How?

Nick stared at his phone. It's got to be a glitch, right? Shaking his head in disbelief, he dialed 911. Maybe the portal didn't close completely? Maybe I can get a signal through!

His hopes were dashed when he got nothing but silence. He hung up and called his friend Brian. Nothing. Just silence.

It's just a glitch.

The disappointment was crushing. Nick hadn't been braced for this—sudden hope, suddenly dashed. His mind filled with despair. I'm going to die here.

The word die snapped him out of it. It was too extreme a reaction, even if it was realistic. He had had thoughts like that a lot in the past, and had learned to recognize them. Depression is a lying liar that lies. Shut up, brain.

Nick took a look at Petra's display tablet. Does this thing have a clock I can compare with? He checked the symbols currently visible, and saw an icon along one edge that he hadn't seen before. It was a small rectangle with slightly rounded corners...

No way. Nick tapped short-short-long on the new icon. His phone started ringing.

How in the hell...? Nick picked up his phone. It said 'unknown number,' and after a moment of staring at it, he accepted the call. “Hello?”

“Hello?” It was his own voice echoed back.

“Is this...Petra?”

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“Is this...Petra?”

“I'm Nick.”

“I'm Nick.”

“No, I'm Nick. You're Petra.”

“No, I'm Nick. You're Petra.”

She doesn't know what she's saying, Nick concluded. It's just an echo. He took the phone away from his ear and looked at his screen. He was about to hang up the call when his phone kind of went nuts.

It started moving through menus, as if he had tapped the Settings icon and was searching for something. It scrolled and selected like a runaway train, faster and faster. Then it slowed down again, as it looked like every app on his phone was starting up, and then shutting down, one after another, and the apps themselves didn't seem to boot up any faster than normal.

That took a while. At one point every photo Nick had saved flashed onto the screen, one after another, so fast it was strobing. Nick watched and waited. He noticed that his phone battery was now at five percent. Then four percent. It's going to run out of juice and shut down, he thought with dread.

Finally Petra ran out of apps to poke at, and his phone settled down. Nick reached for the power button, but hesitated. He took a look at Petra's display. Half of the display suddenly changed, and showed the home screen on his phone.

“Did you just clone my phone?” Nick asked the alien device. Hesitantly, he reached out and tapped on the clock icon, just as if Petra's display were a touch screen just like his phone.

The clock app came up. Nick started the stopwatch and then paused it, scrolled through his alarms, and then exited the app. It worked. Petra had cloned his phone.

“Holy...shit!” Nick blinked hard and stared at it, wondering if it was real. Then he noticed that the phone was down to three percent charge. “Uh-oh.” He tapped through the Settings menu until he could call up the battery percentage.

“Hey, Petra, can you recharge my phone?” Nick swiped Petra's green and pink power readout, then tapped on the phone's battery percentage. Is Petra smart enough to take the hint? It didn't seem to work, though, so when the battery showed two percent left, Nick turned his phone off.

The clone of his phone shrank back down to the icon he had tapped on the alien display. Petra wasn't done, though. The whole display started flashing, then filled with static for a few moments. When it cleared, everything had been rearranged.

Petra's controls were now written in English.