Tag Archives: elyen

Creationivity

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I’ve been working away at this concept of a novel series, Elyen, for over a decade now, though it’s gone by a number of other names in its earlier forms. Maybe it should not be taking me as long to make the kind of progress that I have in that time (which I will deliberately not specify), but the fact is that the story has changed immensely from its original concept.

I think that, out of all of the changes, the most profound is that of my role as the story’s author. In fact, I seriously question if ‘author’ is even now the right word for it anymore. What I mean by that is this: When I first set out to work on what is now Elyen, I had no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I was the story’s author, it’s creator. It wasn’t even a question. There was no alternative way of looking at my relationship with that early body of work, no other function to it beyond that which you would expect to exist between an author and his story.

Now, I see myself as being more of a reporter, if anything. The story might as well be its own living thing, and I am merely studying it. The universe (/multiverse/metaverse) that is Elyen, and the world of Drendast in particular, have become their own sovereign domains, into which I am now little more than a privileged guest, granted the freedom to write about anything I see.

I am become Marco…

Anyways, I’m sure you can imagine how perplexing it is to arrive at a conclusion like that and then pair it with the notion that I likewise exist as some unknown element within that same story as well.

So now I question whether I have ever created anything now encompassed within the body of work that is now, and will yet be, Elyen. This threw my head for a little spin when I really started thinking about it last night. My conclusion, however, is that I have created (and now maintain) the means by which I observe and report the goings on in Drendast. And that’s still a very vital part in the grand scheme of things, though not as dictatorial (why can’t we just shorten that down to just ‘dictorial’??) as what I believed my role was when I first began.

I now believe that the events which unfold in Elyen do so largely independently of how I might wish for them to, and that the characters have every bit as much free will as I believe that I, myself, have. I am unaware of what influence or impact I may or may not still have, if I ever had any to begin with. In either case, when I record something and it goes into the body of work known as Elyen, I understand that such things could just as easily have gone any other way. More accurately, given the multiversal nature of Elyen, it should be stated that anything I record is simply only one way (out of countless other ways all taking place simultaneously and in parallel) that things are going.

And if there’s one thing I wish to convey through the writing of Elyen, it’s that anything and everything that can happen, is happening. The question is not “what happens in Elyen?“, but rather, “which version of events am I seeing unfolding in Elyen?“

…Polo.

Viria: Mamissamus

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In Elyen, or at least on Drendast (or rather in Drendast, given how most Drendains reckon their orientation to the planet that birthed them, even though, like us, they live on its surface), there are those of the synthetic variety who keep viruses as pets for themselves. You might think that that would be a bad idea.

Sometimes, you’d be right.

Mostly, however, the worst thing that ever happens is that the viruses, or viria as they are known as here, get misplaced. Sometimes, that can cause a great deal of harm, other times, a great deal of hilarity. In one case, there was one Synthetic Intelligent entity (SI for short) that had a pet virus called Mamissamus, and… well… It got lost somewhere in a physical domain populated with animal kind. If memory serves me correctly, I believe that even the ancestors of your human kind were among the affected. 

For what it’s worth, this is approximately what Mamissamus looks like when rendered into a physical manifestation:

            Don’t let the classy act fool you, Ma’am is one cunning strain, and not
                                        to mention totally into cross-dressing.

For the life of me, I still don’t know what the big draw was, but apparently Mamissamus (or, as you may have gathered already, Ma’am for short) had a particular penchant for mammalia DNA specifically. Without getting into too much detail, it wound its way right up there into the ancestral roots of warm-blooded, sexual vertebrates and latched on. Though mostly harmless, Mamissamus’s occupation within the mammalian lineage triggered a biological response that ultimately resulted in what is known today as “menstruation” — a rather messy business, from what I understand.

I should be honest with you, when I say “was” and “had” and otherwise treat this little anecdote as though it all took place a long, long time ago in the distant passed, the fact is that Lynic, the SI alluded to in the above, has been in a real tiff for the passed few days, which is about how much time has passed since he realized Ma’am was missing. How did a virus that only went AWOL a few days ago come to be responsible for eons worth of bleeding and serious discomfort, you ask? Well, being of Drendain origin, it has the ability to time travel. Obviously.

So anyways, it’s fallen to me to try to locate and retrieve the poor, lost virus. With any luck, Lynic and Ma’am will be re-united before long (and you warm-blooded folk will hopefully go back to not bleeding in strange places periodically). But please, whatever you do, don’t get your hopes up. Honestly, I really do have better things to do, and if I can’t track it down within the next day or two, I’m writing it off as being gone for good. If it comes down to that, you’re just gonna have to keep putting up with the after effects of Ma’am’s tampering until you figure out a way to adapt all on your own, mkay?

Have you tried, I don’t know, not letting yourselves be on biological autopilot? Really, going through the reproductive motions only when you actually want to reproduce is the way of the future. Just saying. Anyways, good luck with that!

 

Flora: Alluem Numana

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Care and effort are hard to exhibit in the face of apathy and laziness. Such is the struggle I deal with when it comes to describing some of the finer details of Drendast. In this case, I have a very, very pretty picture in my head, but when I try to find the words to describe what it looks like, I lose interest. The struggle continues, such that I am determined to press on despite the lack of enthusiasm for doing so. Perhaps, that is a quality that sets me apart as a truly awful writer.

Perhaps, I am okay with that.

With that said, I have always loved trees. I know almost jack shit about them as they are in the present day natural world, but maybe that is for the best. I have more blissfully ignorant wiggle room to work with when when trying to describe the kinds of vegetation that exists in my mind’s world. In this case, I wanted to share some thoughts concerning a species of tree known as Alluem Numana.

The name “Alluem” just sounded cool to me, and “Numama” hints at a source of magic(k), and otherwise paints a more enchanted picture in one’s imagination. At least, that’s the hope.

I wish I had a great deal of plant taxonomical details to relay, but instead, all I’ve got are the gists: Alluem Numana are very much like oaks in that they are very large, green and broad-leafed, deciduous hard woods. Being as they are native to Drendast (and Drendast is nothing if not Earth enlarged in many respects), they typically reach the heights we see more commonly seen among Coastal Redwoods: that is to say, tall as fuck — and yet, like oaks on Earth, they’re far from being the biggest trees on Drendast.

Apart from their height, however, there’s also the fact that they glow at night to take into consideration. I could be wrong but, in my mind, the idea of trees that light up and give off an aethereal, enchanted aura of one sort or another after twilight has set in seems to be a fairly well established fantasy trope at this point in the history of fictional literature (and other media). I can’t trace where I first got the idea from, but I know it was before the release of Avatar. In either case, it can hardly be avoided in a place like Elyen, given that nightfall only takes place once every three years (or months, depending on your reckoning). Well, months or years all the same, the point is that there are long periods of darkness for one third of the time at any given point on the surface of Drendast on a consistent basis. Therefore, it should not be so strange that the ecology reflects that fact in unique ways (in this case, with vegetation that lights up when the suns finally take their leave).

Other than that, it should be mentioned that they belong to a family of temperate rain forest trees.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_rainforest

Like so, only with, you know… actual oaks… and glowy bits at night…

So, giant-ass oaks that glow at night. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Alluem Numana of Drendast. I will have a little more to divulge about them in a second entry I will link to from here in the future.

Drendast, Part 1: The Big Picture

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Image

My best attempt to track down the original creator of this image came up inconclusive, but there’s a strong chance that credit for this picture goes out to BBC. Or Mother Nature. Or a space agency of one sort or another. Or an artist, you know, like the kind who render images like these for fun. Either way.

I’ve been sitting on a lot of ideas pertaining to the story I’ve been working on called Elyen for a long time now, but in all this time, I’ve hardly shared any of the details publicly. This is my first major disclosure of some of the bits and pieces I’ve got going on so far, starting first with the setting.

Much of Elyen toys with the idea of parallel universes/multiverses. In fact, Elyen is the name of a particular(ly large) multiverse, within which the characters will end up doing a great deal of sight-seeing. At the heart of Elyen is the planet Drendast, serving as a the primary hub between universes.

Drendast is a mega water-planet forged in the ether eons ago. It is absolutely massive. It originally sported no less than 12 super-continent sized landmasses called Subworlds spread evenly across its surface and separated by unfathomable distances of sheer ocean. It is so huge that rather than orbiting around a star, it had three of its very own sun-sized stars orbiting around it, ensuring a perpetual state of day light . 

Had, was the operative word. Around ten thousand years ago or so (according to the few surviving historical records), one of the suns orbiting around Drendast came crashing down, causing massive devastation in its wake. But rather than destroy the planet outright, Drendast happened to be SO huge that it absorbed the worst of the impact without crumbling apart or evaporating away. Many myths abound to this day attempting to explain the cause of the judgement that reigned down from the heavens that fateful day.

Originally, the three suns were Tropreus, Neora and Selah. Now, only Selah and Neora remain.

Originally, Drendast had 12 thriving Subworlds. Now, a full third of them have either been rendered uninhabitable, or were vaporized completely.

Much of the action in the early stages of the story will take place on one of the remaining Subworlds called Sarenalis (Ser`n`AY`liss). Before the Fall of Tropreus, there was never (or very, very seldom?) any night fall. Like on most Subworlds, many of the creatures which evolved there had the benefit of being photovorus (light-eating).

There was certainly enough sunlight to power all of creation indefinitely when all three stars circled the world. However, since the Fall, all life became a struggle. Sarenalis was one of the Subworlds least affected by the Fall since it was located on the complete opposite side of the planet from where the impact took place. Still, great suffering occurred there as much as anywhere else where the night touched.

Once great and peaceful creatures took to predation and killing all in order to survive in the face of scarcity and chaos. Civilization fell into disproportionate states of disarray. Many advances in medicine and technology were lost. Most importantly, the Subworlds, which were once connected to one another by a series of ethereal channels (often mistaken for wormholes by outsiders) called Conduits, were now completely isolated. The oceans between Subworlds were simply too vast to ever cross using most surviving conventional methods of transportation of the day.

Geographic separation began to take its course. At the height of Drendain evolution in the day was a humanoid race known as the Sævanii. Ever since the Fall, the separation between Subworlds forced the original Sævian line to branch out and become distinctly new entities.

Now, nearly ten thousand years following the calamity that Tropreus brought down, the Conduits have slowly begun to repair, re-establishing the links between the remaining Subworlds, but more than that, re-establishing the links between Drendast and the now-wild external multiverse at large. Mighty airships have also begun to make an appearance, slowly replacing reliance on the Conduits as the only way to get around the planet.

Many creatures have begun to adapt to the new nightfall conditions, even making sense of the star-and-constallation-filled night skies for the first time in all recorded Drendain history. New ecological niches have begun to mature. Balance and vitality were slowly being restored to the planet.

However, a new element began to materialize in the natural world still very much under-repair: Ambition. Can the devastated people of Drendast survive this strange new drive emerging from among them to carve out a competitive way of life for themselves so soon after their world was nearly destroyed?

Nuts and Bolts and Progress!

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I try to do too much at once. I have been sitting on the same story now for over a decade. Obviously, it’s evolved. It’s nothing at all what it was when I originally envisioned it, but my problem is that I have a bit of a hard time committing to any particular version of the story. Who knows if, come tomorrow, I’ll see the story from some new, unforeseen angle and what to redraft the whole thing through the filter of the new vision.

Also, I can’t fully settle on what events should happen when. Lots of ideas, but they’re all disjointed. There’s a few overarching themes I have in mind, but very little substantial glue to bring it all together and hold it there in a way that feels quite natural. At least not just yet.

What is becoming more and more obvious to me is that certain things cannot be planned. There are a great many things which can only be discovered during the writing process itself. I’m finding myself increasingly guilty of letting ideas evolve exclusively in my head on their own to such a highly specialized extent that they suddenly start having very little in common with the heart of the rest of the story as a whole.

Instead, when I take to writing my ideas out in the direct context of actual story material, no matter how simple and incomplete they may be at first, they’ll at least have the benefit of being cohesive with the over arching vision. I’m now facing a turning point where I may need to open myself to some serious pruning. Eventually, the lofty and abstract concepts I’d like to feature in the story will make their appearance, but will they express themselves to the same refined extent which they currently exist in my head, or will they take an unexpected turn and show me something new instead? I’m getting closer to finding out each and every day.

Speaking of which, I’ve been busy the last couple of days. I’ve written a chapter for my story, Elyen, and will be looking to get some feed back from friends soon enough. If all goes well, I’ll share it online for anyone who’s interested in actually reading what I’ve been working on, rather than reading me talking about what I’ve been working on. Keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks.

Also, I drafted up a short poem called “Intentions” (originally called “Pretentious”), hosted on Wattpad. If you get a chance, please check it out and let me know what you think! It’s a quick read.

https://embed.wattpad.com/story/10888194
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Nothing To Do With Thermal Lensing

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I have an idea, but it’s hard to explain. It’s about heat and life and stuff.

And, after a few days of being stagnant in the keeping-up-with-blogging department, I feel as though that is precisely what I should ramble about today: my difficulty explaining things.

The idea that I had been struggling with trying to share has lead to a deeper vice of mine, and that is that I struggle with describing things that are of a somewhat unfamiliar nature, period. If it were up to me to describe what snow looked and felt like to members of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon in order to not be cooked alive (for whatever reason), I’d be screwed. Doesn’t matter how well acquainted I am with the concept, it’s others whom I must enlighten.

So, when I want to write a book that’s intended to be chock full of interesting, weird, abstract concepts, and each of those concepts reinforce other strange ones, I am forced to go at it from a developmental approach: Start with the basics, establish a foundation, then build up.

The reason I find this difficult is because I want the reader to be plunged right in. I want to throw a reasonably diverse mixture of both familiar and unfamiliar ideas at them from the outset, so that way, there’d be things they can latch on to, and there’d be things they’re left wondering about.

From there, I fully intend on developing those unfamiliar threads in such a way that they gradually evolve in the reader’s mind, like a jigsaw puzzle slowly coming together, until they eventually become something they find intimately familiar. And/or, in the weaving of other concepts and threads, I will put a foundation together in such a way that all of the unfamiliar bits (which, to be fair, I would only mete out a reasonably little at a time) become instantly clear all at once, as though the reader were given the cipher for a crucial code they’ve been unable to solve for a long time.

So, my idea involving heat and life and stuff could be an unknown concept that instantly pops when the right information comes along, or one that slowly evolves over time, or, more likely, one that’s best left alone until the right fundamental principles that the universe of the story happens to abide by are first established. But therein lies another difficulty: it seems to me almost that all of the story’s universe’s fundamental principles are, themselves, unfamiliar and abstract.

So.

What does my story, Elyen, have in common with anything a human from Earth alive shortly after the turn of the 21st century might find familiar?

– The main characters are usually humanoid, so there’s often strong physical resemblance
– There are, more often than not, weather events that are similar to what we might expect here on earth
– Though the grander setting is nothing at all like Earth, from the perspective of a given humanoid character on the ground, the existence of mountains, bodies of water, forests, plains, desserts, etc., are all Earth-like enough for most readers to connect with
– Fantastic technologies exist which should be explainable in a way that fans of Sci-fi would have little difficulty appreciating
– Various forms of magic exist that fans of Fantasy will have little trouble understanding

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s just a cursory list for now. Here’s a list of some of the concepts I’m toying with which, I believe, are less common and therefore much trickier (but not impossible) to explain:

– “The Singularity” is the name of a type of major event that happens at various points throughout the history of the people of the story (yes, as in, there’s been more than one such event in Drendain history)
– Drendast is the name of the planet most of the events of the story takes place on. Drendast is a mega Aether-world, so large that it has multiple stars the size of Earth’s sun revolving around it, and not the other way around
– Most of the characters and beings on Drendast are photovores, naturally evolved [or, in some cases, genetically engineered] to subsist solely on the nearly perpetual light from the planet’s suns
– Physics on an Aether-world like Drendast are conveniently exotic. ‘Anomalies’, such as tri-pole magnetism, are taken for granted here
– The overarching philosophy behind the story incorporates, among other things, an offshoot of Taoism, which, if I understand anything at all about, only proves to me that I understand nothing at all
– Drendast happens to serve as a kind of ‘hub’ within it’s local multiverse, bridging connections via Conduits (think wormholes and you’ve basically got it) between universes both near and far.

And there’s loads and loads more concepts besides that.

The point is that I don’t always know where to start when it comes time to describe something. When I want to talk about a race of beings based on heat (rather than, say, carbon), I soon find myself struggling to explain their environment and behaviour, both of which involve (from the what I assume is a typical human perspective) altered states of reality, vaguely spiritual themes, Immersion (another very key concept I’m aiming to expound upon in the near future), and so on and so forth. Not easy.

Suddenly, explaining just one thing (what this race of heat-based beings are all about) is no longer just one thing, but many things, each of which are equally tricky.

I’m long winded. I’m still new to this whole blogging thing, and I don’t think I’ve quite figured out the most appropriate and tasteful format for presenting ideas, especially in terms of length, so, my biggest concern is not going on and on forever. To this end, I think I’m gonna start explaining concepts in parts. Starting after this blog, if I want to share a complex idea, expect to see it presented in chunks.

Or maybe I can do up a sort of wiki reference page, since I’m almost certain to reference earlier blog entries when presenting new ones related to Elyen. Something for me to look into. Anyways, that’d be all for now.

__Vergence

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I was having a bit of a discussion with my girlfriend about the Zelda timelines. She now has the unspeakable pleasure of trying out the new Zelda game called A Link Between Worlds. She can’t express enough how happy she is that Link is once again left-handed. Apparently, this installment takes place after the events in A Link to the Past have transpired. There’s a whole other version of Hyrule that Link can now explore called Lorule. From how she’s described it so far, I immediately recalled to mind the Twilight Realm from Twilight Princess. Those who have played each game will have to forgive my ignorance on that part since I haven’t seen Lorule for myself yet.

Anyways. Timelines. That’s what this is about.

We’ve all wondered about how things would be different if things were, well, different. What if the JFK or Abraham Lincoln assassinations were prevented, if the process of colonizing the new world were handled much, much differently, if Rome never fell, if the impact from the meteor that wiped out most of the dinosaurs was much less severe (or never occurred at all), if our crush from 8th grade actually liked us back instead of the idiot they ended up dating instead, that sort of thing?

In this case, even though the Twilight Realm apparently lacked a triforce of its own, what if they were one-and-the-same place, only within different timelines? As my girlfriend put it, the Twilight Realm could, perhaps, be Lorule in an alternate timeline where the hero of time fails his quest and the triforce is taken. Nintendo would have to go to some lengths to back that up (also likely pissing off a lot of devoted fans in the process), but still, it’s not inconceivable to pull off.

Then, I was watching my friend play Call of Duty Ghosts. She actually gave the campaign mode a try. I know, right? Who does that?? (secretly, all of us first person shooter fans do at one time or another, but it’s more fun to be hypocritical). Anyways, the opening bits… How incredibly Red Dawn-like. Mind you, it’s probably unfair to say that. Just about any story nowadays that involves America crumbling at the hands of some new attack by one random (targeted), foreign power or other has the unfair disadvantage of being likened unto one of the biggest box office remakes on that very same thematic basis in recent memory, (that being Red Dawn, in case I wasn’t clear). Doesn’t matter if it wasn’t the first or if it won’t be the last because, for now, it’s the definitive point of reference.
More importantly, whether it be Red Dawn, COD Ghosts, or any other WWIII/apocalyptic tale, it always involves events which play on our ability to envision it actually happening. Like, for real. Some of us might not have much of a hard time imagining what being an elf or dwarf hunting an orc party halfway across Middle Earth might be like, but when it comes to events which could very well take place in our own actual backyards at any moment, well… It makes for a far less imaginative exercise than it does a drill rehearsal.
But no matter, because in both Red Dawn and COD Ghosts, as well as a myriad of others, those events simply have not happened. You can throw a “yet” at the end of that if you want to or not, but the point is that it’s far from inconceivable that they perhaps could happen.
Now here’s where I come in. As an adherent to my own bastardized take on the Multiple Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics and, by extension, parallel universes, I’m already convinced that such events have already taken place. In fact, they’re happening right now. Continually, even. If there are an infinite number of universes within a larger multiverse structure within which alternate timelines might exist (and to be clear, there might not be) then, in theory, events such as those shown in Red Dawn are happening an infinite number of times. Endlessly. All of the time.
Equally true is that another requirement of the premise of infinite universes is that there would also be an infinite number of timelines where everything is made out of candy, and others where trees sound like Quagmire from Family Guy when they communicate with one another, and still others where gravity worked in reverse yet nothing appeared to be even remotely different (owing, of course, to the divine providence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as administered by his noodly appendages, hallelujah). All things, regardless of how improbable, are possible.
For a good example of this, consider the “technical” explanation of the Infinite Improbability Drive in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or simply enjoy some lul-filled goodness here.

I have no difficulty seeing how any given choice we could make or any fork in the road could eventually lead to the kind of resulting, diverging timelines that could spell the difference between the rise or fall of entire empires, given enough time, but what about converging timelines? Why is it that, once separated from a possible outcome that failed to be, we can never visit (any of) the resulting parallel universe(s) that came into existence at that exact moment?

Can you imagine the decoherence? Overlayed, or rather, enmeshed within the fabric of the reality that is presently happening, there suddenly appeared a secondary reality, playing along at the very same time. It might look like two movies playing on the same tv at the same time if the one on top was set to half transparency, but how would one function within it an environment like that if it couldn’t just be turned off when it got too confusing?

Say that someone approaches you and asks you a question in both, only, in one version, they ask you one thing, and in the other, they ask you something completely different? If you’re experiencing both at the same time, how would you respond? Would your response be appropriate for both, or might you also happen to see yourself responding in a different manner along side the self you happen to be fully self-awareness of? (The whole self version 1, self version 1.1, self version 1.2, etc. thing is a whole other nutshell to crack into another time).

And that’s just considering two timelines intertwined. Imagining being able to perceive of thousands simultaneously (and knowing that even that amount is on the pathetically low end of godhood relative to a truly infinite number).

Anyways, for an idea of what I envision for the characters in Elyen, navigating between parallel universes, filtering between realities, and converging or diverging between timeline events is absolutely and ridiculously mundane for them. It’s more a matter of practicality, in the same way that tools are useful for serving a functional requirement or meeting some inherent need.

Think of it this way: In a certain light, the fact that we humans drive cars to get to and from work would be considered the working of immensely powerful magic in the eyes of certain primitive societies. Yet it ain’t no thing to us, really. By the same token, perhaps a sufficiently advanced version of ourselves might have access to the means to traverse the (or a) multiverse (who’s to say there can only be one multiverse, hmm?) and yet regard it as being equally normal and unexciting. Boring, even.

Perhaps a civilization like that, if it might be called a civilization at all, would be glad to have a consciousness that consists of a single, unstoppable “now”, an unknown future, and an unchangeable past. In all likelihood, they’d regard such quaint notions as an absurd oversimplification, perhaps even a blatant fallacy when compared to the real truth of the matter of time, but so what? For all we know, they could envy the bliss that comes with our potentially remarkable ignorance.

Infectious Ideas

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So, as part of the thematic foundation for The Story I am working on, I keep rolling over the ideas of death, life, reincarnation and other various afterlife-related thoughts. Here’s the thing: Elyen, the story, focuses very heavily on multiple universes. That’s key. Couple that with my fascination for:

1) anything to do with FTL phenomena,

2) the impending technological Singularity/birth of smarter-than-human AI,

3) quantum computing,

4) evolution,

5) chaos/entropy vs order and control, and

6) the relative nature of time/eternal vs temporal phenomena

[Edit: 7) the wonder of biology]

…and we get an incredibly rich mixture of concepts from out of which can emerge any number of plausible philosophies, including those along the death-is-only-the-beginning line of reasoning.

To give a type of example — and just to be clear, as abstract, pseudo-technical and intellectual-sounding as these concepts and my particular take on them (including the following example) may sound, I have absolutely zero factual proof that any of what I have to conjecture is actually valid — think about the following event:

You’re walking down the street, on the sidewalk of course, and you come up to an intersection. It’s a busy and bustling city, so there are traffic lights and such to direct the flow of vehicles and pedestrians safely in turns. You wait for your right to proceed across the street. Once the light changes, you begin to do so. Suddenly, a vehicle approaches heading directly towards you from your left side on, moving dangerously fast and showing no signs of stopping.

In any number of universes, you could be distracted at that moment. You could be listening to your ipod with the headphone volume cranked up. You could have initiated your crossing a few seconds earlier or later (depending on your proclivity towards j-walking or not paying attention right away when the light changes, for example). Others could be crossing with you, walking faster or slower. Road conditions might be slippery. The exact conditions could have been anything. This is just one time that you happen to find yourself crossing one particular street out of potentially hundreds, maybe even thousands of times crossing the very same street.

What happens? Theoretically, everything. But only one possible outcome will ever actually be realized by you, personally. What that is remains utterly unknown until it happens. Obviously, certain possibilities appear to be incredibly more probable than others, but there’s still always a statistical chance of experiencing a fluke. More to the point, let me ask you something: Have you ever had a close call? Ever find yourself in a situation very much like this? Nearly struck by a vehicle who’s driver failed to slow down and come to a stop or swerve out of your path as you were about to cross? Ever actually been struck in a situation like that?

Ever die from a collision like that? Or at all?

What kind of question is that? I’ll tell you. In my view, I actually do seriously question how life and death works sometimes. I do believe death can visit us all, perhaps at any moment if it’s our time, but I do also acknowledge that I could be wrong about that. Yes, I see the graveyards filled with the bodies of those for whom death has inescapably brought about the end of their physical lives. Many countless people who once lived no longer do, but I don’t believe that things are nearly as cut and dry as they may appear to be.

A time or two, I have experienced a close call, as with the above example. In these moments, I feel a rush of fear and excitement, the tell tale fight-or-flight reactions brought about by a surge of adrenaline. Again, I have no proof of this, but I’ve come to suspect that there’s more, much more to that feeling than simple physical responses.

I believe in parallel universes, as stated already. In a vast number of those universes, I died. And in those brief moments, I believe that I’ve felt it. At least, other versions of me (including yours truly) did.

Here’s the thing: all matter can theoretically exist in a wave-particle duality. What we see around us are atoms and molecules that have been “collapsed”. As in, if a brick is a brick when we look at it now, it’s still going to be a brick if we look away, and still going to be a brick when we look back a short time later. There’s exceedingly little possibility that the brick might spontaneously become a puddle of water, or a small animal, or any other truly non-brick thing without some interacting conversion process affecting it first. The substance it’s made of is fixed, and once it is fixed, it won’t spontaneously unfix and refix as something else (presumably).

When it comes to the future, however, the unknown of events which are yet to be, it works kind of like this: In front of you is a picture. It’s really blurry. However, the longer you look at it for, the clearer it gets. If you look at the picture long enough, and if the clear picture is of something you recognize, then, in all likelihood, you will eventually identify it before long. However, while the picture is blurry and still of something as-of-yet unknown, it might as well be a blurry picture of anything.

So what if it really was a picture of anything? What if the blurry picture was a composite of thousands of differing, but perhaps similar, images, all morphed into one? However, as it becomes clearer, the number of pictures from which it is comprised begins to drop down from thousands, to hundreds, to tens, to a few, until eventually, finally, just one.

What if that is how the future works? Full of possibilities counter-weighted with probabilities, and as we near each successive, seemingly instantaneous moment, each new frame or slice of unfolding events, each new “now”, the picture unfolds revealing it’s singular clarity, but not without first having whittled down the possible other outcomes which might have been instead.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, in a multiverse where the unfolding events involve a street, a pedestrian, and a car failing to stop at their red light all brought together, the “pictures of the future” involve all the possibilities mentioned above (distraction, slippery conditions, loud music, etc.) and many, many more besides. However, the way that the entirety of the events actually plays out can only involve one fixed, final, irrevocable outcome for someone experiencing them.

Per universe.

My argument is that similar, nearby universes played out similar events and arrived at slightly — or perhaps greatly — differing outcomes. Perhaps countless numbers of them.

In any number of those outcomes, for those of us who are alive now and reading this and able to relate to the experience of a close call event like in the example above, is it really all that much of a stretch to believe that we’ve died in some of them? To press the point, the “closer the call” was (the more anxiety/fight-or-flight responses we felt, etc.), perhaps what really happened was that we felt the reverberations of our own deaths more acutely than in situations where the events leading to our deaths in other universes were much more remote.

I believe that universes abide by a proximity principle, and this may, perhaps, be one of the only ways we sub lightspeed-existent human beings have of interacting with other such otherwise unreachable places in the truly wide, fascinating and mysterious world that we may find ourselves in.

So, I’m not saying we’re all free to jump in front of cars, but I would hazard a guess that should a car strike us and kill us in one universe, we would instantaneously snap into awareness of ourselves in a universe where we did not die. This idea may rightfully be challenged by the idea of fate and whether or not we all, in fact, have our inescapable, predetermined time to die. At this time, I have no thoughts to weigh in on that matter, but I’m sure I’ll dream up something that seems sensible for the sake of The Story soon enough (I swear, I don’t purposely try to create alliteration in my phrases, but it does seem to happen a lot).

Also, it is an inescapable fact that universes in which we die, assuming they’re not also universes where it is routinely common to come back from being legally dead, are also universes in which we would leave behind loved ones. That’s never fun, for anyone involved. So, just to stress the point, don’t jump in front of cars. All I’m saying is, if it’s not your time (if there even is such a thing as “your time”), you won’t even realize how often you die on a regular basis in nearby universes anyways, so even if this idea infects you and blows your mind open a little, don’t fuss about it. Seriously. Why? ‘Cause you live in a universe where you’re too busy living, and that is honestly awesome. So go on, live and be, let whatever happens will happen. Just be sure look both ways when crossing the street.

[Edit: There’s much about these notions that have bothered me to think about in the years since initially musing about them. One example is the case of serious injuries. At what point can/does/should transference to a different, safer, but highly similar universe happen? I have no answers, only hopeful ideals]