Phoebe sighed and hung up, fighting against the tears of frustration that threatened to come spilling out.

None of the numbers she had memorized were right. She'd called everyone's cell phone and each time had gotten someone unexpected. Eventually she had stopped getting change and had purchased a phone card. She had been running down its minutes making more inquiries.

She had called Mike's parents' house. She'd managed to get through to his father, who didn't recognize Phoebe and wouldn't tell her where Mike was, only that he was currently out of the country.

Phoebe picked up the phone and dialed directory assistance. She waited, spoke in response to the prompts. "Westchester. Chandler Bing, B-I-N-G."

A moment later a woman responded. "I find no listing for Chandler Bing in Westchester."

"Can... can you search all of New York?"

"Statewide?" The woman sounded dubious. Still, Phoebe heard typing. "No listing for a Chandler Bing anywhere in New York."

"Uh, okay." Where'd Chandler go? "Manhattan, Joey Tribbiani, two b's, one n."

"I'm sorry, I have no listing for a Joey Tribbiani."

Of course not, he was in California. She hoped. "Manhattan, Ross Geller, G-E-L-L-E-R."

"One moment." And a click, followed by a recorded voice. "The number is..."

Phoebe's eyes widened as she realized she had no pen, nothing to write with. She muttered the numbers over and over and hung up. Quickly she dialed it, hoping, hoping.

It rang once, twice, and then a familiar voice said, "Hello?"

"Ross!" Phoebe sagged in relief. "Ross, this is Phoebe."

Silence for a moment. "Do... do I know you?"

"Oh Ross..." Phoebe clutched the phone desperately. "It's me. Phoebe. Please, you know me."

"I, I'm sorry miss, I don't... I've never met anyone named Phoebe."

"Yes you have, it's me, it's..." Phoebe cut herself off. This was getting nowhere. "Look, can we meet? Talk, face to face? I really really need to see you."

Now Ross sounded suspicious. "Why?"

"Nothing bad will happen, I promise. Can we meet at Central Perk?"

"Central Park?"

"Perk. You know, the coffee house."

"Oh yeah, I know the place." Ross paused slightly. "What is this about? Who are you?"

So many answers flashed through her head. I'm the maid of honor at your upcoming wedding. I'm the one you poured your heart out to when you first found out about Carol. I'm the one that hugged you when you thought Rachel was leaving forever. I'm the one that sang songs to you and about you when you needed to hear them the most and I need you now, listening to me now, please Ross, please...

Phoebe drew a shaky breath. "I'll explain when we meet. It will only take a few minutes." She couldn't think of a way to convince him, other than to beg with one quiet word. "Please."

The silence dragged on as Phoebe held on to the phone for dear life.

Finally, Ross spoke again. "All right. When?"

Phoebe leaned against the phone and breathed a silent thanks.

---

Central Perk looked exactly the same. Phoebe eyed the surroundings, spotted Gunther behind the counter. He glanced at her but showed no recognition. Phoebe walked up and ordered a latte. While it was being made she went into the bathroom.

She'd been almost dreading this moment, wondering what kind of horrible creature she'd turned into. But having overplayed her worst fears, what she saw in the reflection was mild by comparison. It was still her face, just a little thinner, and little more worn. Her hair was only shoulder-length and a little stringy, and she was wearing no makeup or jewelry.

Phoebe once again lamented the loss of her own purse, stuffed away who knew where. She cleaned herself as best she could, and found a forgotten hairpin which she used to bind up her hair. The result wasn't necessarily attractive but it was presentable. So she hoped.

She left and found two things waiting for her: the latte, and Ross. The former was resting on the counter, the latter was sitting at one of the front tables. Phoebe quickly paid Gunther while studying Ross.

He looked no different. He was dressed as if for class - tie, brown jacket, slacks. He was sipping a mug of coffee as he looked at the front door, and Phoebe could tell he was nervous.

Slowly Phoebe approached, until he noticed her and looked her over. She saw his nervousness increase, which filled her with a bit of despair. He truly didn't recognize her, and was frightened by her.

Still, it was easy to smile, because even after everything she was pleased to see him. "Hi Ross."

"Hello. Phoebe, I presume?"

"Yup." Phoebe sat at the table. "So, how have you been?"

"Look, lady." Ross was getting irritated. "You called me here for some reason. As far as I can tell, it was just to get me out of my apartment so your friends could rob it. Well, the joke's on them. One of my neighbors is watching it right now, and he'll call the police the moment he sees anyone come near."

"Oh, it's nothing like that." Phoebe took a sip of her coffee.

"Better not be." Ross studied her again. "But you have about ten seconds to start telling me what it is about or I'm leaving."

Phoebe nodded. "Everything's wrong. I'm not supposed to be like this, I'm supposed to be married and pregnant. All the phone numbers have changed - yours, Monica's, Rachel's, Joey's. They don't live in Westchester, you don't live in Ugly Naked Guy's apartment. I don't know how it all got messed up, but you have to help me make it right."

Ross stared at her for a minute. Then he stood up. "Goodbye."

"Wait!" Phoebe reached out to grab his arm. "You had a cat when you and Monica were kids. Fluffy Meowington, that's what you called him. And you had a dog Chichi which your parents told you had gone to live on a farm when he died. You, you came up with the idea for Jurassic Park after getting bitten by a mosquito way before the movie came out. Your favorite band in high school was Frankie Goes to Hollywood. You and Chandler started a band in college. Your best song was Emotional..." Phoebe ground to a halt. Oh God, what was it? "Emotional... Backpack?"

Ross looked at her strangely. "Knapsack."

"Yes!" Phoebe beamed. "That was it!"

"How... how do you know these things about me?"

"Because I know you, I know everything about you. I know how much you love paleontology. I know how important your family and friends are to you. I know how much you love your son and daughter."

"Daughter?" Ross shook his head. "I don't have a daughter."

"Oh." Phoebe's smile dimmed. "But you're supposed to. That's what's changed, and we need to unchange it."

Ross looked down at her hand, still grasping his arm. "Is it supposed to be our daughter?"

"Oh no, don't be silly." Phoebe hastily retracted her arm. "It's supposed to be your daughter with Rachel."

"Rachel?"

"Yes. Rachel Green."

"Rachel Green!" Ross sat back down heavily. "I have a daughter with Rachel Green?"

"Yes, see? We have to make that real again."

"How can it be real? I haven't seen Rachel since... gosh, since college."

"Really?" Phoebe frowned slightly. "Didn't you meet her again the day she ran out on her wedding?"

"She ran out on her wedding?" Ross looked very surprised. "When was this?"

"Oh, ten, eleven years ago. She ran to Monica's apartment, but she wasn't there, she was here, in Central Perk, and Mr. Treeger told her she'd probably be here, so she came in and found her here, and you were here too."

Ross seemed to have a little trouble following that. "But... we stopped coming here when Monica moved out of Nana's apartment."

"Moved out?" Phoebe's mouth dropped open. "Why'd she move out?"

"Well..." Ross seemed uncertain how much to say. "She, she had a roommate, Meghan, that she didn't get along with. Eventually Meghan left in a huff, and told the building owners that Monica was living there as part of an illegal sublet. So they evicted her."

Phoebe felt as if the world had slapped her on the back of the head, hard. That day, that moment, looking at the flyer, Roommate Wanted, Must Be Neat. Hesitating, then grabbing the flyer. Leaving the flyer behind. Doing both at once.

"So..." Phoebe said out loud, "...if Monica wasn't here, which was the last place Rachel knew to look for her, then they never met again. So you two never met again, either, and never fell in love."

"Fell in love?"

Phoebe focused on Ross again, seeing in him rationality warring strongly with longing and hope. Phoebe reached over, squeezed his hand. "Look. Let me talk to you for a few minutes. Let me tell you who I am, and how we met, and how it was all supposed to be. All right?"

Ross peered at her. Phoebe looked right back, pouring all her love and friendship into him, trying to make him feel what she felt, to rekindle that which should never have been lost inside him.

"I, I don't know how you know these things about me," Ross said at last. "I don't like it. You're trying to use me for me something. You're setting me up for some kind of scam, aren't you? I don't have any money, I'm not very rich. I work at a museum and they don't pay me very well. There's nothing in the museum worth stealing unless you're a paleontologist. So whatever it is you want from me, you're not getting it."

Phoebe watched him, saw the rational front he was putting on. She'd often teased him about this but had secretly admired him for his ability to analyze and understand. Right now, though, that was getting in the way. Rationally, what she was saying was illogical, therefore she had to be saying it in an effort to extract something from him.

And, unfortunately, that wasn't too far from the truth. Phoebe needed someone to believe her and help her. But she didn't have the nefarious goals Ross was attributing to her. She needed some way to convince him of that.

"Your daughter, Emma, is two years old," she found herself saying. "She runs around with such energy, such joy. She loves to play and laugh, and she makes everyone happy just by being near her, especially her parents. As much as anything, Ross, what I want from you is to see you bring Emma to life."

Ross swallowed. "I, I'm not saying I believe any of this. But... but go ahead. Tell me. I'll listen."

Phoebe smiled widely. "Thank you." She took a sip of her latte to organize her thoughts. "Okay, first of all forget this Meghan chick. I'm the one that moved in with Monica. I got to know her, and you, and Chandler and Kip who lived across the hall. Then Kip moved out and Joey moved in, and I moved out and Rachel moved in. Joey, you don't know him, he's a wonderful man. And for a long time, it was us, the six of us, you and me and Joey and Monica and Chandler and Rachel. About a year after Rachel moved in, Chandler let it slip that you were in love with her, and she..."

---

Phoebe drank down the glass of water Gunther had brought her. She'd talked nearly non-stop for an hour. Ross had asked a few questions but had mostly sat there with a stunned expression very similar to the one he was wearing now.

Which, Phoebe supposed, he had every right to do. She patiently waited him out.

"That's... that's quite a story," he finally said.

"It's not a story, silly." Phoebe offered him a reassuring smile. "It's all true."

"But... but it's not. Monica did move out. She lives with our parents and works as a chef at Denny's. Chandler... Chandler got promoted and moved to Tulsa."

"Tulsa!" Phoebe slapped the table. "I forgot about that. No wonder he didn't have a number in New York."

"Uh, yeah. Either way, he never dated Monica."

"Well, of course not, because you guys never went to London."

"For, for my wedding. My second of three weddings."

"Well, yeah, but don't forget you were about to have your fourth and last wedding." Phoebe grinned. "So, what's happened to you in the past fifteen years?"

"Me, well..." Ross shrugged. "I never got fired from the museum, I can't imagine... becoming as angry as you said."

Phoebe shrugged. "Rachel always inspired your passions, both good and bad."

"Er, yeah." He shifted uncomfortably. "I've dated a few women, I almost got married to one."

"Julie?"

"Yeah, Julie. But, but we were too much alike, we both grew too bored too quickly, and when she broke it off, I couldn't... I couldn't really say I was heartbroken." Ross looked down at the table.

Phoebe studied him a moment. "So you've been living a quiet life, where you go to work every day and do the same things over and over, and you don't have many friends but that doesn't really bother you because you've gotten used to being alone, and other than your son you don't really look forward to seeing anyone or doing anything."

Ross looked up at her with such a look of pain. Phoebe immediately reached out and hugged him. He reacted stiffly, uncomfortably, and Phoebe soon released him. "It's all right. We'll make it better."

"How?" Ross's voice was strained. "How can you... possibly change anything?"

"I changed it once, I can do it again," she said with confidence she didn't quite feel.

"How'd you do it the first time?"

"Um... I don't know," she admitted. "We can try the incense again."

The rationality immediately surged to the forefront, clouding Ross's eyes with suspicion. "Let me guess: especially rare and expensive incense?"

"Oh yeah. I might have to use an entire five dollar bill."

"Oh? Oh."

Phoebe grinned. "But I'd like a quiet place to do it in. Do you trust me enough to let me into your apartment?"

Ross's eyes remained clouded. "Why don't we use your apartment?"

Because I have no idea where I live. Phoebe, however, decided to try a different approach. "Do you trust me enough to come to my apartment?"

"Uh..." Ross considered that. "All right, you can come to my apartment. But you should be warned, I have-"

"Unagi, I know." Phoebe smiled and patted his cheek. "I won't hurt you, I promise."

Ross didn't seem to know how to respond to that, so he simply stood up. Phoebe stood up as well and waited, and after a moment Ross led them out of the coffee house.

---

"So... anything?"

Phoebe's eyes fluttered open. No matter what had changed in the past, Ross was still Ross. Which meant he still tended towards impatience.

Still, he had every right to be. She sat up from where she'd been lying on the couch. The incense sticks had burned all the way down, she saw, and she blew out a sigh of frustration. "Nothing. I can go back to that moment, I can live in it, but in my head it's only the one way, where I took the number and called Monica. I can't get the other image there, and I don't know... I don't know where it came from in the first place."

"Hmm." The look of suspicion was back on Ross's face. "So, as far as you can tell, there's no way to go back and change things."

"Well of course that's not true." Phoebe frowned at him. "Ross, please, just try to pretend that everything I'm saying is true. You're the smart guy, I need you to tell me why this isn't working rather than laughing at me for being so stupid."

He seemed abashed. "I didn't, didn't call you stupid."

"I know." Phoebe calmed herself, let the frustration wash away. "You never did, you were always very respectful of me even when you disagreed with the things I believed in. I think that's what I loved about you, how accepting you could be. It was a surprise to me to see people who could be... tolerant. So please, be that Ross. Indulge me on this and try to help me figure out what's going wrong."

Ross studied her a moment longer. Then he sighed and clasped his hands together, fingers pointed at his chin. "Well, you know, current theory is that time travel is impossible."

"I didn't travel in time, I just... changed something."

"No, that's what I'm saying, it's impossible to change the past." Ross tapped his chin. "However, there are theories that there are multiple universes coexisting with our own, and that some of them branch off from ours at a certain point. They start with the same initial parameters, but go off in different directions. What might have happened is not that you went back and changed anything, but you went back to a moment where another universe branched off, and went down the other path."

"Oh." Phoebe found it hard to breathe. "So, so how come I can't go back and pick the right path?"

"Well... maybe, maybe the other Phoebe needs to be there, too. Maybe at the same time you were reliving your past, the other Phoebe was reliving hers, and the two of you met there and traded places. You can't go back now because she's not there at the same time."

The alleyway, confronted by two young men with knives. A woman in her mid-thirties still resorting to mugging for money, and having to fight off other people just to keep what she had. That might certainly have led to a moment of regret, a desperate deep wish that things had gone differently. Phoebe found her eyes watering with sympathy for the anguish her other self might have been going through.

Suddenly her mouth went dry. "Then that means that this Phoebe, the one that lived in this world..."

"...is currently occupying your body in your universe," Ross confirmed.

"Oh my God." Phoebe jumped to her feet, began pacing. "I'm pregnant, she, she's pregnant. She, oh God, she won't hurt the baby. She can't hurt they baby." She looked up at Ross. "Can she?"

"I don't know. I don't know... her... in this universe."

Phoebe collapsed into a sitting position on the couch. "Oh God. So I have to, I have to find a way to contact her, get her to go back to the moment with me."

Ross nodded. "Do you need a different kind of incense for that?"

Phoebe eyed the used sticks. Her mind ran through the list, but there was no leaving-this-universe combination that she was aware of. She shook her head. "I don't know. I've never done anything like this."

"How'd you do it before?" Ross looked at her curiously. "How'd you manage to... put yourself back in time?"

"Feeling," Phoebe replied instantly. "My love for Mike, and for you guys. I wanted a special name for my baby, and I drew strength from him and my memory of all of you, and that made the journey easy."

"So," Ross said reasonably, "you should be able to repeat the process here."

Phoebe sighed. "I was with Mike, I felt his strength, and the strength of all of you. I don't feel it here."

She paused, an idea beginning to form. "But... if I could feel it again..." Phoebe jumped to her feet. "A reunion! Bring them all back together! Mike, Joey, Monica, everyone. If, if I can see you guys, feel all of you with me, then I can, I could do it, I could do anything!"

Phoebe beamed at Ross. He was watching her with a thoughtful frown. "I, I could get Monica pretty easily, and I might even persuade Chandler to come visit, I haven't seen him in a couple of years. I have no idea where Rachel is, and I don't know Joey or Mike at all."

"I can track Joey and Mike down. And your parents are friends with Rachel's parents, right? You can find her if you try. Then they'll all be here!" Phoebe bounced on her feet a couple of times. "We can do it, we can bring them here, it will work!"

Ross smiled slightly, then unclasped his hands as a serious expression settled on his face. "Okay, I've proceeded on the assumption that everything you've said is true. Now, however, I have to go back to being Rational Ross. And Rational Ross says this is all ludicrous. There's no way you're a Phoebe from another universe. And I will embarrass myself tremendously if... if I invite my friends, family, and complete strangers here to visit me to cater to the whims of a nice but slightly unbalanced woman I've never met before."

Phoebe felt the words like blows. "I, I don't know that I like Rational Ross too much."

"He's saved me from doing stupid things a number of times in the past," Ross said evenly.

"Oh?" Phoebe cocked her head. "Did Rational Ross tell you to dress up in a tuxedo to take Rachel to the prom when her boyfriend was late picking her up?"

Ross paled. "How, how did you..."

"Ask Rational Ross how I knew." Phoebe leaned in towards him. "Ask him how I know about the comics you drew about Science Boy that you kept in a backpack that said Geology Rocks. Ask him how I know that at Geller Bowl Six, Monica broke your nose. Ask him how I know that you're deathly afraid of spiders. Ask him how I know about the time you ended up on a fishing boat to Nova Scotia with Gandalf. Ask him how I know about this." She banged her fists together twice. "Ask him how-"

"Stop it!" Ross closed his eyes and turned his head.

Phoebe straightened and folded her arms across her chest, waiting.

After a minute, he opened his eyes and looked back up at her. "You could have hired a detective agency, I suppose with enough effort you could have found out all that stuff about me. Or maybe Monica put you up to this, maybe this is all some sort of twisted plot of hers. Or maybe you can just read minds, that's easier to believe than this universe-switching thing."

Phoebe nodded. "I suppose all those things are possible. But what does your heart tell you? Does it think I'm not telling the truth?"

"That, that's a cop-out. Trying to tell me to be deliberately irrational."

Phoebe sighed and sank back into the couch. "Then all I can say is what I said before. That I'm telling the truth and I need your help, please."

Ross looked at her, an expression of regret on his face. "Let, let me think about it."

The more he thought, the less likely he was to help her. But Phoebe also knew that to press the matter would be wrong. She nodded reluctantly. "I'll call you." Phoebe stood, walked over to Ross, put her hand on his arm. "Thank you for listening to me." She smiled and turned away.

Phoebe got as far as the door before he called out, "Where are you going?"

She stopped but didn't face him. "I, uh, know a few places." The library, the park.

"But if you're not from this universe, you don't know where your apartment is. Or even if you have one."

"Yeah. I'm sorry I lied when I asked if you'd come back to my apartment. I was, I was kind of bluffing you on that."

"Do you want to stay here? I can set up the couch, it's pretty comfortable."

"No." She turned to face him. "I don't want to give Rational Ross any ammunition. He might think I'm making up this story just to find a way to leech off of you."

He winced. "Okay, I guess I deserved that. But if that's all that's holding you back, then please stay. I'd feel much better knowing you were here and safe rather than out there sleeping on a bench."

Phoebe studied him, then smiled. It was the same Ross, the one she loved, no matter what world this was. "Thank you very much."

Ross smiled in return, and Phoebe felt hope arise.

---

(to be continued)