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Always Leave Them Wanting More

Today's chapter—

Interactive: "Do As I Do" 
Public: "Do As I Do" 

—completes a five-chapter commission, plus the six chapters I wrote in order to get to the commission's starting point. The ending will probably frustrate, but as this entry title says, Always leave them wanting more.

You'll probably get more, eventually. The commissioner has said he wants more, and I hope today's chapter doesn't change his mind. I know he wanted the story to push farther along than I actually took it, but given the kind of psychology and personality Will shows in other branches, I felt like these chapters needed some extra motivation in order to take the story down some paths it doesn't elsewhere explore.

What's next? Tomorrow I start publishing another commission, for ten chapters, in an area we were just in: a sequel to "The Sophomore Candidates" . I won't be returning to the branch I was working on, though, but will launch a new, parallel branch off that chapter.

The story so far: Will and his friend Caleb have been playing around with masks. After Will lips off to Chelsea Cooper and she sends her thuggish boyfriend to beat him up, Will uses a mask to escape, first into the life of Chelsea's boyfriend, then into the life of a pothead. Neither is very pleasant, so he has randomly leaped into the life of a sophomore girl and is using her to pick what he hopes will be a more permanent alias. Two possible aliases have been chosen in other branches; it is time for a third one.