Parallel Universes

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Parallel Universes

The language of parallel universes and alternative realities is now common currency, since certain physicists first suggested the "many worlds" implications of quantum mechanics. It's an extraordinary idea, that time is like a road with many forks or branches, and new universes are spawned at the points where events could take us in multiple directions. At such times, a universe is generated to accommodate each of the possible realities arising from the event. It seems a recipe for chaos. What controls are in place to prevent the arrow of time from going astray, changing direction, slipping sideways, stopping in mid-flight?

As a matter of fact, there is a Draconian system of policing in place. It has to be administered with what we might think of as brutal and unswerving determinism - an iron fist. The entity controlling these splits cannot be sentimental. It cannot change its methods or develop emotions, attachments or personality. Any softening of resolve or change of policy could lead to a catastrophic melt-down of all realities. The entity (policeman or demon, depending on your outlook) is hard and unsympathetic - but most of all, it's busy and focused. It splits itself again and again, to accompany every off-shoot. Each duplicate of the 'policing demon' is identical, in every respect, to the original - the one that first came into being when time began. That is why time continues and appears orderly and logical. There have been very few slip-ups. It takes a powerful and unusual event to cause this strict and purposeful entity to lose control.

But there was this one time when an event gave rise to so many possibilities that the number of branches could hardly be accommodated in the instant of time required. And the man whose life was affected was a strong willed, highly emotional and slightly unhinged individual to start with. The ramifications of the event were devastating to him in every outcome. There were more than three dozen versions of this same man in overlapping and intersecting parallel realities coming from this one node - this one event. The strength of his misery and his will were multiplied by the number of his unhappy selves occupying that space - or rather, those spaces - where he continued to live his parallel lives.

The event was a car accident in which a person or persons were killed. The person(s) killed, varied from one version of the event to another, depending mainly on a series of smaller events that occurred just prior to the accident. In several versions of the accident, it was only his wife who died. In others it was his wife and her sister. In some it was his wife and his mother. In yet other versions, events that had happened some months earlier influenced the outcome of the accident and his attitude to it. But in every case, the results of the accident crushed him. He was beside himself with grief and wished with all his might, to turn back time and restore his happiness. The problem for the supervisor policing time, was that all this man's 'might' had become very mighty indeed, with its massive multiplication: having all these deeply unhappy duplicates concentrating all their considerable powers of will on changing the direction of time.

The entity was fighting a losing battle to keep the man's life flowing in the right temporal direction. Its solution was to isolate the branches issuing from the accident - and even a little before, to accommodate other interweaving branches from earlier events - in a sort of protective bubble, and then allow the man to have his way. It did not know anger, but there was a certain satisfaction in arranging the order of the branches carefully, to ensure that the man could only increase his misery by trespassing on the past. He could not reverse further back than the accident because, at the point of the accident, he was reduced in strength to a single will.

All versions of the man arising from the accident and, some from a short time before, whose lives had taken a similar direction, pulled backwards to the point of the awful event and felt the sideways slide to the next branch. The branches swayed and twisted round into the positions previously occupied by the neighbouring branches. The man then commenced living the alternative reality, flowing forward in time again. So, for example,

A Derek, who had been distraught because his wife had died, now lived the life of a Derek whose wife and mother had died;
A Derek whose wife and mother had died, lived the life of a Derek whose wife, mother and dog had died;
A Derek who had started having an affair with his wife's sister, a couple of months before the accident (even though he still loved his wife), of course, had now to live the life of a Derek whose wife and sister-in-law had died;
A Derek who, driven insane at finding the new reality identical to the old, went to dig up his wife's grave after a few days, because he couldn't believe she was really dead. And he found that she had been buried alive - had in fact died trying to scratch her way out;
A Derek who was wretched to the point of madness, actually achieved his aim. In the alternative reality his wife avoided hitting the other car and she came home.
And so on.

The complicated order of the universes was restored and the man, Derek, did not live happily ever after.

Fiction by Tibley Bobley

Tibley Bobley

14.02.08 Front Page

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