Chapter One - Manic Pixie Dream Goddess

“The world is going to end in four days, three hours, and approximately twenty-nine minutes!” The chipper tone of the young woman at my door did not jibe with her words

“What?” I was way too tired for this. I wouldn’t even have crawled out of bed and opened the door if she hadn’t kept knocking and knocking.

“That’s this coming Tuesday at one forty-two pm.” She added helpfully.

“Why are you telling me this?” I don’t know why I didn’t just close the door in her face. It’s probably because she was cute and I’m a sucker.

“I thought it would be relevant to your interests.”

“What interests would those be, exactly?”

She tilted her head to the side, looking puzzled. “Not having the world end in four days, three hours and twenty-eight minutes?”

I blinked.

I blinked again.

“May I come in? And perhaps trouble you for a glass of water?”

Only an idiot would let an obviously insane stranger into his house just because she asked nicely.

“Sure. Have a seat.” I waved vaguely in the direction of the couch and turned to the kitchen.

I retrieved a glass from the cabinet. “Ice?” I called out.

“Yes, please.”

I pondered as I filled the glass first with ice, then with water from the dispensers on the door of the fridge. Why did I let her into my house? Who is she and why is she peddling her crazy here?

I half expected to see her fleeing out the front door with my laptop when I reéntered the living room, but she was seated on the sofa, waiting patiently. I handed her the glass.

“Thanks!” She took a long drink of the water. “Saving the world is thirsty work.”

I waited silently, hoping she’d either leave or elaborate.

She didn’t speak again until she’d finished the water. She opened the drawer of the coffee table and pulled out a coaster to set the empty glass down on. That was odd. It didn’t look like she even looked in the drawer. She noticed my puzzlement.

“Oh. Um,” she tilted her head a little up and to the left before she spoke again. “That’s where I keep my coasters, too. Lucky coincidence?”

I wasn’t sure why that was a question, but it wasn’t my biggest concern at the moment.

“So, again, why me?” I asked, when it was clear she was waiting for me to start the conversation.

“Like I said, it’s relev—”

“No, I get that part, but the end of the world is sort of relevant to everyone’s interests. Why am I the one you’re waking up at ten in the morning on the first day of my vacation?”

“That’s an excellent question!”

Once again, the word that came to mind to describe her was ‘chipper.’ I don’t know that I’d ever thought of a real person as ‘chipper’ before, but if there was a better word, I’d be damned if I knew what it was.

I waited for her to go on. I could practically see the gears turning in her head.

“Well…” she paused, rubbing the back of her neck. “I’m kinda limited in what exactly I can, or more accurately, should tell you, but I know I need to tell you something. Hmm.” More gears turned behind her eyes. “I can probably tell you more later, but right now I can just say that I need your help to save the world.”

“What exactly are a fifty-nine year old coder and a,” I looked at her. At a complete guess, I’d say she was somewhere between twenty and forty. No noticeable wrinkles, but there was age in her eyes, “twenty-something?” She didn’t say anything, but a blush barely touched her cheeks, “year old woman going to save the world?”

“Another excellent question!” She practically beamed at me. Then her face fell. “But I can’t answer it.” She paused again. “Not the way you mean it, anyway.”

“How can you answer it, then?”

“I can tell you specific things you need to do, when it’s time, but I can’t give you the big picture.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t work.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“This seems like a very complicated way to scam me.”

“Nope!” Oh, good. The chipperness was back. “I don’t need money from you. Not even a little!”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time—”

“Sure you do,” she interrupted. “You don’t have any plans for today.”

“I’m having lunch with—”

“Nope,” she interrupted again. “Check your messages.”

I’d been so distracted by her that I hadn’t even looked at my phone since getting up. Sure enough, I’d missed a message. My best friend, Finn, wanted to switch our lunch this afternoon to dinner. Sure that I’d be free of this strange person by then, I agreed.

‘How did you—” I shook my head. “Nevermind. I need to clean up around here, anyway.”

She looked around the living room. “Really?” she asked. She looked strangely pleased with herself. “It looks fine to me.”

I looked around. I could have sworn I’d left the room messier than this, but she was right; it really didn’t need a cleaning. Still, I knew for a fact that my bedroom was a mess.

“The rest of the house is fine, too,” she added. “I’ll tell you what. Go look, and if you can honestly tell me more than ten minutes of cleanup you need to do, I’ll get out of your hair.” Before I could speak she continued. “For now, anyway.”

Without saying anything, I went to my bedroom door. The clothes that I was pretty sure that I’d left on the floor the night before were gone. I could have been wrong about leaving them on the floor, of course, but I was one thousand percent sure I had not made the bed before going to answer the door.

“Thanks again for the water, by the way,” she called out from the living room. I hurried back.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?” She was trying very hard to look innocent.

“Did you sneak into my room while I was getting your water?”

“I was here on the couch the whole time.”

“She definitely was. I saw.”

I spun around. There was another young woman standing in the hallway between me and the bedroom. Or maybe another copy of the same one. She had a different hairstyle (pink and curly vs. the original’s purple and wavy) and was dressed in a slightly less femme style, but otherwise she looked identical.

“Do you mind if I get a little more water?” A third one of her (blue hair, cargo pants) leaned out of the kitchen, brandishing a glass.

I looked back and forth between the three nearly identical women. I opened my mouth but no words came out, because I had no idea what to say.

Uh oh. I may have broken him. It would help a lot if I could remember all this, but time travel is stupid, and I can’t remember it until it happens. But, bright side, I’m still here. I must not have ruined things yet.

I pull myself back into a single body, sitting on the couch with my glass of water. It’s probably time to tone down the manic pixie dream goddess thing a bit.

“Sorry about that,” I say. “I thought it would be better to show than to tell. I may have overdone it a little bit.”

“How…” He managed to get a word out. Good for him. “Who…” And another one. There may be hope. “What…”

“All excellent questions. I’m going to take them out of order, if that’s okay with you.”

He’s used up his supply of words for the moment and nods, slowly.

“Okay, one and three—” I hold up the corresponding number of fingers, “—are relatively easy. It’s basically the same answer for both. I am, for lack of a better term, a goddess.”

“A goddess?”

“Yep.”

“A goddess of what?”

“Hold on, one of your other questions is still pending.” It’s hard to know exactly how much to tell him. There’s the very real chance that if I tell him the wrong parts, I’ll scare him off, and that would be curtains for me. And probably everyone else, too. Almost everyone else. “As for who, you can call me, um, Tivt”

“Tiff?”

“Close enough.”

“Is that your actual name?”

“It’s a name, and one that I’ll answer to, so, sure. For now.”

“Are you sure? You seem a little conflicted.” He somehow manages to say that with a straight face.

I reward him with an eyeroll. He’s making terrible puns, which means he’s pulling himself together. That’s good. I hoped he would, but I couldn’t be sure.

And he’s decided not to press me on the name question. That is also good; I don’t want to have to figure out the right answer to that right now.

I’m pretty sure that me answering his next question before he asks it would hurt the situation more than it helps, so I wait while he builds up the nerve. Plus, I’m not sure which one he’ll pluck from the swirling mass of confusion that is his brain at the moment.

“Okay. Back to my last question, then. If you’re a goddess, what are you the goddess of?” He then adds, “or does it not work like that?”

I could lie to him. It would be risky, but if it would make things better, maybe it would be worth it. For the moment, it might win him over more than refusing to answer, or deflecting. But if he finds out, it would break his trust, and if he doesn’t, that might be even worse. But…

“That’s another thing I can’t tell you. I know that’s frustrating,” I say, and mean it, “but it’s how things stand. And no, I can’t even tell you why I can’t tell you.”

“If you won’t tell me anything, then I can’t help you. For all I know you could be setting me up to end the world, rather than save it.”

“I—”

“Can you at least tell me how it’s going to end? And how you know?”

Can I? This is not going according to my very meticulous plans that I formed during the minute between manifesting at his front door and him opening it. He’s on the verge of kicking me out. Maybe keeping him almost completely in the dark was always going to fail. Maybe I just screwed it up. It doesn’t really matter at this point; I think I have to tell him what he wants to know.

Not all of it, but enough. Probably too much.

“I’ll tell you what I can.”

She closed her eyes for a moment—hopefully to gather her thoughts, and not to figure out a good lie to tell. I took the opportunity to look at her a little more closely.

She was close to my height, maybe an inch or two shorter. Her wavy purple hair was shoulder-length. She was very pretty, but not in a supermodel sort of way. I might have called her beautiful, but ‘cute’ worked better. The lightweight green dress she was wearing should have clashed with her men’s work boots, but she made it work.

She smirked a tiny bit and I tore my gaze away right before she opened her eyes.

“This coming Tuesday morning, gods will once again—maybe. I’m not sure if they ever actually did before—walk the Earth. And that’s bad.”

“Bad how?”

“They’re evil assholes. Imagine six of the worst people you know— angry at the world, incel losers, given the powers of gods. We’re not talking minor gods, either. We’re talking the burn down nations, bend the masses to their will kind of gods.”

“That does sound bad. Why them? Won’t any decent people be chosen?”

She closed her eyes again for a moment. When she opened them, she stared directly at me. “As far as I know, it’s happenstance. And I’d like to think that the seventh one is better, but I guess that’s not for me to judge. I think I’m doing my best, though.”

“Wait…”

“We sort of chose our, um, sphere? Archetype? Something like that—”

“I take it you didn’t choose a burn-the-world down sort of sphere?” I didn’t know why I believed her, but I did. When she nodded, I continued. “What did you choose?”

“My turn to ask a question, first.”

I nodded.

“What would you choose?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Okay, fine. Maybe a trickster sort? I’ve always liked the idea of shapeshifting, being able to mess with people. Probably just the ones who deserve it, though. I hope.”

“And that’s why I came to you. I knew you’d get it. It’s more complicated than that, but yeah, I’m a Trickster.”

When she said it, I could hear the capital T.

“But you said this won’t happen until Tuesday…”

“Causality is just another rule, and what do we Tricksters love to do with rules?”

“Break them?”

She handed me a little gold star sticker. When I didn’t immediately do anything with it, she grabbed it from the tip of my finger and pressed it onto my forehead.

I ignored that for the moment. “You’re from four days into the future?”

Her formerly bright mood is gone.

I probably already told him too much, but in for a penny…

“Closer to two weeks,” I answer. “I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t protect the world. My sphere doesn’t work that way, and I don’t have the raw power that any of the others did.”

“Did?”

Damn. If time travel were easier, I’d go back and undo that slip. I have to admit the truth.

“Technically, will. But from my point of view, yeah, did.”

I take a deep breath before I continue.

“I won.”