The next few days passed much the same. Everyone left in the morning, and I had the house to myself until they came home in the afternoon. On the second day of such, Chelsea came home even more animated than usual. She asked us to come into her room, and shut the door conspiratorially. “I remembered something that might help you two. Your dad had a journal that detailed the methods he used to create those weird portal mirrors. His will entrusted it to my dad. I think it’s in the attic in a box somewhere. You wanna look for it?”

“That would be great!” I exclaimed. Finally, some help!

“Okay, I guess so,” Taylor said.

“I don’t really want to go up in the attic, so you guys will have to. Too many cobwebs for me. Ick.”

“How do we get up?” I asked.

“There’s a hatch and ladder in the ceiling of the laundry room.”

“Let’s go, Taylor.” I was not looking forward to being alone with her. Especially since we were looking for something close to her heart - her dad’s personal writings.

We finally found it, in a box in the far corner. A leather-bound notebook, filled with scribbles that were not easily deciphered. “What language is this?”

“Looks like computer code,” Taylor explained. Duh. I could’ve figured it out myself.

“I’m not fuming out loud for your benefit, pal!” I grabbed the book from her and climbed down the ladder with only one hand. I stormed to the couch and sat down. It did look like some kind of coding. Why did Dad have to be so secretive?

“So that the company couldn’t steal his ideas!” Taylor called to me from upstairs.

“Again, not out loud for your benefit!”

“Well, I seem to be benefiting you, so you can shut up now!”

“No, you shut up! I’m tired of listening to you. I never asked or wanted to be here, so if you shut up, maybe I can get some work done and get me out of here.”

By this time, she had entered the living room. “Quit lying, Taylor. You’re the one that brought me over, and you just want to destroy the notebook, not learn from it. Give it to me now, so you won’t mess with it.”

I held it closer to me. “No, you want to destroy it so that I can’t go back to my own family.”

It slipped out of my sweaty palms and onto the floor in front of my feet. I reached for it as she grabbed ahold of it. I now held one end with my slippery fingers, and she the other. “Give it back.”

“No. If anything, it’s more mine than yours. My dad wrote it.”

“That means literally nothing, because we have the same dad.”

“Our dad in my dimension, though.”

“So what? Give it back.”

In response, she pulled even harder, and a chunk of the pages ripped off, sending her backwards with the effort. “Hey! Now look at what you did! Come on! Just give it back! It’s like you don’t want your life to return to normal!”

“My life will never return to normal,” she reminded me, suddenly sober. Then she turned and ran back upstairs like a frightened rabbit, still clutching the pages. While I had some peace and quiet, I studied the pages still in the notebook. Still only computer code that made no sense to me. I wasn’t sure what Donovan did for work, but he seemed like a smart guy. He could probably figure it out.

I found him in an armchair in the first living room. He had probably heard our whole exchange, and I felt embarrassed. A sense of duty prevailed, and I strode up to him. “It looks like Dad’s journal is written in computer code. Do you know how to decipher it?”

He took it from me gently, noticing the torn bits. He flipped through it and told me, “No, sorry. I do work with computer coding, but this is a language that I’ve never seen before. I’m not sure what it means, nor how to translate it. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, I guess.” I took it back and went back to the couch, only to find Chelsea sitting right where I was a minute before. For once, she didn’t have her phone out, which was surprising.

“How did it go?”

“Bleh. I learned nothing, and nothing can be learned from the journal. Plus, Taylor ripped it.”

“Aw, that’s terrible! Can I see?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I handed her the notebook. She peered at it curiously. “What language is that in? Russian or something? I can’t understand a word it’s saying.”

“Not Russian. It’s computer code. And no one I’ve asked so far can figure it out, not just you.”

“That’s weird. Computer code?”

“Yeah, it’s odd. He was a software developer, but still…” I ended the conversation by moseying upstairs. I needed to speak to Taylor.

The closed door beckoned me to open it. I cared not about privacy. She sat at her desk, hunched over the stolen papers, and jumped when I opened the door. After seeing me, she angrily told me to leave. Before I removed them by force, I took the polite route and asked. “Pretty please, can I have the pages you currently possess?”

“No.”

“We could do this the easy way and work together, or do it the hard way. I see you’ve chosen the hard way.” I demanded the pages, and again received no for an answer. So I stormed the castle, snatched it from her, and retreated just as quickly as I had come. She ran after me, but I fled into the safety of the locked bathroom door, which she pounded on.

“Give it back! You can’t take from me what I’ve rightfully stolen!”

“I just did. Plus, you stole it from me first. I’m actually going to use it, not get rid of it.”

“What do you think I was doing? Not destroying it!”

“Why don’t we work together, then?” This is exactly what I wanted. I felt so glad that she had fallen into my trap.

“I don’t want to work with you! But I will if I have to.”

Yes! Finally, things were falling into place. Her sudden seriousness seemed sincere. “Same here. I’m going to come out now. If you try to get the notebook from me, I will personally rip out half of your hair.”

She chuckled, a good sign. I doubted that she would double-cross me so quickly, so I unlocked the door and blithely stepped out. I am so glad that she decided to join me. I think that guilt finally set in, and she’s regretting her decision to bring me here.

“Where do you want to start?” I asked.

“I have no idea where to start!” She exclaimed. “I scrutinized my pages and couldn’t come up with anything. I just don’t know computer code.”

I agreed, but she kept talking; thinking out loud: “Maybe we could type the code into a program, and see what comes out; or we could… I dunno, past that.”

“Taylor, you’re a genius!”

“Aw, thanks. You’re a genius, too, by the way. Just not as noticeable as me,” she joked. I playfully smacked her arm (she deserved it, after all), then continued with the conversation, saying, “Let’s go type it all in, and see what we get.”

We went to the family computer in the living room, she logged on, and we opened the interface. She typed until her wrists ached, then I took over. We took turns up until dinnertime, ate rapidly, and went right back to the grind. Pushing steadily until eight, we then encountered a problem. “The ink - look! It’s all smeared! Now I’ll never be able to get back! Stupid Dad, smudging the ink!” I wailed, inconsolable.

“Why don’t we try it, anyway, just to be sure?” Taylor suggested, trying to be helpful. I blew my nose, finished the last few lines, and pressed ‘Enter’. The computer wrote more lines in its coded response, and then a message appeared:

Taylor -

If you are reading this message, something has happened to me and the ITUs are being used. Good job for figuring the puzzle out. I knew you could.

Before installing the mirror portals, I had to travel to the now-linked dimensions. If one mirror is broken, you can use the computer to travel to the next dimension. Anyway, here’s how to travel interdimensionally without an ITU:

He went into detail on a complicated process which allowed him to teleport by writing himself into code somehow. I had no idea how to do this, but he had paved the way. I had no idea that he could plan for such things. He also explained what the other dimensions would be like.

I have made everything ready for you. All you need to do is put in a password, then press enter. For the password, what was your favorite animal when you were 6 years old?

I didn’t even have to think about the answer. I typed the word ‘Llama’ into the box. I double-checked everything.

“Family gathering!” Donovan bellowed. Chelsea exited her room quickly, a panic on her face. “I’m sorry, Dad! I never would’ve done it if I’d known! Please forgive me!”

“Not you, though we’ll talk about whatever it is later, now that you told me that. It’s for the Taylors.”

By now, all six of us were seated in the second living room. “Girls, Carmen and I have decided that it is time to send one of you back, for previously underscored reasons. We don’t want anyone to dredge up old memories of your dad and his invention, which were supposed to have been destroyed. Now is the time for us to figure out which one of you is which.”

I stepped forward. “Donovan, I am the one that she brought from another dimension. I can prove it to you: “I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, my hair still wet after a shower. The same brown hair, the same hazel eyes, the same long face looked back at me. I -”

“That’s enough. We get it; but that’s exactly what the other one is going to say. How are we going to distinguish between the two of you?”

Amanda spoke up. “I can tell the difference, Dad.”

“You can? How?”

“They walk differently.” She pointed at me. “She walks with confidence. Head high, no faltering. She, on the other hand,” Amanda pointed at the other Taylor, “mopes around like a wilted flower. Can you tell now? Also, the confident one looks you right in the eye.”

Donovan nodded. “Yeah, I have noticed that. Can you tell right now who is who?”

“I sure can.” She correctly indicated who I am, and my other self.

“Well, I guess that’s settled,” Donovan seemed cheerful enough. I would be, too. I turned to Taylor. I had some things to say to her. In private. “C’mon into the living room. I need to tell you something.”

I saw something gleam in her eyes, but dismissed it as a reflection of the lamp. “I’m sorry, okay. I want to apologize for being so bratty. I’m not sure how you felt so compelled to bring me into your problems, but I’m okay with it. I mean, I don’t like it, but I’m not too upset. I’m just glad that I can go back.”

She said nothing, and started typing on the computer. She grinned at me evilly.

“What are you -” She pressed Enter before I could finish speaking.