Chapter 7: It's a Date

It was times like these that made Ronnie Anne long for the luxury of a big family. She knew of the disadvantages, as Lincoln would often complain to her about the constant meddling, the lack of privacy, and the precious little attention he got from his parents in times of need.

But right now, Ronnie Anne was yearning for the guidance of someone as smart as Lisa, as articulate as Lucy, or as witty as Luan. Tomorrow, Lincoln would be expecting to hear every detail from her journey through the multiverse, and she had to come up with a way to retell it without making herself sound completely insane.

Shapeshifting aliens? Monster hunting? He's going to think I'm a lunatic!

As it was, the only two people Ronnie Anne could seek out for help were Bobby (who was a bit of a dope) and her mother (who'd probably just lecture her for "playing with toys" when she should be studying). All she could do at this point was go to sleep and reassure herself that she'd come up with something overnight.

Fortunately, she did have someone who could help her with that. After setting the goggles down on her nightstand, she reached under her bedsheets and retrieved a longtime friend of hers - an amber-furred stuffed monkey.

"Good night, Ki-Ki," she whispered, wrapping her arms around the doll and squeezing it tight against her chest. She'd never admit it to anyone, but the feeling of Ki-Ki's soft, plush body next to hers had a soothing effect on her psyche. As long as he was nestled in her arms, she could convince herself that everything was going to be okay, regardless of the circumstances. Before long, all her anxiety vanished and she drifted off into slumber.


Her anxiety, unfortunately, was still waiting for her eight hours later when she woke up. As soon as she stepped out of bed, it snuck up on her and crept back into her mind, stinging her with the chilling realization that she still had barely a clue how she was going to describe last night's session to Lincoln.

On the positive side, her nervousness made for an effective antidote to her usual morning grogginess, and she breezed through her morning routine in half the time it usually took her. Once she got downstairs for breakfast, her mother marveled at the fact that she was already dressed and packed without having to be called even once. Ronnie Anne muttered some comment about going to bed early, wolfed down her scrambled eggs and toast and hopped into the car, where Bobby was waiting for her in the driver's seat.

"Hey, Nie-Nie, there's something I've been meaning to ask you about," he said as he pulled out of the driveway. "What's with that new gadget I see you using nowadays?"

Ronnie Anne gulped. As if the day wasn't anxious enough already, now she had to explain the multiverse goggles to Bobby. She only barely understood how they worked herself, and while Bobby was a pretty easygoing dude, she wasn't sure how he'd feel about her meddling with other dimensions.

"Um... just something I borrowed from the Louds," she said. "You know Lori's little sister, Lisa?"

"The smart one?"

"Yeah, her. She gave me this pair of goggles that... uh..."

Knowing that Bobby would get suspicious if she hesitated for too long, Ronnie Anne just spat out the first thing that came to her head.

"...play movies! They play movies."

Technically, it wasn't a total lie; at times, she did feel like she was watching a movie while the goggles were in use.

"Oh, neat!" said Bobby. "Maybe one of these days you can let me try 'em."

"Maybe," she said, squirming in her car seat and fiddling with her seat belt. "They're not mine, though. You'd have to ask Lisa."

Bobby chuckled. "Well, all right, then. Next time I'm over at the Louds', I'll ask."

And those were the last words spoken between them for the remainder of the car ride. Rather than making conversation, Ronnie Anne opted to stare out the window, waiting for the schoolyard to come into view - which it did, after about fifteen minutes. By the entrance, she spied a certain ashen-haired boy giving her a wave.

Ironically, the sight of Lincoln waving to her in the schoolyard tempered her anxiety instead of exacerbating it. Though she cared an awful lot what he thought of her, in-person he was just about the least intimidating person she could imagine. Those wide, cutesy eyes, that goofy smile, that physique that looked like it'd struggle to resist a gentle breeze... simply put, that "Lame-O" moniker she bestowed upon him didn't just come out of nowhere.

By the time the two of them convened for lunch, she was still a little apprehensive, but far more relaxed than she had been that morning. She took out the goggles, shoved them across the table towards Lincoln, and promptly started the conversation.

"You're not gonna believe what happened in my time last night. You should probably be sitting down for this."

Lincoln eyed her confusedly. "I am sitting down."

"It's a figure of speech, Lame-O," Ronnie Anne said with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, Steven met me on the beach and took me over to his house. It was, like, way out at the end of the beach, at least a mile away from the city."

That first detail elicited a pair of raised eyebrows from Lincoln. "Okay, that's a little weird."

"It gets weirder. Behind his house, he had this huge statue of a four-armed lady with two faces."

Lincoln's eyes started to bulge out of their sockets, and his jaw crept open. "I'm afraid to ask, but was that the weird part?"

"Not even close. You remember, Pearl, right? Well, when I came in, she was in the kitchen making me some tea, and there were two other women with her. A tall, black one named Garnet, and a short, chubby one named Amethyst."

"...huh. So which one of them was Steven's mom?"

"None of them. They're..."

Ronnie Anne paused, trying to come up with a way to explain their unique relationship to Steven. "...I guess you could call them his guardians. They're training him to be a member of this team called the Crystal Gems."

"The Crystal Gems, huh?" asked Lincoln, taking a sip of his milk - at the worst possible moment to do so, in hindsight.

"Yeah. They're this team of monster hunting aliens, and they-"

*PHHHHHBBBBBT*

Lincoln, bewildered by this unforseen turn of events, spat a mouthful of milk all over the table. Ronnie Anne thanked her lucky stars that she was sitting across from him, or else she would've been doused.

"What?!" he cried, too stunned to bother cleaning up after himself. "Aliens?! Wha... where did this come from?!"

The tension in Ronnie Anne's gut started to heighten again. Apparently, her warning did little to temper the incredulity of his response. She sat up, took a deep breath, locked eyes with the bemused boy, and prepared to tackle what would be the hardest task of the day: convincing Lincoln that she wasn't crazy.

She spent the rest of the lunch period relaying every detail of her meeting with the Crystal Gems, from Amethyst's shapeshifting demonstration, to the Gems' explanation of Steven's complicated family situation, to Steven's incredible demonstration of strength.

"...and then I left after getting his number," she concluded. "I swear I'm not making any of this up!"

"Believe me, I don't think you're lying," said Lincoln, as he began to mop up his mess with a napkin. "I mean, I couldn't make that stuff up if I tried. But I thought the only thing different about this timeline was that you moved to a different city! How did aliens come into the picture?!"

"You're asking the wrong girl, Lame-O," Ronnie Anne said, throwing up her hands. "Maybe my moving to Beach City triggered something else. I don't know. You'll have to ask Lisa."

"I guess I will," muttered Lincoln, as he dropped the goggles into his backpack. "You know, I almost want to give you another turn with these. Your side of the timeline sounds way more interesting than mine."

Ronnie Anne shook her head vigorously, causing her ponytail to swing back and forth like a pendulum. "No way, José. I need a day to recover after what I saw. It's your turn."

With that, the two of them rose from the table and went to recycle their trays, just moments before the bell rang. "Besides, who knows? Maybe your side turns out to be just as insane as mine."

Lincoln gave off a shudder of anxiety, or possibly anticipation. He honestly hadn't considered that, but now that Ronnie Anne brought it up, he couldn't stop thinking about it. What if Connie turned out to be an alien, too? Or a cyborg? Or an alien cyborg?

The possibilities dominated his thoughts for the rest of the day. He played back every one of his encounters with Connie in his head, looking for any signs of an anomaly - a hint that, maybe, she wasn't fully human. As far as he could tell, she was a pretty normal, albeit painfully bashful, pre-teen girl.

But that only made him even more anxious to strap the goggles on. Maybe this would be the session that revealed some unforseen plot twist. After all, he and Ronnie Anne were technically looking at the same universe, from two different perspectives. If aliens arrived on earth in her timelines, they must have arrived in his, too. The only question was when, if ever, he'd encounter them.

By the time Lori pulled into the driveway, the suspense had elevated to near-torturous levels. He jumped out of the car, bolted through the front door, gave a hasty greeting to his sisters lounging in the living room, bounded up the stairs, dove into his room, leaped onto his bed and strapped the goggles on.


3:00 p.m.

October 6

Royal Woods Academy Study Hall

Over the course of the past few weeks, Lincoln and Connie had -


Lincoln took off the goggles.

Wait a second. Did I just leap forward three weeks? How does that work?

Lincoln knew that if he didn't get that question answered, it'd be pestering him throughout the entire session. As such, he decided to seek an answer from Lisa, who he was planning on seeing later that day anyway.

He walked out of his room, rapped on Lisa and Lily's door, and was greeted with a nasally, "Come in." He opened the door to see Lisa crouched over the table, scribbling something down into her notebook.

"Oh, sorry, is this a bad time?" asked Lincoln.

"Not at all," said Lisa, as she continued to write. "I'm just jotting down the results of an experiment I did earlier today. I can spare a moment or two to assist you."

Lincoln took a couple of steps inside, closing the door behind him as he did. "You know those goggles you lent me? The ones that let you see into an alternate timeline?"

"What about them?"

"Well, see, I tried using them today, and it took me to a point in the timeline three weeks later than the last time I used them. Why's that?"

Lisa paused for a moment, twiddling her pencil in her hand. "Well, Lincoln, as the goggles were not my invention, I can't tell you for certain how they work," she said. "But I did come up with a hypothesis after using it for a few hours. I hypothesize that the device automatically homes in on pivotal moments in your alternate self's life, based on his body language, stimulation of the amygdala, and other factors. That would prevent you from being forced to watch yourself, say, brush your teeth or use the lavatory."

Lincoln rubbed his chin, mulling over Lisa's response. Aside from the fact that he had no idea what an "amygdala" was, he understood the gist of her explanation. "I guess that'd make sense."

"It would," said Lisa. "Is that all you wanted to ask me about?"

"Sorry, no," said Lincoln. "There's another thing. See, Ronnie Anne told me about her timeline today, and it's... pretty out there."

For the first time since Lincoln entered the room, Lisa put her pencil down. "Define 'out there'," she said, taking on a tone of intrigue.

"Well, she said that she met this team of monster hunters called the Crystal Gems. And they're, like, space aliens who can shapeshift, and also I guess they can breed with humans because she met this one kid who's half-alien, and-"

Lincoln paused in the middle of his rambling once he noticed that Lisa still hadn't bothered to turn her head. Her face was completely obscured, and for all he knew she was concealing a look of either abject horror or bewildered amusement.

"I-I don't sound crazy, do I?" he asked. "I swear, this was what Ronnie Anne told me."

Lisa hopped off her stool and turned to face Lincoln; to his relief, aside from a slightly heightened pair of eyebrows, her face had maintained its default expression of unenthused contemplation. "No, Lincoln, I don't doubt the veracity of Ronnie Anne's story, or of your clumsy attempt to relay it to me. Infinite timelines bear infinite possibilities, including one in which we were visited by extraterrestrials. Though I didn't expect such a monumental difference to exist in a timeline that, according to my cursory glance, appeared to be near-identical to ours."

Lincoln let out a light, wispy sigh, taking solace in the reassurance that neither he nor his quasi-girlfriend were losing their sanity. But just after he expelled that knot of tension from his gut, another one sprouted in its place.

Connie.

Lincoln had seen a glimpse of the timid Indian girl when he began to use the goggles a moment ago. If Lisa's hypothesis regarding the goggles' functioning was correct, then it was no coincidence that every single one of his sessions was centered around Connie. For the bulk of the school year, she was going to dominate Alt-Lincoln's world, and there was no getting around the fact that, sooner or later, he'd have to tell Ronnie Anne about her.

"Now, is that all you wanted to see me about?" asked Lisa, snapping him out of his troubled thought process.

"N-no," muttered Lincoln. "There... there's one more thing. It's... um..."

It occurred to Lincoln that he was fully poised to ask his preschool-aged little sister for relationship advice. He couldn't have looked sillier and more desperate if he tried.

"Well?" asked Lisa, a hint of annoyance creeping into her voice.

"I-it's about Ronnie Anne," Lincoln finally spat out. As foolish as he felt, he had to accept the fact that Lisa was the only one who understood the whole multiverse deal, and was thus the only one who could help him. "See, in the alternate universe, me and her never meet, and-"

"She and I," Lisa corrected.

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I meet this other girl, named Connie, and it looks like I - that is, the other me is going to start dating her soon."

Lisa gazed up at her older brother with a flat expression on her face. "I fail to see what the problem is."

Lincoln groaned. It was easy to forget that Lisa, in spite of her prodigious intellect, had a) a measly four years of experience on the planet, and b) a limited social life. Of course she wouldn't see what the problem was; she knew as much about dating as Leni did about quantum physics.

"Lisa, every day this week, me and Ronnie - I mean, Ronnie Anne and I have been meeting at lunch to talk about our alternate selves. I'll have to tell her eventually that Connie's dating the other me. What if she gets jealous?"

"That would be entirely unreasonable," said Lisa, "given the fact that you have no control over the actions of your alternate self."

"Yeah, I know," said Lincoln, scratching the back of his head. "But what if she gets angry anyway? How am I supposed to deal with that?"

Lincoln could see Lisa's eyes narrowing behind her glasses. "Well, Lincoln, as you know, I'm not exactly what you'd call a casanova - or whatever the female equivalent of a casanova is. But if I were in your proverbial shoes, I would calmly explain to her why her anger is illogical."

Lincoln gulped. "Yeah, I don't know if that'd work with her," he said.

"Why not?" asked Lisa. "Assuming she's a rational human being, it should."

"But what if she doesn't-"

"'But what if' this, 'but what if' that!" snapped Lisa. "Lincoln, I'm genuinely curious; when you envision interactions with your significant other, why does your mind automatically gravitate towards the worst possible scenario? Is she really that much of a monster to you?"

Suddenly, Lincoln's eyes burst open with clarity. Monster. That one word triggered a flashback to his ill-fated class project with Ronnie Anne, that had both of them assigned to take care of an egg for a few days. Lincoln, fearing that Ronnie Anne would be too rough with the egg, kept it away from her for the entire school day, and when he finally did let her take it home with her, he plotted to swap it out with a rubber decoy. When Ronnie Anne found out, she was, understandably, more than a little upset.

"So, that's what you think of me? That I'm such a monster that I can't be left alone with an egg?!"

It occurred to Lincoln that she would likely be just as hurt if she heard what he said about her to Lisa. Had he learned nothing from that incident? Why was he still so cowed by a girl who only wanted him to see her as a friend he could trust?

"N-no. No she's not," he uttered, hanging his head in shame.

"Then stop treating her like one," Lisa said sharply. "And if, by chance, she does react with even more hostility, then I don't think you should be tolerating that kind of behavior from her. Grow a spine, for Pete's sake."

Lincoln sighed. There was little doubt that Ronnie Anne was the one who wore the pants in their relationship. It made sense; after all, she was a school bully who made her classmates fear for their lives during every game of dodgeball, while he was a scrawny nerd who was almost always picked last for said games, if at all. Nevertheless, if he wanted their relationship to be a healthy one, he'd have to start sticking up for himself.

"You're right," he admitted.

"As usual," said Lisa. "Now is that the last thing you wanted to speak to me about?"

"Yes."

Lisa pointed towards the door. "In that case, you're excused."

Though he sensed that Lisa's patience was practically nil at this point, Lincoln still felt the need to end their encounter on a positive note.

"Thanks, by the way," he said, giving her a faint smile. "I feel a lot better."

"You're welcome. Now shoo."

Lincoln complied, turning around and ambling back to his room. With his mind cleared and his lingering doubts resolved, he was fully prepared to take whatever the multiverse could throw at him.


3:00 p.m.

October 6

Royal Woods Academy Study Hall

Over the course of the past few weeks, Lincoln and Connie had gotten into a regular routine of meeting in the study hall after school to work on homework (and, time permitting, gush over Dogcopter). The sessions were partially an excuse to spend more time with Connie, though he did appreciate her help when it came to explaining complex concepts. At the moment, Connie was helping Lincoln out with the following algebra problem:

g / 12 = 8 x 6

"The first part's easy enough," said Lincoln. "Just multiply both sides by twelve, right?"

"Mm-hmm," said Connie.

"So now I know that g equals 48 times 12. But..."

A hint of frustration seeped into Lincoln's tone. "...but where do I go from here?! It's not like I've memorized my times tables for 48."

"You don't have to!" said Connie. "Just break up the problem into manageable parts. Here, I'll show you."

She took out her pencil and started marking up Lincoln's assignment sheet.

"Let's take that 48 and cut it down to size," she said. "It'll be a lot easier if you think of it as four twelves."

g = 12 x 48

12 x 48 = 12 x (12 + 12 + 12 + 12)

"Now, what's twelve times twelve?"

"144," said Lincoln, without even having to think about it.

"Exactly right. So, now, you can just use the distributive property to figure out the rest."

Lincoln didn't want Connie to feel like she was holding his hand (figuratively speaking), so he took the paper away from her, snatched up his pencil and finished it on his own, like so:

12 x (12 + 12 + 12 + 12)

144 + 144 + 144 + 144

288 + 288

g = 576

"Done!" cried Lincoln. "Gosh, thanks, Connie! I can't believe it never occurred to me that I could just... well... do that. Where'd you learn that trick?"

"Well, I wouldn't really call it a 'trick'," said Connie, scratching the back of her neck. "It's just easier to work with a lot of small numbers than one big one. Once you know that, a lot of these problems are pretty simple."

Lincoln brought a hand to his chin, gazing at the freshly-solved problem on his paper while he mulled over that statement. Connie hadn't just helped him with that particular problem; she had given him a pearl of invaluable wisdom, one that would doubtlessly make his algebra class a lot less headache-inducing.

"Connie, I don't know what to say," he said. "You...you're..."

He looked up into Connie's bespectacled eyes, with a look of wonderment in his own. "...you're so smart."

Connie shrunk away from Lincoln, as her gaze darted off to the side. "Y-you think so?"

"How could I not?" asked Lincoln. "This problem was giving me a migraine, and you solved it like that. I can't thank you enough."

"T-thank you," squeaked Connie, as she continued to avert his gaze.

Lincoln muttered a, "You're welcome," and went back to his algebra homework, breezing through it with considerable ease now that he knew what to do. But as helpful as Connie's advice was, there was another task he had promised himself to complete by the end of the study hall - and this one didn't involve numbers or variables.

He had pledged that this would be the day he asked Connie out.

Come on, Linc, he thought as he blazed through problem after problem, pausing sporadically to look up at his prospective date. You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. What's the worst thing she could say? "No"?

Upon finishing the last problem on the page, he glanced at his watch and noticed that a half hour had passed since their study session began. As their sessions seldom exceeded forty-five minutes, Lincoln suspected that his window of opportunity was starting to close. It was now or never.

"Hey, Connie? There's something I wanted to ask you."

Connie looked up from her homework. "Hmm? Another math question?"

"No, I finished that," said Lincoln. "You know, these study sessions have been really helping me out these past few weeks. I was wondering if you'd be up for another one over the weekend?"

"What, like at the library?"

All right, Linc. You've gone this far already. There's no turning back.

"Actually, I was thinking that maybe it'd be fun if we did it at your house."

Connie gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth, as her pupils shrunk into pinpricks. "M-my house?"

Lincoln leaned back, out of an instinctive desire to give her some space. "What's the matter? We're friends, aren't we?"

"N-no, we are," stammered Connie. "It's just... well..."

She sported a blush that was just bright enough to be visible against her sienna skin. "...I've never had a boy over before."

"Oh."

Lincoln scooted a bit closer to her, wielding a disarming smile. "Well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

Up until that moment, "intimidating" was never a word that Lincoln would think to use to describe himself. But his invitation (which, to be fair, was a little forward) made Connie shrink into her seat like a frightened little mouse.

"W-well, here's the thing," whispered Connie, tangling her fingers in binds of thick, black hair. "My parents are, um- how do I put this- conservative. Traditional. Well, my mom is, at least."

A chill ran up Lincoln's spine. He was old enough to know that both of those were codewords for "overprotective and nigh-impossible to please". He already felt like he was walking on eggshells around her; he didn't want to think about how much worse it would be with a stone-featured authoritarian looking over his shoulder.

"I think they would prefer it if they, you know, got to know your family first," said Connie. "Maybe we could set up a dinner? You, me, your parents and mine?"

The suggestion sent Lincoln's brain into a flip-flopping frenzy. As he attempted to reach a decision, he looked away from Connie and produced a low, drawn out, "Ummmm..." from his throat, just to spare her from the awkwardness of a prolonged silence.

On one hand, this would be a great opportunity to get closer to her. On the other hand, it'll be pretty much impossible to keep Connie a secret from my sisters once the date is set up. On the otherhand, I can't keep her hidden from them forever, can I? On the other hand-

"Well?" asked Connie.

"Sure!" Lincoln blurted out in a fit of impulsive panic. For that, he earned a few scattered shushes from around the study hall, and he muttered an apology in response. Afterwards, he turned back to Connie, and was taken aback once he saw her brandishing a disarming smile of her own.

"'Sure'?" she parroted. "So it's a date?"

Oh, geez. Me and my big mouth.

Lincoln knew full well that there was only one way he could answer that question. Oh, sure, she would have been disappointed if he told her "no" outright, but she would be crushed if he tried to renege on a "yes". What would he even say to justify it? "Sike"? "Just kidding"? "Sorry, I changed my mind in the past second"? Any excuse he tried to formulate would be beyond callous. Even as he hesitated, he could see her smile starting to shrink.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it's a date."

"Great!" chirped Connie, regaining her smile. "I'll tell my parents about it tonight and we'll set something up. See you this weekend!"

With that, she packed up her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and strode out the door, bidding Lincoln goodbye with a finger-twiddling wave. As soon as she left the premises, he collapsed back into his seat and let his head fall into his opened palms. At this point, he was unsure of whether he wanted to feel satisfied that she agreed to a date...

...or dismayed that, of all the possible setups, he agreed to the one that would be the most awkward and the most likely to end in disaster.