I had no idea if Meticulous would actually hurt Twig and Nash more than he had already, but I didn’t plan on finding out. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

The truth is, I couldn’t have fought back anyway. I still couldn’t stand up on my own, and my channeling trick seemed to have burned itself out in me. No more fizz. No more All of Me.

“Okay, then.” Meticulous checked his MePad. “Start with an anglerfish. For Earth One Hundred Fourteen.”

As soon as I started folding the energy, a big chunk of my anxiety fell away. Origami always cleared my head like that. If it weren’t for Meticulous hovering around, I might have even enjoyed myself.

“So, what’s your deal, exactly?” I said, shaping the light into a fish body. “Why’s it so important for you to go ‘deeper’ into the multiverse?”

Not taking his eyes off my hands, Meticulous shrugged. “You know, curiosity and all that tosh.”

“You can’t lie to a Me. Not this Me, at least.”

Meticulous checked the length of his fingernails. “Well, if you must know. Based on my calculations, this new list of Earths I’ve gathered should have the tech I’ve been seeking: the next generation of spacecraft, life-extension treatments, and artificial intelligence. I plan to bring these gewgaws to my world.”

The truth hit me like Twig’s kick to the groin. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?! You stole ideas from other worlds and passed them off as your own! The Missing Mes invented self-driving cars and smart toilets and all that other Me Corp. junk you’ve been selling on Earth One! You stole it from them to build Me Corp.!”

If being called a thief and a cheat hurt Meticulous’s feelings, he didn’t show it. “Back to folding now. You don’t want to break your momentum.”

Folding was the last thing I planned on doing just then. “Me Con was a scam all along! It was just a way for you to keep the Mes occupied so you could sneak into their worlds and steal ideas for your company! That was the real point of interviewing everybody, to see what tech they had back home! Tech you could steal!”

Lips tight, Meticulous wagged his thumb at Twig and Nash. I took the hint and got back to the fish, but I didn’t shut up. “And now that you’ve taken all the worthwhile ideas from a hundred worlds, you’re all washed up. Which is why you need new worlds to rob.”

Meticulous whipped a handkerchief from his breast pocket and shook it out a lot harder than he needed to. “And what’s the harm, really?”

“The harm? Your greed and general buttheadedness have stranded everybody at Me Con! Wait a minute, I just realized: You didn’t banish the Missing Mes. Your stupid, unstable elevator messed up their Earths, didn’t it?!”

Meticulous buffed the already spotless wall around the origami drive. “Their Earths are fine. It’s the portals to their Earths that may require some tweaking.”

“So you went to their worlds to steal ideas too many times, and it wrecked their only way home?!”

“Like I said, I’ll return them to their homes with this new and improved elevator. Eventually.”

I was so mad I almost squished the fish head I’d just folded. “Was it worth it? Robbing them of their homes just to make a fast buck?”

Meticulous polished the wall hard enough to rub a hole through it. “That’s tosh! This isn’t about money, it’s about Me Corp. and what it represents. It’s about a Me actually doing something with his life. Do you know how bloody hard it was to build up the company?”

“Couldn’t have been too hard if Dad started it for you.”

“That failure? Pillocks! Not likely! It wasn’t until I made some simple improvements to the MeMinder that Dad’s naff little business took off.”

“And from there you stole the MePads and MeCars and MeToilets?”

Meticulous wiped so hard the wall squeaked under his handkerchief. “It’s not as if Dad could have ever thought up a single one of those products!”

“It’s not like you did either. You didn’t even invent the origami drive. Mom did!”

He threw the handkerchief on the floor and stomped on it with his boot. “It was just notes when I found it! Notes with the numbers all squiffy! Unlike your mum, my mum only got it one percent right. I did the other ninety-nine! Me!”

He trailed off, and his eyes went watery. Even his tears were neat and tidy, rolling down his cheeks in an orderly little stream.

“Your mom’s dead,” I said. “Is this about her or something?”

He choked back a sob. “What, you think I’m scouring the multiverse, trying to find a replacement for her? I’m not. I’m not happy she died, but I’ve moved on.”

“Yeah, moved on to stealing stuff from the Mes.”

Meticulous snatched up the handkerchief and shoved it into his pocket. “I made the origami drive! What else did I need to do?! Once I had the elevator up and running, I had a whole multiverse of brilliant new gadgets and inventions to choose from.”

“But they aren’t your ideas!”

“Rubbish! Anybody can invent a MePad or a MeLoo. I created from scratch a machine to travel between realities! After you’ve done that, you don’t need to bloody well tinker around with anything else, because everything you need is already out there for the taking. It saves time, and time is crucial when you’re a thirteen-year-old CEO!”

“What’s your rush? You’ve got decades of being a CEO ahead of you.”

He snorted. “I run Me Corp., but I could be sacked by the board of directors at any time. As it is, they’re less than chuffed to have a kid at the head of a multibillion-dollar company. They only accept me as long as I roll out new doofers and upgrade the old ones every fiscal quarter. Do you know how much pressure that is?!” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Now get back to work.”

It was a good thing my hands were occupied with folding, because otherwise I’d have used them to strangle Meticulous. By pouring my frustration into the origami, I had it finished in no time. As soon as I put the final folds on the fins, the anglerfish started spinning.

It was time to visit a new Earth.