenly, expression full of concern. "No, I mean, we'll be friends, Simon. You and I will. Always. And the part where we're still investigating the forces of weirdness together makes sense. But you don't want to stay in Eerie after you grow up, either. Do you?"
Does he? Simon's never really thought about it. He wants to move out of his parents' house as soon as possible, sure, but this place, their own apartment, seems nice. And the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks investigating the forces of weirdness while living in the center of weirdness is a really good idea.
"I guess not," is what he says out loud.
"See? This isn't the real future. It's just mega-voodoo Eerie weirdness at work again. We messed up the space-time continuum when we messed with that milk truck. That's all. And now we've got to fix it."
"How?"
"We need to find it, find our way back to the past, and go back to being kids again. If we don't, this whole thing could have serious consequences. Not just for us, but maybe for all of reality."
"Oh," says Simon, deflated. He supposes Marshall's right. Still, he's not looking forward to taking the long way back to adulthood again. "I guess—"
Before he can finish that thought, Dash comes storming out of the master bedroom with a door slam that makes Simon startle and Marshall leap to his feet. Of the three of them, Dash is the one who seems changed least, despite the longer hair and the fine grey stubble on his chin. Maybe it's because Dash's species ages slower, Simon thinks. Or maybe it's because he's still wearing yet another variation of the same outfit Simon remembers from ten years ago.
"All right, Slick," Dash says, pointing a finger at Marshall. "This is obviously my place and neither of us want you in it, so here's what we're going to do. I'm going to be generous and give you until nightfall to pack up and get out alive, and then you're never going to come back." He spares a glance toward Simon and shrugs. "The kid can stay if he wants."
"Your place?" Marshall's up in Dash's face before Simon can protest that he's not a kid anymore. "What makes you think this is your place?! I—"
"Oh, don't pretend like you didn't just say it yourself," Dash says, stepping closer. "You don't belong here. I don't know what you screwed up about the timeline back there to get yourself and your sidekick stuck in my future, but—"
"Your future?!"
"Yes, my future. My town. Eerie's the place where I'm going to find my answers, remember? You don't want to be here. For once, the story's not about you. This is my apartment with my stuff in it and you know it. So get your stuff out of my room and out of my bed and—!"
"Dash, I swear—!" They're both somewhere beyond fury. Marshall raises his arm like he's about to strike and the small pieces of paper in his hand go flying.
And Simon, who has never once imagined that the story might be about him, puts his hands to his ears and yells, "STOP!"
He can shout really loud without trying now, it turns out.
Marshall and Dash freeze.
Simon folds his arms and glares at both of them. Syndi was right, he realizes. Here in the future, the age difference between him and Marshall doesn't feel like that big a deal anymore. In fact, right now he feels like the only grown up in the whole room.
"Stop," he repeats. "Both of you. Marshall's right. We may have accidentally screwed up the space-time continuum back there and I think we all need to work together to fix it." Without taking his eyes off them, he bends down to pick up the papers Marshall's dropped. "Why don't you—?"
And then he really looks at what's he got in his hands.
"These are checks," he half-whispers, with an accusing glare at Marshall. They're made out to Teller, Holmes, and Associates and they're for a lot of money. Not Mr. Wilson-level money, but still a lot. There's one from Mr. Radford for $500, a couple more for $300 each, and one from the City of Eerie that Simon stares at for a long time to confirm to himself that there really are four whole numbers before the decimal point. "See?" he says, triumphantly. "I told you we were rich!"
"Let me see that—" Dash begins, moving toward Simon.
"No." Marshall puts a hand on Dash's chest and shoves him away, not gently. "Simon and I are rich. Your name's not on any of those. Anywhere."
"I think he's 'and Associates,' Mars," Simon points out before Dash can move to retaliate.
Marshall glares. "We're not sticking around this future long enough for it to matter anyway. The only important part of what you're holding is that it's evidence Mr. Radford's still in Eerie. I think our next step should be to go to the World O' Stuff and ask him if he's seen any suspicious rusty abandoned milk trucks."
"I think that's a good idea," agrees Simon. Which has everything to do with the mission and nothing at all to do with the fact that he's hungry.
Or that he can treat himself and his friends with an allowance…no, an income that involves thousands of dollars.
***
Meanwhile, back in 1992
"What exactly is happening, Slick?"
"Cross-temporal cognitive transference, I think."
From Dash's expression, Simon can tell it doesn't make any more sense to him this time than it did when Marshall said it the first time.
Marshall leans back on the bed pillows and tries again. "It's like when the three of us touched that old milk truck and it zapped us, it zapped our consciousnesses back across time and into the bodies of our younger selves."
Simon nods. "That makes sense." The movement draws his eyes once again to his own reflection in Marshall's bedroom mirror. He should really stop letting it distract him, he knows, but he's having trouble adjusting to how small he is now. How young, especially compared to the other two.
He's forgotten how big his hair used to be.
"The problem is that's not the only thing that's wrong," Marshall continues.
Dash gives him a look from where he's sitting at the foot of the bed. "It's not?"
Marshall shakes his head. "We're in our own past and have our own memories, but I've been thinking back through everything I remember from the summer of 1992, and this didn't happen."
"You're right," Simon realizes. "If we're on a fixed part of the timeline, we should at least have some memory of this. Some unexplained missing time or something. And I don't."
"Dash?" Marshall asks, gently.
"No," Dash says. "No, this is my first full year of memories ever and there's nothing in there about missing time. Or my body being taken over by a ten-years-older version of me."
"Oh man," says Simon.
"Yeah," says Marshall. "We've changed things already just by existing here. We're in uncharted territory, which means we're at risk of seriously damaging the space-time continuum and possibly destroying our own future. Maybe a lot of people's futures if we're not careful."
"So what's the plan?" Dash asks him.
Marshall closes his eyes, deep in thought. He looks almost too young for the serious expression he's wearing, Simon thinks. "Obviously we have to find that milk truck," he says. "But we have to do it while staying as inconspicuous as possible. We avoid interacting with this time period or anybody in it as much as we can, and when we have to, we act like us. Younger us, I mean. Simon, I think you should probably stay away from your house. Stay the night here if we haven't figured everything out by then. Your parents won't care, but if you go home, they or your brother might notice something's wrong. My family's oblivious."
Simon can't suppress a sigh of relief. He doesn't like interacting with his parents even back in the present, where he's bigger than both of them now and can drive away from the Holmes family drama when he has to.
He hopes he won't have to take the long way back to adulthood.
Dash sighs, vaults off Marshall's bed, and stretches. "Well, I guess another night in the Old Mill won't hurt anything. I was kind of starting to miss those bats."
Marshall reaches out and pulls him back down on the bed. "What are you talking about? Just stay here."
Dash's eye roll is almost audible. "The mill is where I sleep in in this time period, remember? You're the one who just made a big speech about acting like our younger selves and not disrupting the space-time continuum or whatever. I don't know if you recall, but you and I aren't exactly close right now. I don't belong in your house."
Marshall takes Dash's hand even as he makes an exasperated noise. "Yeah, but I didn't mean you should go off on your own. It's too dangerous. You're just a kid right now, remember?" His gaze moves across the room to include Simon. "We're all just kids. We have to be careful."
"We were just kids before," Dash points out.
To his credit, Marshall doesn't argue. "I still think we should stick together. If you're worried about my family noticing you're here, just…I don't know, run for the closet or roll under the bed if you hear my mom coming."
They exchange a look. There are shared memories in there, Simon can tell. Ones that haven't even happened yet.
They both seem so impossibly young to Simon's eyes right now. Even Dash, who of the three of them, has changed the least over time. He wants to protect them. To tell them it'll all be okay. Except he can't protect anybody, he reminds himself. He's nine.
"Fine," Dash concedes.
"For now, though, let's concentrate on finding the truck," Marshall says. "We can start by looking up the Eerie Dairy schedules onli—no wait. No, we can't."
"Maybe we should ask somebody?" Simon suggests. His stomach punctuates it with an involuntary growl.
"Somebody who won't mind too much and may not even notice if people come to him acting weird and asking weird questions?" Marshall asks, picking up on his train of thought. "Somebody who might even serve us a black cow with a nip of java while he answers?"
Simon nods. "He'll even let Dash in there if we vouch for him. Let's go the World O' Stuff." He pats his pockets for his wallet, then realizes he's too young to be carrying it right now.
And then something else occurs to him and suddenly he's not hungry anymore.
"Oh man!"
"What?" Marshall and Dash ask, in near-simultaneous alarm.
"Mars, did you go to the bank today?"
"Well, I meant to do it after lunch, except instead of lunch I got trapped ten years back in my own past with you guys. Why?"
"I was just thinking," Simon begins, "are we experiencing two-way cross-temporal cognitive transference?"
"Good question," says Marshall. He considers. "There's no way of knowing for sure, but my guess is it's likely."
"Which means?" Dash demands.
"Our younger selves—the selves that belong in these bodies—that consciousness isn't just dormant in here, waiting for us to leave," Marshall explains. "There's a good chance it actively switched places with us on the timeline."
"Which means," says Simon with a growing sense of horror, "that nine-year-old me is in my future with my bank card. He doesn't understand about bills yet. Or expenses."
"Oh man." Marshall pales. "My past self has my wallet and my car keys. As far as the present day state of Indiana's concerned, I'm old enough to drive. I'm a licensed private investigator. I can carry a gun. I can buy and sell property. I can go into any bar I want and order any drink. I can buy drinks on credit." He looks at Dash. "I'm going to have some serious reasons to want to drink, too. There are things about the future teenage Marshall's not going to understand and I won't be there to explain. God, I hope younger me's a lot more responsible than I remember being when I was him."
Simon can't resist a glance at Dash, who isn't looking at either of them. He's looking down at his hands like he's studying the marks on the backs of them.
And Simon realizes how silly it was to be worried about his own past self.
"Yeah, I'm sorry," Dash says and laughs. "The whole future's basically screwed."