Car trips were often awkward between Pete and Myka. Pete broke what Myka considered an unwritten rule about how many burritos a federal agent should eat, while Myka didn't travel anywhere without her Margaret Atwood books-on-tape. Still, they were never more awkward than after the two had been on a grand total of two and a half dates.

"Do you realize where he took me?" Myka, in the passenger seat, was saying into her Farnsworth. "On our third date? Our third date?"

"Lots of women enjoy that sort of thing!" Pete said defensively.

"You've known me for five years, Pete, when did I strike you as a woman who enjoys 'that sort of thing'?"

"I don't know, I thought you liked to try new things!"

"A new thing is like a, a class on cave-painting or going scuba-diving with seals. Not a monster truck rally."

"It's good old-fashioned American fun, Myka!"

"Maybe I'm just not that American, because I don't see anything fun about the criminal waste of our dwindling petroleum…"

"I don't see anything fun about nah nah nah," Pete mimicked.

"Now he's mimicking me!" Myka complained into the Farnsworth.

"That's fascinating," Steve said in black and white. "Really. But why are you telling me this? Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I have nothing better to do than hear gossip about your love lives."

"Because it's your fault I went on a date with him! I was all emotional and vulnerable over the Warehouse closing, Pete was having a mid-life crisis—"

"I'm not middle-aged—"

"—you told him he was in love with me…"

"I didn't expect you to take me seriously!" Steve protested. "Okay, I kinda did. Straight people are hilarious."

"We are not!" Pete protested.

"Anyway, can we please stop blaming me for everything? I think some of the blame should go on the Round Table, showing memories at random. It didn't even give Pete a defining moment. We probably should've known it was broken when there was that business with Claudia and the musical number…"

"Don't blame a table!" Myka jeered. "It's tacky!"

"I don't know, I thought that table was pretty nice looking."

"What do you know about interior decoration?" Pete demanded. "You're gay. What are you, a stereotype?"

Static momentarily crowded the screen as Artie jerked it from Steve's grasp. "Can I remind everyone that the Farnsworths are meant for official Warehouse business, not jawing about Pete taking Myka to a rodeo."

"Hey, it was a demolition derby," Pete corrected. "She's a classy lady. And we're totally focused on the ol' SBT."

"Then you'll remember your assignment?"

"Yeah. Buncha people disappearing for a few days in Oregon, they come back, they're outta their minds—running to the nearest store and tearing into the porno rags until the police show up."

"Very weird," Myka added.

"Especially since they have porn on computers now. I hear there's even stuff about, like, Seven of Nine getting it on with Cap'n Janeway."

"Not that you'd know," Myka added.

"Nah, feels weird reading about those two. Since they were on Voyager, the worst Star Trek TV show ever."

"The Farnsworths are also not for complaining about Star Trek!" Artie broke in. "You have the entire internet for that. Now keep your eyes on the road!"

The Farnsworth went blank. Pete settled in to focus on the long, empty road.

"Just so you know, I'm not taking the full blame for the implosion of our love affair."

"Please don't call it a love affair," Myka sighed.

"You were never that into me. And we both know why."

"Your haircut."

"No! Because you're not over HG."

Myka leaned in to fiddle with the radio. "Hey, I bet we get NPR out here."

"Don't use NPR to run away from your feelings, Mykes. You're better than that!"

The first disappearance had been Keith Koogan. His house was still outlined by police tape, which Pete and Myka breezed through. It was a good-looking house in a neighborhood of good-looking houses. However, Myka doubted that the other houses on Boundary Street had the same decorator. "Holy crap, this is—"

"Awesome!" Pete interrupted.

"If your definition of awesome is a sex shop—of course it is."

Pete high-stepped around to a row of posters. "Sex shop? A bunch of golden showers and facials and silicone implants? No, no, Myka, this is classy vintage stuff! Russ Meyer films, old Playboys, not a DVD in sight!"

"Can we just spray some goo around? I'm sure it wouldn't be the first time that's happened in here."

Over the next two hours they gave everything a coating of neutralizer goo, but no Artifact responded. Myka, exhausted, sat on the stairs and hoped Koogan hadn't had a stair fetish. She went over the case on her smartphone.

"Hey, Mykes, you think he'd mind if I borrowed one of these nudie playing card decks? We're probably going to save him from a fate worse than death, so—"

Myka looked up. "Like a souvenir… Pete, what if the Artifact was here, but someone took it? The next victim was a first-responder who searched the house looking for Koogan. But then the third victim was a garbageman…"

Pete dropped the cards. "We need to talk to the cop's girlfriend."

"Yeah, I threw his porn out. He disappears on me, no phone, no e-mail, he's lucky I didn't throw out his Truffaut films too!"

Myka drove. "Okay, so whatever the Artifact is, the garbageman finds it, takes it home—you think it's still there?"

"He's the last victim. Makes sense."

The garbageman's place was surprisingly clean. The garbageman's roommate was not. "Yeah, Carl wasn't a dumpster-diver or anything, but if he saw something valuable, he took it to eBay. Everything he ain't sold yet's in the other bathroom. Can doesn't work there anyway." He leered at Myka. "How 'bout I let your friend look through it while I get you a drink?"

"How about I help him clean out the shower so you can use it? A lot?"

The bathroom was piled high with signs you might be a 90s kid. Milton-Bradley games, Power Ranger toys, Sega Genesis cartridges. More potential Artifacts than Stephen King's junk drawer.

"For the record," Myka said, spraying around dismally, "I am completely over HG."

"Really? Because have you seen her new girlfriend? She looks like—"

"I know what she looks like!"

"Just sayin', if anything could convince moi to have a sex change operation…" Pete broke off to pick up a dog-eared magazine that was more crinkle than paper. "Hey, check it out, Penthouse before they invented the Brazilian. I think my uncle had this issue. Bought it by accident when he was getting bodybuilding magazines. Man, for a fat guy, he was a real fitness nut."

"You know, I've spent five years of my life expecting you to feel shame?"

"Listen to this." Pete held the magazine at arm's length. "'Greetings, esteemed appreciator of the female form'—that's us—'in addition to the fine content you are used to Penthouse providing, we are now also opening up a forum within our pages for your own sexual adventures and sensual explorations.'"

Myka took a look at him. "Do you have a mustache? It seems like you should have a mustache right now."

"Myka, this is the first Penthouse forum!"

"Clearly a seminal event."

"Oh, ooh, look at this! 'Dear Penthouse Forum, thank you for finally providing a space for the connoisseurs of the feminine species to swap war stories—'"

"This must be what getting married in Vegas feels like…"

"'I humbly submit my own story, and that of Lil Abner'—think that's his penis."

"Oh dear God."

"'I never thought this would happen to me, but—'"

Myka snatched the magazine away from him. "If you want to talk about sex that's clearly fictitious, there's this new thing called tumblr?"

"A straight man on tumblr? And you call me crazy."

The spray-goo turned up nothing and they were out of leads. They interviewed the victims, getting nothing out of them, searched their houses, found nothing, and brainstormed over Chinese. Nothing. Checking the scrolling ticker on their Farnsworth revealed that Artie had gotten another ping on the other side of the country. They agreed to shelve the case for now and swing by the Warehouse for a night's sleep and some debrief/briefing.

It sucked, but not all cases ended in bags and tags. Not everything was an Artifact, after all. Could've been some lost mail from Eureka, or an Alpha who'd spent the night at a motel. Claudia would keep an eye on it, see if the case developed any. For now, it was a long, bitter drive back to the Warehouse, with days wasted on a frustrating assignment.

"Why would you even say something like that?" Myka asked, head lolled against the car window.

"You're gonna have to narrow it down some, Mykes. Since I'm me."

"About me not being over HG?"

Pete shut off the radio. Nothing good was playing anyway. "Well, c'mon—it's pretty obvious. First there was that thing with Nate; if you'd come onto her any harder, you'd've been jumping out of a birthday cake."

Myka winced, coming to stare at him through her sunglasses. He irked a little.

"I mean, not that I have anything against birthday cakes—"

"Go on," Myka commanded.

Pete cleared his throat, realizing slightly belatedly that he was swimming in shark waters. "Okay, then she breaks up with Nate, so you'd think the first thing she'd do would be, I don't know, whatever mating call lesbians have. But instead, she starts working with the Warehouse again as a consultant and yet she's all buddy-buddy with this Giselle woman? That's cold. Just speaking as a guy, that is cold. She could've at least asked you out for coffee, gone on a cruise with you, seen if Groupon had any specials on couples' therapy—"

"She asked," Myka interrupted.

Pete blinked, his mind so blank that he nearly drifted into the other lane before pulling the wheel to the side. Myka didn't notice.

"Wait—hold up—una momento, por favor—you're telling me Helena Godiva Wells, love of your life, literature-nerd-in-chief, like, the woman you would wish for if you could wish for the perfect woman… I'd wish for Denise Richards circa Wild Things, by the way… she asked you out? Why are we not celebrating your gay Canada marriage right now?"

"Cancer," Myka answered simply.

"Geez… Myka, I'm sorry—"

"I wanted—more than anything—for her to be there with me. I didn't dream of being cancer-free; I dreamed of feeling her hand in mine, or waking up and seeing her in that damned empty chair they put by the bed. But… if I didn't make it… and it looked like I wouldn't… what would that do to her? It'd break her, Pete. If I let her back in only to drag her down with me. She's worked so hard to have a life that's, that's safe and I wasn't safe. I was quicksand. Then—I got better, and she was with Giselle."

"Have you… thought of telling her that? How do you know she's happy with G? How do you know she's not staring at the phone, praying that you'll call—"

"Pete, I have asked myself that a million times. But if it's not cancer, it'll just be something else. You said it yourself. The Warehouse leaves everyone dead, evil, or crazy. I'm okay with that. But I don't want that for HG. It'd be too hard for her."

"You're sure she's the one it'd be hard for?"

Myka looked at the car radio. "I think All Things Considered is on. Do you mind?"

Pete dutifully turned the radio on and tuned the dial as Myka leaned back in her chair.

"Does this place seem different to you?" Myka asked inside the Warehouse, as they passed the bombs.

"Well, Claudia isn't playing her Rihanna music so loud that the ventriloquist dummy on Aisle 444 complains about it. That's new." Pete ducked the low-hanging pipe and came out into the office, decidedly empty. He took the opportunity to sit down in Artie's chair and relax.

"Where is everybody?" Myka asked, going to the telescope on the catwalk outside.

"Don't," Pete called. "Don't jinx it. I've been cooped up in a fabulously affordable Toyota Prius for the last two days. I don't wanna do Die Hard in a Warehouse or whatever kooky adventure could be going on. I want fifteen minutes to put my feet up and—" He put his feet up. "Oh… my back. My back feels like I learned to do yoga. Don't tell anyone, but if somebody were to try to blow up the world, I would let 'em. Not worth leaving this spot."

Myka gave up on the telescope. "Tell you what. I'll look around, and if I find Hans Gruber, I'll bring you some pizza bites as apology for making you run around in a wifebeater and shoot people."

"I'll keep my shoes on," Pete replied, pointing at himself and back to Myka repeatedly in the unspoken language of 'we are making references to the same movie and I find that awesome.'

Myka went down the stairs into the many rooms built into the superstructure of the Warehouse, calling for the others and periodically trying them on the Farnsworth. It was in Subbasement Gamma-2 that she stopped recognizing the décor. The room as she'd once known it was an old-fashioned secretarial pool that'd been abandoned until Steve had needed a place for meditation. Now, the floor seemed to have a lot more statues lining the walls—naked men and women in the classical style, but without the boyish proportions the Greeks had favored. These were, to turn a phrase, anatomically corrected.

"Okay, I dated Pete, very funny," Myka called to the co-workers she knew were pranking her. "But if you think I let him get on any bases in two and a half dates—the man pitched a no-hitter! Steve, tell them I'm telling the truth!"

Silence. Myka was sure they were around somewhere. She hurried around, checking the doors, poking her head into hallways, until she saw an office door with the stenciled glass lit up from the inside. "A-ha!" Myka cried, flinging open the door.

Then she screamed.

To his credit, Pete didn't once think of the pizza bites Myka had promised him as he took the stairs two at a time, bursting into Subbasement Gamma-2 with his Tesla drawn, finding Myka with her back pressed to a door like she was holding an axe murderer at bay.

"What? What is it?" Pete asked, wondering if it'd be too much of a pose to draw his Glock as well, get a little Chow Yun-Fat thing going for whoever'd messed with the BFF.

"Artie and Claudia are having sex."

Pete lowered his Tesla. Now he was glad he hadn't gone full Woo. "Real funny, Mykes. Ya got me."

"They are in there going full-on…" Myka's head bobbed as she sought to convey the proper words. Like reading the Necronomicon, it didn't come easy. "He's… and she's… it's like I'm watching Blackfish again, only this orca has a penis!"

"Here's where, if I were pulling this joke like the universe intended, you would tell me that orcas do have penises. A-duh." Pete yanked open the door. And closed it. "No."

"Noooo!" Myka agreed.

"It's like someone made a porno out of Kung-Fu Panda! You can't even think about what's happening, you just wanna know why! I need to call my sponsor. I haven't been this close to drinking since Edgar Wright got fired from Ant-Man."

There wasn't much to do after seeing something like that except share-binge a tub of Rocky Road in the break room. After thinking about it became somewhat non-toxic, they quickly agreed that it was an Artifact and that they'd have to wipe Artie and Claudia's memories as soon as the Artifact was dealt with, time travel not being an option.

It was then that Artie emerged from prior Lovecraftian horror, dressed now as he usually was. Myka hid the microfiche viewer she was looking up memory artifacts on. Pete hid the ice cream.

"Finally, you're back. Huge ping in South America, huge, coinciding with the discovery of an ancient Incan statue head…

"Hey, boss? Artie?" Pete called gently. "Have you, uh… did you bump anything? On the shelves?" He played it off with a laugh. "You bump something, you old rascal? Huh?"

"Or smell fudge?" Myka asked. "Because I… misplaced some brownies I baked earlier and I'd love if you could tell me where to find them."

"No, no bumping, no fudge. I've been with Claudia all night."

Pete and Myka blanched at each other.

Pete suddenly snapped his fingers. "Oh! Oh, I get it! You were just working on some wacky Warehouse mojo, but it looked to us like you were—" He turned to Myka, shaking his head. "They weren't actually…"

"No, no Warehouse mojo. Just us fucking. But Steve has been in the gooery, so don't worry about anything getting out of hand."

"He said phreaking!" Pete cried desperately. "Phreaking like—in the eighties. War Games."

"Hey guys," Claudia said, breezing in.

Pete and Myka reacted appropriately.

"Pants!"

"Where are your pants?"

"Why aren't you wearing pants, God!"

"Or a skirt!"

Claudia sat down, prompting further consternation at the thought of her bare butt on unfathomably old leather chair. "Dudes, just going bottomless. I know it's been a while since I shaved, but c'mon, guys like a little tickle. Little feather duster." She winked at Myka. "Girls too."

"Alright, what—" Pete circled around so a console was blocking his view of Claudia's suddenly very mentionable unmentionables. "What is going on here? What kind of skanky Artifact did you two whammy yourselves with, because we are taking it out like now."

Seeing what he's done, Myka rushed to stand beside him. "Yeah!"

"Artifact? Why would there be an Artifact?" Artie demanded, becoming impatient. "Claudia and I have been exploring the sensual limitations of our bodies—"

"Oh God, it's worse when he doesn't use the F-word."

"—since she came to the Warehouse," Artie concluded humorlessly.

"What? No!"

"No, no, no!" Myka stressed. "You're like her father! Claudia, you're like the daughter he never had! We all thought you had this sweet, platonic, familial relationship and now it's all about sex?"

"Gross!" Pete emphasized.

"Well, sometimes I call him daddy," Claudia grinned.

"Eww!"

"So eww!"

"Clearly, this is not something the people we've known for five years would ever do!" Pete argued. "There's gotta be some weird, malevolent force acting on you, and for some really creepy reason, it's decided you two should have sex."

"Either that or you're not the people we've known," Myka added. "Because there's no way those people were having some weird, age-inappropriate flirtation this whole time!"

"Wait, is this because Artie's old and chunky style?" Claudia demanded. "Because that's pretty hypocritical, coming from a guy with Pete's haircut."

Pete raised a finger to defend his hair, but Myka lowered his arm for him. "Okay…"

"Maybe you were hit by an Artifact," Artie reasoned. "It would explain why you're both acting so strangely."

"Maybe…" Pete said, stroking his chin.

Myka hit him in the arm. "No, Pete, we're normal!"

"But, Mykes—what if we're doing a sort of The Thing… thing, where no one knows who's been infected and who hasn't?" He pointed at Artie. "He's Wilford Brimley! It works out great! Myka, one of us is gonna be Keith David and the other is going to be Kurt Russell!"

"I think the bigger issue here is whether or not a man and a woman can ever be good friends or whether there's always a sexual undercurrent to the relationship, even when there's a frankly gross age differential."

Pete dropped his hands. "Don't turn this into When Harry Met Sally. Just don't."

"Heeeeey Artie," another Pete said, coming through the door with another Myka trailing behind bearing an Artifact with purple gloves and a foil-wrapped bag. "Sorry we're late, got some roadhead on the way so I drove in circles for a while… hey, are we doing evil doubles?"

One brief Tesla fight later, Pete and Myka were behind cover on one side of the room, with Other Pete and Other Myka hunkered down with Claudia and Artie, other side of the room.

"You're right," Pete said to Myka.

"I know," she replied heedlessly.

"I mean about my hair. My evil twin has much better hair. It's like, styled, but not trying too hard. Blown by the epic wind on the cover of a fantasy novel. Shame he doesn't have a goatee."

Myka fired a quick shot at Claudia as she emerged from cover. She was more disappointed that Claudia still hadn't put on pants than that she'd missed. "At a time like this, you really think you could pull off a goatee?"

"Well, he's the evil me, right? He should have a goatee. You gotta respect the classics, man."

"You're right. He's not rocking a goatee." Myka craned her neck for a look over their flipped-over desk. "And it's not like the other me is wearing leather."

Pete nodded. "The evil you would be a dominatrix? That how it is?"

"No, she just wouldn't be vegan."

"Oh, we're doing the vegan thing again, Twizzler girl?"

Myka poked her head up from cover. "Hey, guys? I realize this is a bit awkward, but is it possible none of us are evil doubles?"

"Yeah, if I were an evil double, why wouldn't I have a goatee?" Pete offered.

"And if Artie and Claudia are evil doubles, they haven't done that much that's evil. Just the… physical act of coitus."

Pete groaned. "That's the worst one yet."

"It's just a May-December romance," Myka argued.

"Or like a May… leap year romance…"

"Of course!" Artie jumped up from behind the desk. "That's it!"

Pete snapped his fingers. "Leap years! I knew it!"

"No!" Artie slapped his Pete upside the head, then apologized. Force of habit. "You're not any sort of duplications at all, merely residents of a parallel dimension. I presume one where Claudia and I aren't erotically intimate."

"Other us's aren't making faces," Pete confirmed. "Definitely another dimension."

Somewhat defusing the tense mood, Artie skittered between the two armed camps to gather up files. "This would explain the same duplicates we've seen appearing in Oregon over the past few weeks. We assumed they were expressions of the superego, set loose in a confused and unbalanced state, but what if—" Artie flipped a paper over a few times until he had it right-side-up and facing the right way. "They were instead visitors from this parallel universe—I assume one that doesn't share our casual attitude towards sex."

"Hey, we're not some Puritans," Pete countered.

"I've had sex three hundred times since I joined the Warehouse," Other Pete said, facing his counterpart. "You?"

Pete paused. "I'm worried that telling you would affect the timeline or something."

"No wonder we couldn't find any Artifact causing the appearances!" Artie cried. "It wasn't on our end, it was on yours!"

"Hey, we couldn't find anything either," Myka corrected.

"Either way, before the Artifact's effects reach their culmination, we have to get in touch with your universe and coordinate some sort of snag. Pete—my Pete—help me find Lady Gaga's disco stick. It should allow us to communicate beyond dimensional borders."

"Why?" Pete asked.

"Do you really think Lady Gaga is from your universe?"