Getting in Touch with Your Inner Voice

“Welcome to my Library, Mr. Warrener. Can I call you Ethan?” the Director said.

I said nothing. I stood motionless, staring across the space between my doppelganger and I.

“I suppose it would come as no surprise to you this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation.”

“Where’s Kelly?” I demanded.

“Hmm. Not the first time we’ve talked, but I do believe this is the first time you’ve done anything but beg for your life.”

“I have no memory of you, or of this place.”

“But you walked through my basement to get here. You saw the other versions of you—of us—with your own eyes.”

“Those weren’t me. They looked like me, but they weren’t me.”

“Just like you and I aren’t the same, then?” the Director looked perpetually amused by me. I never knew I had such a punch-able face.

“Different experiences, different memories, different points of view. We are not the same person.” I crossed my arms.

“I was hoping we’d be able to understand each other. I’d expect you of all people to understand why I’ve had to do what I’ve done.”

“Let Kelly go, and I’ll think about hearing your side of things.”

The Director shook his head. “Sorry, Ethan. That’s a non-starter. Kelly is…how can I say this?”

“The person who saved my life?”

“A provocative agent. Installed by powers far above even my pay grade. The bodies in the basement are as much his doing as mine.”

“Says the megalomaniac who can bend reality to his will. How’d you do it? Quantum unreality can’t extend to a macroscopic scale.”

“Why not? Before my breakthrough, physicists had observed entire molecules waffling into and out of reality. All you have to do is ensure the particles of a given object break all causal interaction with their surroundings, and boom. You have your own little microcosm, with its own rules, history, and ending, internally consistent by virtue of its own interlinking interactions, but severed from the wider cosmos.”

“How is that possible? The odds of every atom of even a speck of dust, breaking off from every single surrounding particle…it’s still part of our universe—”

“I’m sorry.” The Director waved plaintive hands. “I forget you are a man of letters, not one of science. Let me take a step back. What is a universe?”

“Everything that exists,” I answered with a shrug.

The Director shook his head. “That definition won’t cut it anymore. Which is why, in my line of work, I prefer to use more accurate terminology. Are you aware of cosmic inflation?”

“It’s the expansion of the universe. The universe is expanding.”

“And that expansion is accelerating. At our cosmic horizon, space is expanding faster than the speed of light, and the furthest reaches of our universe are becoming severed from us, spilling over the edge of an unreachable, unknowable chasm. All causal connection between us is broken. Those galaxies, winking out of sight, are no longer capable of influencing us in any way, nor we them. Are they still part of our universe?”

“I guess not. Not meaningfully, at least. If a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears it…”

“Good. But you could say that those galaxies still exist, yes?”

“I suppose?”

“Then,” the Director said, “what is a universe?”

I understood now. “The collection of everything causally connected to each other.”

“Then the multiverse is then necessarily the collection of all universes not causally connected to each other.”

“But why should I care about a multiverse? If there’s no causal connection between us and whatever other universes out there, they might as well not exist at all, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Sure. As long as such universes stay separate. But if you look away for a second…” the Director pointed to my left, but I only saw endless shelves of books. As I squinted, I heard his voice waft from between the rows. “You may find your universe a little more populated than you remember it.”

I looked back to the desk where the Director had been sitting, and in his place sat Kelly, bound and gagged. “Kelly!” I ran forward to reach him, only to run face-first into a projection screen, behind which lay only more and more books. The illusion dissolved, I looked and saw no sign of either the Director or Kelly.

“I know what happened,” I said, turning and shouting at the cavernous library around me. “You messed around with quantum unreality, bringing in and banishing universes on a greater and greater scale, until you brought in Kelly. Now your universes are causally connected. One can affect the other, and vice-versa. They’re no longer separate. They’ve merged to become one.”

The director beamed as he stepped forward on the catwalk above me, spreading his arms wide, as if in greeting. “Welcome to the expansion of your universe. Or as I like to say, our causal domains have merged.”