oui, le time skip
in all honesty, Alex was faintly relieved when the revelation came about that they'd all been mindwiped -- faking that he was in on some bigger plan while Darcy interrogated him for more info was starting to get stressful.
Finding out the reason he'd decided to be part of the experiment was more distressing, combined with the ID card he'd found among the pile of the World's Worst Pokemons. Not that he's told anybody, yet.
Instead Alex worked on figuring out more about his duplication power, and over the year and a half, Sasha (the polite nerd) and Xandi (the party monster) have been able to maintain integrity for longer and longer stretches, even having experiences that Alex isn't aware of until they reabsorb back into him.
While Sasha helped Selin and Lindi with organizational stuff, and Xandi did ... whatever Xandi did, Alex decided to keep busy exploring with Zaid and Lokni whenever they felt like some company on their jaunts.
He also "kept busy" with Adarsh whenever they found the time, although somehow they always seemed to get interrupted before getting down to full on business.
Alex has also gone on a number of smaller, less honourable jaunts solo -- or at least, with his own dupes as companions. Because while survival does keep you busy, sometimes spying on your fellow survivors is the thing that keeps you going.
