Strange but not a Stranger

The back of my mind said, "Official Secrets Act" and the front of my mind played dumb, I signed something saying I was happy to leave the investigation to the hospital authorities that limited their liability to a hundred and fifty thousand Euros. I didn't bother querying the currency; I was still feeling quite dissociated from the world as an after effect of the shock earlier. My car keys had gone at the same time as my purse so without prejudice I was offered a lift home in a taxi at the hospital's expense.

I checked the car park on my way out and unsurprisingly my car was missing as well. Why some lowlife Pervert Ninja wanted a nine-year-old Honda Civic with a hundred and twenty thousand miles on the clock I have no idea, but I was back into the admin offices making a second statement to Pete Lacey and the same PCSO. Also, unsurprisingly their entire electrical security and computer system had been wiped out in the same problem that had fucked up my MRI scanner so there were no CCTV images. I was convinced by now that our Plasma reactor and quantum communications system had done something, so I kept quiet and concentrated on the Official Secrets Act.

I dozed in the hospital taxi, coming round with a jolt at a sudden stop when a traffic light took the driver by surprise, a blue glow blaring in his face. He finally got me home at around three thirty in the afternoon. I hobbled up to the house, shocked to see my car on the drive. The fucker, the fucking Pervert Ninja had stolen my car and purse and driven here to rob my fucking house while I lay unconscious on the hospital floor.

I looked around the front garden, there was nothing I could use as a weapon. I tried the front door, open. Quietly I kicked off the clogs and tiptoed into the living room, empty. Not empty, empty, just no one in there. I picked up the ornamental poker from in front of the gas fire. Ornamental it may be but fucking heavy it was and I was prepared to wrap it round some bastard's head.

A thump came from upstairs. I dropped the nurse's coat on the sofa, don't want to get blood on it, not after she was so nice to me, and made my way slowly to the stairs. I climbed up, stepping to the side by the wall so they wouldn't creak.

The noises coming from upstairs didn't sound like burglars burgling, it sounded like they didn't expect me to be home any time soon and were making full use of the facilities. It definitely sounded like there were two of them and they were getting along famously.

"Oh babe, that's amazing. I love it."

Shit a brick. I know that voice. It's fucking Carlo, why the fucking fuck is Carlo shagging the burgling perv Ninja that stole my fucking car.

I lifted the poker and held it two handed behind my head ready to get a massive swing at the first one to come near me. The door was slightly ajar, I raised my foot, feeling very James Bond but wondering at the same time why I didn't run away and call the cops. I was torn. Run away and let the professionals sort it or burst in, twat someone with the poker then run away and call the cops.

I settled on the latter and gave the door a massive thump with my heel, it flew open with a crash and the couple on the bed stopped and stared, "What the Fuck" I shouted at the same moment that she shouted the same thing. I was vaguely aware of blonde hair, quite large tits and my fucking boyfriend underneath her, buried in her tarty cunt.

What the Fuck had worked well the first time, so I tried it again. "What the Fuck are you doing Carlo, and who the fuck's this tart? Don't worry, don't tell me. I don't care, just get the fuck out and wait for the fucking cops to come and talk to you."

Tarty slapper woman and Carlo were entirely silent, no doubt shamed by their discovery and scared at the thought of doing some prison time. I wasn't about to take that shit from him. She started to speak but I found myself talking like I was in a Jason Statham movie. "Shut it Bitch, I want your views I'll fucking beat them out of you. Carlo, what the fuck?"

He started saying something to her, to fucking HER. "Babe, what's this about? Who is she?" I picked up a shoe from the floor and threw it at him "who am I? WHO THE FUCK AM I? WHO IS SHE MORE FUCKING LIKE IT AND WHY ARE YOU SCREWING HER IN MY FUCKING BED?"

I stopped and stared at them. Funnily enough it was her tits that got my attention, they were quite large, nicely rounded with distinct deep pink nipples, a bit like mine, and a couple of freckles in exactly the same place as I had freckles. There was a thump as I dropped the poker.

I moved my gaze up her body, her neck looked vaguely familiar, as far as necks can, her chin had a tiny scar underneath it where she may have fallen off a seesaw aged seven, her fingers were tracing the outline in exactly the same way as I was tracing an identical scar on my own chin.

Her teeth looked as if her parents must have paid quite a lot to get them straightened when she was thirteen, she had a set diamond studded earrings that her grandmother could have bought her when she passed four A levels with A grades and her eyes were the identical hazel green that mine were.

"Nnn No, what, no, what the fuck?" I gabbled and felt the floor coming up to meet me, through the greying room I saw her collapse sideways and then nothing.

No, not nothing, a sore head where I hit myself on the side of the bed on the way down and I felt nauseous. I was hyper ventilating, so was someone else, no not someone else, me as well.

I lay on the floor semi-comatose, what I really wanted was some tea, but I think all three of us knew Carlo wasn't really a man for emergencies, in fact he was probably only hanging round in the hopes other me woke up and carried on screwing him. I lurched onto all fours; the greyness was clearing.

I stood up, Imposter me was lying sideways across Carlo, stirring weakly. I sat her up and rolled her round to lean against the bead head. I poked Carlo in the chest. "I'm going down to make tea, you leave her alone until I get back up here, if I find you touch her while she's zonked out we will have a falling out."

He looked even more confused than me, or me. I pulled the bed covers over her; I have to say we do have a lovely pair of tits and went down to boil the kettle. I returned five minutes later with two mugs of Yorkshire Tea and a small cup of black coffee for Carlo.

She was awake and talking to Carlo who was slinking his way under the duvet, kissing her neck and ears. I know I like that, and I could see it was starting to work. she was saying to him, "Did you see it too? I need to get to hospital, I'm hallucinating. You wouldn't believe me if I ..." I put a mug down on the bedside table next to her. I'd used my two favourite mugs: they're a matched pair with Zachary Quinto Spock on one side and Leonard Nimoy Spock on the other.

Understanding was creeping into his eyes. "You never told me you had a sister. You're very alike. Which one's Jess and what's your sister's name?" A glance of acknowledgement shot between us, somehow we both knew neither of us was an imposter. I nodded imperceptibly. "I'm Maria, I'm Jess's twin," said naked me in bed. Maria's my middle name after my grandmother. "Carlo, I'm sorry, when I came home and you were here and just swept me upstairs into bed I didn't really stop to think. Jess, I think we need to have a long talk."

I agreed with me. "Carlo, I'm not angry anymore, it's an easy mistake to make since my er twin got her hair cut the same as mine."

Carlo displayed his total lack of comprehension, shallowness and failure to read the room by reaching out his hands to stroke the side of me in scrub's right boob and naked Me's left boob. "Maybe, if you are into it, maybe ahhh, we could all have some fun?" Both of me slapped his hand away and in unison told him "Really, that's where your mind goes? I think you should go now."

He seemed oblivious to anything being out of the ordinary and wandered naked through to the bathroom where a tap running and some splashing announced his hygiene regime, then came back in, still naked but his erection had subsided and there was a smell of Honey and Camomile hand soap. "Sticky cock" he announced, "Gets uncomfortable if you don't wash after." Then pulled his clothes on and came across to kiss me goodbye.

I'd told him I wasn't angry, but he wouldn't have known from the perfunctory peck he got.

"I'm off then, I'll be down the Crown later, Chelsea are away to Juventus in the Champions League if you want to come along? Robbo's going to be there if Mary wants a date?" I rolled my eyes at him, "Again? Is that a third leg then? I thought they played yesterday evening? And it's Maria and no I don't think we'll be there. I'll call you sometime ok?"

His confused face was back. "No, there's only two legs. This is the second, Chelsea are two nil up on aggregate."

Now I was confused. I distinctly recalled him coming over yesterday after the game, furious because Juventus had made it two nil, which made it two all and then in the last minute of the game Thiago Silva tried to clear a loose ball and sliced it so it bounced off Jorginho's shoulder and into the back of their own net, making it 3-2 and dumping them out of the competition.

He was almost as confused as me, "Nah, never gonna happen. We got this. Tell you what though, if you're so sure give me a tenner and I'll stick it on that at Ladbrokes on the way. I should get great odds."

I looked at my naked doppelganger, she pointed at the dressing table, there was my purse that had gone missing from the hospital. I opened it and pulled out a brown tenner, handing it to Carlo who clattered off down the stairs and slammed the door as he left.

I sat on the bed; she pulled the bed covers up tighter round her chest. I felt my throat constricting, we had a 'you go first, no you go first moment' then together we started, word for word at the same time we said:

"I, um, don't know where to start. I'm Jessica Maria Newell, I was born in Carlisle in 1997, I have a masters in Electronic Engineering from Oxford University and I work in Professor Cole's team in a classified field of research."

Then there was silence. We reached out a hand each and gingerly touched our fingers together.

We both flinched as

Nothing happened.

What did you expect? Lightning and a split in the fabric of space-time? You watch too many Marvel movies.

I started by going over what I remembered.

"I drove into the hospital, by the time I parked up and made my way to the imaging suite to meet Bill and Julia. Julia took me through to the changing room and gave me a paper gown. I put it on and locked all my clothes, ear studs and watch in the locker. I'd worn a cheap watch in case it went missing. I had a pee before Julia came for me then followed her to the scanner. She took my locker key and got me set up in the MRI scanner."

Other me nodded, "Yeah, all the same so far. I was strapped in; they gave me those nasty plastic headphones and switched on Radio two. They started the machine up, it gurgled and whirred for a while then they pressed the transmit button and the lights dimmed, then flicked off for a few seconds, then everything came back on. An alarm went off, but it sounded like an alert, not an emergency, you know? Like 'have a look at this' not a 'RUN FOR YOUR LIVES' alarm. Julia came back in, took me back through to get dressed, then she told me we'd be leaving it until Monday to review the results, but initial assessment was the data dump had gone through in a couple of Pico seconds."

I shook my head. "No, it was the same up until the lights flickered and went out. I must have passed out because I was suddenly aware of being naked, the alarm was sounding, and no one was around. Bill and Julia had disappeared, a porter found me and started squealing for help, he wouldn't come near me. Worried about a sex crime charge I guess, then a couple of nurses fixed me up.

My clothes, purse, watch, all gone. Ah, we probably need to cancel the police report. Likewise, the car. There was an electrical smell, I was completely disorientated. There's a registrar in A & E we owe an apology. And I need to take that coat back to Nurse Emma McCready." I'd gone into a bit of a stream-of-consciousness ramble, thoughts popping into my head and getting recycled as words almost immediately.

I took out our mobile from our handbag and asked other me for the number from the police report, together we concocted a believable story that had a relative driving my car home for me because I was expected to be getting a general anaesthetic and in my confused state I had forgotten entirely. I'm not sure they believed me but it's a statistic they can use, crime reported, case closed in 4 hours. Well done the met.

Me that was naked looked again at the crime report.

"Where did you go to get in the MRI scanner?"

I looked at naked me like I was stupid. "The same as you, John Radcliffe."

She pushed the crime report back to me, "So why were you reporting the car stolen from outside UCH in London?"

The world was greying out again and my breath was coming in short painful jabs. "No, it must be a mistake, surely? I was in Oxford." I dug out all the paperwork I had, every piece of it said UCH, Euston Road, London.

I called them, "Oh hello, it's Jessica Newell here, Can I speak to Emma McCready? I think she's in Imaging services?" Turns out she's not a nurse, she's a radiographer and she would be on duty on Sunday so I could return her coat. also turns out it was definitely UCH.

While I'd been on the mobile other me had been on the landline to our lab trying to track down Professor Cole. She slammed the phone down and turned to me.

"Cole was the one that closed down the experiment and sent everyone home when we came out of the MRI scanner. He's not to be contacted until Monday, mobile's switched off and they won't give out his home number."

I scrolled through the contacts on the mobile to J for Julia, I tapped the handset icon and waited for the call to connect. Bollocks. Voicemail. I left a message asking her to call me back as a matter of urgency. B for Bill got me a similar result. B for Bollocks. I tried a couple of others from the team, but no one was contactable.

It made sense, we'd been working on the weekend so once we finished people tended to switch off and not be online again until Monday.

It was weird how quickly we'd both come to the conclusion the other one was the same person, I mean neither of us had the first clue how it had happened but physically we were identical, and I mean IDENTICAL, down to the mole on our left boob and the tuft of hair on our pussy. We'd several times reacted with exactly the same words at exactly the same time and after spending twenty minutes asking each other questions about our past that only we would know and getting the correct answer we concluded our initial suspicion was correct.

At one point I had a genius idea, she went to make another cup of tea and I took the opportunity to sneak into the living room while she wasn't looking, I kept my sewing basket in a cupboard in there and sneaked a pin out. I was back at the kitchen table before the tea arrived. We chatted about first boyfriends and watching movies from the top of the stairs after we'd been sent to bed when we were eleven. I surreptitiously sneaked the pin into my hand and when a motorbike went past outside with a loud roar, and I thought she was distracted I jabbed it in her upper arm.

Amazingly there was a stabbing pain in my own arm, less amazingly it was because she'd done the same thing to me at exactly the same time. We looked at the pins, then each other then burst out laughing.

Asking what the other was thinking or wanted to do superfluous, we knew what the other was thinking because we were thinking the same, and there was no shame in sharing our thoughts, but we both (I both?) felt a social need to say things aloud.

"If you're me and I'm you, if we're us, would it be wrong if we got Carlo back for the evening? You know, it wouldn't be like he'd brought another woman back and we both know what we like about him..."

We walked into the Crown, I'd put a baseball cap on and other me had tied her hair into a ponytail just so we looked a bit different. I found Carlo, he was annoyed but was waving a betting slip around as a consolation prize, he was talking to his mate Robbo and being Carlo, he was being a bit of an ungracious winner.

"Yeah mate, read it and weep. Accumulator bet, Juventus to win at three to one, that's thirty, then to win three nil at five to one, that's a ton fifty then Thiago Silva to get an own goal at seventeen to one that's.." his maths failed him at that point so other me helped, "Two thousand five hundred and fifty." I came up from the other side, "And that I think you'll find is ours. You coming? Is the betting shop open to go and claim our winnings?"

He confirmed it would be for the next half hour, so we all took a brisk stroll to the high street where the man in the betting shop counted out a stack of ten twenty Euro notes with the balance being credited to Jessica's bank account.

That was worrying me. Euros? I stepped out of the shop and pressed the button on a pedestrian crossing and watched the lights intently, something else was stirring in my memory.

Green light, amber light, blue light. Blue for stop? Since when was that a thing? Further along the road an Ambulance shot over a junction, it's Black and White checkerboard pattern on the side marking it out. Suddenly I wanted some normality and control. I flew back into the shop where Jess and Carlo were signing something about publicity and tax.

"Jess, I'm er, I'm Maria. Not you." They looked at me, one confused, one with understanding. Not the way round you'd think. Carlo nodded, "I knew it, I think you're a tiny bit taller and your hair's shorter." I threw him an exasperated look, "I'm wearing boots, she's got flats and she's got her hair in a pony tail you muppet. Jess, I don't think I live here. We need to speak to Professor Cole as quick as we can."

They swapped expressions. Jess asked, "Is something different?" I gasped out "Euros, blue stop lights, black and white ambulances. I haven't noticed anything else yet. President, is there a president?"

She / I took control of the situation and dragged me back to her house. Carlo followed, probably still hoping for a twins fantasy threesome. I wasn't about to tell him we weren't twins; I don't think his mind had the capacity to understand the situation and I doubt he cared, he's a man of simple tastes and pleasures.

We appealed to one of his other simple pleasures and sent him out with forty euro to get a takeaway and spent twenty minutes with a bottle of red at the kitchen table talking about what had happened.

I had noticed a few differences, I still used pounds at home, the version of England I was now in had voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU and joined the Euro soon after the vote in 2016. The President I'd been asked about was probably the President of the EU. They'd always had blue stop lights, it made sense Jess said, the Emergency services all used blue lights, it was a clear colour of danger. The Waitrose supermarket up the road was badged as JLP Foodhall and the petrol station attached had a dozen charging points on one side of the forecourt.

We came to the conclusion that I'd been somehow snatched from somewhere else, we didn't know enough about what our respective Professor Cole's were working on, we were both fairly junior cogs in a highly compartmentalised machine, but we were convinced it wasn't a coincidence and that the experiment we'd been part of had something to do with it.

I poured another large glass of red. Jess picked up the phone and called Carlo. "Get more wine."