I knew that I occupied some poorly defined point in time and space. I think that to begin with, I focused on space, and left time a mystery.

So I was in a frozen room. In front of me, a wooden desk. Behind it, a bed. An array of rulers on one side of the desk. Why would you have so many rulers? Some had the name Dominic Fraser printed on them; a child's penmanship. They looked old.

The place had an unfamiliar smell. Scrap paper littered the desktop, and was only noticeable because everything else was so neat. Neat and frozen. I felt as if I were standing on a stage, as if the room was fake. Was I in a theatre? I couldn't remember how I had gotten here. I couldn't even think what the last thing that I remembered was.

I did know who I was, though. That was never a mystery.

I was Elizabeth Stratton, daughter of Henry Stratton. I'm 22 years old, and unmarried, and my family lives near the Macquarie River.

I guess you could say I was a rather passive person, and that helped greatly. The things in the room flooded to my perception without being asked, and without being questioned. That box on the desk, for example. My mind observed that it was made of some thin pliable wood, and fronted with a dark stained glass. I suppose I was confident that understanding would come eventually, and so I merely acknowledged it's existence.

It was an appropriate attitude for someone who didn't know anything about where they were, except for that which could be plainly seen. An appropriate attitude for a naturalist.

Having looked about the room, I found myself examining my hand, which seemed oddly bloated. I raised it, and went to the window, drawing aside the curtains.

Ah.

The world wasn't static any more. The rustling of leaves outside the window attested to that.

It was mid-afternoon, and it was probably winter.

I began to realise that there was an awful lot of periphal information in my head. Information that didn't strictly belong to "Elizabeth Stratton". And somewhere among that information, I found an understanding of computers.

My next thought - after identifying the dark-glassed box - was that I was Jake Salway, and I lived in New York, and I was an expert on finances and photography.

I didn't see Elizabeth as a seperate persona when I took on this identity, rather I felt I was still myself, merely choosing to play Jake. This was a rather more acceptable situation than the reverse. I am, quite frankly, more intelligent than Master Salway. I am more capable of comprehending things that seem impossible, and yet are undeniable.

If I'd woken up believing that I was Jake, I would have gone insane. A delusional psychotic, walking around without seeing anything at all, just wondering how it was that I got from New York to wherever the hell this was.

In fact, there were a lot of other selves available to me, many of which would not have accepted the immediate situation quite as well as I did. It was really best to just put them aside for the moment, and walk out of the room.

When I first looked into the mirror, I must admit, my eyes swelled with tears. Which is not to say that I cried, so much as everything went a little blurry, and I felt awfully tired.

You see, somebody else was looking back at me.

I probably imagined that I was dreaming, but there was no denying that this other person was the body over which I had dominion. And of course that body, that other person, that person who didn't appear to be here anymore, was Dominic Fraser.

I did have the strongest feeling that Dominic was someone who I knew very well, and yet didn't know at all. Someone who had a massive impact on my very existence, and yet, was completely removed from my life.

And now, I was in his body.

I didn't mourn the loss of my long hair - in which I take great pride - because I truly believed, at that stage, that I would get it back. This was merely some cosmic mistake, which would be shortly corrected. In fact, I was mildly fascinated. A woman, in the body of a man? Surely this would be an unprecedented opportunity for the advancement of both science and philosophy!

But there was much more going on than a mere spirit posession, a seperation of mind and body. And, I suspect, there was a clue in the person of Jake Salway.

When I took on Jake's name, I truly was playing a part.

And he wasn't alone.

There was also a rather hideous gentleman by the name of Mandagor Lightswift, and he seemed to be assuming that this situation was entirely fraudulent.

He had been taken over, he suspected, by one of those numerous parasitic beasts that latches onto your spine and siphons your neural energy... even at that moment, I thought my crew must've been murdered by those very beasts, my ship must be spiralling out of control without me to guide it, and I was lying on the deck hallucinating that I was a female colonist from some pre-space flight era, trapped in the body of a man... oh, but that's just silly.

Clearly, both Mandagor and Jake were not people at all, but fictions. Roles taken from the stage.

At that point, things began to make more sense.

You see, mind and body are not two seperate things, as some have maintained, but rather they are intertwined. My mind may have been in Fraser's body, but being anchored in his brain clearly led to my comprehension of some of the fantastical personalities that he had once imagined.

Perhaps to make myself feel less lonely, I imagined myself talking to them.

"I'm sorry, Master Salway, Captain Lightswift. There some unsavoury truths which you'll need to face up to: neither of you actually exist. You are fantasies within the mind of this gentleman, Master Fraser. A man whose body I am currently occupying." Quite a laugh.

But then as Jake would say; the joke's on you, babe.

Ha ha.

Back at Dominic's desk, I began searching for clues about his life. I needed to know where I was if I was ever to get back to my own body.

The papers scattered on the desk were useless; merely the vague disconnected fragments of a story. This man was a playwright, or an author.

But there were more papers to be found within the computer. I tentatively went through the procedure to switch the machine on, a procedure which seemed familiar to this body, and I began browsing for documents to read.

I found a host of half-finished stories, describing things which were all intimately familiar to me. I almost felt as if I were reading a description of my own life - except there were so many lives. And I didn't even perceive this as a contradiction.

Until I found myself.

At first, I was merely curious.

"Oh, this Dominic must be quite well-read, to so accurately describe my own place and time."

Then, "Oh, this character is called Elizabeth Stratton."

Then, simply, "Oh."

Outside the room, I heard a door opening. Someone Dominic knew, obviously. Perhaps even someone that he lived with. Someone who would not appreciate the alien soul occupying their friend's body...

How would I deal with another human being? Would I pretend that I was Dominic Fraser, aspiring writer? No, this was too much to consider right now. I leapt to my feet and scurried across the room, pushing the door closed as quietly as possible, and locking it with a small click.

(The fictional Jake, it seems, has a similar lock on his apartment in the Big Apple.)

Stranded alone in the static room, and with a million thoughts and voices in my head, I proceeded to the bookcase. Not to read, to look anything up, but just to have something to lean against.

I needed to think. Parralel universes may exist, as Mandagor knows from firsthand experience; alternate worlds where things unfolded differently.

With an infinite number of monkeys writing books in an infinite number of worlds, surely one would come up with the story of your life?

So I was in another universe. A universe in which I was a fictional character. In which an author had stumbled across my life story in his imagination.

So perhaps Dominic was in my universe, and occupying my body...

Back to the computer. Back to scrolling through the most bizarre text I had ever seen in my life. The important thing was, if we had crossed into each other's worlds, then we could cross back. I could return home!

Did this mean I could get back to New York, as well? Back to my life as Jake Salway? No, of course not. Jake isn't like me - a visitor from a parralel world. Jake is merely a role, no matter how real his identity appears to be.

Oh.

I didn't surrender, after that revelation. I didn't simply sit there for hours, thinking of nothing, stunned into submission by the fact that everything I had ever loved, and everything that I had ever hated, had never existed at all, except in some gentleman's mind.

I crouched by the door, doing what I've always done best. I listened.

There were at least two other people in the house. One of them was a very good cook, and I would love to have gone outside and shared in their meal, only they knew me as Dominic. If I couldn't be Dominic, then what would they think of me?

When the light from the window failed completely, I sat down upon the neatly made bed, and drifted into sleep. I'm fairly certain that I didn't dream at all that night, but they say one can never tell for sure.

I awoke early in the morning, full of energy. The first thing I did was to make a complete inventory of my situation. That included an assessment of how much money Dominic had.

Soon, I was ravenous, so I walked outside the house for the first time, finding myself on a street lined with houses much like Dominic's. None were very large.

The sounds of human activity called to me, drawing me toward a street lined with shops. Including cafes. The morning became an interesting opportunity to test my knowledge of Dominic's world. It was apparently quite similar to Jake's, but nothing at all like most of the other roles. 'Cafe', for example; the word belonged to Jake. Who was also me, in a way.

Paying for the meal was quite an odd experience.

I used to be much better with mathematics, when I was a child. But a woman does not have much use for such things, and it is amazing what mental powers one can lose through disuse. If Dominic was any better at the subject - and considering the dusty Physics volumes piled behind his bed, he ought to have been - then it wasn't much help to me. A hundred cents to a dollar, and no pence, shillings, or pounds... it would have taken some getting used to, were it not for Jake.

But then, as Jake I felt the urge to give the waitress another two-and-a-half dollars. I quickly put a stop to that.

"Do you need a lift to work?"

"I work..." I realised. I knew the name of the young man asking, knew it began with a T. But I didn't know where I - where Dominic worked.

"That would be delightful," I said. "Terence."

Thomas blinked. "Terence?" he asked. "That's your new name for me?"

"Thomas," I hurriedly corrected myself. I needed to put on a convincing front, or things might become unnessecarily complicated. I had to meet this fellow's expectations of his friend. I had to anticipate everything Dominic might say. I had to find his voice.

As it turned out, Thomas could drive a car. Not very well, but better than I would have managed. Something I surely must correct if I'm going to live in this world as Dominic.

And that was the issue at hand, wasn't it?

How long would I have to live as Dominic? Is Dominic all I was capable of being? Did I ever exist, anywhere, before that moment when I appeared in his room? All of this was in the very front of my mind during the short voyage to where Dominic had apparently worked.

"Uh, here we are..." Thomas said uncertainly, when I didn't leave the carriage.

I was staring at the huge red sign, the large grey cube-shaped building. It spoke of unanswered questions, of being lost... would I even be competent to do whatever it was that was expected of me in there?

If I'm not simply lost in another universe, if I really am a fictional character in the body of it's author, then is Fraser ever coming back at all?

Thomas must have seen the fear in my eyes, for he asked "Dom, what's up?"

"I have to... I have to go home..." I managed to breath out.

He began to say something else, but I cut him off. One tends to become self-absorbed when one's existence is in question.

"I'm not Dominic," I said, heartlessly, free of emotion. It was time to deal with facts. The one thing that could be relied upon. "My name is Elizabeth Stratton... I don't live here, and I shouldn't be here."

Thomas furrowed his brow. "Oh God, this isn't some tortured artist thing, is it?"

I had to see my home. My real home. I placed my hand on the dashboard. "Can this carriage take us to Bathurst?"

"Carriage? Dom, do you really think she would call it a carriage?"

I closed my eyes. He believed I was Fraser, no matter how poor my imitation was. So what would Dominic say? How could his friend be swayed?

"You don't have anything important on today," I said.

"Gee, unless you count uni..."

"Oh come on, blow it off. I'm missing work..."

Unconvincing.

So how about... "You've been going on about how cool a road trip would be for weeks... are you ever going to do it?"

Aha.

At those words, a gleam appeared in his eyes.

Bathurst, the nearest town to my home. A place I would recognise, and a place I would be able to navigate home from.

I didn't say much along the way, though Thomas tried his best to make conversation.

"So, Elizabeth, what brings you to the twenty-first century?"

I don't have much choice in the matter, I thought. Dominic would have laughed at his question. So I laughed. My eyes were following the large swaths of cultivated land passing by the window.

"Is it anything like you remember it?" Thomas added.

I smiled. I watched the land slip by. My smile began to fade.

"The terrain is similar," I said, trying to remember. "I can't quite..." I turned to Thomas suddenly. "Do you know that feeling, when you can't exactly recall something, but you know what it ought to look like?"

"Um... maybe..." Thomas said uncertainly. Much of what he said was uncertain, I was beginning to notice.

"Like the layout of an old house, or the way a schoolground looked... it's almost there, on the edge of your memory, but you don't remember it so much as you... as you suppose what you should be remembering?"

Thomas laughed. "Deep." He glanced at me. "Yeah, well, when I look at photographs, stuff looks different to how it looks in my head... um, but... I guess that's not really memory... is it?"

"I don't know," I plead ignorance. Photographs. I've taken some beautiful photographs in Central Park, when the sun hit the skyscrapers at just the right angle...

"Stop here!" I started.

Thomas brought the car onto the gravel by the side of the road, and I flung the door open as it ground to a halt.

I was already out of the car before Thomas had opened his door, and I was running toward a delapidated old building. Very old. As old as me.

"I know this building... I knew it when it was young..." A fantastic thought found its way into my head. Perhaps I wasn't a product of Dominic's imagination after all... I was no Mandagor Lightswift, with impossible memories of impossible worlds! I remembered things that actually once existed. Perhaps I wasn't from an author's imagination, or a parralel world - perhaps I was a spirit from history. Perhaps I had died long ago, and was only now reclaiming a body...

I was real... I was merely dead! It was the most uplifting thought I'd had since arriving in Fraser's brain.

"Oh Thomas, you won't believe what I have to tell you..." I turned to my companion.

"You scared me!" Thomas said.

I hesitated. "Pardon?"

"Don't just fling the door of the car open while i'm driving..."

I was confused. "It's just a carriage..."

Thomas looked at the ground, and shuffled his feet. "I guess I'm being stupid," he said, turning back to the car and eyeing it with a worried look. "No damage done..."

I shook my head at him. Thomas was not the strongest personality I had ever come across.

"You're saying you're posessed by a demon?" Thomas asked. "Wow. That's... biblical."

"Not a demon, just a spirit..."

I pushed aside the door, and it very nearly fell off it's hinges. "You see, this house is where a friend of mine once lived."

I shook Dominic's head, still picturing my own body in place of his.

"We had the most remarkable adventures when we were younger... and with the experiences I've had in my life, well, surely some of it was important enough for somebody to write down after my death, and Fraser... well, he's trying his hand at a historical novel, one that's, for the most part, not fictional at all. He certainly has done his research well. Perhaps that's why I took control of his body..."

I was filled with nostalgia now. The world I loved was still here, just buried, or dated. Everything I had ever loved, everything I had ever hated... it was glorious.

"Hey," Thomas said, from beside me.

"Hey?"

"Do you think this used to be a stable?"

I looked around. "No, it's a house. There was no stable here."

"It looks kind of like a house from the road," Thomas agreed.

"It is a house," I said, looking at the high roof, and the straw matted onto the bare dirt beneath our feet.

I don't remember a lot of what Thomas said or did immediately after that. I don't even really remember seeing anything, if that makes any sense to you. Memory is part imagination, after all, and when one is too focused on ones own introspection, sight and sound can be neglected.

Scientifically speaking, one must always attempt a parsimonious explanation for things. One must find the simplest, most straightforward way of explaining the facts.

Was I a spirit from the past, a spirit with a faulty memory when it came to what was a house, and what was a stable? Or was I Dominic, in some kind of crisis, with his sense of self erased, and all that remains to string his thoughts together are the traces of imaginary characters he created for the purposes of a fictional story?

There was one fact digging into my mind. Dominic, if he had passed this building and decided to incorporate it into his stories, would have assumed it was a house. Not a stable.

Was I nothing? Was my entire self so meaningless?

Was I even truly worried about this, or where these anxious thoughts just the random movements of a carriage with it's driver dead or missing?

No, I had to grasp at what was real. I had to see, and hear, and feel. The air. A warm breeze in winter. Sky overhead. A car. This was the world. I was clearly in it - that was the most scientific assessment.

No more of this air-headed little nineteenth-century chick. She can't even exist here. She needed me and Dominic to understand what a computer was. She was meaningless, and the sooner I drove her out of my head, the better.

I had to return to New York. Dominic might not have known much about photography, but he wrote my character with the desire to take pictures. And photography is a skill that can be learned. I must make a firm declaration of the cold, hard facts. I Am Jake Salway.

Oh. Eucalyptus. I couldn't even stand to look at those trees. The things she loved, the things I loved, they're awful. I wanted them all to burn away. I wanted to escape them.

"America", I whispered savagely.

Thomas, the stupid weak fool, wouldn't even resist. Dominic had walked all over him in their friendship, and it would certainly be no trouble for me. I snatched his keys away. I had to get on a plane, as soon as possible. I had to get back to New York... back to my setting.

My world exists, after all. It's the twenty-first century, for god's sake! Not her age! Silly little girl, wouldn't even know how a car worked if it wasn't for me... I was appropriate. My mind fit this male body! My mind fit this age - I was the most suited to dealing with reality.

I sped from Bathurst back to Sydney. I would take up photography classes. I'd get back to my studies, and I'd see Central Park again. I Am Jake Salway, and I Am Going To Get My Life Back.

I was a fair way along the route before I faltered. I turned the wheel, and came off the road. Somehow, I kept control of the carriage. I may have been using Jake, I'm not sure... he can drive. For that, did he deserve to exist over me?

Deserve. Funny choice of words. I don't know if anybody has ever had to earn their existence. But then, maybe everybody has. Somehow, I took a hold of myself. Somehow, I drove Jake from my mind.

The car had stopped.

I sat staring at the trees beside the road. Watching the wind blow through them, making it seem as if they were moving of their own accord. The leaves made a new shape every second.

I was exhausted, and an exhausted brain lends itself to distraction. It might be interesting to document the patterns the leaves made, I thought. I saw a series of diagrams in my head, a billion measurements attached to each leaf in each picture. I smiled. I couldn't hate that idea. I couldn't hate these trees. I am Elizabeth Stratton.

Less than that; I am.

Thomas is probably convinced of my mental instability, and I can't say that I blame him.

"I don't know what's gotten into you," Thomas says, as he drives us home. "You're still Dominic Fraser, you just don't believe it. You're just not thinking right."

It is an extremely awkward situation.

And I'm sure it is only the beginning. I may run into Dominic's family eventually, and then what? Maybe they'll treat me like an Alzheimer's patient, or an amnesiac. Maybe they'll bemoan the loss of my memory. But I am not him, not in the strict sense of identity... Dominic didn't even have the strength to exist.

"I'm a creature of fiction," I tell Thomas.

"Elizabeth Stratton is someone made-up!" Thomas is protesting.

I sigh, and look out of the window. Maybe he isn't listening to me, because I'm sure that's what I just said.

"You're lying to yourself," he persists. "Who are you going to be in another second? The Queen of England?"

I smile.

And look at that. Now I'm Elizabeth Stratton of One Second Later.