ILLUSIONS

By CharlieGirl, The Angst Guy, and Angelinhel

(with help from many others)

Daria and associated characters are ©2006 MTV Networks

Feedback is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com (The Angst Guy), or kckli@yahoo.com (Angelinhel).

Synopsis: What did Daria see behind the attic door that made her faint? Would you believe . . . another Daria? Prepare for a crossover journey into strange but familiar Lawndales, drawn from alternate-universe Daria fanfics of every sort.

Authors’ Notes: On January 21st, 2005, Kristen Bealer began an “Iron Chef” contest on PPMB to complete a Daria story begun by CharlieGirl (a.k.a. Kendra), called “Illusions.” The conclusion had to show what Daria saw behind an attic door in her home that made her faint. This entry in the contest was begun by The Angst Guy and run as a serial story until mid-February, with added help from Angelinhel for sections using her original character, Angel. Story sections in which other alternate Dariaverses were visited in detail were reviewed by the creators of those worlds.

CharlieGirl’s introduction is repeated here with minor changes. Her story title was retained for the whole work. A familiarity with the third-season episode “Depth Takes a Holiday” is helpful in understanding certain key events in the story.

A list of the fanfics on which the alternate universes in this story were based is presented at the end of this tale, with additional notes.

Acknowledgements are at the end of the story.

*

The most dangerous of our calculations are those we call illusions.

—Georges Bernanos, Dialogue des Carmelites

Chapter One

Daria lay on her stomach, her head resting on her arms, staring at the blankness of her padded wall. Nothing much was eating at her, except boredom, and a bit of disgust that she kept well-squashed—for now.

Jane was busy with her new job at Pizza King, trying to save enough up to help with college expenses, pending financial aid. Quinn, who was finally becoming interesting, was at Sandi’s house with the remnants of the now-defunct Fashion Club. Her father Jake was with a promising client, discussing a possible contract over drinks—or, more likely, drinking alone. Tom, with whom she had broken up only a few weeks earlier, was most likely at the Cove with his family.

And her mother Helen . . . was at work, boffing the boss as usual.

And, as usual, Daria said nothing, trying to maintain the peace long enough so that she could escape. She hoped that Helen and Jake would maintain their illusions long enough so that Quinn could get out relatively unscathed, too. Quinn was finally becoming human, and Daria didn’t want to see that crushed out by their parents’ problems.

Daria tried to block out images of what Helen was doing that very moment, but it was becoming difficult. She got up and put on her boots, intending to go for a walk. When she reached her door, though, she thought about how soon this house, which had been a home to her for nearly three years, would be gone. No doubt once Quinn was off to college, the ‘rents would split. They had been wanting to for years, despite occasional flings with each other, and the only reason they stayed together was “for the girls.”

In the hallway, Daria paused at the head of the stairs and looked up at the attic pull-door on the ceiling near her parents’ bedroom. She’d never bothered to go up there, and all she really knew about their attic was that there were a few boxes from Highland, and there were windows, so even if there was no bulb, the mid-afternoon summer sun would let her see well enough.

“Oh, what the hell.” She jumped, caught the cord, and gave a good tug. The attic door came down with a hard creak. Daria had to kick the hinges to make the stairs unfold. “Well,” she remarked, “no one’s been up here in awhile, that’s for sure.”

Climbing the steep steps to the top, she looked around. Dust had been stirred up when the stairs had moved, and the motes danced in the sunlight like a scene from a dream. Nearly spellbound, Daria pulled the steps up after her, closing the trapdoor. There was a light switch on a support beam, and the bulb on the pole crackled to life after long dormancy.

The floor of the attic was made of pieces of wood, some of it one-by-fours, and some of it just thick, wide sheets of wood. Testing it, she found the floor strong enough to hold her weight, although more than two people on one of the boards would probably crack it. Just to be safe, she stuck to the places where she felt beams beneath her feet.

There were a few boxes right near the entrance, and Daria recognized all of them. This one contained Quinn’s baby clothes and mementos—worthless, financially, but too precious to be tossed. And that one over there was . . . hey! Her parents had fished her ruined flute out of the garbage and saved it. Underneath were school reports, progress cards, drawings, and a few toys. A well-read copy of Black Beauty was tucked in the corner of the carton.

Gently searching through other boxes, Daria found all sorts of bits and pieces of her childhood. Her parents had saved quite a bit more of her stuff than she’d thought. God, had she really worn that dress? And those little booties! Had her feet really been that tiny? She was nearly overwhelmed with emotion.

“They loved me,” she said in awe. “They always said that they loved me, but they really did.”

She sat down with a thud and put her head in her hands, trying not to cry. Never before had she felt more wanted, more cared-for by her parents. Even if they had their problems, even if they were probably going to get a divorce, they had always loved her. No one who didn’t care about a person would save so much of a person’s life. And now she was leaving them, going off to college, and her plans had never included returning to visit her parents for anything other than holidays and funerals. After pondering that for a moment, tears began to leak out of the corners of her eyes.

Twenty minutes later, after a good cry and going downstairs to fetch a box of tissues, she was back in the attic. The spell of the motes had been broken, and it looked like any other attic, except for . . . except for that door on the far wall. Why was there a door in their attic? Stepping lightly across the boards, not worrying now about falling through, she crept quietly up to the door and listened at it. No, no unusual noises. She put her hand on the knob and turned. It was locked.

“Okay, bigger mystery than I thought. Why is there a locked door in this attic? Why am I thinking of that Simpsons Halloween episode where Bart finds his conjoined twin locked up and creating pigeon-rats? What is behind this door?”

She went back downstairs and returned with a screwdriver, then proceeded to jimmy the lock. The handle was rusty, but eventually Daria heard a click. She held the screwdriver in front of her like a weapon, turned the handle, and pulled. . . .

Thump.

Daria Morgendorffer had fainted clean away.

* * *

Her hand on the doorknob, Daria turned to look back at Jane. “Do you think it was too much when I waved and said, ‘Yo, sup’?”

“I think it was your overpowering charisma that did it.” Jane stepped past her friend and raised her digital camera, aiming down at the unconscious Daria on the other side of the door. Flash. “The fainting spells do seem a bit over the top, especially on the sixth time around. Maybe some of these alternate Darias have, you know, issues.”

“Can you imagine a Daria that didn’t?”

“You got me there.” Jane stepped through the doorway and knelt by the unconscious Daria, taking one more flash photo at close range before setting the camera aside. “She’s dressed just like you, so you’re okay. Looks like we have another window for a full download. You’d better get your stuff and go.”

“On the way.” Daria picked up the external hard drive and cables, then stepped through the attic door to the other side. She shivered as she walked past her own body and headed for the pull-down stairs. “If this house has more than one Quinn in it, I’m burning it down. I couldn’t believe the last one had five.”

“Oh, you liked it better in the world that had no Quinns, and you were a cheerleader and the VP of the Fashion Club?”

“I hate you.” And, for a moment, she almost did.

Daria dropped the attic’s trapdoor and made her way down the stairs as quietly as possible. She seemed to be back in her own home, down the hallway from her room—except, of course, she wasn’t. “This gives me the creeps,” she whispered to herself, walking in what she hoped was a casual way to her room. No sound came from any other part of the house. Maybe she was alone. That would be perfect.

Her room looked almost exactly like it did in her real home. (She couldn’t stop herself from thinking she was the real Daria and her home was the real Morgendorffer home, and everyone and everything else on the other side of the attic door was just a bad copy.) Even the Apple computer was the same. She pulled over the chair, sat down, attached the cables from the external hard drive to the CPU, and booted the system up. Everything loaded, and then—

:PASSWORD

She took a deep breath and began running down the usual list: H1GHLAND, LANEJANE, 3I4I5926, NCC1701X, S0L1TUDE—

The system opened.

“That’s not good,” she mumbled, feeling a chill go down her spine. She remembered using S0L1TUDE as a password just after coming back from that nightmarish family-therapy weekend at Quiet Ivy, where her parents tore into each other and came within a hair of destroying their marriage, the family, and everything else. This world’s Daria was still using that password, which did not bode well for what secrets she was keeping. Steeling herself and trying not to feel like a morally depraved thief and peeping tom, Daria clicked through the computer’s files until she found the folder for her personal documents. This she copied onto the external hard drive, along with a few system folders that caught her attention because of the dates given for last modification. She was in the habit of hiding particularly personal or damaging material inside system folders, almost always the same ones—and her alternate-world duplicates clearly had the same habit.

This done, she turned off the computer, disconnected the external hard drive, and wadded the cords up for easy carrying. She took a last walk around the room, checked to see if her diary was still in its usual secret place (it was), and read a few pages. Aghast, she read a few more.

“Damn it,” she whispered, her eyes huge. “Damn it to hell.” She finally shut the diary and hid it away. She felt like her insides were falling out. This is not my world. This isn’t happening to me. It’s happening to her, not me. I am the real Daria. Weak-kneed, she stumbled out of the room for the stairs. I can’t take too much more of this. I really can’t. Jumping from universe to universe like this is tearing me apart.

Chapter Two

By the time she got back into the attic, Jane had finished giving the prone Daria a long drink from a wine cooler. The Daria on the floor coughed, swallowed, then turned her head and saw the (real, I am the real!) Daria walking toward her over the wood floor.

“All done,” said Daria to Jane, kneeling beside the prone Daria. “The rest of the house is empty.”

“This is one hell of a dream,” the prone Daria murmured, staring up at her duplicate.

“That’s all it will be, too,” said Jane, holding the prone Daria’s head in one hand. “You’re going back to sleep, and when you wake up, you won’t remember us at all.”

The prone Daria’s gaze went to the wine cooler. Fear entered her face. She stirred and tried to get up, but four hands held her down.

“Don’t!” said Jane, trying to straddle the prone Daria’s legs. “It’s too late! It’s only a couple of roofies! We’re not going to hurt you!”

Panicked, the prone Daria struggled harder to get up.

“Stop it!” shouted Jane, half sitting on her.

“Who are you?” cried the prone Daria. “Who . . . are . . . you?”

“I’m you!” shouted (I am the real!) Daria. “Stop fighting and listen to me! Stop it! Just listen to me!”

The prone Daria continued to struggle, almost knocking off her glasses.

“I know about Mom and Dad!” Daria forced the other Daria’s shoulders down. “I mean, your mom and dad, Helen and Jake! I know what’s going on!”

The prone Daria stopped fighting and looked up in shock. Sitting on the prone Daria’s thighs, Jane shot the upright Daria a startled glance.

“I know about your mom and Eric, the whole thing!” Daria yelled in desperation, louder than she wanted. “And your dad’s drinking and your fears they’re getting divorced and everything! You’re still going to make it! You’re still going to come out okay, and Quinn will make it, too, and everything will be fine, all right?”

Panting for breath, the prone Daria stared, her eyes huge. “How did you know?” she gasped.

“I read your diary! I always hide it in the same place in my room! You’re going to be okay! I am you! I know you’ll make it, and you’ll get Quinn through this, too! Trust me! You’ll make it! We always do!”

The prone Daria’s grip began to weaken. She looked from the Daria above her to the Jane holding her down.

“We’re from a parallel universe, swear to God,” said Jane. “We come in peace. Seriously, we do. We’re just out . . . exploring.”

“It’s a long and unbelievable story,” said Daria, eager to talk about anything but this Daria’s dreadful secrets. “You remember that hole behind the Good Time Chinese restaurant? The one you thought you dreamed about, that went to Holiday Island? It’s real. We think it’s an alien or extradimensional artifact. Jane found it. This Jane did.”

“Lucky for me that Pizza King wasn’t hiring in my universe,” said Jane. “I was taking out the trash at Good Time last week when I found the gateway right behind the dumpster, exactly where it was in the dream. You could have knocked me over with a breadstick.”

“See, I’d never asked Jane if she’d had the same dream I had, about the holidays coming to life,” Daria continued. “But we both had the same memory, because it wasn’t a dream. The holiday people, or whoever they were, must have used magic or ESP on us to block the memories after we left. It didn’t completely work, though. We still remembered something of that whole Bizarro World experience.”

“So we sneaked over to Good Time one night and found a metal framework surrounded the gateway under the restaurant’s rear wall, boxing in that hole in the wall,” Jane finished. “We borrowed some crowbars, broke a few larceny and property-damage laws, and drove the frame back to Daria’s house, where we mounted it in the attic on the old door that went nowhere. Now it goes everywhere. Cool, huh?”

The prone Daria blinked, struggling to stay awake. She looked up at the Daria above her.

“It’s true,” said the upright Daria. “We have an alternate-universe portal. And we really are here for peaceful purposes only.”

“Huh,” Jane said under her breath, “that’s not what you said when we found the house with quintuplet Quinns.”

“Oh, shut up.”

The prone Daria strained her face toward the mirror image above her. “Will it . . . everything . . . be okay, like you said?” she whispered. “It’s so . . . messed up . . . I’m . . . I’m so afraid.” The last word was barely audible.

Sadness filled Daria’s face. “I swear to you,” she said, leaning over the other Daria, “it will be okay in the end. Just go to sleep. You won’t remember us, but you’ll remember that everything will turn out okay. You’ll make it. You and Quinn, you’ll both make it through this.”

The prone Daria’s eyelids fluttered, then closed.

Swallowing, Daria put a hand on the sleeping Daria’s forehead, as if checking her temperature. She ran her fingers through the other Daria’s hair, sighed, then stood up on shaky legs.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. She picked up the external hard drive and walked back through the door, kicking aside the screwdriver the other Daria had dropped..

Jane watched her go, then looked down at the sleeping Daria. Quickly, she bent over and kissed the sleeping Daria on the forehead, laid her head on the floor with care, and got up. She collected her camera, miniature tape recorder, and bottle, and left. The door shut behind her with a click.

Daria and Jane went downstairs to the second floor and closed the pull-down staircase. They then went to Daria’s room, where Daria put the external hard drive in the secret space in the closet in her room.

“Aren’t you going to download that?” Jane asked.

“Later.” Daria shut the door. “I need break after all that. I’m sorry.”

Jane nodded. She knew Daria had discovered terrible things in that last alternate world, things that opened wounds and fears about her home and family, and she would need a few hours to recover. “Sure thing, amiga,” she said, then on impulse went over and gave her best friend a hug. Daria returned it, holding Jane tightly.

“I’ll be okay,” said Daria, her voice muffled by Jane’s black shirt. “That one really . . . I just need a little time to get over it.”

“You know, that was a sweet thing you said to her, that she was going to make it. Maybe you gave her hope.”

Daria exhaled. “I wish I really believed it. It really got to me, her mother . . . the whole thing. It was too much.” She swallowed. “I hope she does make it.”

“I’m sure she will.” Jane gave a last squeeze, then let her friend go. “I’m going home to download the pictures and see if I can pick anything unusual out. Nothing interesting in her pockets. She looked the same as they all do, most of them.” She flinched, thinking of the Daria from world number two.

“Okay.” Daria sat down on her bed and took off her glasses. She then put her face in her hands, elbows on her knees.

“It was really bad, wasn’t it?” asked Jane, waiting by the door.

Daria nodded without looking up. “It was the pits.”

“Call me later, okay?”

Daria shrugged.

“Call me.”

“Okay.”

After a moment, the door to her room closed with a soft thump.

Later that night, Daria downloaded what she’d recovered from that other Daria’s computer. The short stories were bleak, filled with family secrets and betrayal—unending betrayal, presented with a chilling banality as if everyone in the world were as faithless as the inconstant moon.

In a hidden folder with a coded numerical name in one of the system files, though, was a file describing the other Daria’s discovery that her mother was having a long-term sexual affair with her boss at the legal firm where she worked. The other Daria had accidentally overheard the whole story straight from her mother, who was in a private company-sponsored therapy session at Quiet Ivy. The session was accidentally broadcast over a malfunctioning desk intercom to another office, where the other Daria had been reading. It had destroyed her faith in everything good, turned her into an apathetic burnout with no goal except escaping her parents’ home at the earliest possible moment.

“I hope you found something to hold onto,” said Daria, but not to herself. She wiped her eyes. “You have to make it. You’re me, too. You have to make it, so I’ll know that I will, too, if anything bad happens to me.”

Bad like in world number two, whispered a voice in her head. Almost all of the other Darias had problems, but not like that second one. It made the first and third one look livable, and this one look almost good.

She shut off the computer and went to bed. She did not dream, or did not remember if she did, and she was glad of it.

Chapter Three

They went for number seven the following day, just after lunch.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this,” said Daria, making sure the portal frame was properly connected to the attic doorway.

“We wanted to find out what killed the cat,” said Jane, putting fresh batteries in all her equipment. “At least, that’s how it started.”

“Huh?” Daria looked back, frowning. “What did that remark mean?”

“Well, didn’t you feel personally involved after the first one, just a bit?”

Daria’s angry reply never made it out of her mouth. She turned back to the framework, biting her lower lip.

“Sorry, amiga,” said Jane, now ashamed. “Should’ve kept my mouth shut.” It had been the second world that caused the change, not the first, though the first had been bad enough. The third world had perfectly frosted the cake.

The first Morgendorffer-Lane experiment to reach an alternate universe had backfired horribly. While half expecting to find a world in which the Confederacy had won the Civil War, or America was still a British colony, they had instead met a very Daria-looking Daria from a perfectly normal world, who fainted upon seeing herself on the attic door’s other side.

And, upon recovering, grabbed Jane and began to cry, refusing to let go of her.

“It’s okay,” Daria mumbled. She let go of the framework and rubbed her eyes. “Consider yourself forgiven. You probably have a point.”

The first alternate-world Daria could not be consoled and refused to let Jane out of her sight. Brief questioning revealed that the other world’s Daria had argued with the other world’s Jane over a trivial embarrassment several years earlier, and their friendship had gone on the rocks—permanently, it turned out, when the other Jane was struck and killed by an out-of-control truck on Dega Street, next to the Zen. The other Jane never had a chance. And the other Daria never had the chance to mend the damage to the only real friendship she had ever known. Now she had Jane again, and she wouldn’t let go.

It was Jane who came up with the only possible solution. She secretly wrote a note for Daria to go downstairs, mix a sleeping pill in one of her father’s badly hidden supply of wine coolers, and feed it to the other Daria. It was a reasonable risk, as Daria had a taste for wine coolers and sneaked two from her dad on a monthly basis, sharing with Jane. The risk paid off. Once the other Daria was unconscious, the girls moved her back to her own world, then left, shaken.

It didn’t stop them from world-hopping, though they debated over better drugs to use and settled on using illegally obtained roofies for their ability to cause amnesia. Tricking the other Darias into drinking the spiked wine coolers turned out to be unnecessary. The other Darias always fainted, to the world-hopping Daria’s annoyance and Jane’s amusement, and drank whatever they were given upon awakening. Checking out alternate-universe homes, taking pictures, and downloading computer data for “research” began and grew with further explorations.

“If I lose my job at Good Time, I’m going to regret it when my college tuition bill comes due,” muttered Jane, testing her pocket tape recorder. She thumbed a playback and listened to a few of her own words before hitting rewind.

“You’re getting some of my cash reserves, I told you,” said Daria. “I just want to play with this thing a little more, okay?” She finished checking the portal frame and stepped back. “Ready when you are.”

Jane turned on the recorder and put it in a pocket of her red jacket. She picked up the digital camera and nodded.

Daria turned to the portal frame surrounding the old attic door, put her hand on the doorknob, then closed her eyes and fixed an image in her mind, reciting to herself the formula that she and Jane had worked out for visiting alternate universes. The gateway did not open without a mental image of its purpose in the mind of the person triggering it, this much they had learned.

Somewhere out there, thought Daria, another me at this time is about to open a door in an attic. When that other me opens the door, I will open this door, and our worlds will be joined for as long as the doors remain open.

She opened her eyes and pulled open the door.

A door opened on the other side at the same moment. Another Daria identical to her peered through, gasped aloud—and fainted. Thump.

“Seven,” said Jane. “Jeez, how can you even look at yourself in a mirror without—”

Someone behind the fallen Daria stepped forward into the illumination from the windows and the lone attic light bulb—and shrieked.

“Quinn?” gasped Daria in recognition. “What the hell are you—?” She hurried through the door to the other side, maneuvering past the unconscious Daria—and came to a dead stop.

Her younger sister Quinn stared back with enormous eyes behind eyeglasses that looked remarkably like Daria’s own, though with thinner frames. Quinn wore a spring-green tee and black Capri pants, not unusual for her fashion consciousness, except that the green tee had a decoration on its front that arrested Daria’s attention as soon as she looked away from Quinn’s glasses.

“Ohmigod,” whispered Quinn, looking from one Daria to the other and putting a hand to her forehead. “There was something wrong with those diet cookies the school was selling! I thought they tasted funny!”

“What is that?” said Daria, pointing to the T-shirt decoration.

“What?” Quinn looked down. “That’s pi,” she said. “The Greek letter. Three point one four and all that.” Quinn’s initial shock faded as she leaned closer, squinting. “Are you really another Daria? Or could I tell if this was a dream even if I tried?”

Daria nodded. “It’s another me. Are you Quinn?”

“Well, duh! Who else would I be?” Quinn looked past Daria, then carefully scooted around her to reach her fallen sister. Jane stood in the doorway with a shocked expression on her face, camera raised but motionless.

“Daria?” said Quinn, lifting her sister’s head while glancing around. “Are you all right? We seem to be having a really weird hallucination together.”

“Is anyone else in the house?” asked Jane.

“What?” said Quinn, looking up, suddenly wary. “Don’t try anything. I can scream so loud it’ll burst your eardrums.”

Jane sighed and looked at the Daria she knew. “The oofies-ray scheme isn’t going to work here,” she said.

“I know.” Daria scratched her head. “Okay, this one we’ll talk to. These two, I mean. I think it’ll be okay.”

“What?” Quinn looked back and forth from Jane to the other Daria. “What are you two talking about?”

Jane cleared her throat and stepped closer to Quinn. “We come in peace,” she said. She raised the camera, aiming down. “Smile.”

Flash.

Once the other Daria was awake, the meeting went surprisingly well. “I’m sorry to hear about Mom and Dad here,” said (I’m the real) Daria, after hearing a recitation of this world’s family history and giving her own. She had removed her green jacket to let everyone distinguish between her and the Daria with the brainy sister. “This is the second alternate world we’ve visited with a divorce in progress. We hit the other one yesterday. It was pretty bad.”

“Mom and Dad are just separating, not divorcing,” said Quinn. “I hope.”

“Was that other world worse than this one?” said the other Daria. Everyone sat on the attic floor in pairs, the world-hopping Daria and Jane facing the local Daria and brainy Quinn.

“Much worse.” No-jacket Daria looked at the glasses-wearing Quinn. “It may be hard for you to accept this, but you’ve got nothing to complain about.”

The jacket-wearing local Daria snorted. “Good to hear that someone thinks so.”

“Your sister doesn’t like math? Really?” asked Quinn, pushing her glasses up on her nose with a finger.

“Hates it,” said no-jacket Daria. “The Fashion Club broke up a couple months ago, but the foursome still gets together. Quinn—my Quinn—is doing a lot better. We agreed to never turn out like our aunts.”

The local Daria and Quinn perked up. “You mean Mom’s sisters?” said Quinn. “What happened to them?”

“They fight.”

The local Daria and Quinn visibly relaxed. “Oh, that,” said jacket-wearing Daria. “Yeah, they do that here, too, but not so much now with the baby.”

“Baby?” said no-jacket Daria and Jane at the same time, mouths hanging open. “What baby?”

“Amy and Joel had—” Jacket-wearing Daria stopped and turned around. A noise had sounded from downstairs. “Crap, someone’s home.”

No-jacket Daria and Jane quickly got to their feet, picking up their equipment. “Hate to run,” said Daria, “but if we don’t get out of here, one of your parents is going to come up the steps and have a cow the size of Pennsylvania.”

“I’ll go see if our Good Time restaurant has an interdimensional portal I can borrow,” said jacket-wearing Daria. “Maybe we can get together again sometime, do lunch, scare some people.”

Quinn darted forward and threw her arms around the no-jacket Daria, giving a quick hug. “Good luck with everything,” she said. “Be careful. Don’t open any bad doors, okay?”

“Uh, okay,” said the flustered Daria. “I will. I mean, I won’t. Whatever.”

The two Darias looked at each other a last time, then shook hands and parted. Jane started to close the door from her side, and Quinn from hers.

“Wait!” shouted no-jacket Daria, spinning around. “Who is Joel?”

The doors shut and contact was broken.

Chapter Four

They rehashed the seventh expedition in Jane’s home, in her room. The animated talk ran on for an hour. Both travelers were relieved that things in the other world had not been worse, and the other Daria and Quinn had been quite well adjusted. Jane could tell Daria didn’t know what to make of the brainy Quinn, but their first impressions were favorable.

“Okay,” said Jane, clicking through the digital photos of the other Daria and Quinn on her computer, “what have we learned so far?”

“There are certain things mankind was not meant to know,” Daria said without hesitation, “and we’re up to our necks in them.”

Jane consulted a list by her computer. “Were you thinking about world number four, where you and I had that civil union in Vermont and were thinking of getting you pregnant by Trent before we went to college?”

A strained look crossed Daria’s reddening face. “I was trying not to.”

“Good thing the other Jane wasn’t around when we crossed over. I’d have kicked the butt of anyone who slipped my soul-mate an alcoholic beverage full of roofies.” Jane smiled, her voice lowering a register. “Hey, amiga, can you honestly say that you’ve never looked at me and thought about—”

“That does it,” said Daria, standing up with a scowl. “Boot to the head.”

“Okay, okay! Down, girl!” Jane’s smirk didn’t go away, though. “Seriously now, what can we conclude from our mini-vacations on seven what-if worlds?”

Daria sat down on her bed again. “This is harder than I thought,” she said, wringing her hands together. “I’m not looking forward to this as much as I once did. I think it’s more fun for you because we haven’t met another Jane yet.”

“Hmmm. Nothing bad’s really happened to other Janes, so far. Well, except for me getting killed in the first world. Bummer.”

“You were a runner a couple of times, which figures, and an artist otherwise, gay or straight. Thinking about seeing more than one of you at once gives me the chills, though.”

“Hey, I think it would be cool. Think of all the terrible things a gang of Janes could do. Twenty-four hours, and ve vould rule zee vurld!”

Daria didn’t laugh or even smirk. She lowered her head. “Terrible things, yeah. Terrible things are all I can think of. I never thought it could be so bad, that things could go so badly for me so many times, somewhere else. I just can’t believe it.”

Jane’s smile sank. She turned her chair from her monitor to face her friend and thought about, but did not speak of, world number two. World one had been rough, but after their visit to world two, with world three slamming in right behind, Daria’s goals in world-hopping seemed to change from having a little excitement, poking around where she didn’t belong, to something more. It had seemed at first like a do-gooder urge, making troubled Darias happy, but that wasn’t quite it. Most troubled Darias were likely to stay troubled, no matter what this Daria did. It was like masochism now, this running around. Almost like—testing herself, maybe? Growing up? Preparing for something?

“Talk to me, amiga.”

“It’s . . .” Daria sat up and ran both hands through her long hair. “I always thought I had a rough life, competing with Quinn for attention when I was growing up, having parents who were half with-it at best, being surrounded by smiling, shallow, plastic people—I always thought I had it so hard, but now I think I was the shallow plastic person. I was the stupid one. I see it now, just how good I’ve had it, and I feel freaking stupid for thinking it was otherwise.”

She leaned forward over, elbows on her thighs, and looked at the floor. “And I see how lucky I was all this time to have found you. I knew it before, I really did, but now it’s . . . it’s totally different. I cannot believe I was so lucky to find someone like you. I wouldn’t have made it without—” Her voice cracked and she stopped, rubbing her face.

Uncomfortable now, Jane cleared her throat. “And I was lucky to get you. However, if we go on too much longer like this, we’ll end up getting married like on world four, and I don’t have the money for a wedding dress.”

She expected Daria would make a face and a sarcastic remark, but instead Daria stared at the floor and nodded. “I can understand why they did it,” she said. “I’m not gay, and I know you aren’t, but I understand them. They had it all, and they knew it. Their world and this last one have been the best so far. And ours, too, I guess. I just wish it didn’t eat at me so much.”

Jane found herself imitating Daria’s pose, leaning forward. “Then why are we still doing this?” she asked in a soft voice. “Are you thinking about stopping?”

“What? No, not stopping. Just . . . why are we doing this, I dunno anymore. I . . .” Daria sighed. “Let’s not talk about this now. Later, maybe. I have to think it through. I want there to be a purpose to what we’re doing, since we’re blowing off so much time doing it, and everyone keeps asking where we are, why weren’t not around, and all that. If Mom and Dad weren’t so busy at work, and Quinn wasn’t out so much of the time on dates or at her friends’ houses, we’d have to rein back our trips, and I’m glad we aren’t. I really want to keep going, even though this is scaring the living daylights out of me.”

They were silent for half a minute.

“Want me to try it?” asked Jane, and realized as she said it that she didn’t want to do it, she didn’t want to be the one who activated the portal. She was too afraid of what she might see on the other side. It might be an alternate version of her—a bad alternate version—and she didn’t know how she’d deal with it.

Daria shrugged. “If you want, but you don’t have to. I’m kinda used to it now.”

“Maybe it’s better if we go with that, then. The portal’s probably attuned itself to your personal vibes, or whatever.”

The beginnings of a smile appeared on Daria’s face as she looked up. “Hmmm,” she said, “you’re buttering me up so you don’t have to open the door and wonder why you keep fainting every time you see yourself.”

“It’s your intense charisma, I keep telling you. Maybe if you wore a mask or something. We could put a paper bag over your head. Want to try it?”

Daria looked up, fighting a broader smile. “I’m thinking of a two-word phrase that begins with F.”

“I’m lucky to have you, too.” Jane scooted her wheeled chair over to Daria. Their hands found one another and held on.

“I’m glad this isn’t like that first world,” Daria whispered. Her grip on Jane’s hands tightened. “I’m really glad.”

And I’m glad this world isn’t like the second, Jane thought. That was worse than the third one. Funny that I was a runner in both of them. I did pretty well, but not Daria. At least world three’s cheerleader/Fashion Club Daria had a few real friends and had a chance for a better life when she got away from home. At least she had a spirit, bruised and battered and shrunken and angry as it was.

Whereas the second world’s Daria was an empty shell.

* * *

“No more roofies as part of the plan,” said Daria when they got back into the attic that evening. “Spike the drink anyway, just in case, but leave it back here somewhere in case we need it. We’ll talk it out and see what we discover. Looking through those computer files is taking up too much time, and I didn’t feel right about it anyway.”

Jane got to work on the drink. “Did you ever think we would need a weapon, by the way?” she asked as she worked. “Just in case?”

“In case what, another world’s Daria turns out to be a gun nut?”

“Well, you never know.”

“No, forget it. After that wonderful experience with paintball in the tenth grade, just thinking about live ammunition gives me hives. We’d probably shoot ourselves by accident before we shot any bad guys.”

“And any bad guys we shot would probably be us, anyway.”

“Don’t give me any ideas while you’re within range. Let’s get on with this.”

They got ready, and Daria opened the door.

A door on the other side opened at the same. The Daria there, looking exactly like almost all the others, gasped and fell backward in a faint, dropping a flashlight that went out when it hit the floor.

“Damn it!” Daria snapped while Jane giggled behind her. “This crap has gone far enough!”

“What crap are you talking about, amiga?” came Jane’s voice from a short distance behind the fallen Daria.

Daria’s anger and Jane’s giggles vanished in a shot. As one, they moved to the doorway and strained to see into the near-darkness of the other attic.

A tall, lanky figure took a few steps closer to the door, faintly illuminated from behind by a ceiling light near an open stairway door. The figure tapped a long, pale walking stick to the left and right on the wooden floor ahead of her as she moved. “Daria?” said the figure with Jane’s voice. “Daria, what are you talking about?” The walking stick struck the fallen Daria’s head lightly on one side, and the figure quickly knelt and felt around with one hand.

The figure was Jane, wearing wide, stylish sunglasses and dressed entirely in black, with a jet-black waterfall of long hair. She kept her head facing forward, not looking down at the fallen Daria. As one fist clenched her white cane, the fingers of her other hand found the fallen Daria’s face by her knees and ran over it—and she gasped. “Daria?” she said, her voice rising. “Daria!”

“She fainted,” said the Jane in the doorway, talking a step closer. “Let—”

The new Jane reacted in less than a second, the white cane coming up and whipping back in both her hands like a baseball bat. “Get back!” she yelled, ready to strike. “Get the hell away from us!”

“No!” yelled Daria, holding up her hands. “Don’t! Wait a minute!”

A stunned look spread over the kneeling Jane’s face, half hidden in her long hair. “Daria?” she said. The white cane waved in her grip. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Oh, no,” said Jane, stepping back. “She’s blind.”

“What’s going on?” the blind Jane shouted. “What’s happening?”

“Jane!” Daria pushed her Jane aside and stepped through the doorway. “Jane, be careful! It’s me, Daria!”

The blind Jane hunched down as if preparing to be attacked. Her face became partly visible through her hair—a nightmarish mess of scar tissue reaching down to her misshapen nose. Whatever had hurt her had clearly damaged her eyes as well, now hidden behind the sunglasses.

“Wait! Listen! This is hard to explain. My name is Daria, Daria Morgendorffer, but I’m not the Daria you know. She’s in front of you. She passed out when she saw me. We look exactly alike, and it must have frightened her. We—Jane and I, we came from another—”

“Oh,” groaned the fallen Daria. She put an arm over her face. “Oh, what happened?”

“Here,” Daria said, stepping through the doorway into the room. Her boot thumped loudly on the floor. “Let me—”

One of the blind Jane’s hands released the walking stick and went behind her back. Daria heard an electronic tone a moment later, then a woman’s faint voice: “Nine one one. What is—”

“Eleven eleven Glen Oaks Lane!” shouted the blind Jane, facing the doorway. “Get the police! Hurry!”

“No, damn it! Don’t do that!” shouted Daria. “We just want to—”

The white cane sliced the air with lightning speed and smacked Daria in her left upper arm. Daria shrieked and stumbled back. The blind Jane rose up on one knee, dropping the cell phone behind her and reversing her grip on the cane to whip it back around a second time. She hit the sighted Jane in the side of the head as the latter stepped in to grab Daria. Jane yelled, dropping her digital camera, and manhandled Daria back through the doorway. She then slammed the door shut, leaning on it to keep it closed. Contact was broken.

“Freaking hell!” yelled Jane, both hands covering a flame-red cheek. “Goddamn freaking hell! That hurts!”

Daria sat down on the wooden floor, gripping her arm and trying not to cry. “What did she do that for?”

“And I lost my damn camera!” Tears running down her face, Jane began to spew curses that nearly shocked Daria into forgetting her injury. Jane concluded with, “That rotten bitch!”

Then, a moment later, she smiled and began to chuckle. The chuckle swiftly turned into hysterical, full-blown laughter.

“What the hell’s so funny?” Daria growled.

Jane doubled over and howled with mirth, even as she held her aching cheek. Blood trickled from her right ear.

“Jane?”

“She got us!” Jane gasped. “I told you that those other Janes could kick butt, and this one was as blind as could be and she kicked our asses! I am the greatest!” She sank down to her knees, her back to the attic door, then fell over on her side laughing.

“Drop dead, Lane,” Daria said, fighting a smile, and then she began laughing, too.

When it was over, they bandaged themselves, had a wine cooler each, and fell asleep in Daria’s room on the rug. Late that night, Daria dreamed she opened the attic door, and behind it was a Daria in a matching denim skirt and vest, with a burnt-orange top, cork sandals, stylish glasses, a gold necklace and rings, and nothing in her eye sockets except darkness.
Her screams woke up Jane, who knew without asking what had happened. The nightmares had started with world number two. They fell asleep again in bed, nestled together like spoons until the late morning sun got them up.

Chapter Five

The next day was a Friday, and after breakfast Daria and Jane decided to make the most of an empty house and visit at least two alternate worlds in a row, possibly three, as long as their nerves and sanity could take it. On the downside, Quinn asked some pointed questions before leaving on an all-day date about what was going on in the attic.

“We’re making a movie,” Jane said. “I call it, ‘The Life and Death of a Dust Bunny.’ It’s sort of Russian in tone, sentimental and uncommunicative, with a little Andy Warhol thrown in.”

“Uh-huh.” Quinn gave Jane and her sister a doubtful eye. “Well, don’t bring any dust bunnies downstairs where they can reproduce. Ta-tah.” She started off, then turned and added, “Oh, and if making this movie requires drinking any more wine coolers, buy your own. Dad’s asked me twice if I’ve been getting into his stash.”

“The wine coolers keep the dust bunnies happy,” said Daria. “Can’t have a movie without happy actors.”

Quinn left, shaking her head. “No wonder I don’t understand art,” she mumbled.

Daria’s parents were already gone. The cynical duo made their way back to the attic in no time.

“I bet it was that episode of ‘Sick, Sad World,’ the rerun,” Daria said. She was finishing some notes on the last expedition through the doorway.

“Which episode?” Jane was unwrapping a disposable camera.

“The one that was on two or three nights ago about the attic monsters. We missed it from doing this.”

Jane looked up, the light dawning in her face. “Oh, that one, yeah! And the second half of the show was about illegal space aliens taking our jobs! The shapechangers!” She smacked her forehead. “Oh, no! Of course! That was one of their best shows ever! Scared the living hell out of me when I first saw it!”

“Exactly. The last Jane must have seen the show and got overexcited, that’s all.”

“Wait—that Jane was blind. She couldn’t see it!”

“Oh. Um, well, maybe the other Daria saw it and she told Jane, or Jane listened to it, or—God, listen to what I’m saying. Can you believe we’re talking about this?”

“What I can’t believe is that I dropped that damn digital camera. It had all our photos on it, plus . . . oops.”

Daria looked up from her notes. “I don’t like that ‘oops.’ Please tell me what that ‘oops’ meant and if we should find a new place to live.”

“Um, well, it sort of had something experimental on it. Kind of a comment on . . . oh, hell, I took pictures of me naked and covered in stage blood, chewing on a mannequin’s arm. We’re still friends, right?”

Daria’s pencil tapped the side of her head, then she shook her head, sighed, and went back to writing.

They were ready in fifteen minutes more. This time, Jane wanted to be the one to open the door. “It’s only fair,” she said. “What’s the worst that could happen—we go to a world where everyone’s a flesh-eating ghoul except me? How likely is that?”

“Shut up and open the damn door.”

Jane’s hand rested on the doorknob, but she turned and said, “Daria?”

“What?”

“Bet you fifty the other Jane doesn’t faint.”

Daria’s lip curled in a snarl. “You’re on,” she said in a dark tone.

“One, two, two-and-a-half, three.” Jane pulled the door open.

The door opened on the other side, revealing an identical Jane with her hand on the other doorknob. The other Jane’s eyes grew wide and she froze—then raised a hand, rubbed her eyes, and leaned forward to stare again.

“Thank you for not fainting,” said Jane. She turned to Daria. “You owe me fifty smackers, amiga.”

Daria glared at the other Jane. “Thanks loads.”

The other Jane cleared her throat, then looked to one side at something behind the door on her side, then looked back at Daria and Jane, then away again, then back. “Hey, Daria?” she called, leaning back, her head turning.

“What?” came Daria’s voice from somewhere out of sight.

“You owe me fifty buckaroos,” Jane said. “It’s not Bart Simpson’s twin.”

“I owe what? Hey, how’d you get that door open?” Boot steps approached.

“She’s going to faint,” Jane told the other Jane. “Bet you fifty.”

“No way,” said the other Jane as the other Daria appeared around the door. “She won’t—”

Thump.

“Damn,” said the other Jane, looking down. “That sucks.”

“Where are those wine coolers?” Daria growled. She walked back into the attic, got one, opened it, walked through the door past the other Jane, and poured the bottle’s contents into the prone Daria’s face.

“Hey!” yelled the other Jane, grabbing Daria’s wine cooler. “You’re wasting it!”

The other Daria coughed and tried to sit up. “What happened?” she gasped.

The first ten minutes were a nightmare of misunderstandings and hunting for clean towels, but when things settled down and more wine coolers were passed out, the interdimensional encounter took on a rosier glow. Daria again took off her green jacket and made Jane take off hers, so no one would get confused if anyone got up and walked around. Histories were recited, future plans compared, family members named, and a few differences found—but only a few.

“You two have had a busy summer,” said no-jacket Daria, looking a bit peeved. “I haven’t gotten published yet, myself. I didn’t think anyone would want a Melody Powers story, so I didn’t even try one.”

“Send one to Literature in Action,” said jacket-wearing Daria. “It’s almost the only market left that’s open to new talent in action-adventure fic.”

“You would know,” no-jacket Daria said, trying not to sound like sour grapes. “I must have sent out two dozen stories and eight poems by now, all rejections.”

“Try a novella and make something awful happen to Melody,” said the other Daria. “Make her crawl and spit up lots of blood. Angst sells.”

“That was so sweet of the Morgendorffers to give you that party!” no-jacket Jane told jacket-wearing Jane. “Can I see that family portrait you did for them?”

“Uh—sure, I think. It’s sitting in the family room. I don’t believe anyone else is in the house.”

“Let me guess,” said no-jacket Jane, ticking off names on her fingers. “Helen’s at work, Jake’s out at the movies, and Quinn’s on a date.”

“We must have a really boring universe,” said jacket-wearing Jane. “I promise next time you come by, I’ll have the Recreation Committee set off some bombs and start a house fire.”

“That would be great, thanks!”

The two Janes got to their feet and waved goodbye to the two Darias, then went to the attic stairs and headed down.

“Okay,” said jacket-wearing Daria when they were alone, turning back to no-jacket Daria, “what was the name of the boy you had a crush on in ninth grade at Highland High School, but Beavis and Butthead ruined it by telling him they saw you naked when they didn’t, and you always kind of wished afterward that they were both dead?”

No-jacket Daria gasped, then raised her hands and fingerspelled a name.

“Correct,” said jacket-wearing Daria. “You’re definitely not an illegal shape-changing space attic monster, not that I imagined for a moment you were. Next question: How did you really get here from your universe?”

“Walked.”

Jacket-wearing Daria frowned and narrowed her eyes.

Sigh. “I told you, we walked through a doorway using an alien portal framework from the back wall of Good Time Chinese, and—”

Jacket-wearing Daria held up a hand to stop her. “That’s not possible. I made that up in a short story I gave to Jane a few days ago, when we were at Good Time Chinese.”

“Huh? But you got the idea from that dream, right? Holiday Island? Christmas, Halloween—”

“—and Guy Fawkes Day living with us, everything. No, I didn’t. I’ve never had a dream like that. I just made it up for Jane and Trent. Big Cupid, little leprechaun, Love Taser, the works. No dream.”

“But the framework is right there,” said no-jacket Daria, pointing to the doorway. They both got up and went to look.

“This is impossible,” said jacket-wearing Daria, inspecting the framework.

“Exactly.”

“But it’s imaginary! I made it up for Jane and Trent’s story!”

It was no-jacket Daria’s turn to frown. “You have a copy of this story?”

Several minutes later, the two Darias were in the jacket-wearing Daria’s room, watching a story come out of a computer printer. “I don’t believe this,” said no-jacket Daria, holding the story as she read it. “This can’t be something you made up! This is impossible!”

“Exactly.”

“But this—” No-jacket Daria shook the story in her hands “—really happened.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

“I need a wine cooler.”

“Ditto.”

The two Darias marched out of the bedroom, heading for the stairway down to the first floor.

“Oh, Daria,” said Quinn, looking at the two Darias as she came down the hall from the staircase, “Joey’s waiting out in the car, and I need my—my—my—muh . . .”

Thump.

“Uh-oh,” said both Darias at once, looking down at Quinn’s unconscious form.

Both Janes appeared at the foot of the stairs, clutching plastic bags full of food fresh from the refrigerator. “Did someone drop something?” one called.

“Weren’t you watching the front door?” called jacket-wearing Daria, looking irked.

“We were in the kitchen!” said no-jacket Jane.

“It’s time to beat feet,” called no-jacket Daria. “The manure has hit the windmill.”

“But we haven’t finished lunch yet!” said jacket-wearing Jane.

“You had breakfast just half an hour ago!”

“But they have cold pizza and chicken wings!”

“Jane, Quinn just saw both of us and passed out, and her boyfriend will be here in less than a minute! We have to get out of here!”

“Damn it!” said both Janes at once, and then jacket-wearing Jane helped no-jacket Jane stuff her pants pockets with food taken from the Morgendorffers’ refrigerator while both tried climbing the stairs at the same time.

“You have my sympathies,” muttered jacket-wearing Daria, watching them and shaking her head.

“And you mine,” said no-jacket Daria.

“Thank you. I’m glad someone finally understands.”

“I am too.”