Now & Again (30 page)

“You mean, in every line, regardless of us…you choose to die anyway?”

“Yes. Probably much to your surprise, in some of the branches.”

“No kidding.” Quyron placed her fingers on the corner of her monitor, covering over the dots and the blinking square. “Goodbye Echo,
dear
. It’s time.”

“Goodbye.”

There was a stillness that settled over them. Outside, on the balcony, as if sensing the moment, they saw Everett glance their way and raise a single hand in farewell. Suddenly, the massive complex shuddered as the great archive itself shut down, section by section, alarms going off in a rising shriek of noise. In the distance, displays began to turn black, marching toward them in an unfurling sheet of darkness: until only their workstation screens were left alive. The three glowing dots and the bright square in the corner of their monitors slowly dimmed, and then vanished altogether, leaving their own screens dead.

The two women sat peacefully in the diffuse illumination from a distant skylight. Leah lifted an eyebrow at Quyron. “When does it happen?”

Quyron looked up at the light. “I think it…”

With a sudden overwhelming thunder, they were plunged into an abyss and shredded apart. Around them, everything was shredding – the screen, the office, the campus, the clouds, the sky – billowing away into nothingness. And through it all, there was the all-encompassing, rising sound of tearing.

Kendall and Josh plummeted to their deaths from the bridge. Their hands were outstretched and their feet widespread. Each face wore a wild look of hope.

What were their chances? A hundred new timelines spun away from this moment: in some they never left the backseat, in others they stumbled, were hit by cars, or refused to jump; most lines ended in their deaths – by concussion, or drowning, or striking the base of the bridge. The flash of all the possibilities made fleeting impressions on their minds; none substantial enough to stick. The realities of adjacent lines were like late dreams that swim away in a startled burst of forgetfulness when we awake.

In some remote lines, Leah was dead again, while they lived; in others, Hannah grieved at three gravestones; in many others, they too were caught in the destruction of the timelines. It was a constantly shifting mosaic of potentials that were already actuals, somewhere. Their unique and mysterious capability, that had been so capriciously dropped into their DNA by a random multiverse, somehow sorted and evaluated and chose an option, among the myriad of options. And once chosen, it thrust them into it in the time it took to fall from a bridge to the churning waters of a river below it.

* * *

Kendall and Josh were suddenly rocked in their seats. They sat in a blue pickup driving northbound across the Big Mac bridge. Kendall swerved as he hunched over in pain. Horns erupted. He straightened the truck out.

Josh gasped, “That really hurt!”

Kendall scowled. “Tell me about it.” He cautiously touched his chest as he guided the pickup to a slower lane and exited as soon as he could. “But…at least we’re still not dead.” He frowned at himself. “Well…not dead, dead. I mean…never mind. You know what I mean.”

Josh closed his eyes and concentrated. “Do you remember anything new yet?”

Kendall pulled the truck over to a curb and stopped. “C’mon, you know it takes awhile.” Kendall checked his pockets and found an iPhone. “More than one way to skin a cat.” He touched the screen and checked his recent call list. He grinned in triumph. “She’s here!”

* * *

Leah stood on a stepladder taping trim along the top of a door in a small bedroom. The walls were already primed and a baby bed stood nearby, covered with a tarp. Her cell phone rang with a familiar tone and she frowned before answering. “What? You should have been back already. Did you remember paint and brushes?”

Back in the blue pickup, Kendall glanced behind Josh’s seat and saw new cans of paint and brushes, still in their store bags. “Got ’em. Of course I got ‘em. Whaddya think?”

“Why are you calling then?”

“I was missing you and wanted to hear your lovely voice. Anything wrong with that?”

Back in the new nursery, Leah was suddenly at a loss for words. “I…that’s nice. What’s gotten into you?”

Back in the blue pickup, Kendall was all smiles. “Nothin’. Just checkin’ in, you know.”

Beside him, Josh anxiously pantomimed something. Kendall asked, “Oh, ah, Josh wants to know if…” He winced. “Hannah’s there?”

Leah sounded exasperated. “Hannah?”

“Yeah.”

Leah climbed down the ladder and rolled her eyes. “What do you think? You two are such goofballs. Stop wasting time and get back here. We’ve got work to do.”

In another part of the room, Hannah looked up from sanding a baseboard and snickered. She was dressed in loose fitting clothes but was obviously well along in her pregnancy.

“We’ll be there before you know it.” Kendall ended the call and then patted his face in delight and stamped his feet. “Yes!”

He signaled a turn, and, smiling ear-to-ear, he got the pickup back on the road.

Beside him, Josh’s face suddenly lit up as he stared at the wedding band on his left hand. “Dad! I remember Hannah…oh, do I remember!”

The pickup roared up a ramp and merged back onto the freeway. Kendall suddenly had a lot of reasons to be in a hurry to get back home.

The cardiac wing of Holy Cross Hospital was positioned on the east side of the building and high enough to enjoy an unobstructed view of morning. The new sun streamed through the open window slats and across old Everett’s face as he slept. The brightness warmed his skin but didn’t awaken him yet. Next to his pillow, his forgotten phone sat silent on the mattress.

Hugh was dreaming that he was a boy again and slogging through deep snow in a birch forest. The sun was out and the clear sky was a brilliant blue. His face felt hot in the light. He swept up a handful of the pristine snow and chewed half of it into his mouth. The taste was achingly cold and clean.

As he lurched out into a clearing he was suddenly aware of two immense Siberian tigers frolicking in the drifts. Their oversized paws kept them high on the snow, despite their great weight. They rolled each other over and displayed their long teeth as they played at biting and rending. He felt no fear until there was a loud, chirping noise. Both tigers snapped to their feet and noticed him. He dropped his handful of snow and stood paralyzed, terror crawling up from inside him. There was another chirp. The tigers crouched and slid apart, each stalking him. He looked into their eyes and saw himself reflected there.

Sudden panic woke him to his forgotten phone. He blinked rapidly, trying to remember where and when he was. He focused on the flashing readout:
1 New Text Message
.

Arthritic fingers painfully worked the phone until he forced it to display its text:
Message from: Echo. Dr. Everett, you were right, and it’ll either work or it won’t. If you receive this automated message, it worked. I’ve learned that life is a choice. And even computers can learn to make sub lines. Goodbye.

Hugh slowly sank back into his pillow. And then he had to remind himself to breathe.

In Kendall and Josh’s new timeline, the Reivers Corporation was never created, and the multiverse has remained inviolate.

Quantum computers exist as the tantalizing playthings of theoreticians, the focus of high tech pioneering at well funded university labs, and the early products of overly optimistic startup companies trying to cash in on a hope and a prayer. Google reportedly has bought one of these early beta units from a company called
D-wave Systems, Inc.
and is testing it on image searches.

Nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing remain key future goals, not yet realized. Various governments have reportedly invested billions of dollars to hasten hoped-for future applications, but for now, it is still just that: the future.

At Princeton University, in January of 1956, Hugh Everett III submitted his first version of his 137-page PhD dissertation,
Quantum Mechanics by the Method of the Universal Wave Function
. By March, bound copies were sent to a university review panel of physicists; key among them was Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize winner from Denmark. Hugh’s fresh theory was vehemently rejected by Dr. Bohr and his clique of
right thinking
academics. Everett was told that his advanced degree would remain in jeopardy unless he revised his thoughts to match the prevailing scientific view – the Copenhagen Interpretation (devised by Dr. Bohr).

In early 1957, Everett rewrote his paper, excising and condensing large portions of it, and resubmitted the shorter dissertation under the title,
On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
. It was finally accepted by Princeton on April 15, 1957 and Everett subsequently was awarded his degree.

Offended by the experience, Everett turned away from academia and went to work for the Pentagon. Fifteen years later, in 1972, the original, long version of his paper was published by the Princeton University Press as
The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
. It raised some controversy and dusted off the dormant disagreements from the reawakened status-quo physicists of the time, and then slipped back into the relative oblivion of queer scientific theories and other oddities.

Hugh Everett lived his life, made and lost a lot of money working for the government, and later, made and lost a lot of money mismanaging his own company. His brilliant mind remained trapped in a limited world and unrecognized by most of the scientific community. Always dressed in a black suit and tie, he smoked incessantly, drank and ate to excess, was emotionally alienated from his wife, became an absentee father to his son, Mark, and daughter, Liz. He died from a massive heart attack in 1982 at the age of 52.

In 1996, Hugh’s daughter, Liz, took her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills. His wife, Nancy, died of lung cancer two years later. The only family survivor was his son. Mark Oliver Everett is better known today among a faithful fan base as
E
, the founder and singer/songwriter of the indie rock band the
Eels
. With a raw style and painfully personal, yet endearing lyrics, the
Eels
have recorded nine albums since 1996 and appeared on the soundtracks of numerous films, including
Shrek
,
American Beauty
and
Hellboy II
.

Today, the many worlds theory of Hugh Everett III has been rediscovered and championed by prestigious contemporary physicists and astronomers. Everett is viewed as a luminous mind with a startling and provocative vision of the quantum world. His theory is now actively explored and expanded upon as a vital step on the road to the current scientific Holy Grail –
ToE
(theory of everything).

At a conference in 2006, David Deutsch, a prominent British physicist and proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, spoke about Everett and his theory. “Everett was before his time, not in the sense that his theory was not timely – everybody should have adopted it in 1957, but they did not. Nevertheless, theories do not die and his theory will become the prevailing theory eventually – with modifications.”

Peter Byrne, who wrote a thoughtful and frank biography of Hugh Everett III in our timeline, concluded his book in this way: “And when all is said and done, why should there be but one universe? Is not the notion that there is only one world just as strange as that there might be many? And what if there are many worlds? What then?”

I would like to thank my patient wife and editor. She was my neverending source of encouragement and criticism. She kept my story honest and my grammar as close to proper as I could tolerate. Any remaining comma splices, fragments, run-on sentences, typos and awkward phrases are mine, and mine alone.

E. A. FOURNIER has worked in Hollywood and the corporate world. He has written for television and the big screen. He has directed independent films in this country and overseas. Yes, he has an advanced degree in film from the University of Southern California but he prefers to hide that – and yes, he roots against the Trojans whenever their football team is on TV. He currently works for a major international corporation directing their audio visual productions. A native of the Twin Cities, he escaped from Southern California many years ago in order to raise his large family in Minnesota. This is his first novel.