----------------------------------------
The midafternoon sun shown into the small office, diffused to a pleasant incandescent haze by the half drawn shades.
A cheap tabletop waterfall trickled in the corner, water splashing against the smooth pebbles in the basin before being siphoned back up to the kitsch dragon head spout, sound of the burbling stream drowned out by the loud voice at room’s center.
“Nah, doc, that’s the old Aristotelian view of the world. The one where moving things have movers, and events have causes. That’s not how it works.”
“Are you claiming that cause and effect isn’t real, Randall?”
“Not in the sense that you mean. It’s a useful way to talk about things, sure, but that’s not how it works, not really.”
He clasped his hands together behind his head, smiling as he leaned back against the red tweed cushions of the couch.
“The whole universe, every position of every particle, and the exact velocity of each, at any arbitrary point in time, it’s all determined by the exact state of everything now.”
“So the universe as it is now, is determined by how it was just a moment ago? And in turn the moment before that?”
“Of course, Doc.”
“Is that not the same as saying the state of the universe just a moment ago caused the state of universe as it is now? Is the state of the universe as it will be in ten seconds—or ten years—not an effect of how it is now?”
“Like I said, Doc, it’s a useful way of describing things at the scale we are used to, but it doesn’t apply to the very base layer. Way up here in everyday life cause and effect works just fine. It’s convenient, simple. Like when Miss Teresa ran into you as you walked in, that caused you to spill coffee all over your shirt, which caused you to go to the bathroom to try and clean it off, which caused our session to start five minutes late. That’s an efficient way to talk about such a sequence in everyday conversation, it’s a useful approximation, far quicker than describing what’s truly happening at the very bottom. To do that would require way too much time.”
“More time than we have, I suppose?”
“More time than anyone has, Doc. I mean, just take that two second period from when the cup slipped out of your hand til it hit the floor, it would take ten septillion centuries to describe all the quanta involved, and that’s only what, a two cubic meter volume over a period of two seconds we’re talking about. Imagine describing the entire universe over all of time in terms of its most fundamental constituents.”
“So… impossible, yes? You’re saying there’s simply not enough time.“
A small insight struck him then.
“Nor would there be enough… uh, eyes…sensors… whatever you would need to do all the measuring.”
“That’s exactly right, Doc… unless of course—“
Randall looked about the office conspiratorially.
“—you don’t happen to have Laplace’s Demon laying around somewhere do you?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I won’t tell anyone if you do.” Leaning forward and lowering that perpetually nasally voice. “It can be our special secret.”
“I’m sorry, Randall, I don’t underst—“
The enigma in the seat across from the Doctor guffawed. “Heh it’s okay, I didn’t think so! Not like you’d be here if you did… or maybe you would, I don’t rightly know. I guess it would just depend on what happened to happen, but not really depend, ya dig? At any rate, it tickles me that you’re actually fitting the pieces together, I guess you didn’t talk about this kind of stuff en route to your Psychology Doctorate, huh?
Steven adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat, trying to conceal the irritation in his voice.
“That’s correct, Randall. Such topics didn’t feature heavily in my coursework. Though, I believe you informed me that you were a Sociology major, earned your B.A. Now, unless I am mistaken, I don’t believe Sociology curriculum tends to involve much in the way of String Theory either.“
“Many Worlds.”
“Pardon?”
“Many Worlds, Doc. The Everett Interpretation. That’s the best fit.” He said, smile broadening as he leaned forward in his seat. “String Theory became something of a viral pop-culture buzzword for a while because it sounds cool and also ‘cause lots of physicists think it shows the most promise for reconciling Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity by providing a unified description of gravity. The problem is that it still can’t account for why the wave function collapses the way that it does.”
“My mistake.”
“The Everett Interpretation can though. It’s quite elegant really. The wave function doesn’t actually collapse, all possibilities become actualities. Schrödinger’s cat, alive and dead until you look at it and then it just picks an outcome? Nope! Both outcomes actually do occur. The probability of the cat dying is 100% and the probability of the cat living is 100%. Both happen, but just on different branches of the infinitely splitting timelin —”
Steven realized his eyes must’ve been glazing over, because Randall sat back abruptly.
Shit
“—anyways, you’re right, Doc, I didn’t study any of this at Uni, it’s just stuff I find rather interesting.”
“I have to be honest with you Randall, I am very out of my depth here.”
As I’m sure you are too
“I fear most of what you’ve said is lost on me, but it sounds like you’ve spent a great deal of time delving into these topics.”
“I have, yeah.”
“And from said delving you seem to’ve concluded that cause and effect isn’t rea—“
He caught himself, last thing he needed was to make it look like he hadn’t been paying the utmost attention to the ravings of a madman. He suspected the disdain in his voice had already been all too obvious.
“—excuse me, not that they ‘aren’t real’ per se, rather that they are merely handy, high-level descriptions of the world, but that they don’t tell us how it all really works. That we can’t truly know anything, we can’t truly predict anythin—“
“Oh, no, I totally think we can know stuff and make predictions, Doc.”
“Wait, I… I thought you were saying that… at the beginning of our session you were saying that nothing is connected. That nothing depends on anything else.”
“Yeah I guess I was saying that, wasn’t I?” Randall was smiling again, staring beatifically at the fire-lined clouds beyond the window. “A pity we can’t just fuse our corpus collosums together, we have to rely on mere speech and gesture. Sometimes the literals and the metaphoricals and the hypotheticals and the actuals get a bit mixed up, don’t they? I’d be wise to choose my words more carefully next time, if only the those words existed…” He trailed off, lost in what Steven assumed to be some maelstrom that approximated thought. Eventually he threw a leg up over armrest and looked back at the Doctor.
“Let’s put it this way, we observe patterns and we make predictions, and we can make some pretty damn solid predictions that match the observed patterns perfectly, but we can’t ever take for granted the fact that, at any moment, our predictions might fail—that the very framework upon which we base our understanding of… of everything… that framework might suddenly crumble spectacularly.”
Steven said nothing at first, evidently this was supposed to have been another of Randall’s infinitely elucidating synopses, but it did nothing in aid of comprehension.
So after what he hoped passed for a believable moment of reflection—he spoke.
“I see. That’s very interesting, Randall.”
He decided a change of conversation was in order, lest his façade of interest suddenly crumble spectacularly.
“Randall, one of the orderlies tells me you’ve been writing a book. Would you like to talk about that?”
“Sure, we can if you’d like, Doc, but it’s mostly all the stuff I’ve already told you about today.”
Well never mind then
“In that case, Randall, we can talk about something el—“
“No no, I’d love to talk more about it.”
Fuck
“I just find all of it so interesting, you know? Just… just… the implications of it all!”
“Oh?” Steven said, unsure how much longer he could feign interest.
“Yeah, like, okay imagine this: you’re standing outside and there’s a thunderstorm in the distance, bunch of lightning, right?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, so imagine the thunderclouds booming off in the distance, and you’re standing there like Yashuji Matsumoto about to unleash a Ki blast and—“
“I’m sorry, Yashu who?”
“Oh, Yashuji… from the manga. Did you ever read Hikaru? Or watch the anime adaptation?”
“I have not. I was never big on, um, anime or any of that.”
“Oh, okay, but you’re familiar with the trope, yeah? Muscular dudes with platinum blonde hair doing a jab thing, like a… a palm punch motion? And they’re standing in, like, a wide karate stance? Like, kinda leaning back on the rear leg and—“
“Kokutsu Dachi.”
“What?”
“Kokutsu Dachi. It’s the ‘back stance’ in Karate. Is this what you’re talking about?”
Steven rises from his seat, pulling spine straight as he does so. Stepping wider than shoulder-width, perpendicular to Randall in the seat before him, he points his left foot directly forward and keeps a slight bend in the knee. The other is nearer 90° and the foot faces outwards at a perfect right-angle to the front. With his center of gravity over his back leg, he pulls fingers together making flat blades of his hands, the left in front of his face with pinky finger leading, the right held just under the naval with palm facing up.
He looks at Randall and shrugs.
“I practiced Karate up until my early teens.”
Randall’s eyes have lit up and he bolts upright in his seat. “Yes! Yes that’s it! That’s exactly it!”
He hastily fumbles a small notebook and pen from his pocket.
“What did you say that was called? How do you spell it?”
“Kokutsu Dachi, k-o-k-u-t-s-u, d-a-c-h-i.”
“Great! That’s just great, Doc, thank you!”
“Certainly.” Steven takes his seat again. For the briefest of moments, he remembers the joy he used to find in the practice of kihan, and later in kata and kumite, before realizing that he’d never really be that good, before he became convinced—or convinced himself—that the only reason worth doing something was if you were good at it or getting paid for it or both.
“But to answer your question, yes, Randall, I’m familiar with the trope. Images of such characters, shooting their fireballs or energy beams—‘Ki’ as you call it—are quite iconic. Pretty hard to miss…
…by the way, another word for your little notebook there, that ‘palm punch’ you described most closely resembles the Teisho Uchi, t-e-i-s-h-o, u-c-h-i, that's a palm strike in Karate, though you wouldn’t typically do so from the back stance like that.”
Randall’s smile grows ever wider as he scribbles furiously in the notebook.
“Gosh, doc, thank you so much. This is very useful information, very useful.”
“Of course, Randall—“
Parallel Universes and Karate, what a trip that draft must be, I wonder if this book will have a section on Origami Wormholes too
“—Now, you were saying that you were writing a book that somehow involved all this?”
Randall’s mind seems to stutter for a moment, the gears in his head struggling to draw the spotlight of attention back to whatever blither had so entranced him mere moments before.
“Oh right, right, yes the trope, the, uh, the book, uhh—“
“I believe you were describing a thunderstorm as well.”
What crazy shit are you about to say now
“Oh right, yeah, okay I remember now. Okay, so imagine there’s a thunderstorm on the horizon, a big one, and you are standing there in, uh… Ko-kut-su-da-chi, and then at whatever moment strikes your fancy, you do that tey… uhh, teyshoo… um—“
“The Teisho Uchi, yes.”
“Yes, yes, the Uchi! You do the Uchi and jab your palm out—just like Yashuji in Hikaru throwing a Ki blast! And imagine that it just so happens to be timed such that lightning strikes the exact moment as you do it.”
Randall is gripping his knees, at the edge of his seat, staring expectantly. Finally, after he says nothing, Steven fills the silence.
“Okay, I am imagining that now, is there more to it?”
“Well, what would you think, Doc?”
“What would I think? Of… of that situation?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I would think it was a coincidence. Are you saying that it wouldn’t be a coincidence?”
“Oh no no no. It would be a coincidence alright, in fact, it’s all coincidence, all the way down, but hold on we’ll get there soon enough. Right now I just wanna do a thought experiment with you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, so… uh… right, so, in that situation you’d think to yourself, ‘oh that was a fun little coincidence’, maybe you’d wish you’d filmed it so you could post it to your socials or whatever, but the point is that it would be ‘just a coincidence’, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, now what if after that first perfectly timed Uchi you did it again and the lightning hit again?”
“Well I suppose I would think that it was still a coincidence, however strange, but I think I see where you’re going with this, Randall. You want to know how many times my Teisho Uchi would have to time perfectly with a lightning strike before I began to doubt that it was mere coincidence? How many times it would take before I thought the probability of it being a coincidence was less than—”
“Sort of, Doc. You’re close, really close. So yeah though, if it happens once you think coincidence. Twice? Coincidence. Three or four times? Spooky maybe, but still coincidence. But what if it happened ten times? Twenty times? Twenty thousand times? What if every time you ever saw a lightning storm—since the earliest moment you remembered seeing a lightning storm—you did a hundred Uchies, each one coinciding with a lightning strike?”
“Well… I guess at a certain point I wouldn’t think that ‘coincidence’ adequately explained the phenomenon. I would start to look for alternative explanations for what was happening.”
“Right, as most would I think. Most people, if you told them to try that the next time they saw a storm, most wouldn’t expect that many coincidences in a row. Certainly no one would put money on it happening, because there’s no reason to think that it would happen.”
Randall leaned forward again, lowering his voice.
Oh boy, here comes another ‘revelation’
“But here’s the thing, Doc, there’s also no reason to think that that wouldn’t happen. There’s no reason not to bet the house on it. There’s no reason to think, if you did your Uchi say, a hundred times, and lightning hit each time, that those were all because of ‘coincidence’”
My God, please stop gesturing air quotes
“Well of course not, Randall, if it happened one hundred times it wouldn’t be because of coincidence, it would be because of some specific reas—“
“—no no, Doc, you’re missing it. I’m saying that the hundred perfectly timed strikes wouldn’t be coincidence, in the same way that one single perfectly timed strike wouldn’t be coincidence either!”
Steven frowned, he could usually follow a train of thought, however disjointed or incoherent, but right now he was lost.
“You’ve lost me, Randall. Earlier you said that ‘it’s all coincidence’. ‘All the way down’ you said. Now you’re saying that nothing is a coincidence?”
Randall let out a little chortle as his gaze wandered to the window again.
“Heh, yeah, I guess this is where mere language kinda fails to suffice again, huh? I don’t… I don’t really have all the terms ironed out yet, I’m still working on… on formulating the whole theory and whatnot, but I guess in a nutshell I could sum it up like this: it’s not that some things are coincidences and some things aren’t and we can figure out which is which. It’s that the question itself—‘is it a coincidence or not’—isn’t a coherent question to be asking.”
“So… you don’t think it’s possible to determine when an occurrence is a coincidence as opposed to—“
“No no, it’s really that the question doesn’t make sense. There are no coincidences because everything is a coincidence, and vice versa!”
Randall sat up straight and met Steven’s gaze, something he didn’t do often.
“Okay, let’s try this: imagine you live that life where every time you did this—“
Randall raises his hand just so, thrusting palm forward, gaze following the trail of some invisible energy beam, until, once it reaches some point in the imaginary distance, he holds his other hand at arm’s length and repeatedly flicks his fingers downward, as though erratically striking piano keys or playing a drunken marionette.
“—ksch ksch ksch, lightning crashes.”
“I believe you’ve asked me this already, Randall. If I do a Tei… uh… a palm strike and there is lightning, then I would think it coincidence unless the frequency of the coincidences became so great that—”
“—oh right, right, sorry, Doc. Let me clarify, I’m not asking what you’d think about coincidence in that situation, now I’m asking what you’d think about cause.”
“Can… you elaborate, please, Randall? I’m unsure the exact question you’re asking here.”
“Oh sure, sure. So the world where your palm strike times with a lightning strike every time—every time—for your whole life. At that point, what does it mean to cause something?”
“I still don’t quite follow, Randall.”
“Okay, okay, how ‘bout this: do you think you can manifest lightning?”
“No.”
“Okay, so if you—or someone, whoever—lived a life and did palm strikes constantly, and each one ‘coincided’ with a lightning strike, would you think they were manifesting lightning?”
“No, I—“
“Or would you think it the most improbable series of coincidences ever seen?”
“Well… I guess… I guess I would still think it due to something else.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Okay but if it wasn’t something else. They just jab their hand and lightning happens.”
“I… Randall I’m not sure wha—“
“It’s okay, Doc, it’s confusing I know. The answer is that isn’t the correct way to look at the situation to begin with. It wouldn’t be a coincidence, not because it was a coincidence, but because the distinction is a false one.”
“I don’t—“
“Okay, okay, wait, this’ll clear it up! Think of that world again: the urge is to ask, are you causing the lightning with your Uchi or is it just coincidence? And what I’m saying is this: the world—let’s call it World A—where someone ‘can actually’ create lightning and does so, say, ten million times in their life, and the world—let’s call it World B— where someone ‘just coincidentally’ times all of those same ten million Uchies with lightning… those are the same world! World A and World B are identical! There is no difference, both those people are the same person!”
“Even if we were to grant the possibility of genuine Electrokinesis, Randall, I’m still unclear how you could claim those to be the same situations.”
“Doc, I’m not saying people can really shoot lightning from their fingers, I’m not saying people can cause lightning. What I’m saying is that the very meaning of cause—and effect—isn’t the right lense through which to view the example. I’m saying that if there was a world where someone ‘just coincidentally’ Uchied in unison with lightning, that would be the same as them causing the lightning.”
Allah, Buddha, whoever, I swear I’ll never pick up another cigarette if he just stops saying Uchi
Steven remained unconvinced, although a few fleeting memories from a long-ago philosophy elective were momentarily stirred. Something about identity, or continuity across time, or something of the sort. As it were, his recollection was cut short as he became aware of Randall’s eyes staring directly into his own.
He found these occasional fits of eye contact disconcerting. It was quite out-of-character for Randall, too intense for someone typically focused so intently on the floor, the ceiling, the waste bin in the corner, everywhere but another’s face.
But before the discomfort could exceed that critical threshold, past which he’d’ve reflexively shifted in his seat or cleared his throat, Randall’s gaze shifted to the frayed thread at the end of his sleeve and he continued.
“Okay, look, I know this sounds strange, but here’s an analogy: when physicists talk about the beginnings of the universe and say, as they do, that time began at the moment of the Big Bang, does it make sense to ask what was before the Big Bang? No! Because time itself originated in that moment! There was no time before time. Same with the question of what is ‘outside’ of the universe—as some superstitious-thinking types like to do—and I don’t just mean the ninety three billion-something light year bubble that we can see, I mean the whole universe, all of space, however big it is. If we are talking about the totality of everything, the question ‘what’s on the outside’ doesn’t make any sense. There is no space outside of space… are… are you following me, Doc.”
“Hmm, I see...”
Steven puckered his mouth into a slight frown and cupped his stubble in hand, a stalling tactic he’d devised long ago for those moments when he was put on the spot during a lapse in concentration and needed a moment to recall some snippet of whatever it was that he should’ve been listening to. It had saved him much embarrassment back in the days of seminar, and it seemed to work quite well during his sessions.
“You’re saying it’s a definitional issue then? There’s no coincidence or non-coincidence because the whole concept is incoherent, in the same way the notions of ‘before the Big Bang’ or ‘outside the universe’ are incoherent?”
“Exactly right, Doc! You got it! If we want to say that something like me timing an Uchi perfectly with a lightning strike is coincidental, then we also have to say that you walking outside tonight to see the parking lot just as you remember from this morning is a coincidence too. Or that you don’t blink and suddenly find yourself with six arms. Or that the sun hasn’t been replaced by a binary red dwarf system. And if we want to say that any of those things aren’t coincidences, that they are in fact necessary continuities, then we also have to say the same of things like guessing the winning lotto numbers, or having the same birthday as the barista who serves you your coffee at the drive thru. Those aren’t luck or chance, nor inevitable or normal. They aren’t coincidence and they aren’t not coincidence. The concept itself, as you so astutely observed, is broken. Really, at the fundamental level, everything is co-incidental to everything else—and simultaneously not!
“Alright, Randall—”
Time to push him
“—I think I understand what you are saying, regarding the incoherence of the concept of coincidence, as well as cause, but I find it hard to square with my own experience. I hope you don’t mind my being blunt, but I am unpersuaded by what you’ve presented so far.”
“Oh not at all, Doc, this is great!”
Well he took that pretty well
“Having someone pick apart your position and force you to defend it is invaluable for understanding. And I love talking about this stuff.”
That makes one of us
“Besides, to show you the real evidence for my claim, we have to get into the nitty gritty, and that’s the really interesting part!”
Christ
“So you remember what I was saying about patterns, Doc?”
“Remind me please.”
“Okay, so how we observe patterns and make predictions off of them?”
“Mmm, yes, I recall now.”
“Okay, so it turns out that patterns are just like coincidences!”
“They aren’t re—I mean, they aren’t what we think they are?”
“Yeah, close enough. If we look a little deeper, we see that patterns are just coincidences, and simultaneously not coincidences. Extrapolating further, we see that all patterns are non-patterns and vice versa—”
Where on earth did he think all this up
“—and you’re probably wondering: how, why, what the hell am I talking about, right?
Yep
“No, I…”
“It’s okay, Doc! It’s fine to be skeptical, good in fact.”
Randall was rocking back and forth in his seat, like a 5th grader watching the clock, ready to spring out of the classroom the moment it struck a quarter past three.
“Okay here’s the mind blowing part. Have you heard of the Dutch physicist Max.. um, shit I forgot his last name… uh, I think it starts with a T? And he might be Swedish, I can’t remember, anyways, he’s done a lot of research into the Multiverse Theory—“
“This is the Many Worlds you were talking about earlier?”
“No, not technically—well, kinda—err… well, it incorporates the Many Worlds idea—but it’s not quite the same—but whatever—for the purposes of this discussion we can say they are. Anyways, this Max T guy says that there are approximately a googolplex distinct alternate universes and—“
“Pardon, a what?”
“Oh, a googolplex? That’s a one with a googol zeros after it. And a googol is a one with a hundred zeros after it. Basically it’s a really, really big number.”
“And this Max fellow claims there are that many other universes?”
“Yep.”
Bullshit
“That sounds like a rather large number, Randall. How is it exactly that he’s arrived at such a figure?”
“Oh it’s super fascinating, Doc! Okay, so, in our observable universe there’s room for about a googol particles, one with a hundred zeros behind it, right? That’s, like—“
Randall counts off by threes on his fingers.
“—three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty one, twenty four. And twenty four is basically twenty five, which is a fourth of one hundred. So four groups of these eight fingers is a hundred, which is eightgroups if I split it into groups of four fingers. And four fingers is—“
Dropping each finger in turn.
“—a thousand, million, billion, trillion—“
Looking at Steven, face blank, eyes staring through him into the wall behind.
“—so that’s eight groups of a trillion. I mean, a trillion times itself eight times, not eight trillion. So that means there’s room for a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion particles in our universe!”
Randall catches his breath even as his smile grows wider.
“And that number is supposed to be how many different universes there are?”
“Oh no, no no no! That number is way bigger! All the possible permutations is two to the power of that number!”
“I’m not sure I follow, Randall. As you no doubt recall from earlier, math of this magnitude was never so crucial for my particular major.”
“Oh that’s okay, Doc! I’m not great at it myself either. I understand best by analogy, and this Max dude has a paper—I’ll have to find it for you—and in it he says to imagine a universe with room for only four particles, that’s sixteen possible permutations, or two to the fourth power. So you’re just taking the number two, and raising it to the power of the number of possible spots that the particles could be in—and for our universe this is a trillion trillion trillion trill—“
“—Ah, yes, okay, I see it now. Thank you, Randall—“
If you say ‘trillion’ one more damn time
“—that was a very clear explanation.”
“So you see where that number comes from, Doc?”
“Yes, I understand now, thank you.”
“Cool, okay, so there’s that googolplex other universes out there, right?”
“As you say.”
“And the totality of those googolplex other universes contains the totality of everything, of every possible outcome.”
“So, in effect, everything happens. You’re saying that in the infinity of the Multiverse, everything eventually hap—”
“Not quite.”
“Wait, what?” Steven found himself genuinely puzzled for a moment. He’d heard similar such spiels before, and they always, to some end or another, evoked the notion that ‘everything happens somewhere’, he hadn’t expected the contradiction just then. He wondered where Randall’s mental wanderings were talking them, and braced himself for the fantastical jargon-laiden explanation sure to follow.
“What do you mea—“
“I’m not saying that everything happens, Doc. That’s certainly not what the Multiverse theory posits. What it says, what I am saying, is that every possible thing happens. For example, suppose that the speed of light truly is the universal speed limit and it can’t be broken, well then, in none of those alternate realities will it be broken. It’s not that anything and everything is possible in the Multiverse, rather it’s just that all possibilities are actualities in the Multiverse. Nothing that can happen, doesn’t happen, ya dig?”
“Uh, yes, yes I believe so, Randall. I dig.”
“Also, the Multiverse may or may not be truly infinite, they think it probably is, but either way the number of permutations isn’t. So, if space does extend forever, then eventually the alternate universes will repeat if you go far enough. They’d repeat an infinite number of times in fact, but anyways anyways I’m getting sidetracked sorry, back to my point… um—“
“Every possible thing happens.”
“Yes, right right! Every possible thing happens. Every. Possible. Thing. The universe where Miss Teresa didn’t bump into you in the doorway! Or where she did but you were holding soda instead of coffee! Or the one where she is the doctor and you’re the janitor! Or the universe where you drive a Volvo instead of a Tesla! Or where everything is completely identical for us here on earth except for a million lightyears away the gas in a molecular cloud collapses and begins fusion just a nanosecond later than it does in this universe! Or the one where you have a twin sister! Or the one where you are married to somebody else! Or the universe where you’re not married at all!”
Or how about the one where I’d never made that mistake in the first place
“Well, Randall, I must say this is all rather interesting.” And Steven was surprised to find he meant that.
Still bullshit though.
“I still haven’t worked out how you’re fitting all your pieces togeth—“
“Oh this next part is the best part, Doc! Now that you’ve got all the background, we can finally talk about the full implications!”
“Oh?” Steven glanced subtly at the clock behind Randall. As admittedly thought-provoking as a few of these particular reveries had been, today’s lack of caffeine precluded his indulging them much longer.
Christ, fifteen minutes to go
“Yeah, okay so, you remember earlier, when we were talking about Schrödinger’s cat, and I said that the probability of it living, and the probability of it dying were both 100%?”
“I do, yes.”
“Okay so let’s imagine some other situation where probability could be involved.” With a toothy smile, Randall nodded his head and emphatically gestured at Steven with open palms.
“You want me to imagine a scenario where I have multiple different options to choose from, and we decide which would be more likely?”
“No, let’s keep it even simpler than that, what’s something you could do that has a set number of outcomes? Something that people do a lot that you could apply a discussion of probability to if you wanted.”
“Well, I don’t know, I… oh wait, a coin toss.”
Randall clapped his hands like a giddy child. “Haha! Yes! I knew you were going to say coin toss! It was either that or rolling dice. But I like the coin toss better for this hypothetical anyways. Okay, so imagine you have a coin, actually wait—“
He dug in his jeans pocket and fished out a nickel—thick verdigris patina betraying its age—holding it in his upright palm.
“—okay imagine I flipped this coin right now, what side would it come up?”
“Well, it could come up either. But you’re asking the probability of one or the other, yes? It would be fifty-fifty. Heads or tails, each is just as likely as the other. I’d go with heads though.”
“Ahh, heads, huh? Well, lemme tell you, tails never fails, Doc.” Randall flicked the coin off his thumb, its trajectory a steep flight to the left. He snatched at it clumsily, failing to catch it, instead batting it down onto the ottoman between them
Seemingly unfussed about his display of finesse, he picked the coin up, presenting its green face toward Steven with a smile.
“See, Doc? Tails!”
“Yes, I see that, lucky call.”
“Okay, so now what if I flipped this coin again—don’t worry I won’t actually—what side would you call?”
“I’d say heads again.”
“And if I flipped it again after that?”
“Uh, I suppose tails then.”
“And if I flipped it a hundred more times?”
“Well… I… I guess I would guess about fifty of the flips to turn our heads and fifty to turn out tails.”
“Why?”
“Well, because that’s simply what probability dictates. Given enough flips of a perfectly fair coin, it will come up heads fifty percent of the time and tails fifty percent of the time.”
“What would you say if I flipped this coin ten times in a row on tails?”
“I would be pretty surprised, but if I’d had some guarantee it was truly a fair coin beforehand, I suppose I could still write it off as a memorable moment of the odds working out on your favor, Randall.”
“What if it landed tails a hundred times, a thousand times?”
“Is there a trick to this question? Is this like when you were asking me about lighting strikes and Teisho Uchi?
“No—well… maybe… kinda, depends what you consider a ‘trick’, but let me ask you this: what if not just this coin, but every coin that exists, for the rest of time, came up tails?”
“So millions of coins coming up tails for eternity?”
“Or for however long humanity will be flipping coins until we extinct ourselves. I don’t know, let’s say, uhh… a thousand coin flips a year for each of a million coins for a million more years. So… a quadrillion coin flips, starting now, and every flip comes up tails.”
“Well, I’d say that would be impossible.”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, because it simply is. It just couldn’t happen, Randall. That’s… I don’t know, I’d need a calculator to—or we could just ask Google to do the math—but that must be an astronomically small number. Beyond astronomically small. Regardless of what you’re saying about probability, that’s just too unlikely, it just couldn’t happen.”
“But it already is, Doc.”
“Come again?”
“It’s already happening.”
Oh this is rich
“I don’t follow.”
“The Multiverse. All those possible realities. Every possible reality. In one of them, every coin flip from here on out comes up tails.”
“Randall, I—“
“Just think about it! Imagine the people in that reality. Really imagine it, Doc! From this point onward, every coin flip comes up tails! Ask yourself, what will those people do?”
“I—“
“Ignore the ordinary folk, or casinos where all shit would break loose, think about the state of science in that universe! What will all the researchers, the mathematicians, the probabasticians—or whatever they’re called—what will they think when all of a sudden, without warning, all of their observations suddenly show that probability doesn’t work anymore?”
“Randall, I think—“
“And here’s the crazy thing, Doc, the big thing, we have no way to say that we aren’t in that reality right now. We have no way to say that probability is going to keep working here, or that it ever worked!”
“Rand—“
“We have no way to say that math will keep working! Or that we will be able to predict anything ever! Or that we won’t wake up to two suns tomorrow! Or in a different bed!”
“Rand—“
“Or with a different family! Or wi—“
“Okay time out, Randall! Time out!”
For a split second Randall looks like a deer caught in headlights. Then he closes his eyes and takes three slow deliberate breaths, counting them out on the long exhales.
“Very good, Randall, very good. Slow and calm, let yourself relax.”
“Yes, Doc, sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Randall. You don’t need to be sorry. Remember our discussion about this? It’s good for you to talk to me openly, to free-associate, but sometimes we just need to reel it in a little bit. We have to have our ‘time outs’, okay? To make room for the other conversations that can help you.”
“Yes, I remember, thanks for reminding me.”
“It’s okay, Randall—“
Thank God, less than ten minutes left
“—this has been a good conversation, but in our last little bit of time I want to turn the focus to why we had this conversation. Why do you think you wanted to talk about this specifically today?”
“I… I just… I just think it’s important, Doc.”
“For your book?”
“Well, yes, for my book, but… but also I just think it’s important for… for you, for… for everyone.”
“Why is that, Randall?”
“Well, I just think it’s important for people to know… well… to know the truth about stuff, about how it all works.”
“Go on, please.”
“Knowing the truth… it just… it just makes things easier, better… it makes life better.”
“Why does the truth make it better, Randall?”
“Well, it’s just, like, you don’t have to be so hard on yourself, you know?”
“Do you recall that you gave a similar reasoning when we talked about God, Randall? Do you recall telling me that God doesn’t exist and that you find life easier believing that there’s not ‘someone up there’ watching over you?”
“Yeah, yeah kinda, and that’s… that’s… it’s like, when you think that God’s up there, smiling down on you and all happy for you and everything, it makes you think why was I made so… so wrong? Why am I so fucked up? God loves me. Why can’t I be happy? Why can’t I be normal? And then, then when you realize that there is no God, there is no one up there who loves you and cares about you and wants the best for you, and you won’t see everyone you’ve ever loved when you die, you’ll just… die. That makes it better.”
“Do you feel like you aren’t normal, Randall?”
“No, I just… maybe, I… I don’t know, I—“
Randall’s face flushes a deep shade of red even as his eyes begin to water.
“—I’m sorry if I upset you with the coincidence and probability and Multiverse stuff, Doc. I…I was just saying… I just meant—when I said that nothing’s connected and nothing depends on anything else and there’s no way to tell if probability is gonna suddenly stop working—“
Randall’s voice breaks and cracks with phlegm. His hands are in frenzied motion around themselves as he rocks in the seat.
“—I just meant, like, there’s no reason to be upset… or… or scared. I don’t really think that you’re gonna walk outside and see that your car is blue instead of red, or that everyone knows you as… as Kyle or Bill instead of Dr. Nolan… or that you can shoot lightning out of your fingers, or anything like that—“
He is blubbering now, tears streaming freely as he chokes back sobs.
“—I mean I do… I do think that’s true, it… it happens, things like that happen all the time, and, and, I know it could happen here too, and, and, it just… it just hasn’t yet, but, I… I just—I know I’m not supposed to ramble about all this I’m sorry I’m sorry—I just think the truth is important because, because it means that nothing could’ve been otherwise and, and it’s… its not your fault what happened, and because—“
Through red eyes he looks at Steven, face wet and contorted in anguish.
“—because it makes it okay—“
The words come out as a squeak, barely audible.
“—it makes it all okay again.”
----------------------------------------
He meets her in the parking lot of the old auto parts store.
None of the pole lights work anymore, and in the autumn months it’s been dark for several hours already.
He parks at the other end of the lot, or at least he did the first few times. Now he pulls in right next to her, who would know what their cars looked like anyway? They aren’t Russian spies on the lamb from the NSA, no one knows, no one cares. Or, anyone who cares, doesn’t know.
He puts the Tesla in park and steps out.
He climbs into her Escalade and shuts the door without saying a word.
He doesn’t even really remember how it all started, only that it was once exhilarating, this infidelity. Now, in the backseat, clasped together, he goes through the motions almost by rote. The prelude, tongues exploring each other’s mouths, her hand firmly pressed against his crotch.
His pants coming off hurriedly, then. Feeling her mouth around him, taking him deeper, deeper.
Now her pants coming off. Him entering from behind.
Her hair balled up in his fist, her face pressed into the seat as he thrusts.
Squeezing her breasts as she reaches back to grab him, to pull him against her, into her.
Kissing her neck as his tempo increases, faster, faster.
Her moans, all genuine from what he can tell, as he pulls out and cums on her ass—or the seat, she doesn’t care she says, the leather cleans easy enough and her husband never pays attention to anything anyways.
The lingering kiss afterwards, her smiling, looking into his eyes as he holds her.
Don’t say it
Her head pressed into the nook of his shoulder as she traces her finger along his chest.
Don’t say it
Then, abruptly, the walls are up again. Open, now closed. Warm, now cold. The mask redonned as she gathers up her clothing, dressing and then crawling into the driver seat as he steps back out into the night without a word—as though it had all never happened.
Which is just as well, he’s not really here anyway.
He’s already thinking of the next one. The new nurse practitioner who starts on Monday, he saw her in the cafeteria after her interview two weeks ago.
She’s young, maybe twenty five. Very toned. And blonde. He’s always had a thing for blondes.
Her name’s Aisha, or maybe Allison, he can’t remember. It doesn’t matter, he’ll look it up before he orchestrates their accidental meeting. Some quirky happenstance of fate straight out of a rom-com.
And this tryst, this one will end. It will burn out—Gina deciding she wants to reconcile with her husband after all, that these clandestine rendezvous mustn’t continue, a mutual, amicable end to the affair—or it will explode in his face, in a much less desirable, perhaps far more public, manner—but it will end.
----------------------------------------
“I’ve got your Latte here.”
Jeff is already at the coffee machine by the time he arrives. Steven isn’t a morning person, never has been, and he would normally find such niceties offputting, but he likes Jeff. Something about him has always struck Steven as genuine, and he welcomes the incessant chatter, even this early on a Monday morning.
“Next one’s on me.”
“Oh don’t worry about it, Steve.”
“Thanks.” He says. His mood lightened and alertness heightened the moment he smelled the aromatic brew, does so further the instant he takes his first sip. Purely psychological at this point he knows, that bitter alkaloid wonderdrug having not yet had time to block his adenosine A1 and A2A receptors, but—placebo or not—he’ll take any mood enhancement he can get these days.
“Pretty good for coming out of this old thing, huh?” Jeff gives the ancient vending machine a light kick.
“Sure is. Thank God too, I’d never make it through the day otherwise”
“Yeah, you and me both. Especially not the days when I have Will and Madu in group together, I swear keeping them from arguing is like dealing with my sons.”
“Which Will are we talking about? Harbarth?”
“No, no, East.”
“Right, East is the one who—“
“Yep, always breaks the 4th wall. Every time he does it Madu can’t help but tease him about it. And of course that starts the bickering.”
“So he still thinks he’s in a movie then, huh?
“Seems so, he’ll be having a totally normal conversation, and then out of nowhere he’ll look over to the wall or just slightly to the side, and throw a little quip out to the ‘audience’, and then come right back into the conversation without missing a beat.”
“Interesting.”
Jeff’s sigh betrays only a hint of exasperation.
“Indeed. And when I’ve pushed him on it he’s assured me that he knows he’s not in a movie or a show or whatever he thinks it is, but then he’ll do his little monologues again later without fail. Like just this past Friday it came up again. I asked him why he thought he was in a TV show, who he thought was watching him, where they were—you know, the standard stuff—and he told me ‘oh, no no, I was just confused earlier. But I understand now. I know I’m not in a show’. He gave me a whole explanation on how I helped him figure it all out, but then as soon as he finished, he raised his eyebrows and turned to the window and said ‘we’ll see how long this gets the ole Doc of my back this time'. And then I asked him why he said that, you know, pointed out what he’d just done, and he just went right back into insisting that he knew he wasn’t in a show.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, and get this, after that whole spiel about not thinking he’s some main character, he looked back to that same spot and winked.”
“Jeez.”
“Yeah, and of course when it happens in group, Medu jumps on it. Sometimes he’ll join in and pretend he’s talking to ‘the audience’ as well. Needless to say it never ends well.”
“I can imagine. Do you think that the delusion is improving though?”
“Well, aside from the times he engages in the delusion right after insisting he isn’t delusional, it seems to happen less and less often during our sessions, although some of the orderlies tell me that they’ll hear Will in his room when he thinks no one is around.”
“Talking to the camera?”
“From the sound of it, yes. He’ll be in his room for hours without making a peep, and then out of nowhere go into a commentary about some mess in his room, or his plans for the day, something about his current state of affairs, et cetera. Teresa told me she turned the corner to him mid-spiel a few weeks ago, said he didn’t even jump or break-character or anything. Only acknowledged her after he finished, smiled and greeted her and all that and then walked away like nothing happened.”
“Wow, that all sounds… just… quite—”
“Yeah, but what are you gonna do, right? We just do the best we can and try to leave people better off than before we saw them. Anyways, enough of me talking your ear off, Steve, I hear Randall was pretty shook up from your one-on-one last week?”
“Oh? I’ve had quite a bit on my plate lately, I hadn’t been keeping close tabs, but I do recall near session’s end trying to pull him back from his typical coping behaviors—you know, the ramblings—and he appeared quite distressed after that. Why, did any of that come up in group?”
“He hasn’t been in group. Not since that Monday with you. He’s back to the incoherent babble.”
Steven almost chokes on his coffee. “Again?”
“Yeah, I guess you must have really hit on some really sensitive terrain… or he was just due for another fit, I don’t kno—”
“You know that’s how they found him, right?”
The statement-qua-question bleats out from behind Steven, and he flinches at the sound. Nathan has encroached on their conversation.
“He was wandering around that bookstore-cafe place—just a few blocks from here actually—totally disheveled, asking customers ‘if they’d seen him’ but mostly just rambling complete nonsense. Apparently he smelled to high heaven too—“
Within seconds, Steven has strategically circumambulated the pair and leans against the corner where their little vestibule meets the hallway. He’ll wait here, feigning interest a moment or two longer, before slipping away unnoticed. As much as he likes Jeff, it’s better him that gets trapped in this unwelcome tête-a-tête than he.
“—anyways, someone called the cops and they took him to the hospital, held him for the seventy two hours, then transferred him here on a 5250 for fourteen days, probably ‘cause they saw all the burn marks and cuts. And then we filed the 5260 to hold him another fourteen days, and—you can ask Dr. Fields—there was talk of letting him out after that, he was pretty coherent for about the first week, but then he went back into pure word salad and wouldn’t bathe or eat, so she had us file the 5270 and now we got him another month.”
“Yes, I am familiar with the circumstances around Randall’s arrival, I helped Janet with his intake paperwork after all.”
“Oh, right, right, Jeff. I forgot.”
Steven catches Jeff’s eye, and with a knowing wink, pivots 270° and strides into the hall.
It’s about halfway to the stairwell when he-with-the-ever-too-loud-voice peaks his head around the corner and yells after him.
“Oh hey, by the way!”
“Yeah?”
“Gina was asking after you, said she has the book you lent her or whatever!”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I think she’s still out back in her car, was a few minutes ago at least!”
“Thanks, Nate.”
----------------------------------------
The driveway is, surprisingly, not empty when he arrives.
Two cars. One, his wife’s, and directly behind, the other—
Is that Tessa’s pickup?
As he steps onto the porch he can see the door already ajar, it swings open just as he reaches it.
The figure in the doorway starts for a second. It is Tessa. She’s holding a large cardboard box, it looks like it weighs nearly as much as she does. She says nothing for a moment, then, after sizing him up, she brushes past.
“Is Ella—?”
“She’s inside.”
“Is—“
“No, Mason isn’t here. No one’s gonna kick your teeth in.”
“Do you need—“
“No, I got it.”
She’s already at the truck, sliding the box between the others in the bed. It’s nearly three quarters full, and Ella’s backseats are overflowing with odds and ends as well—they must’ve been at it for a while already.
She walks back to the front door, adamantly refusing to acknowledge Steven’s presence until he shifts ever so slightly into her path.
“Tessa, how is Ella? Is she—“
“How do you think she is, Steven?”
Tessa has locked eyes with him now, the first time in he can’t remember how long—probably since whenever her sister called her up crying in the middle of the night needing a place to stay.
“Whatever you have to say, just go say it and then leave her alo—“
“Tessa, it’s okay, it’s okay.” The voice comes from the doorway, it’s beautiful, Steven thinks. The most beautiful sound he’s ever heard, and he hates himself that it took him this long to notice.
“Please, just… just no fighting right now, please.”
Tessa pushes past the asshole on the porch and embraces her sister.
“Okay, love, okay.”
She turns and glares at Steven.
“I’ll be upstairs sorting.”
That last part comes out like a warning. She’ll be out of sight, but only just. Listening, ready to intervene at the first hint of raised voices.
At five-foot-null, she’s over head shorter than Steven, but she’s all pitbull. He doesn’t doubt for a second that she’d be more trouble than even her brother.
“Hi, Steven.” His wife says.
“Ella, I… what… what is going on?”
“Tessa’s helping me move out, Steven.” Her voice is ragged, she speaks like one who’s spent the better part of the day in tears. She looks tired, fragile.
“We’ll be done in an hour or so and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“No, Ella… I… I don’t need you ‘out of my hair’, I don’t want you to move out. Stay, stay here and—“
“I want to move out, Steven. I want to go. I need to go, I can’t stay here, I need to—“
“Ella, c’mon, we said we would work this out. I said I would—“
“Steven, stop. Just stop, please.”
“Ella, you said we could work this out.”
“I said that I would try, Steven, I said that I would try. And I’ve tried, Steven, I’ve tried so hard. What do you think I’ve been doing every time you had to go in just a little bit early to the office, or stay just a little late, huh? Or when you spend the weekends who-knows-where with ‘old college buddies’ that I never meet?”
“Ella, I explained all that, I told you—“
“I know, Steven, I know. There was always an explanation, a justification, always a nice, convenient little reason for me to stop asking questions. To believe you. To go back to pretending it was just a one time thing, a mistake.”
“It was a mistake, it was! And I’m so, so, so sorry, Ella, I am! I swear to you I’m not seeing Gina, I never was. That… that night… it was once! One time! It was a mistake I’ll never make again, I swear to you!”
“Steven—“
“And I know it’s been one thing after another I’ve put you though. I know that the house has been more of financial hit than we’d expected. I know that money’s been tight and getting my own practice off the ground is going to take longer than expected. I know leasing the Tesla—“
“Steven, stop. It’s not about the house, or your job, or Gina or whatever her name is, or Aubrey, or any of the others before that. It’s not about the fucking Tesla.”
“Then what is it?”
She lets out a long sigh shaking her head, the very last of her tears falling as she wipes her eyes.
“I don’t love you anymore, Steven.”
Panic rises through his chest as her words sink in.
To say, in that moment, that he felt gutted, would be an understatement. Eviscerated would be a more appropriate description.
He becomes aware then of the finality of this moment, of the futility of anything he could say, of all his frantic pleading. But plead he does.
“Ella, please, please! I’ll return the car and we’ll get something more… more practical! We’ll get the mortgage figured out! I’ll get a different job, a better one. I won’t be anywhere near Gina… I’ll be making more tha—“
“Steven, enough.” Her tone is distant now, dead, matter-of-fact. Her eyes are still red but her voice no longer quavers.
“You always do this. You apologize and deny and change the subject, and I’m always stupid enough to fall for it. But I’m done this time, Steven, I’m done.”
His panic morphs to angry indigence.
“So… so… you brought your sister here to move out under my nose?! You… you… you’re just going to run away?!”
“I’m not running away, Steven. This isn’t under your nose. I’m not trying to hide this, I’ve never tried to hide any of this. You won’t sign the papers, fine, but I’m not going to stay here with you anymore.”
“Goddammit, Ella! Will you just stop for one fucking second and—“
“Time to go.” The deep voice comes from the driveway. Steven hadn’t even noticed her brother pull up, but he’s here now. Steven opens his mouth to protest but the lumbering bulk approaching cuts him off.
“Get in your car and wait there, we’ll be done in a minute.” Mason’s voice is calm and level. “It’s not a request, Steve.”
Steven looks back to his wife, eyes begging her to reconsider—to just give him one more chance—even as her sister walks out, arms crossed, eyes daggers through his face.
Ella sighs again and, with Tessa gently guiding her shoulders, walks inside.
Mason has stopped at the edge of the drive, and he steps a politely accommodating, but no less intimidating, distance back from the path to Steven’s car.
Steven doesn’t make eye contact as he hurries past. He stumbles just slightly, foot catching on the transition from grass to concrete, as he reaches for the door handle.
His heart is thumping in his chest as he shifts into drive.
He’s barely made it out of sight around the corner before the uncontrollable sobbing starts.
----------------------------------------
Speeding along Highway 1, he sees the storm churning out over the Pacific, past the mountainous green hillsides.
Abruptly, Steven pulls onto the shoulder, gravel crunching under the tires as he lurches to a stop.
Opening the door is difficult against the battering wind. He steps out of the Tesla.
Walking up to the guardrail, he leans his thighs into the feeble thing, letting the curved metal dig into him, support him as he leans his head back and closes his eyes, the tumult in the heavens before him a mere fraction of that in his head.
Tears crust his cheeks, his sobs are drowned out by the howling around him—or maybe the howling is him.
All at once, he moves back from the railing, pulling spine straight as he does so. Stepping wider than shoulder-width, he points his left foot directly forward and keeps a slight bend in the knee. His other is nearly 90°, the foot facing outwards at a perfect right-angle to the other. With his center of gravity over the back leg, he pulls fingers together making flat blades of his hands, the left in front of his face with pinky finger leading, the right held just under the naval with palm facing up.
Pulling with his diaphragm, he takes a deep breath in through his nose.
His whole being stiffens with a sharp exhale as he thrusts his palm toward the roiling maelstrom in the distance