Let me tell you a story that's been unfolding for the last two months or so.

Have you ever wondered if you had a twin somewhere in the world? Have you ever wondered if there was an alternate "you" living a different life in a parallel universe? Have you ever read Griffin and Sabine and wondered if such a correspondance could ever happen to you?

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's all true.

Two or three months ago, a new fellow showed up on the CWD forum. An intelligent and well-spoken individual, Kenny got along well with the forum members, and was an active participant in the board's discussions. Before long, I discovered he was a graduate from UW in computer science. Hey, what a coincidence! But, there are a number of UW students that come and go through there, so it wasn't much of a discovery.

Something seemed a little odd when I discovered he was from Mississauga. "Now that's a coincidence," I thought. "Same city, same school, same program. Small world, huh?"

At this point we found it intriguing that we have these aspects in common, yet we have never met in person, and only ran into each other by pure chance on the internet. Still, Mississauga is a pretty big place, so it's not mindbogglingly odd that we have these commonalities.

Where he worked, though, is mindbogglingly odd.

One day I happened to mention that I was spending my summer in Montreal. Kenny wrote back, not knowing the details of my move, that he assumed I was there for a co-op work term. He explained that he also worked in Montreal for a co-op position, and happened to mention that it was at a company called Softimage. "Now that's odd," I said. "We both spent co-op terms at the same company. You know the woman that interviewed me. You know the guy with which I share my cubicle."

I then checked an out-of-date floor plan of the building, and noted the names of the previous cubicle occupants. My pupils grew dilated. "You sat in the same cubicle as me!"

Shockwaves rippled through the space-time continuum as realms of possibilities and probabilities collided with each other in explosive mayhem, as theories of quantum mechanics took a holiday from reality.

So, we're the same age, grew up in the same city, went to the same university, enrolled in the same program, worked for the same company 600km away from home, and sat in the same cubicle. Yet, we have never met in person, and only came across each other online by chance.

Wait, it gets better.

Last Saturday, I was sitting at a bar with my roommate, Mark, and told him this wacky story. "What's his last name?" he asked me.

I told him.

"Oh yeah, I know him," he responds. "His fiancee is my best friend's sister."

My jaw hit the floor.

Today, in one of his posts, Kenny mentioned one of his teachers in grade school, Mr Watters, and the fun things they did in his class. "Mr Watters," I thought. "Haven't I heard that name before?"

I ran some checks with the guys back home and came across yet another startling discovery. I knew the name because three of my hometown friends were in the same class. One of them even keeps in touch with Kenny every now and then.

So, now I discover that he knows three of my closest friends. But, there's still another link in there. Another of their classmates is currently a UW student, with whom I am acquainted. Her cousin, Mary, is my other roommate here in Montreal.

So, here's what I've gathered so far. We're both from Mississauga, we both took CS at UW, we both worked in the same cubicle at Softimage in Montreal, he has direct or indirect links to both my current roommates, he personally knows three of my closest friends, and we met by pure chance on a website forum and have never met in person. This just throws six degrees of separation right out the window; try two degrees of separation applied thirtyfold.

It is generally accepted around the forum that we are really the same person, whether it be a split personality, an alternate universe (Bizarro SPU, perhaps), or a year-length time shift into the future. We wonder what would happen if we ever did meet in the flesh. Would contradictory universes collide? Would we suffer the same fate as Griffin and Sabine and simply be unable to make our worlds meet? Would SPU collide with anti-SPU and completely annihilate each other? Would time fold over on itself and hurtle us a year in the past or the future?

In any case, I'm going to watch out for an icey patch in front of the Student Life Centre on January 17, 2002, because Kenny had a nasty fall there last year and I'll be damned if I let it happen to me.