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[unextrordinary]

Honestly, I wasn't paying that much attention to the latest reason people were being all odd and twitchy. I knew that something was up, but it could have been just me given that I seemed slightly more likely to say exactly what was on my mind. It was like I'd had no filter, no stop between my brain and my mouth

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[a_sport]

"What?" He ducked his head out of the lab and then stepped all the way out a moment later when he caught a sight of her. This truth-telling thing was fantastic when it came to research, just say hypothesis aloud, and if it comes out you know you're on the right track.

"Meg? What's the matter?"

[unextrordinary]

I turn to look at Cal, waving the piece of paper almost half-accusingly, half-violently. Like I'm trying to strangle it or will it to burst into flames.

"This!" I squeak. Wow. That was weird. "This is the matter. Did you know that we were married?"

[a_sport]

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember if we'd gotten married," Calvin pointed out as he took the paper from her before she ripped it up in a million pieces.

His face paled a but a peculiar sort of expression came over his face as he read it. "...huh."

[unextrordinary]

"You'd think, but apparently no. We don't get that..I don't...privelege."

It's like indentured servitude or slave labour or something else really unjust. I flail my hands a bit and grit my teeth.

"See? See?"

[a_sport]

"Yeah, I see." Calvin's face had flushed as he looked at the certificate now, whether out of embarrassment or something else, it was difficult to say.

He read the whole thing over to himself, mouth forming the words as he tried not to focus on Meg's obvious panic or just what that meant.

"Check out the date. 1969."

[unextrordinary]

I don't think that I've even considered looking at the date. I've been too busy being spazz number one, to even think like that.

Still in an all about body wiggle, I stare at him. "So? It's 2008."

[a_sport]

Calvin looked at her for a moment and almost rolled his eyes. "So we didn't get married until we were like 25, Meg, and that's not...cause to freak out or anything."

[unextrordinary]

"But...but...I wanted a say in it. I want to remember it, to know what I was wearing and who was there and how you proposed or if I did that. I just don't want this...this 'oh hey, you're married, ha ha isn't that funny' thing here."

I'm nearly hyperventilating and I can't explain why I'm so worked up about something as crazy as a piece of paper from the future or past or something.

[a_sport]

"You get a say in it, Meg, this didn't- argh, this didn't even happen. Not to us." He had just said the word 'argh' out loud; Meg was a bad bad influence, clearly. And yeah, okay, now he was getting upset against his better influence, gesturing with the certificate at her. "So it's seriously, Murry, calm down it's not- you think I don't want to know all that too? But the only way we're going to do is to actually do it. Here. This is just- are you so upset about the idea of us getting married?"

[unextrordinary]

"It's because it's not real! It's not forever!"

I don't know why I just said that, why I just let it burst out of me and why I even think that in the first place. I can't imagine anyone else but Cal and if he left, I think I'd strange a unicorn or something. It's just...it scares the daylights out of me and I don't know why.

Maybe I just don't believe in it. I take a deep breath. "I don't know whose those people are. Or if they exist. Married or not, I...who does that make me?"

[a_sport]

"Jesus, Meg, don't. Don't. Don't." Before he could work out just what he was doing, Calvin had stepped up to her and put one arm around her waist. His forehead against hers, and he kept talking in a low, serious voice. "It makes you you, seriously. You knew who you were in the middle of your brother's mitochondrion. It's all real somewhere, but it's not here and it doesn't have to be and- God, maybe in five years, you'll want to marry me, and then we'll match these folks, but please don't ruin us because some piece of bureaucratic paper."

Somewhere he'd lost his ability to pause and properly end and start sentences. Also to stop talking. "You're Meg, and I'm Calvin and that's not going to change no matter what happens anywhere."

[unextrordinary]

"Don't what? Think about it? I can't help it. It's stuck in my head now and until I know exactly what's going on and how it got there, I can't stop. You know I can't stop."

I didn't mean for it to come out like an accusation, but it did and I shake my head, stepping away from him.

"I know that. I love you for being you, but I can't stop thinking about it. Somewhere, we're out there, being different people."

[a_sport]

"Don't freak out! You freak out, Meg, and you just worry yourself into a tizzy, and you freak me out by proxy." He shook his head and pressed his lips together but then kept going in an almost reasonable voice. "Does it matter that in some alternate, inaccessible universe that in a few years we get married?"

[unextrordinary]

"Yes, it does."

It's a fact that no matter how crazy the facts are some of them just matter. Like some alternate version of me running around being married and having the kids.

I gasp. "Oh God, what if we have kids?"

[a_sport]

"I don't understand why-"

He broke off at the mention of kids, at which point his eyes just bulged out a bit. "What?"

[unextrordinary]

I stare at him like he's suddenly started speaking Spanish. I was awful at foreign languages.

"You know, kids. Flesh of our flesh, our parents' grandkids. What if they exist out there?"