Every Monday morning, Marie Walker rolled a six-sided dice.

After grabbing a light breakfast and enjoying a morning drink, she would meander to a mirrored room that she had designed to connect to nearly identical parallel universes that also had the same mirrored room. Like a radio. Waiting for her, without fail, were five more versions of herself, in worlds identical to hers in all forms and function with the exception of the result of their morning dice roll.

They would have an organized and brief meeting, all six versions of herself, discussing what they would do with their weeks. In this way, Marie Walker was able to effectively be in six places at once, make notes of which actions had the best outcomes, and spy on people in one reality, confident that they were doing the same thing, unobserved, in the others. After all: the only thing separating their realities were the roll of the dice, and her unique actions.

They passed notes. They exchanged jokes. They were always hilarious.

Sunday night, the six would all converge again and report on their activities. What they did, how the world reacted, and which one had brought them closer to their ultimate goal. In that way, it was almost like a little race, with each version of Marie trying to do better, and accomplish more, than the other versions of herself.

This week, however, things were a little different.

“Four,” Three noted, each Marie christened with the number their die landed on, “You seem a little pale. Your mission this week was to double-check Oberman’s work, so I take it that didn’t go well.”

Four nodded. One, Two, Three, Five, and Six double-checked their notes from the start of the week. They were reaching what could loosely be called the final stretch of their entire operation: One had been testing the UCA they had been working on, Two had been sussing out if there had been anyone spying on their inner circle, Three had been scouring the multiverse for a better pocket universe than the Silver Wheel, Five had been examining the unique properties of their latest ‘toy’, Ture, and Six had been brainstorming the possible outcomes of the eventual deployment of the UCA.

They all had their usual color. Three even had a little tan.

“Well it’s not like me to be so rattled,” Six hummed, “why don’t you start?”

“Sure. You’ll be interested to hear that Oberman is not okay. He hasn’t given up on Project 20:7. In fact, he’s advanced it quite a bit since we ordered him to trash it. He even captured one of the Mr’s somehow.”

“No kidding! That’s great news! Now we don’t need the Silver Wheel specifically, right?” Two nodded. The others, except One and Four, nodded in agreement. Four puckered her lips as she realized she had something else to say. Something actually important.

“Er… no. Having one in this dimension and having one that can cooperate with us are two very different things. This one, um… wasn’t cooperative, to say the least. He treated her really badly. But hey, on that note, Three, have you found any other pockets that have more Misses or Misters in them?”

“...huh. Actually… no,” Three double-checked her notes with a furrowed brow, “Only the Silver Wheel. Mr. Eight is a bit of an anomaly it seems.”

“So we’re not done with the Silver Wheel, then?” Two, Five and Six moaned at once. One and Three somberly nodded, having come to the same conclusion.

“Well fuck us, eh?” One sighed, before turning back to Four, “I don’t suppose we could find a version of her where he didn’t treat her like a dick?”

“Actually, no. It’s exactly how we hypothesized, she exerts a… linear presence to the reality in her area. You know, the exact same thing we needed Mr. Eight for?”

The other five Maries started to flip through the notes Four had already submitted. As they skimmed the report, their own faces began to crack into wide, entertained smiles. As if this were the funniest thing they had seen all day.

“Okay. So the paleness is because-”

“-yeah. I tried to force it.”

“And that-”

“-Full-on apocalypse.”

“You’ve got-”

“-Four days, seven hours, seven minutes.”

“Oof,” the other five hummed, “well, that sucks.”

“At least I died rich and beautiful,” Four sighed, complacently.

“Well then, I think we can all agree that we won’t be doing that, then. One, you wanna take it from here?”

They continued their meeting as per usual. Swapping notes. Exchanging stories. And, as the evening continued, they would conclude the meeting with a vote on the Marie that did the best, and advanced their mutual goal the furthest, before they called the meeting to an end.

Eventually, the winning Marie would go over the notes, observations, and the technology, while savoring a well-deserved ice cream sundae.

The losing Maries, to avoid competition and to motivate future Maries, hung themselves.

And the very next Monday morning, the winning Marie rolled a six-sided dice.