"What the hell?!" Jane yelped, sliding back so far she almost fell off the log. The older Jane reached out and caught her forearm, preventing the teenager from taking a spill.

"Easy there, kid," said the older Jane. She tugged on Jane's arm until the girl was back on the log. Jane stared at her, eyes wide and panicked.

"This can't be happening," she breathed. "I've cracked. I have to have cracked."

Older Jane quirked an eyebrow, leaned up and looked over the top of Jane's head. "Nope. No cracks that I can see. No bleeding. No scrapes." She returned to her original position and looked directly into Jane's frantic eyes. "And you're focusing on me, so no concussion. Looks like you're fine."

Jane's mouth dropped open. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her mind was racing a mile a minute. This can't be real! She looks so much like me! It's a joke, a gag, something!

Older Jane sighed. "Breathe, Jane."

Jane blinked, the command breaking through her panic. "What?"

"Take a deep breath," Older Jane repeated. "In through your nose. Out through your mouth."

Jane complied, unsure of what else to do.

"Good," said Older Jane. "And again."

Jane repeated the breath. She felt her heart rate lower and her panic begin to fade. She did it one more time without prompting then opened her eyes.

"What the hell is going on here?" she asked, her expression still suspicious.

Older Jane sighed. "I'm you. Well, to be more accurate, I'm one of you… or us… or something. Grammar's never been my strong suit."

"Let me know when you want to start to make sense," said Jane, folding her arms.

Older Jane let out another sigh of exasperation. "I knew this was going to be difficult. Okay, let's try this instead. You've spent the last two months at this art colony, where you thought you'd be able to be creative and make some new friends after your friendship with Daria went south after the Tom Thing. The instructors suck, the people suck, and you had a woman you thought was your friend try to get you drunk and get into your pants. You missed Daria, she came up and last night you finally told her what had actually been eating you about the whole damn mess. You've just watched her and Trent head back to Lawndale and, while you know you and Daria are back on the mend, you're still leery of whether or not you can trust her ever again. Sound about right?"

Jane stared, wide-eyed at her double. "You are me," she whispered. "Are you from the future, or something?"

"Or something," said Older Jane. "Look, who I am isn't really important. What is important is helping you figure out what you want to do about Daria."

"What do you mean?" she frowned. "She's my friend."

"Sure, you say that now, but like I said, right now you aren't sure if you can trust her, right? I get it. I was in your boots a while back in my own timescale."

Jane's frowned deepened and became cynical. "Oh, I get it now. You're here to show me how I need to be friends with Daria again or all of history is doomed or some bullshit like that, right?"

"Nope," Older Jane replied. Jane blinked.

"Say what?"

"If you and Daria don't become friends again, the universe will tick along just fine. This isn't about saving history, or reality, or anything epic like that. Hate to break it to you, kid, but the universe doesn't turn on whether or not two teenage girls stay friends or not. Not anymore, anyway."

Jane felt her brain begin to throb. "Can we just stop with all the cryptic crap and cut to the chase?"

"I am here simply to help you decide whether or not you still want Daria in your life. You've been hurt, Jane, and hurt badly. No one would blame you if you decided somewhere down the road that Daria needs to be out of your life for you to move on."

"So, you want me to cut things off with Daria?" Jane asked.

Older Jane shrugged. "Me? No. I'm not here to get you to do that either."

"Then what the hell do you want from me?" Jane got up and looked down at her older self. "You say you aren't here to convince me to stay friends with her, but you aren't here to convince me to dump her either! What do you want from me?"

Older Jane looked at her, her expression calm and sympathetic. She gave her younger self a small smile. "I'm here to get you to honestly answer a question."

Jane folded her arms. "Then ask it so I can get the hell out of this psychotic breakdown I appear to be having."

"Do you love Daria?"

Jane's eyes expanded to the size of dinner plates and she flushed bright red. "What- what the hell kind of question is that?"

OIder Jane stood up. She was a couple of inches taller than Jane herself. She looked down, meeting Jane's gaze. "The question I'm here to help you answer."

"I am NOT interested in wo—"

"Not 'love' in that way," Older Jane interrupted. She quirked an eyebrow. "And I wouldn't quite be so vehement in your declaration of sexuality yet. You're still young, after all."

"Wha?" Jane blinked and was now bright red.

Older Jane shook her head. "Neither here nor there. Let's move on. The question of whether you love Daria is central to this whole situation. Answering it is going to ultimately help you move forward."

She hitched back the sleeve of her shirt. Jane peered at the strange black square strapped to her older self's wrist. It reminded her of the communicator watch Penny wore on Inspector Gadget.

"What's that?" she asked. Older Jane gave her a smirk, and tapped the square. Instantly it flashed to life and Jane stared as the air above them was filled with holographic displays of the earth. Hundreds of them, spinning and orbiting around an unseen axis.

Older Jane grinned at Jane. "Welcome to the multiverse."

Jane took a few steps forward, staring up as the multicolored earths that floated around her. She reached up to touch one. It fizzled a bit, but quickly restored itself, before floating away from her. "Multiverse?" she asked.

"Well, not the actual multiverse," Older Jane admitted. "This is just a representation of it. This little gizmo allows us to look in on any universe in any given multiverse in the entire Omniverse. Am I saying the word "verse" too much? I probably am."

Jane looked back at her. "Why are you showing me this? Don't get me wrong, it's cool as hell, but I don't get it."

"Like I said," Older Jane began, walking over to her. "I'm here to help you figure out whether you love Daria or not. All this is to help you make that decision."

"Ah, okay," Jane said, her voice turning cynical again. "I get it. You're gonna show me that in all the other universes out there, me and Daria are best friends forever and my life is going to suck immensely if I decide not to be friends with her anymore, right?"

"Wrong," said Older Jane. She looked up. "Lessee here… ah! Here we go!"

She reached up and tapped one of the floating earths with her finger. It immediately flattened out and turned into a screen. Jane watched, mystified, as she saw an older version of herself standing in front of a large brightly colored canvas. Reporters and other onlookers were present. Banners set up in the room proclaimed "The Jane Lane Experience" was being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from August 8th to October 1st, 2023.

Older Jane looked back at Jane. "In this universe, Jane Lane never really forgave Daria Morgendorffer for what happened. In fact, she didn't even take Daria's call from the other day. When she got back to Lawndale, she told Daria that she was sorry, but she didn't think the friendship was going to work out. She threw herself into her art, managed to get a scholarship to NYU, and ultimately became one of the most celebrated living artists of the 21st century."

Jane stared at the screen for a while. "What happened to Daria?" she asked.

"Does it matter?" Older Jane asked. "She's not a part of your life there."

"I'm just curious," Jane answered, defensively.

"Well, her life didn't go down the toilet, or anything like that." Older Jane reached up and swiped a hand across the image floating in the air. The scene changed to and older Daria typing on a laptop in an office somewhere. "Daria broke things off with Tom just after they got to Bromwell. The school was a bad fit for her, and she wound up transferring to Georgetown. She got a degree in Journalism, and that led to a job with the Washington Post. She won a Pulitzer for her work, and published three books on various true crimes and political scandals."

Jane felt her heart sink. "So, our friendship didn't really affect things for us, either way then."

"Not quite," Older Jane said. "Daria doesn't have friends in this universe. After things went south with her Jane, she didn't see the point anymore. She has acquaintances, colleagues, but no actual friends. She works, she goes home, she goes to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. She's successful, but outside of her family, she doesn't really share her life with anyone."

Jane frowned. "I thought this wasn't meant to be a guilt trip to make me be friends with her again?"

"It isn't," said Older Jane. She tapped the screen and it resolved back into the hologram of the earth. "You asked what happened there, and I told you."

"Oh please," Jane snorted. "You couldn't be any more transparent if you tried. I'm sure all the worlds you plan on showing me have one or both of our lives suck somehow because we aren't friends anymore. And I'm sure everything is sunshine and rainbows in worlds where we are. You can't fool me, lady."

Older Jane frowned. "God, I'd forgotten how paranoid I was when I was your age. Fine. The self-guided tour it is."

Older Jane tapped the face of the square on her wrist. The floating earths stopped floating, shrank in size, and rearranged themselves into a grid that hovered in front of Jane. Older Jane gestured with one hand at the grid.

"Pick a world. Any world."