Materialising in his bedroom DTH Jon lost his balance. His companion who he had been holding on to was still out cold and his weight pulled him downwards. If he'd reacted quicker he could just have let go but it happened so suddenly they both fell noisily into a heap.
"Damn!" he exclaimed.
"Jon!" a voice shouted. It was his mother downstairs, "What are you doing up there?"
"Shit, she can't see this." Jon said out loud, as he tried to climb up off his duplicate. He could hear footsteps on the stairs. "I err... dropped a book." he shouted back.
The footsteps stopped and retreated as his mother went back down the stairs. Jon breathed a sigh of relief.
Jon pulled back the covers on his bed and as quietly as possible put the unconscious version of himself on to it. He discovered this was very difficult but after a few minutes of struggling eventually got him on to the bed.
He had absolutely no idea how long it would be before Sage Jon woke up. He decided to get Karyn in the meantime. He was about to program the DTH when he remembered what he was wearing. Looking down he saw his bare legs and feet emerging from the bottom of his green gown.
"I think I better change first." he told his sleeping companion.
As he got redressed he thought about what had just occurred. He'd had to use the emergency recall to get back to his bedroom as he had no idea where they were being held captive. Using it had come at a cost, it meant he had no idea where they were being held. The DTH didn't store physical locations in it's memory only time and dimensions. The only place it could take him directly was back to where he started. Although he noticed that about ten minutes in real time had passed since the DTH was invented. The DTH did this, so it wouldn't create new divergences.
Jon reasoned that as far as the emergency recall was concerned as long as he was in this dimension the clock was always ticking. He could manually program the DTH to take him back up the timeline but not the recall. For that to work though, every divergent version of him would need their own version of the recall or they'd all keep meeting up in his bedroom.
Jon finished getting dressed and retrieved his spare phone from his bedside cabinet. His wallet and ID were stuck in Sage Jon's dimension.
Jon looked over at Sage Jon. He was worried about leaving him with his mother in the house. It then occurred to him, if he used the recall again it would bring back exactly when he left so there was nothing to worry about.
He programmed the DTH for ARD Jon's dimension and activated it.
