Lily pulled into the relatively wide parking space and paused, sitting still and thinking her next actions through.

She honestly had no idea what to think at the moment. The teenager waiting inside the apartment behind her was by far the strangest, most dangerous person she had ever met. The weirdness she'd experienced in the short time she'd known him exceeded anything she could possibly have imagined, and yet...

There was something weirdly attractive about the prospect. She couldn't figure out what in the world it was. It was strange, it was worrying, it was...

It was exactly like the show she loved watching at home. Over twenty seasons and twelve remarkable actors (and one actress) had played the lead role in that show, and all of them had a lovable, quirky sidekick who often had no idea what they were getting into, but loved the ride as they went. 

This freakish teenager - Noah Cosmic - might be her ticket towards having that sort of life. It was a conflicting concept. She couldn't help but be drawn to normalcy. It was safe, reliable, consistent, and didn't have any nasty surprises hiding behind the corners and edges. It was a state where one could live in for the rest of their lives without any issues, where you could survive all the way to the end.

Was that really what she wanted? Did she just want to survive?

She slammed her forehead against her steering wheel gently and moaned in irritation. She'd never had questions like this before yesterday, and it was once again all Noah's fault. 

But... he had gotten her job back. And she still wasn't sure how he'd done it. 

With a decisive, abrupt movement, she opened her door and climbed out, heading for the apartment building. Striding straight through the automatic glass doors, she paced straight past the desk boy, who stood up and tried to wave her down. "Uh, lady! Do you know what... yeah, okay, just ignore me. You do you, ya know?"

She stopped in front of the slightly nicked door, and with only a slight hesitation, knocked. 

There was a long silence before the distinctive sound of a doorknob being turned reached her ears. Noah threw the door open and looked her up and down, an expression of mild disinterest on his face. Pulling herself together, Lily spoke with all the confidence she could muster. "Noah, I want you to-"

He held up a hand, forestalling her. His forehead creased in confusion as he asked, "I'm sorry, who are you?"

Lily screeched to a stop. She hadn't expected that at all. "Wh-what?"

He rolled his eyes, leaning on the doorframe. "I said, who are you? You seem to know who I am, which narrows it down ... well, not very much, but I don't know you. At any rate, you interrupted Thaddeus."

She blinked several times, desperately trying to catch up. "What?"

The door opened further, and the scariest person she'd ever seen loomed over her. Well over six feet tall, with nearly pitch-black skin and pure red eyes, he wore a long-sleeved white dress shirt, gray slacks, and a vibrant red bow tie. Perfectly shaved head tilted forwards, he studied Lily with a withering glare. "Who are you?" 

Lily shrank back. His voice was like gravel scraping over asphalt, grating to her ears. She almost forgot to respond, she was so effectively intimidated. "Uhhh..."

He grunted disapprovingly and strode back into the room. A moment later, an incomprehensibly difficult song began to come through, the sound of a piano, or perhaps two pianos, being played with all the mastery of an eighteenth-century composer. 

Noah's eyes widened. "Crap, I didn't think he'd start without me. Sorry, I've gotta go." 

As he began closing the door, she shoved her foot into it. They both stared at it for a moment, with equal expressions of shock. Lily couldn't believe she'd just done that. 

Noah opened the door further, irritation obvious on his face. "All right, what do you want? What do you really want?"

Lily flinched but forged ahead either way. "I'm Lily Olson! I'm your roommate, remember!? You put a post on DormRoom? The app designed to find roommates? You told me that we'd split it sixty-forty! How did you forget all of that? I fell asleep on your couch holding your shark! The government tried to draft you, or something!"

His eyes slowly narrowed until she could barely see his eyes anymore. "...Riiiight. Okay, come back ten hours ago, all right?" He closed the door in her face. 

She stood still for a moment, no longer sure of anything anymore. Standing in front of the door, she gaped slightly, then shook her head. She wasn't going to be deterred by his unpredictable behavior! She knocked on the door again, waiting for the response. 

It came much quicker. As the door flew open, Noah looked her up and down, then grinned. "Lily! Glad you're back. Did you like my little surprise?" He retreated back into the apartment, lounging in the couch and grabbing his controller. Somehow, his game console was back to normal, although at this point she knew better than to ask about it.

Walking in, she asked dazedly, "Uhhh... you remember who I am now?"

He looked back at her and snorted. "Of course I remember who you are, you're my roommate! Duck missed you."

The fuzzy shark whizzed through the air, spinning and pinwheeling until it bumped up against her. She jumped, a little startled. As the shark wriggled into a more comfortable position, she slowly started petting it, a smile crossing her face. Duck was ridiculously soft.

Noah glanced up at her, slightly confused. "Wait, why wouldn't I know who you were?"

She glanced back at him, immensely enjoying the experience of petting Duck. "You didn't know who I was a few seconds ago. And where's Thaddeus?"

He stared at her for a long moment, before realization dawned upon him. "Ohhh, that's who that was! Man, I was wondering about that. Yeah, that was ten hours ago or so. That makes so much sense!"

It made less than no sense to Lily, but she shook it off. His brand of weird was a lot more intense than what she was used to on the big screen. "Okay, yeah, sure. Um - how did you get me my job back?"

He looked up at her again, before returning his attention to his game. It was aloud one, with a lot of shooting and explosive sound effects. "Easy. I bought the company."

She froze, and Duck wiggled out of her arms before zooming around the ceiling fan. She stared at him, slowly tilting her head in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"I bought the company."

"Isn't it family-owned?"

"Yeah, it was. Now it's privately owned. By me."

She swung around the couch, sitting down next to him. "You bought - wait just a second, if you can buy an international food chain, why do you need to split the apartment bill?"

The game paused. It looked like an online game, but it was paused either way. Everyone and everything was frozen midair, bullets suspended mid-flight. He turned to look at her with a slightly shamefaced grin. "Uhhh... yeah. Funny thing, that. I, uh... wanted the experience."

She frowned. "The what?" To her surprise, learning that he'd bought the company she worked for was less mindblowing than it should have been. Her lack of worry was worrying. 

He shrugged, leaning against the couch and crossing his legs. "The experience. You know, the human experience. Buying an apartment, splitting it with a wacky roommate, going to a coffee shop and hanging out with all your friends, and having adventures every day. The experience."

She laughed. It wasn't a hundred percent sane, but she laughed. As Noah stared on with mild concern, it devolved into full-on hysterics, doubled over and in tears from the force. 

Tentatively, he asked, "Are you okay?"

She sucked in a breath, still chuckling, and told him, "It's a sitcom."

An ill-maintained eyebrow raised. "A what?"

Wiping the tears away from her eyes, Lily laughed again. "You... you did all of this because you watched a sitcom and thought that was how life worked."

HIs eyes widened. "Wait, so that's not what being a human is like?"

She shook her head. Why was all this so funny? She couldn't remember the last time she'd been panicking this hard. Chuckling to herself, she asked bluntly, "Hey, why am I taking this so well? I feel like I should be breaking down or something."

He shrugged. "Eh, you technically are breaking down. I mean, hysterical laughter, uncontrollably petting a shark - although that last one is pretty understandable. You're getting the more manageable short-term effects instead of the long-term... insanity, if you will. I rigged the room to prevent that from happening, so you should be all good to go after you get it out of your system."

Lily sighed, slumping deeper into the couch's cushions and laying her head on the back. She did feel as though something had left, a small core of fear that she'd never know what was going to happen. The future held no certainties anymore. Everything rested in the disproportionately large hands of Noah Cosmic, and she felt relieved. 

It didn't take her long to figure out why. Knowing that the future would be determined largely by this quirky teenager was far preferable to a silent, invisible force pushing time along and taking her with it. Honestly, Noah didn't seem unreasonable, either. Freakishly powerful and used to weirdness she couldn't comprehend, but not mean.

Finally, she rubbed a hand across her face and told the ceiling, "It's never going to be the same, is it?"

Noah shook his head sagely, unpausing his game. "No, probably not. But that's what life is about, right? Throws you a curveball when you're expecting a fastball, and the linebacker takes you out. At least, I think that's how that game works. It's how this game works, at least. You think you know what you're doing, you think you've got the rules down pat, and then the ref burns the rulebook. You don't where it's gonna end up or even how it gets there. Chaos, order, organization, a mess - it's all the same when it comes to life. In the end, none of us have a darn clue what we're doing, me least of all."

Slipping his headset on, he focused on the screen. "You get used to it. There's an infinite number of surprises and only so many ways you can react to them, so make sure you react the optimistic way, am I right?"

Lily agreed tiredly as Duck flew back over to her, forcing his way under her arm, She scratched his nose absently, smiling at the ceiling. "Yeah, I guess so. Sure beats doing nothing."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

She poked around the fridge, nudging small cans and Tupperware aside. Selecting a partially eaten loaf of bread, she held it out and shouted at Noah, "Hey, is this bread, or some weird stuff that only looks like bread?" 

He yelled back at her without taking the headset off. "Of course it's bread! What else would it be?"

Lily shrugged and continued rummaging around. Picking up a plastic can of peanut butter, she waved it around. "What about this? It's not-"

Noah interrupted her irritably. "Just take it and go!"

Chuckling quietly, this time without even the slightest hint of instability, she grabbed some dark grape jelly and retreated with her haul. Putting the ingredients on the long white counter, she began making herself a sandwich. "So," she started, using a knife to spread the condiments on two slices of wheat bread. "Why do you like playing video games so much? If you're from a bunch of alternate universes and whatever, couldn't you do all that stuff in real life?"

He snorted. "Yeah, technically, sure. Why not. Instead of sitting comfortably in my house using lightning-fast thumbs to carefully and expertly manipulate the controls of a well-made video game, I'd totally rather get incinerated by some trigger-happy nutjob with a flaming - did you just eat that?"

Lily looked up at his odd tone, chewing on a bite of her sandwich. She glanced down at the missing section of sandwich and asked, "Um. Yes?"

He tossed his headset aside, slowly coming around the couch and staring at her as though she was about to explode. "The sandwich that you just spread ten grams of randomatter on?"

Lily stared at her sandwich, a sickening feeling growing in her stomach. "Uhhh, I guess? Is that bad?"

He gestured uncertainly. "Yes. No. Maybe? All of the above. You're not really supposed to eat it."

As a numbing feeling began spreading down from her head, Lily pressed a fist to her mouth, bile rising in the back of her throat. "What's going to happen to me!?" 

Noah looked totally unsure. "I have literally no idea. You could explode. You might turn into solid gold. You technically could get every superpower in existence combined. Or you could get hiccups. It's randomatter - randomosity made physical. It's not very easy to get."

The numbness had spread to her collarbone, and she staggered. Noah caught her, leading her to the couch and laying her down on it. Duck floated over and gently nibbled on her fingers."Uhhh, I promise you won't die. Or at least you won't die for very long. I mean, you might die, but I can bring you back - this isn't helping at all, is it."

She shook her head, swallowing hard. "No, not really. Is that feelings thing still on?" 

Noah looked confused for a moment. "The... the emotional suppression filter? Yeah, it's still on. Why?"

Lily faced him, a faint smile on her face. "Because I really think I should be more worried than this, but I can't really feel anything."

He bent down to kneel next to her. "Do you want me to turn it off?"

She shook her head. "No, I think that I'll be..." She trailed off midsentence as the numbness suddenly accelerated, shooting past her stomach, waist, and knees in short order. As the feeling crossed her feet, everything went black. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"...collapsed on my couch, can you believe it? Duck loves her though, and she is my roommate, so I can hardly make her leave."

"Hmmm... I mean, I'm a little biased, but I think you should let her stay." 

Lily opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling, to two voices chatting with each other. One of them was recognizable as Noah, but the other was familiar in a different way. Actually, it was as familiar as her-

She sat up with a sudden gasp, inhaling deeply as she realized that the numbness was gone. But the voice that was talking, while hers, wasn't coming from her! What was happening?

Looking over at the source of the conversation, she saw something truly strange. Noah was casually talking to herself, seated at the kitchen table. Launching herself off the couch, Lily pointed at her doppelganger. "Wha-how-who are you!?" 

The second Lily chuckled exasperatedly. "Uh, I'm you, duh. I know your eyes work because they're my eyes two!"

Noah snorted. "HA! Two and too, I get it. I don't think anyone else will, though."

Lily pointed between them. "What's going on!?"

Noah stood up, leaning against the table. "Well, after you passed out, your shadow started reflecting you a teensy bit more accurately, if you catch my drift."

Looking a bit closer, Lily realized that the doppelganger had flawlessly pale skin, and her hair was completely black. Her eyes were a mild gray, squinting at the corners in sour amusement. "Hey gorgeous, you done checking out yourself? I figured you'd have things to do."

Lily shook it off, glaring at Noah. "Undo it!"

He shrugged. "How? You're the one that ate ten grams of randomatter, that stuff is basically a plot device waiting to happen. Besides, it wouldn't be fair to Jill."

Lily was more than a bit confused. "Who?"

The copy giggled. "Me! Lily spelled backwards is Ylil, but that doesn't really roll off the tongue, so I changed it to Jill. Nice, right?"

Looking back between Jill and Noah, Lily realized that she might have bitten off more than she could chew when it came to the weirdness of Noah Cosmic.