Multitudes

A warm, late-summer night in Bruges. Two men in suits — perhaps coworkers on a business trip — stumble out of an establishment and onto a cobblestone street. One of them nearly trips over a planter box.

KRISTJAN: (muttering) Can’t believe they kicked us out.

ERIK: Let’s go to another bar, yeah?

KRISTJAN: Yeah… do you know the way?

ERIK: No clue. It’s my first time here. Let’s walk.

🙘 11:38 PM 🙚

KRISTJAN: …so they observed that a particle could be in a state of superposition, yeah? A photon somehow goes through both slits. But if you measure… (burps)… if you measure which slit it’s going for, the superposition disappears. Poof! Just like that.

ERIK: I’ve heard about that. Like that cat in a box, too? Alive and dead until you peek?

KRISTJAN: Exactly. Schrö… Schrödinger’s cat. They call it the wave function collapse. There’s a magic gnome rolling dice the moment you open the box. Man… what a load of crap.

ERIK: Heh… so what’s your take?

KRISTJAN: Huh? Oh… many worlds. It’s the only one that makes sense. No… you know… nondeterminism. No magic gnomes, no hidden variables. A guy called Everett came up with it. It’s actually mainstream physics now, I think.

ERIK: That’s the one where every possible quantum outcome just… happens? And the universe splits into parallel timelines?

KRISTJAN: Kinda. “Universe” is a big word, ya know? It could be just a couple of particles that… decohere. But if you interact with them, the contagion spreads. An expanding bubble of parallel reality.

ERIK: It’s wild, for sure. Is that a bar?

KRISTJAN: Looks closed. We can keep walking. I don’t know where we are anyway.

🙘 12:05 AM 🙚

KRISTJAN: …and the thing is, the chemistry of our brains? It’s just quantum mechanics, right? Think about it! Every day, every minute, every second, we’re cranking out countless copies of ourselves, each just… living in its own reality.

ERIK: Never thought of it that way.

KRISTJAN: Right? Whoa, a streetlamp! Heh. The big stuff still holds, of course. The laws of physics, no flying pigs in the multiverse. But small things are totally up for grabs. There’s a parallel reality where some part of your brain misfired. You hit snooze too many times, took another bus. Met a love of your life. Her name is Samantha and she’s into yoga and…

ERIK: Ok, I get it. So I need to move my alarm ten minutes forward? Is that the takeaway here?

KRISTJAN: Hey, love works in mysterious ways.

🙘 12:41 AM 🙚

ERIK: …and yet, what does it matter? In all these parallel universes… all these, whatcha-call-them, decohered lives? It’s always lights out in the end.

KRISTJAN: Nah, man. I’ve been mulling that over… I don’t think that’s true at all.

ERIK: What’s not true?

KRISTJAN: Death. What is death?

ERIK: (scoffs) Really?…

KRISTJAN: Humor me. Come on.

ERIK: A… gradual… cessation of consciousness?

KRISTJAN: Right! A gradual process… but with a definitive end! There is that final twitch, the last chemical reaction… the… the final electric impulse past which you cease to be.

ERIK: Sure.

KRISTJAN: A stochastic, quantum event… wouldn’t you agree? As you reach the threshold, two parallel realities arise: one in which the lights go out and another in which you somehow get to draw another labored breath.

ERIK: Ah.

KRISTJAN: Don’t get me wrong: you are dead. But a copy of you keeps dying… (belches)… keeps dying forever! And it’s not just a copy of you-you, if you know what I mean? It’s a copy of you from every divergent timeline, all stuck in endless agony. Sophia’s husband is there too!

ERIK: Her name is Samantha.

KRISTJAN: Sorry!

ERIK: But hold up… doesn’t that also imply the possibility of eternal bliss? A copy of me that never ages, that lives forever without a worry in mind?

KRISTJAN: Eh, the big stuff still holds. If you get hit by a car, you get hit by a car. There might be a decohered reality in which the driver never gets behind the wheel. But is the alternative any better?… Sooner or later, the many-worlds choice is just between getting hit by a dump truck or a delivery van.

ERIK: Thermodynamics doesn’t favor quantum heaven, eh?

KRISTJAN: Yeah… (hiccups loudly)… you’re only guaranteed quantum hell.

👉 For more offbeat stories, click here, here, and elsewhere.