Subreality City, like just about every other plane that runs on imagination, occasionally has visitors from Out There, as Adriana Pinto called it. Some of these have no real idea where they are as they wander the streets, unaware that the Wolverine they see is really Wolverine and not an actor in character. So there were plenty of gawkers at the attractive woman walking a couple of steps behind a shapely floating dress, moving as if being worn by an unseen wearer. For some reason, maybe as an effect of their location, few of the gawkers were fazed by the floating dress. Most, especially the men, were enthralled by the young woman they thought of as “that girl from the lingerie catalog.” But in every case, something prevented them from pulling out cameras or pen and paper to catalog their encounter with a celebrity. Which was just as well, since few things are as they appear to be in Subreality.
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“I should warn you,” Vik was saying, “that Subreality isn’t quite like the outside world. Things can happen here that are impossible on the outside.”
“I know impossible things happen here,” Paulette countered. “That’s why they call it Subreality, isn’t it? At least that’s one of the reasons.”
“I figured you knew that, but still, I wanted to make sure I warned you,” Vik said. Momentarily they found themselves approaching a diner-style restaurant with a large old-fashioned neon sign reading “Unseen Scene.”
“Is that what you brought me here to see?” Paulete said. “A restaurant for people like us?” As she spoke, visually empty but shapely waitress uniforms could be seen moving back and forth between tables, some of them with equally invisible customers.
“Not the restaurant itself, but something inside,” VIk answered. The door swung open seemingly by itself in front of Vik’s dress as she and Paulette made their way inside. Once inside, they could see yet another property of this strange between-worlds world: the place was what some would call a tessaract, plainly much larger inside than the outside dimensions would allow.
A waitress uniform walked up to Paulette and the empty dress. “Hello, and welcome to — aren’t you Paulette? I thought you were here already,” said a voice from the seemingly empty uniform.
“Um, no, I’ve never been here before,” Paulette replied, a llitle taken aback by this stranger’s apparent familarity with her. Who did she have Paulette mixed up with? Oh well, it was probably not that important.
The waitress make a sound like she was about to say something, but stopped herself and said simply, “OK, well, if you’ll follow me I’ll show you to a seat. Your usual seat is, um, taken.”
“My usual seat?” Paulette said, without really intending to say it out loud. “Like I said, I’ve never been here before.” Is this what Vik was talking about? Lookalikes or something?
“Um, OK,” the waitress said, sounding unsure but not willing to pursue the matter further. They made their way between at least a dozen tables, into another room, and around a corner when Paulette heard something that stopped her dead in her tracks.
She heard her own voice in the middle of a conversation. She looked in the direction of the voice but foliage from a row of small trees in large pots blocked off her view of that part of the room.
She recovered quickly, though, figuring that it was just a similarity in voice, nothing more. But then she heard what sounded like Bryan’s voice replying to the duplicate of her own voice!
That was just too eerie to be a coincidence, she decided. Wherever the waitress was taking them, she would take note fo where these voices were coming from and very soon she’d find her way back. But that turned out to be unnecessary, because the waitress was leading them towards the source of the voices.
Once they had passed the offending thicket, the source of the voices became plainly evident…
Bryan was seated at a table, laughing and enjoying the company of… Paulette?!