Thaught opened Caterpillar's office door, stuck her head out, took a deep breath and yelled, "Paulbert Arthur Jr. the third! Come here for a second!"

Paul, who was standing again next to the water fountain and was chit chatting with Margaret once more, turned to Thaught, looking really confused, and said, "How do you know my full name? Wait, is that a real gun?"

"It was a lucky guess. Now come over! The gun is just a toy I won in a contest run by my favorite chocolate bar."

"Wait, the gun is fake?" said the first Caterpillar.

"You wish!" Thaught replied immediately, almost interrupting him. She momentarily turned back in and shot the trash bin, making another hole in the half-donut that was thrown in there a few minutes ago and filling the whole room with the smell of burnt spinach.

Paul panicked. He hated anything that had to do with violence, including guns but excluding boxing matches and gymnastic rings.

"I would love to, but I am kinda busy. I have to... uh... take the microwave out of the fridge, so I can't help right now. Good luck!" he said and promptly run out of the room. Later on he got lost and had trouble finding the way back, in typical travelling agency employee fashion.

"Ugh..." Thaught sighed, "I guess I'll have to handle this myself," she said. She turned back in and locked the door behind her.

"So it's just me and you, we will have to make this work ourselves somehow," said the first Caterpillar.

"It's me too," pointed out the second.

"I already said 'me', and this counts you as well, you are me."

"Yeah, but I am not you you, I am me you, there is a difference."

"The details don't matter. Nor do I understand them, so let's leave them out," Thaught said and pointed the gun at the two Caterpillars. "The point is, one of you is going home today."

"We would both like to go home, thank you very much," said the second Caterpillar.

"What do you mean by 'home'?" said the first one, "Do you mean that one of us will safely return to his home while the other one won't, or is this a euphemism for saying that you are ending one of us and he will go back to God?"

"I'm not sure myself," Thaught replied. "I guess you are both going home, after all. But one of you is going home home."

"Now you are the one using the double word thing and we are the ones that have to figure out what you mean. What kind of double standard is this?" said the second Caterpillar.

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"I am the one asking the questions!" Thaught yelled. She held the gun firmly and pointed it at the second Caterpillar. "And I have just the right one for you two. What is the worst kind of donut you have ever eaten?"

"That's an easy one," they both answered simultaneously.

"The vegan donut I had a few minutes ago," said the first Caterpillar.

At the same time, the second one said: "Raspberry filled anything is just horr-"

Before he had enough time to complete his sentence, Thaught fired her gun with no sign of hesitation, ending him on the spot. "I found the imposter," she said and blew the muzzle of her gun, although there wasn't really any smoke was coming out of it.

"He was not exactly an imposter," the first and only remaining Caterpillar said. "he was indeed me. And I am him. And what you did kinda hurt. Actually, it hurt a lot."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean both physically and emotionally."

"Yeah, I get that, but how is he you and you are him? And where is Paul?"

"Remember the pyramid I used a few minutes ago?" Caterpillar pulled the pyramid back out of his pocket to help Thaught remember what he was talking about. "I told you it can help you go back in time. This is what I did when I pressed all these buttons. I went a few minutes back and came back here to prove you it works."

"So that was really you?" Thaught said. She was trying so hard to keep track of what Caterpillar was saying that you could almost hear the oil-needing gears slowly trying to turn inside her head.

"Exactly," Caterpillar continued. "Using the pyramid, you decide when you want to go, choosing the appropriate time. Then, you add the coordinates and this decides where you will go. If you leave any of the two blank, the pyramid assumes you don't want to change them and uses the current time and/or coordinates. Once you are ready, you press the bottom of the pyramid, you watch the awesome animation we just saw, which was just recently installed, in the latest update a couple of months ago, and then you travel to wherever and whenever you decided. Do you understand me so far?"

Thaught nodded "yes," her face said "no," and her mind thought "If almond milk is really milk, how come there is no such thing as almond milk chocolate?"

"Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it once you use it a couple of times," said Caterpillar. "Anyway, once you go back in time, it is not exactly you. The pyramid creates a clone of yours and that clone is sent back in time. If the clone then presses the bottom of their own pyramid, or if they somehow die, the clone stops existing and you, the original, get all their new memories inside your head, like it was you all along."

Thaught looked terrified at that point for a lot of different reasons, including her trying to imagine what an almond milk chocolate would taste like. She said, "wait, so I did kill you, didn't I?"

Caterpillar looked at her the same way a mother looks at her child that accidentally broke her favorite vase and was now full of guilt. "You did, but don't worry about it, it happens to every new recruit. We'll just put me along with my other selves. Carl, the janitor, usually takes care of it after our shift is over. Only he knows where all my clones are laying."

"But wait, if that was really you, how come you answered my question wrong?" asked Thaught.

"Look, rookie," replied Caterpillar, "I have been through this same scenario at least three times, although it's really closer to a hundred. At that point, it stops being funny and starts getting kind of tedious. You could say I was bored to death."

Caterpillar slowly walked towards the door. He unlocked and opened it, then stepped aside to make room for Thaught to walk, pointing towards the exit of his office with his palm.

"I know today was a lot," he said. "Go home, take a rest, and think about what we said today. Sleep on it. Then come back tomorrow for your first actual shift."