The evening waned on as the pale moon made his slow flight across a dark plane enlightened with a million torches. The mind decries darkness. It challenges, it scorns, it devours to make light, one fire at a time, until it can make its journey.

"Yours?" the particle flickered, a message that swept by so quickly as to almost inspire disdain. It went on to accuse, "Well, I beg to differ, Miss Lutece. It was you who intruded upon my work." Rosalind only crossed her arms. Her mouth contorted into tightlipped half smile. This is almost the pretenses of joke, she thought, and it may very well be.

"Correction, my work, Mister Lutece. I discovered this particle only two years ago. Have you not heard of my achievements?" She fired back. Robert shook his head and sighed. He knew nothing of what she did. He never even knew of another professor that shared his name. What was I expecting, he thought. Oh yes, a much more sane professor on the other side not some fool mocking my work. One hand toyed with a pen as a distraction while the other formulated his reply.

"Miss Lutece, I have never heard about you or anyone else in my particle's demesne. It is known here in fact that such work is solely mine and it is true that I as well discovered my particle two years ago. I suppose it did not take much research to find that out whoever you really are." Rosalind took a deep breath. The knuckles on one hand turned white. And to think I thought this monumental event would serve to overturn the disappointment of the morning. A fool's day I have been led into she derided.

"I refuse to believe you. Why would it be then if you had discovered the particle first that I would be the one chosen to raise Columbia?" He was struck genuinely confused. My particle to raise a district, absolutely preposterous. Theoretically possible, but the funding required would be astronomical, much more so a single benefactor. One needed a government and as if he could miss such an achievement that she claimed. There, it was decided. He was being played for a fool.

"Columbia? As in the District of Columbia?" Robert railed to Rosalind's growing vexation.

"No, Columbia, as in great flying city of American ideals." Again, Robert was left thunderstruck. He mouthed a small what and buried his face into his hands. This is idiotic he muttered. This- this is pathetic. I refuse to deal with this any longer.

"The Great Columbia never happened. It was an idea of extremists and no one took up the mantle. It was preposterous, a fancy of the public. A dying fad. None of anything you are saying is true. None of it ever happened." Robert was almost screaming at the particle. Rosalind had absolutely enough.

"You are insane." Robert bit his tongue to keep from crying out in the dead of night. The other Lutece kept on mocking, "It would be easier for both of us if you simply give up, Mr. Lutece, whatever game that you are playing. I do not know how you managed to toy with my particle but this is over." By now, both Luteces were infuriated, scowling and fuming.

"No. This is not over. This particle is mine. It is you who is wrong. What you think as the timeline is wrong. Everything is wrong. Messing with the work of a scientist is wrong," he accused.

"As if you understood that latter concept," fought back Rosalind.

"What will it take to convince you to stop?"

"What will it take you?"

"Fine, proof. Give me proof to your claims. Tell me your story."

"I do not think you will be so easily dissuaded unfortunately," the particle flickered. "After I founded my particle and demonstrated its practical applications, I was proposed a business fellowship by a Zachary Comstock which provided for my complete funding and lodging in exchange for leveraging an entire city." Robert true to Rosalind's prediction was unconvinced, but he still tried albeit reluctantly to justify its merit. So she manages a floating city, he discoursed, then this Comstock heralds the new Columbia. This is her reality, but my reality is different.

"Never heard of this Comstock. I found no one after my discovery not even after months of pandering. Unlike you, I do not live in a fantastical flying city. I live in a bare minimum flat to which more often than I am comfortable with cannot pay for. It is a miracle I do have someone to help pay off my debts."

"It's almost as if I hear jealousy."

"Do not squander my good will. So if I accept your reality, which is obviously not mine, where does that leave us?"

"With two realities, despite its impossibility." Rosalind had managed to belay the rise of her frustrations and was finally able to try to give the other Lutece the benefit of the doubt. This had gone on far too long to justify a joke. She had tried to imagine once what it would have been like if she had never received Comstock's aid. Firstly, Columbia would have never happened like in this man's reality. Secondly, she knew about her own deficiencies in politics and funds mongering, she would have had troubles like the man. Yet someone pays off his debts. Would she have someone like that? "Mr. Lutece, who pays off your debts?"

"Why would that matter?" Of course he would not answer that, she mumbled. It is an idiotic query. Just because he has some similarities does not mean he had all of them. That is impossible. Yet an odd feeling urged her on, a sort of intuition. She tried it anyways. She gave a name. It was an inconsequential name. If nothing came out of it, nothing came out of it. A feeling of alarm penetrated his mind.

"How do you know that?" The dots and dashes were unusually slow. He was treading carefully, disbelieving, concerned. Rosalind was deeply perturbed by the response. The name was a fancy of a prediction. One at most would have thought to have served as an irritant to the male Lutece.

"They were my neighbors," Rosalind explained.

"As was mine." A nervous laugh escaped from him. A certain feeling of dread arose within him. She traded the first half of the address of her childhood home. He recognized it as his home not hers.

"Finish the address." Robert did and left each other more anxious than before. Rosalind added more details about her childhood to which Robert continued in frighteningly close detail.

"How do you know all this?" Robert asked again.

"Because I experienced all of it."

"How? Those are my experiences. My life."

"Is it?"

Across the line, the response served not incense but to stoke a different fire, curiosity. Robert leaned forward in his chair; a hand cupped his chin in thought. He gazed at the now silent atom. A question, he thought, then a hypothesis. Is what this woman saying real? Yet despite his want for denial, the details were too close, too real. Two realities, obvious where they diverge but nonetheless eerily similar. They existed at the same time without being the same time. The lack of a good answer aggravated him far worse than this Rosalind Lutece. She does not exist here, but I do, he concluded, and where she is, I am not. Robert dropped his hand suddenly; his azure eyes alight. He wanted to test if she truly a Lutece, and not just any Lutece.

"So I have a question: Do I exist?" Robert did not get an immediate response. Rosalind had no response. She thought instead. What kind of a question is that, she pondered, do you exist. Then who am I talking to?

Yet contraries aside, she knew what this man was proposing as if he had voiced a small idea she had formulating in the back of her mind. I had never heard of you until a scant few minutes before even though you share my surname and happened to discover this particle at about the same span of time which is highly coincidental. In a manner of speaking, she conceded, this Robert Lutece did not exist even though he did.

"I am starting to believe that two realities are not as impossible as we might have thought. Which is why you send me that question, to see if I-" Robert immediately took over the messaging and finished her thought.

"I see, Mr. Lutece. Word for word." Rosalind patiently waited on the dead particle. She waited as she thought on this Robert and more she found her anger melt away to be replaced by interest, curiosity, and somehow concern. She wanted to know more about this man who shared her life yet was not her. "This is a puzzle that needs to be solved."

"Indeed," he complied with the same interest and went on to gently scold, "I suppose we will continue the possession rights debate of the particle at a later time?"

"I suppose only with a lawyer in tow." Rosalind riposted. Robert laughed.

"Then neither of us would get the particle." She smiled in return. For the first time that night, Rosalind allowed herself to feel at ease. Her azure eyes watched and waited for an answer.

"So Robert, tell me about yourself."

"From where?"

"Anywhere."

"Then you think so too." The particle stayed aglow, an undiscussed but somehow thoroughly understood sign that the author was in thought. The torrent started, climbing, building, into a nigh perfect mirror. Hours had passed unrealized as Robert and Rosalind continued their banter and probing. For every question answered came a myriad more. Their childhoods were exact minus irrelevant minor details. Perfectly mirrored were their triumphs and failures. They had copied each other's dreams and aspirations. They had attended the same university, published the same books, the same theories. It was as if they were with each other as their life unfolded before them. They stood side by side never looking over and now they knew.

"This is much to take in, Robert."

"As it is for me." Yet they were still unsatisfied. It was not enough to know that they were out there. There were many questions still left unanswered, entire portions of life still uncompared, yet they could not continue for the sheer obstacle of fatigue.

"The night ends quickly." Rosalind idly commented, surrounded by a cacophony of messy papers and codes. She stretched her arms. Sunlight streamed in through the windows over the cracked floor.

"So it does." Robert acquiesced. "Tired?"

"I did not have a particularly good morning and the strange expedition took the hours of sleep away."

"As did I but we have time for a good sleep now." The Luteces started to collect their notes.

"But there are still so many questions." She complained. A sharp knocking at the door alerted her to her butler's presence. She briefly acknowledged him to invite him in but then shifted back to Robert's message. The butler entered, surprised yet concerned.

"Lady Lutece, have you stayed here all night? I assumed you went to bed by the time I had come back from Fink's." Rosalind ignored Gerald's pleas. The butler cleared his throat.

"Oh please, Gerald, I can take care of myself." The butler shook his head.

"Very well Lady Lutece. Am I to refute inquiries for the rest of the day? What about the workers?"

"Refute the inquiries and I will be done before the workers come." The butler did not wait to be excused to leave.

"Unless one of us perishes in our sleep, we have time. May I have assurance you will not?" Robert continued.

"If only in the will it stipulates I get the particle if you do." Rosalind quipped back. Robert smiled.

"No, Rosalind. Do have sweet dreams though." He sighed and observed his newly changed surroundings. Weak sunlight flittered in through the blinds, dancing the early hours away, raising the fires to the high skies. The night had left them and the shadows a long forgotten memory. He counted paper after paper of Morse code and deciphering. Robert stood up, stretching his tired legs and back and gave another glance to the dark particle. He walked to the blinds and opened them. The light momentarily blinded him yet as his eyes adjusted, he beheld a warm sunrise and he wondered briefly what a sunrise would look like in a flying city.

x-x

I made more words happen. Hooray! It took quite a lot rewrites to get this chapter down. The interaction between the Luteces went many ways before I was satisfied. This first draft of this was nowhere near this. The more I expounded on the idea the more it felt odd. Hopefully, I did right by this version.