by Zenia Zuraiq, III B.Sc. Physics
I think about alternate universes a lot.
Okay, okay. I know. Quantum physics doesn’t really work that way. There aren’t really tangible, physical, alternate me’s floating around. But it’s still fun to think about!
Anyway – what I like to do is to imagine paths converging right after something happens. Every time I narrowly avoid something, good or bad, there is a part of me that goes “Oh, but in alternate universe #23456, Zenia did get hit by that car!” (Or to be less morbid, “AU #28967 Zenia didn’t spill the coffee on herself!”.)
It's scary, sometimes. Thinking of the lives we lost or the lives we let go. Thinking of the infinite possibilities. Of the future we're travelling into, second by second. Of the futures we could've been travelling into. Of the chapters we chose not to write. Of the chapters we deleted and edited.
It's comforting, too. Not only could endless possibilities be endlessly bleak, but thinking of the close shaves we unknowingly had - the chapters we deleted could might as well have been our final ones. We might have won wars we never had to face, and lost battles in which we didn't even get to defend ourselves.
We're not living in the world where rabbits rule over everything and bananas are rainbow-coloured, but we could be. We're not living in the world where people have three arms and four eyes, but we could be. We're not living in a robot-controlled dictatorship of a world, but we could be.
We aren't living in these ridiculous worlds - or rather, worlds that seem ridiculous to us. Of all the worlds stretched over our vast universe, we are living in this one.
In the end, I hope it’s worth it.