AN: Sorry for the later update. Ah, if you have guesses about the voices, feel free to tell me but I can't tell you if you are right or not. I can't ruin the surprise now!

CHAPTER 23

Erik was having trouble letting go of the kiss when Emmy started pulling away. That is, until she jumped back with a gasp and literally shoved him away.

Shocked and hurt at her reaction, he impulsively snapped, "What? You dared me to do it!"

Emmy was quickly scooting away until she hit the wall, staring at him with wide eyes and almost hyperventilating.

"What? Emmy, what's wrong?" Erik asked, a little panicked. Her eyes darted everywhere and she started to curl up into a ball.

"Where am I?"

Erik stopped breathing. "Christine?"

Her eyes flitted back towards his and she nodded. "Which one are you?"

"You mean am I Gerry or Erik?" he asked.

"Yes, which one?" she snapped impatiently.

"Erik! I am Erik!"

They just stared at each other for a few silent seconds.

"Amazing…" she murmured to herself, almost reaching out and touching his face but she withdrew her hand quickly, feeling as if she had insulted him by pointing out the difference between him and Gerry. He just sighed.

"Yes, I know, what life could have been….but Christine….how are you here?"

Sighing, she started to explain. "Every time you and Emmy, um…kiss, Gerry and I feel it on the other side. We supposed that it meant something, since that is what swapped you in the first place, so we tried doing it at the same time to swap you back. As you can see, that plan backfired."

Erik slapped his palms to his forehead and slowly dragged them down, groaning. "Fantastic….now it will be the blind leading the blind! I could barely do day-to-day activities in this world without Emmy helping me…"

"Gerry was rather helpless himself," she remarked when she felt a small pang of jealousy.

"Well, I'll try my best to explain how this world works before someone comes and lets us out of this room," Erik sighed. "So, first off—"

Christine cut him off. "Where are we? And why are we trapped here?"

"This is called a break room. It's a place where people go to socialize and eat when they aren't working. Those glowing machines provide food in individual wrappers, and cold, sweet drinks contained in cans. It's quite fascinating….anyway, Someone locked Emmy and I in here. We didn't see who it was….I suspect that it was the woman who is playing the role of our dear Madame Giry…she's been behaving rather oddly."

Christine nodded but looked rather unnerved. "Gerry didn't tell me much about this world….when I asked questions, he could hardly explain how things worked."

"I'm attempting to figure everything out myself, and honestly, I can't explain most of the modern devices either. Except for the writing utensils…" Erik said, holding up the pieces of the pen he had used to unlock the vending machine minutes before.

So, wishing to calm her down with some simple conversation, he started explaining how pens work. At first the randomness annoyed Christine, (but as it turns out, ball point pens are pretty fascinating to people from the 19th century.) Then, he went to the machine (as he explained that normally, one has to pay for food but he had oh so cleverly defeated the system) and let her try the astoundingly unhealthy modern snack food. The soda made her grimace, but the chocolate she could get used to.

"Can you explain how filming works?" Christine asked.

"I only wish I could. All I know is that these cameras, similar to the cameras for photographs that we know, capture movement and sound and play it back. I think they take hundreds of photographs in a single moment and when they are put together, it shows the whole scene. But that is just my theory. I believe our part of the acting and filming process has already been finished, so you may not even have to worry about that."

She leaned her head against the wall and sighed, looking at the ceiling. "Then what must I worry about?"

"Everything else, I'm afraid."

"Elaborate."

"Well, your relations to people. You have to make them believe you are still Emmy. I've had a hard time with acting like my own doppelganger, since he is my polar opposite in personality, but I believe you won't have that much trouble, since you both are naturally so amiable to others. I just have to teach you some of the modern dialect so more people don't become suspicious…." Erik said.

"What is the modern dialect, then?"

He thought a moment. "Well, people in this era hardly ever say 'yes', especially those young as yourself, so if you replace that with 'yeah' you will sound much more like Emmy. And always shorten sentences as much as possible. The language is rather simplistic here. For example, you would not say 'Pardon me, everyone, I have some things I must do, I will return in a few hours', you would say 'Hey guys, I got to go run some errands, but I'll be back later.'"

She frowned. "That sounds incredibly uneducated."

"I know. But that is how people speak now," Erik said regretfully. "So, the names of your coworkers are important to know too. The director—he'll be the older man with the half closed eyes calling you 'Emmy darling'—is Joel Schumacher…."

"Who actually wrote the story of our lives, though?" Christine asked, insanely curious.

"Well…he's dead. Long dead. But his story was far, far, different than our own lives. There is the same basic idea, a lot of the same occurrences, but um…well, I realized, it really could be worse."

"What do you mean?"

Erik was hesitant to tell her, but then figured if he had to return to his body, it was best that she knew it was not so bad in comparison. "There are many versions of our story. Most are horribly idiotic. You can't even imagine the stupidity of some of them….But they are all thought to be fictional. In the original novel….well, remember the rumors that Joseph Buquet told about what I looked like?"

"Yes…"

"They are actually true in that one. Completely skeletal, no nose, paper thin, yellow skin….And I can't say for sure, because I don't know my exact age, but the man is about twice as old as myself. And twice as mad."

Christine's eyes widened. "But…how can that be the original? Shouldn't we be the original, since we are the ones who really existed somewhere and are swapping bodies with our actors?"

"I don't know. Perhaps this happens in every film adaption. Perhaps, somewhere, there are alternate dimensions for each version…." He wondered aloud to himself, looking off into space as his mind wandered to the possibilities.

Christine took her head in her hands and shook it slowly. This was confusing her too much.

"Ah. And another thing you must consider very carefully," Erik said as he looked at her. "Is the seemingly never-ending question that Emmy and I—and probably you and Gerry—are facing every day: Which world do you want to stay in, and with who?"

"I've been trying to find the answer to that question for a while now…even before this whole ordeal."

/

Gerry attempted to give Emmy some pointers on making her way in the year 1871, but most of his tips were promptly ignored since her knowledge of the era far surpassed his. So as soon as she could hurry him along, they retreated back to the lair, since that was obviously the first thing she wanted to see.

"Everything is just like the movie…except it's all connected and doesn't have people with cameras running around…"

"Obviously…"

"Hey, don't judge my excitement, you've been here for over a week and I've been here for five minutes," Emmy retorted. Gerry just shrugged and made himself comfortable on the organ bench while she scurried around, picking up and examining everything in her sight.

"I didn't even get to look at all this stuff much when we were filming in here…I can't believe they put this much detail in it. Seriously, did anyone notice this?" she asked excitedly, holding up an extremely creepy clown doll.

He just smiled a little and shrugged, watching her continue to ransack the lair. At one point, something smashed and she looked around as if Erik might have seen her.

"Yeah, I wouldn't go around breaking his stuff if I were you," said Gerry with a yawn. She smiled sheepishly and pushed the broken pieces of what once was a figurine under a crimson drape, then loped over to him.

"Do you think Madame Giry will suspect anything if I talk to her?"

"Um..yes! And Nadir, and Raoul, and anyone else you talk to," Gerry said bluntly.

"Nadir? The Persian guy from the original book and some other versions?"

Gerry blinked. "Um…Sure. I don't know…."

"Erik discovered the internet and researched EVERYTHING about himself," Emmy explained. "He found some really weird stuff…and made me watch it. But some of it was good. Like the original with the Persian being the only sane one."

"Hm. Fascinating. Well, he pretty much hates me, I think," said Gerry dully.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Hell if I know. Come on, we have to go tell the two loons that the 'spirits' are messing with us again…"