I consider again the time problem but in this case from the point of view of Rosita.
Because when she found Dave eating pie directly from the plate in which it had been baked and she’d asked him “are you eating pie again” he’d answered “No.”
She went through options:
He was correct and she’d been mistaken. Maybe he’d been eating cereal.
Maybe he said no because the answer was obvious. You see me eating key lime, so of course I’m eating pie.
Maybe he answered no because he felt ashamed as he would be the first to admit that pie for breakfast, and dinner the night before, was proof of a deep hatred for Rosita’s cooking.
Most likely, she reasoned, it was a question of identity as the Dave who entered the room and sat and broke into that pie while she watched the film she’d been looking forward to for weeks was another Dave, a Dave with an Australian accent.
This was new, surprising in fact but not so troubling. More troubling was the fact that this Dave persisted in asking the whereabouts of his hat, and the fact that after showering, he neglected to put on clothes, preferring nakedness.
And then, and even this newer, Australian Dave found the phenomenon strange, even unsettling, they began hearing laughter and sometimes clapping. It wasn’t loud or even so obvious, no it was more like a feeling, a shift in the ambient but local structure of the near world, as if they were being watched but that those who might be watching them were just out of view, perhaps located in some other dimension of space.
Dave asked, in his new accent, “Is that people laughing?”
“I almost hear it, but it might also be birds,” Rosita said.
Then she noticed that her new Dave had a whole new pie in his possession. He had a fork, in the wrong hand. He was also naked.
“Are you eating pie again?” Rosita asked.
Dave observed the pie he carried. He said, “No, not again. I haven’t had pie in ages.” But this time he spoke in an accent distinctly Welsh. What’s more, the laughter that followed his response sounded nearer and suspicious, like a mechanical recording of fabricated levity.
But then the oddest of things occurred. Dave said, “Why are you using a French accent? And why are you wearing clothing.”
