"...stay," Jon said after apparently making his mind up.
A short distance away, DTH Jon was heading in the direction of what would become the medical centre. As much as he hated to admit it, it looked like there was a strong possibility that Zoe's instincts had been correct. There had been no sign of either the truck or his alternate self at the store. There weren't a huge number of other places he was likely to be. There weren't a huge number of places in the town period. His thoughts of eating humble pie were interrupted by a vibration coming from his pocket.
The DTH was indicating to him that a branching point had just happened. That in itself was a fairly routine event, what had drawn his attention was the fact that it had buzzed twice. Doing his best to conceal the anachronistic looking piece of technology, he pulled it from his pocket. He glanced at the screen.
"What the hell?" he asked out loud before rubbing his fingers across his brow before increasing his walking pace.
Jon was now standing beside Zoe outside the truck. He was fed up of the cramped, foul smelling interior and decided to escape from it. "You were telling the truth," he said as he pointed towards DTH Jon who was purposefully walking towards the pair at high speed. His facial expression was not a pleasing one.
"Looks like someone's pissed that I was right," Zoe said gleefully as he reached them.
"Oh, I'm pissed all right but not because you were right," DTH Jon said before waving the DTH in front of her. "It is because of this." He pointed at the screen.
Zoe attempted to read it but the syntax was still mostly a mystery to her. "I don't have a clue what any of those lines mean."
Before DTH Jon could reply, his duplicate interrupted. "Wow! You are actually me. I mean I saw you walk over but you could have been someone who just looked like me. Now you are standing here, I can see it. My face and everything."
"Um, yeah whatever. I'll get to you in a minute. Right now I'm giving Zoe a blasting."
"Don't let me stop you," Jon said with a grin.
"Great!" Zoe said as she looked between them both, "you are teaming up on me now. So unfair. I should get another Zoe to make things even."
"Oh, you've already done that," DTH Jon said.
"What do you mean?"
"Somehow you've managed to diverge this timeline," DTH Jon informed her. He could see the blank looks on both their faces. "The timeline has branched in multiple directions at almost exactly the same point."
"I thought that's how it is meant to work. There are branching points and it branches, " Zoe said putting it as succinctly as she could manage.
"Theoretically but usually it happens in a linear fashion. One branch after the other, not two at the same time."
Zoe rubbed her chin. "That seems hard to believe. Are you telling me, nothing like this has ever happened before?"
DTH Jon thought about all the previous hops. He did remember how multiple versions of himself had been created not long after he first got the DTH. It was that sequence of events that had also led to the creation of the inescapable flower petal dimension where time was continually looping in on itself. "It has but there were bad consequences. In fact it was another version of you that caused those consequences."
"You are determined to make this my fault, aren't you?" Zoe said angrily.
"And I was present when the events that caused the branching actually happened. This time, I was just walking here when it happened, hardly an event worthy of splitting the timeline."
Zoe shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe a butterfly flapped its wings or you stood on one."
"Did you just make a joke about chaos theory?" DTH Jon asked rhetorically. "Of course you did, you are chaos on legs."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"I'm sure you will," he said, softening somewhat.
"So why did it happen, oh clever brother of mine?"
"I can only suppose something like this happens when an important decision is made, especially one with equally likely outcomes."
Zoe and the other Jon exchanged a sheepish glance.
"What?" DTH Jon asked.
Zoe pointed at the Jon beside the truck. "I didn't think he was seriously planning on coming back with us."
"I thought about and wasn't so sure, so I just kind of picked an option," he said.
DTH Jon quickly put it all together. "It is done now. I can only presume similar events are now playing out in the other reality based on the alternate option. We have to think about what is next in this universe."
Zoe couldn't see the issue. "So the timeline split because he was struggling to choose. What difference does it make really?" she asked.
DTH Jon gestured with his hands. "The difference is, dear sister of mine, his indecision may have put us in a state of superposition and invalidated our existence."
"And I thought I was a drama queen," Zoe said as she dismissed his explanation. "There are two versions of us now, big deal." She pointed at the time travelling Jon. "I guess, he'll be happy in at least one reality."
DTH Jon shook his head. "Which one is the valid one though? Who is the real Zoe? You or your time twin? We could now be stuck like the proverbial Schrödinger's cat."
