Down the rabbit hole she went.

It wasn’t quite a hole but the passageway that held the staircase she traveled down was narrow and confining and if only because she felt a lot like Alice in the way her day just kept getting curiouser and curiouser, it was what she thought of as she made her way down it.

Chasing the time-obsessed, white rabbit, Michael in this case, she hoped wouldn’t have the crazy repercussions they did for the titular character of the Lewis Carroll story.

Though it had been forever since she read it and there were parts she would never forget, the ‘Drink Me’ potion that made Alice smaller—how that would come in handy right about now—the mad tea party, the painting of the roses from white to red so to create an illusion for the queen that they were what she desired, most of the tale was gone from her memory. Yet she still believed it was a favorite of hers from childhood though she could not say why.

Like Alice, she wondered the whole way down the what she would find once she reached the bottom.

Unlike Alice, however, she’d been on this journey before and had some idea of what lie ahead even if she didn’t know just where the staircase would drop her off. Plus, she knew from the book and the Disney cartoon not do anything foolish like drink strange potions or eat any cake that might be lying around, even though she was still very hungry.

And though her grip on reality was not as strong as it was when she awoke this morning, the gossamer web of rationality she still clung to told her she would not come across anything of the sort.

What she did encounter at the last step was a short tunnel leading to another room similar to the one she’d discovered up above and as luck would have it, it was also empty. This space was a bit bigger but still quite tight with a low, dark ceiling that made her feel no less claustrophobic than she had been when making her way down.

Lining the wall was another row of brightly colored jackets, both lifesaving and element resistant varieties, just like in the storage room above. However, where upstairs there were many boxes along the ground and lots of extra equipment around the space, here there were only a few, leaving room for the pull-down cot that attached to the wall, currently in the down position.

To the left was another door, the edges rounded, the frame, a heavy, reinforced steel, with metal bolts circled round a window made of a double-walled glass through which she could see the comprehensive panel of control boards, dials and intercoms.

It reminded her of the cockpit of an airplane, which she’d seen up close as child, back when it was a regular practice to visit the pilots in flight and be given a pin of metal wings. Despite having not flown in quite some time, she knew because of the devastating events a few years earlier, cockpits were sealed immediately after lift-off and children of today were denied the chance to get much more than a peek and a quick hello from the copilot while boarding. She wondered however, if they still gave out those wings? How she loved hers as a child. Not because she was so interested in aviation, but because the shiny memento somehow gave her a lift and the sense her future was wide open like the skies the planes soared through to get from one destination to the next.

At some point in her youth, the souvenir was lost. She cried when she discovered it was gone, even though she was nearing her teen years and felt silly to have gotten so emotional over such a thing as losing a trinket meant for children. Since by the time she took her next airplane trip, she was too old and too timid to ask for a new pair of wings, they were never replaced.  

Taking a closer peek through the glass at the control room she observed the two chairs bolted to the ground. Draped around one of them was another of the yellow jackets, this one with the word Captain, emblazoned on the back.

Spinning back around to further investigate the space she was in, she made the error of going left instead of right, rotating 270 degrees to observe the additional portal of steel, perpendicular to the cockpit or whatever was the term for it on a ship.

With a much smaller window, positioned slightly higher so that she had trouble seeing out of it, she only knew it led out to the small outside deck on the ship’s central level because the night peeked into the confines of the space in the form of waves of moonlight that danced along the floor as the boat swayed rhythmically. Hanging on the inside of this door, was a clipboard on a magnetic hook. The sheets attached seemed to be a manifest of all the passengers aboard, a list she knew to be incomplete as Pam Beesly and Michael Scott were only listed on it once each.

Situated on the room’s fourth wall was a small desk. Above it was another porthole but it was only because of geometry she knew its vista was not out at the dark waters of the icy lake. Because of the higher placement she was unable to see anything but the lowest section of the circle, through which she could only just make out a partial view of the ship’s main inside area.

Even on tiptoe, her short stature only allowed her the slightest peek, but her prior knowledge and small glimpse told her she was looking out at where the band had their instruments set up. She was not quite able to see Michael’s face, but recognized the top of his head next to Dwight and Captain Jack. Further ahead but mostly blocked by a column in the way, she had a modest view of her Roy and knew it was her own self wrapped up in his embrace. From inside the room, she could just about make out the muffled sound of claps and hollers and only because she’d been on the other side of this wall when it first happened, she knew the captain was calling for a celebration and offering to marry them right there and then.

Her toes still tingling from the cold outside, began to further throb from trying to stay up on them to get a better glance, the pain exasperated by her annoyance with herself at her earlier hesitation. How much she had wanted to take in Roy’s exact words this time around and hopefully also catch her own reaction.

Had she not been afraid to take immediate action upstairs, she may have been down in time to break from this room and watch the scene unfold from a hiding spot with a better view.  But as usual, she had to think too much before she acted, stayed stagnant for too long, scared to take this alternate route because it wasn’t the path she knew.

Instead, she was stuck here, trying to see the last bit of this life-changing moment out a sliver of glass from the confines of the box she had found herself in.

Even if she had kept up her childhood lessons, she would never have made it as a ballerina, that was for sure since after only short bit on tiptoes, she could no longer stand to stay in the position. Without much care as to who or what the cot was there for, she hoped only for the captain to catch a catnap before evening cruises and nothing else, she retreated to sit on it and rest her feet while she planned her next move.

Closing her eyes as she gathered her thoughts, which were tumbling about frantically, behind her eyelids there formed a pattern, tartan-like in the way divergent rows embodying her emotions crisscrossed in her mind. The convergent timelines she was living through tonight were causing a dichotomy of feelings represented by colors that overlapped and only in certain places blended together.

On the one hand there was the golden happiness and renewed fire-red passion for her fiancé who after nearly two weeks of treating her with the kind of affection that made her feel truly cherished and desired, had maybe begun to fall into some of his old ways, putting boys and drinking and sports first and her at the end of his list of priorities.

It was thinking about his griping from earlier in her present day that caused her concern. Technically the grousing hadn’t happened yet since her past was, save for Michael, his and everyone else on this boat’s future and that was some two more weeks away from happening.

On top of that, after once again falling victim to her own crippling indecision, she was riddled with regret and self-loathing for missing out on a beautiful moment because of it.

She saw puce-colored fear stemming from Michael still being unaccounted for. Even with the date set as it had been before, she nevertheless felt a terror that if she didn’t find him soon, her whole world still had the potential to be turned upside down.

Plus, there was Jim, whose pale face she couldn’t seem to keep from seeing at the center of the cloth of her emotions.

With her gloves tucked back into her coat pockets, she spied the subtle glint of her ring and before she could stop herself, she was at it again, twisting the circular band around and around on her finger, momentarily blind to the fact she’d become cemented in place, engaged in the exact same procrastination that set off the state of wallowing she was in now.

She’d been given a rewind button, a chance to hear the song that she hadn’t the first time, but because her own playlist was stuck on repeat, she missed it again.

 “Stop!”

Startling herself with the sound of her own voice, she finally recognized what she was doing. Hearing herself was not as jarring as seeing herself, but it was shocking enough to serve as the wake-up call she needed to get herself back on the task of finding Michael and preventing him from adding another fragment of disorder to her already jumbled state of mind via the alteration of their history.

She knew he wanted to stop what was on schedule to happen next. That was his whole reason for boarding this boat, and though it seemed like a laudable desire, she couldn’t know what potentially worse event might occur in its place. Besides, what possible plan could he have up his sleeve to prevent it?

She only hoped Michael realized any attempt was futile and maybe had returned to the upper level on his own. Either way, any minute now all hell would break loose, interrupting the romantic dance that was etched in her mind now intermingled with the new memories she’d been forming all evening.

During her first time experiencing the night, the diversion was unwelcomed, downright disastrous in fact, but tonight it was an opportunity. There would be at least 10 minutes of all-out bedlam at which time she could get from her current hideout, do a sweep for the AWOL Michael and return to the upper deck, with any luck with him also in tow, that is if he was still hiding out on this level.

She rose again on her toes to peek once more through the porthole and prepped herself to be ready, planning to make her departure just as she saw him make his way back to the stage. Even though she knew it wouldn’t be much longer, she lowered herself again, deciding this time she would act first and not let her fear control her. She stepped up to the exit door, grabbed the handle and slowly pulled it open, popping just her head out first to check if the coast was clear.

It wasn’t.

Luckily Captain Jack and whatever female guest he was directing to where he ‘drove the boat’ were too busy laughing to notice her slam the door back shut. She barely had time to pass back through the tunnel and start back up the staircase before she heard them open the door and fall onto the cot she’d only just minutes ago been sitting on.

---

Ryan assumed he’d been wrong but at the time he’d sworn it was Michael he’d seen out on the landing by the third bathroom. The one he locked himself in most of the night in order to try to get some studying done. He recognized the obsessive look on the man that watched him from behind the dirty glass when he came out to take a break and stretch his legs. It was enough to make him run back inside to the cramped and foul-smelling quarters before his nose got a whiff of cleaner air and his limbs had a chance to loosen up at all.  

It was when a few minutes later he heard the commotion back outside his space, that he supposed he’d imagined the figure in the window; that the man he saw was merely a delusion brought on from hours of reading by faint light while the turbulent motion of the boat and pungent odors of both the latrine and the lake overwhelmed his equilibrium and lucidity.

This was because there had been no doubt when moments later, upon hearing the shrieks and pandemonium, that it was his ridiculously inappropriate and imprudent boss behind whatever calamity was ensuing. Naturally, he was correct; when drawn from his hiding spot in time to see a man jump out the window into the icy water below, he found in the middle of the fray, the middle-aged, man-child who had caused him more grief in the short time he’d been temping at Dunder Mifflin than he’d experienced in perhaps his entire adult life.

But that meant it was someone else who’d been staring wistfully at him through the glass.

He really needed to get off this boat, not due to concern it was sinking as Michael had just announced but because it was making him see things, and not just things, duplicate Michaels, a sure sign he was very ill indeed.

More curious than concerned upon hearing the ‘man overboard’ announcement over the loudspeaker and aware any further study was futile amid the chaos, he mixed in with the Dunder Mifflin crowd to watch as a band of yellow jackets rushed to the decks to rescue the man who threw himself overboard. The captain was not among them as he was directing Michael away in another direction, using a series of choice words to berate him as he intermittently barked orders to the remaining crew. It was then that he once again experienced the hallucination, this time quite certainly from the seasickness that had gotten much worse with the added turbulence on the water and inside the ship. Running through the still hectic crowd of frenzied passengers he imagined he once again saw his boss.

Yeah, he desperately needed get off the boat.

---

In the time it took her to take the steps back up and come back out through the trap door, hovering and peeking out first to ensure no one would catch her before she wholly emerged, so too must the original Michael have made his panic-inducing announcement downstairs. She had only just tasted the cool night again, the lungful of fresh air and sky full of stars doing wonders to calm her mind after the adrenaline rush of the near miss below, when she heard the splash of what she knew to be an overly impulsive man hitting the water. She ran to the boat’s edge to witness the rescue as inflated rings striped with red were tossed over the side and the unfortunate victim of Michael’s foolhardy speech was lifted back to safety onto the front deck.

When she turned back away after the extrication, there before her was Michael.

“I couldn’t stop it Pam.”

Aside from the washed-out pallor still bleaching his skin, he appeared dejected and ashamed. She hadn’t remembered him being so remorseful the first time it happened. Sure, he told her he wanted to stop it but even he had said the reason was so that he wasn’t put into a temporary jail for the remaining leg of the cruise. She never suspected there was a more altruistic motivation behind it.

She presumed over time he came to feel bad about the chaos he caused and for the man who jumped. Or maybe it was always in him, but he was unable to express it in front of the people who looked up to him or at least were supposed to. Either way the look on his face now was kind of breaking her heart.

She hardly needed to confirm it, she knew from how he looked it was her missing Michael. Besides if history stayed true, which it seemed to have so far, the other Michael, had been dragged away by Captain Jack, not to be seen again until the following day at the office.  But in not knowing what to say to comfort him, her silent, pitying stare must have been interpreted as a request for the code word.

It came out more like a croak than a word, “Hermione.”

Pam nodded in acknowledgement, her eyelids dropping along with her head to say she was aware before he even opened his mouth.

“Michael, I’m curious, how did you think you were going to stop it anyway?”

When he didn’t respond, Pam placed a hand on his back and gently guided him back to the room with the water and blankets. She had no idea what he’d been doing for the last 45 minutes but he had to be cold and thirsty as well as sorrowful.

“It’s okay. He didn’t drown, but you knew that. Come, I found a place we can stay hidden until we dock soon.”

Michael seemed relieved when inside she showed him the fridge and he didn’t hesitate to grab a yogurt, which after he ripped away the gold lid, he slurped up like a stray dog that hadn’t eaten in weeks. As he inhaled the creamy treat, squeezing the last bits up from the plastic cup and sticking his tongue in it to lap up any last traces that clung to the side, Pam all the while cringing from the sight, she began to tell him all about how the cameraman knew. This was not the shocking news to him it had been to her. Maybe this whole ‘keep the two Michaels apart’ hadn’t even been necessary. Discovering a second version of himself, he would see nothing strange of it, not like any other rational adult. He wouldn’t faint from the shock or think he’d gone mad. This man was still a child inside and with that came that innocent acceptance of magic, miracles and fantasy.

However, unless she too woke up soon to find herself having a quite curious dream like Alice or the Hollywood version of Dorothy, she too would have to accept that magic exists, just as L. Frank Baum, J.K. Rowling and every fantastical author out there had actually intended their audiences to believe.

“Hey look,” he said spying the piles of stiff brown fabric, “think one of these might be an invisibility cloak?”

She rolled her eyes at first, but then thought on it a minute. She herself had tried to apparate earlier, even though she deep down knew it was never going to work. But who could have thought the Time Turner would and yet here they were on the boat again. But then again, even if out there existed a magical cloth that could make them disappear, what would it be doing here on the Lake Wallenpaupack Princess?

“Not likely, Michael,” she sighed. “Besides what good would it do us now. We’ve got about another half hour or so to remain here and then we are going to slip downstairs and out with the other passengers.”

The closet felt even more crowded now with the two of them inside of it, more so because of the aroma of vomit and sweat emanating off of her companion. She hated to leave him, but now that she finally was able to stop worrying about locating him, she needed a little time to herself to clear her own head.

Once more history gave her foresight. Jim would tell her tomorrow how Michael had been zip tied to the rail on this level, so before she could take her walk she had to be absolutely sure that this Michael would also not be able to move from his spot. She couldn’t exactly zip tie him, although there were plenty of the plastic bands in closet with them.

Instead, insisting that he stay put until she came for him, she stuck out her pinky and linking it with his, had him seal his promise not to leave in the one way she knew the child inside of him would never break. In Michael’s eyes, the pinky swear was the equivalent of JK Rowling’s unbreakable vow, bound by sanctity and too revered to be broken.

With the self-assurance he would not leave this time, she grabbed the top blanket off the pile, wrapped it around herself for extra warmth and left him behind in the space, concerned he might clear out the rest of the yogurts but not letting it bother her too much.

As she walked along the deck again, with the heavy wool material draped over her head and body cloaking her face into shadow, she imagined she might resemble one of the little Jawa characters from Star Wars, the original one which she’d only just seen recently.  She’d rented the movie on Jim’s insistence, following a lengthy conversation where he tried to explain to her that to fully appreciate Revenge of the Sith, she needed to watch the first three films, which technically came later in the story timeline. He’d told her to make sense of the future you had to revisit the past. Or was it the past made more sense if you had knowledge of the future? Either way, it was all very confusing to her.

All she knew is that it was one of the few times when she saw Jim and Dwight in harmony on something, both insisting she’d appreciate the more recently released movie more after seeing the ones from the way past and for that reason alone, she made it a priority to watch the first of the three over the break. She did so on her own, on a night Roy was out drinking with the guys, since he’d seen it as a kid and didn’t need the refresher plus, as he remarked, ‘he wasn’t a Star Wars geek, like her friends upstairs.’ Besides, he didn’t need to anything to ‘appreciate’ the rental except a few beers and his girlfriend to not ask questions throughout it. She didn’t bother to remind him for the upteenth time that she was his fiancée.

When she returned to the office after the new year, she informed Jim, she would stick to the Harry Potter movies, she wasn’t a huge fan of A New Hope.

Harry Potter back in her mind as she continued in her stroll, she considered the possibility that Michael was actually onto something. The blankets might not make them disappear like in the wizarding world, but they could use them to disguise themselves when later they would need to slip in and integrate themselves in with the crowds to get off the boat.

Michael, the original version, she knew by now was somewhere up here with her, after having been banished and handcuffed in a makeshift brig, that was intended to keep him from producing further trouble as well as be the punishment for all that he had already caused.

Recalling the shame on his alter-ego’s face after the incident repeated for a second time, she had the thought to go speak to the original him, posing as her other self. He’d never know the difference and perhaps it would be a comfort to him, now that she knew how bad he felt about what he had done.

As she rounded the corner, she noticed he wasn’t alone. Jim was there beside him.

Sweet Jim had gone to check on Michael.

That’s how he knew about the zip ties. She had asked him but in classic Jim fashion, he joked saying he had his ways. Pam just assumed Michael had told him, since Michael seemed to tell Jim everything, calling him into his office whenever he had a problem and needed advice or just wanted to get something off his chest.

Stopping in her tracks and retreating a few steps to duck back into the shadows she found a spot a safe distance away so she could witness her best friend extend his good nature and bring solace to their boss.

She was close enough to see them clearly but from where she stood around the corner she was blocked from being seen herself, however over the waves and winds it was hard to make out the words being spoken, particularly Michael’s whose back was to him.

Jim however, she knew him so well she could practically read his lips and his mind and she could tell it wasn’t just for Michael’s comfort that he was there. Something on his face said he was in crisis, too. She hadn’t thought he’d taken the breakup with Katy quite that hard, but possibly he did, or was it that his guilt too much to bear? Or was it something else, something she maybe had sensed that night, had all but confirmed earlier but was still too fearful to acknowledge?

She scarcely dare breathe as she stared at his eyes, which appeared as dark as onyx, deep and dusky but still glistening like jewels, perhaps moistened from the gusts of sea air that were whipping through and rustling his hair. Unsure as to why, she felt her heart’s rhythm grow faster, fluttering like the fish that sculled the waters below them.

“That's... great.”

What was great? she wondered, aware of cynicism in his voice. His tone seemed to shift as he continued but she missed some of the words that were drowned out by the noises wafting in from the aquatic expanse beyond them.

“… have a big thing for Pam, so...”

She’d known this. She’d heard about his past crush, right from him in fact, the day before she left on her vacation with Roy. So why was the echo of her heartbeat suddenly so loud she thought both men might turn back to hear where the deafening thumps were emanating from?

“Yeah, I know.”

What did he know? For once she wished she could hear what ridiculous words were coming from Michael’s mouth.

Was he reminding Jim she was engaged back when he started or in true Michael fashion responding with a statement completely irrelevant to the disclosure? Most likely, he was comparing Pam to Katy, pointing out how much cuter his current girlfriend was than her.

As she listened to Jim agree with the voice in her head that planted words she couldn’t make out over the wind, she couldn’t keep from experiencing feelings of self-doubt and insecurity, the kind that made her feel she was lucky she had someone who loved her even if she didn’t always get him. 

At the same time, she couldn’t help being washed over by a wave of disappointment, the same one she felt when in the same instance she both learned of Jim’s previous infatuation with her and that it had long since passed. That any romantic feelings he had for her were a momentary tick on the timeline of their relationship, a flash of heat that cooled before it could flourish beyond a friendship, because she was involved with someone else and Jim was not the kind of guy to pursue someone else’s girlfriend, much less fiancée.

Once again just like back then, or was it as she soon would, this time continuum thing made her feel like a hamster running in circles on a wheel going nowhere, she felt a wave of guilt for her feelings. It wasn’t like she would leave Roy for him, especially not now, so why was she so sad that he no longer felt that way.

Or might she have? If she’d known sooner, before the date was set, might she have reconsidered staying with Roy? Was what she had with Jim only platonic because she wouldn’t admit it could be, it was, something more?

It didn’t matter now, what’s past is past, she thought.  Except it wasn’t, not since the paranormal event that shifted everything.

Still, he had a crush, past tense, so the point was moot.

“Yeah. She's really funny, and she's warm. And she's just…”

After that she didn’t hear anything else and this time it wasn’t because of roars coming off the water or the whistling gusts blowing about. It was as if in that instance her whole world went silent. What he felt was real and now and his the words she heard coming out from him were a confirmation of what she suspected earlier, that little intuition she banished away as she focused on what was to come later in the evening.

It was more than she could handle at the moment. She felt weak and dizzy and if she hadn’t had time and space fall out from under her already today, she might have thought that she was floating somewhere above herself as what she heard sunk in.

It wasn’t then, it wasn’t over and it wasn’t just in her mind.

From out of her pockets her hands flew at each other, the overwhelming need to twist and fiddle with her fingers drawing them together like magnets to metal.

Instinctually, she found it, the band with the cluster of stones that she couldn’t help but to physically fixate on whenever her anxieties flared. Even while hidden under the glove that kept it from sight, its presence blinded her.

She was engaged, the date was set. She loved Roy and tonight he showed, in front of everyone, how much he loved her. No matter what Jim felt, or for that matter what she did too, she had made a promise to the man downstairs and she wasn't ready to break it.

But now with what she heard, how was she going to face Jim at work the next day?

It took a minute, but it eventually came to her. She wouldn’t see him tomorrow, at least this version of herself wouldn’t. With no reason to return to Dunder Mifflin, aside from keeping Packer from his foul deed some two weeks from now, it would also be that long before she would be with Jim again.

As much as she would miss him, as much as she knew they would need to talk, as much as she wanted to make him understand how much his friendship meant to her, it was probably for the best that there would be this waiting period before she saw him again.

To adjust to the new dynamic of knowing his feelings, she was going to need what the magic Time Turner had granted her. She was going to need some time.