“But what?” the old Jim whispered.
Just then a new hole opened in the air, this time directly above Viola. Two new forms fell out of it, and crushed Viola to the ground. Her head hit the floor, and she was dazed. The wand flew across the room, and landed near the Jims.
The two people who had landed on Viola stood up, revealing themselves to be yet another set of female Jim and Rick, identical to the second pair, but for some reason wearing a pair of Rick’s oversized sweatshirts to cover up their boobs.
The old (pregnant) Jim said, “Well, that was pretty sneaky, wasn’t it.”
The two newcomers took in the situation -- two Ricks still frozen in the act of running in their direction, two Jims sitting on a bench, one of them heavily pregnant. They came over when they saw the non-pregnant Jim pick up the wand.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Rick and Jim, right?”
The two new girls glanced at each other. “Right,” the brunette said, “though we’ve started calling each other Ricki and Jamie. I’m not even sure when we started doing that. You’re both Jim?”
“Yep. And they’re both Rick. Hang on a moment.” She used the wand to unfreeze the two Ricks, who then joined them.
A lengthy conversation ensued, bringing all six of them up to date. Sadistically, the author decided not to include it here -- the readers can figure out the three (or four) separate time tracks on their own. Nyah.
They soon realized that they needed some way of referring to each other that wouldn't get confusing. So:
Jim-3 said to Jim-2, “So you came out of the hole before we did -- that should mean that you came from our second timeline, the one that we altered, because we followed our past selves into the hole. Don’t you remember meeting us before?”
Jim-2 looked at Rick-2, and they both shrugged. “Sorry,” Rick-2 said, “The first time I remember seeing twins of ourselves was when we appeared in this locker room a few minutes ago.”
Jim-3 said, “But this was back when you were both males. Surely you remember -- you both had sex with us!!”
The original pair drew slightly away from the newer four. “You had sex with your female self??” Rick-1 asked Rick-2, at the same time Jim-1 asked Jim-3 “You had sex as a female??” “How could you??” they both cried.
The three Jims looked at each other in understanding, and turned to the three Ricks. “It was all your idea, wasn’t it,” they declared in unison.
Rick-2 said hastily, “Hey, I don’t remember any of that. Do you?” And Jim-2 shook her head.
Jim-3 sighed. “Maybe our changing the timeline erased your memories somehow. Or the trip through the tunnels. Or maybe we’re not really from the same timeline after all.”
Jim-1 broke in. “The important thing right now is -- what next? I’d like to change back to my old self, or at least stop being pregnant. I’m sure all of you want to get back to normal, too. But we can’t have three Ricks and three Jims running around.”
During all this, Viola had crawled away, intending to avoid any possible retribution that came her way. The six girls had started to attract attention from the other girls in the locker room, who were not used to seeing two sets of semi-identical triplets in one place, so they decided to move their discussion elsewhere.
Sun Mar 14 14:21:47 1999
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