Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods

by Paul Melko

  “But what about other universes, other people just like us.”

  The man laughed. “Highly unlikely. Occam’s razor divests us of that idea.”

  “How would I travel between universes?” John said, grasping at straws against the man’s brisk manner.

  “You can’t, you won’t, not even remotely possible.”

  “But what if I said it was. What if I knew for sure it was possible.”

  “I’d say your observations were manipulated or you saw something that you interpreted incorrectly.”

  John touched the wound in his calf where the cat-dog had bitten him. No, he’d seen what he’d seen. He’d felt what he’d felt. There was no doubt about that.

  “I know what I saw.”

  Wilson waved his hands. “I won’t debate your observations. It’s a waste of my time. Tell me what you think you saw.”

  John paused not sure where to start and what to tell, and Professor Wilson jumped in. “See? You aren’t sure what you saw, are you?” He leaned forward. “A physicist must have a discerning eye. It must be nurtured, tested, used to separate the chaff from the wheat.” He leaned back again, glanced out his window onto the quad below. “My guess is that you’ve seen too many Schwarzenegger movies or read too many books. You may have seen something peculiar, but before you start applying complex physical theories to explain it, you should eliminate the obvious. Now, I have another student of mine waiting, one I know is in my class, so I think you should run along and think about what you really saw.”

  John turned and saw a female student standing behind him, waiting. His rage surged inside him. The man was patronizing him, making assumptions based on his questions and demeanor. Wilson was dismissing him.

  “I can prove it,” he said, his jaw clenched.

  The professor just looked at him, then beckoned the student into his office.

  John turned and stalked down the hall. He was asking for help, and he’d been laughed at.

  “I’ll show him,” John said. He took the steps two at a time and flung open the door to the quadrangle that McCormick faced.

  “Watch it, dude,” a student said, almost hit by the swinging door. John brushed past him.

  He grabbed a handful of stones and, standing at the edge of the quadrangle, began flinging them at the window that he thought was Wilson’s. He threw a dozen and started to draw a crowd of students, until Wilson looked out the window, opened it and shouted, “Campus security will be along in a moment.”

  John yelled back, “Watch this, you stupid bastard!” He toggled the device forward one universe and pulled the lever.

  *

  John awoke in the night, gripped by the same nightmare, trapped in darkness, no air, his body held rigid. He sat up and flung the covers away from him, unable to have anything touching him. He ripped off his pajamas as well and stood naked in the bedroom, just breathing. It was too hot; he opened the window and stood before it.

  His breathing slowed, as the heavy air of the October night brought the smells of the farm to him: manure and dirt. He leaned against the edge of the window, and his flesh rose in goose pimples.

  It was a dream he’d had before, and he knew where it came from. He’d transferred near Lake Erie, on a small, deserted beach not far from Port Clinton and ended up buried in a sand dune. He’d choked on the sand and would have died there if a fisherman hadn’t seen his arm flailing. He could have died. It was pure luck that the guy had been there to dig his head out. He’d never transferred near a body of water or a river again.

  That hadn’t been the only time either. In Columbus, Ohio, he’d transferred into a concrete step, his chest and lower body stuck. He’d been unable to reach the toggle button on the device and had to wait until someone wandered by and called the fire department. They’d used a jackhammer to free him. When they’d turned to him, demanding how he’d been trapped, he’d feigned unconsciousness and transferred out from the ambulance.

  After that, each time he touched the trigger he did so with the fear that he’d end up in something solid, unable to transfer out again, unable to breath, unable to move. He was nauseated, his stomach kicking, his armpits soaked, before the jumps.

  It was the cruelest of jokes. He had the most powerful device in the world and it was broken.

  “No more,” he said to himself. “No more of that.” He had a family now, in ways he hadn’t expected.

  The confrontation with his parents had been angry, then sad, and ended with all of them crying and hugging. He’d meant to be tough; he’d meant to tell his parents that he was an adult now, and could take care of himself, but his resolve had melted in the face of their genuine care for him. He’d cried, goddamn it all.

  He’d promised to reconsider the letter. He’d promised to talk with Gushman again. He’d promised to be more considerate to his parents. Was he turning into Johnny Farmboy?

  He’d gone to bed empty, spent, his mind placid. But his subconscious had pulled the dream out. Smothering, suffocating, his body held inflexible as his lungs screamed. He shivered, then shut the window. His body had expelled all its heat.

  He slipped back into bed and closed his eyes.

  “I’m becoming Johnny Farmboy,” he whispered. “Screw it all.”

  *

  McCormick Hall looked identical. In fact the same student guarded the door of the Physics Library, asked him the same question.

  “Student ID?”

  “I left it in my dorm room,” John replied without hesitation.

  “Well, bring it next time, frosh.”

  John smiled at him. “Don’t call me frosh again, geek.”

  The student blinked at him, dismayed.

  His visit with Professor Wilson had not been a total loss. Wilson had mentioned the subject that he should have searched for instead of parallel universe. He had said that the field of study was called quantum cosmology.

  Cosmology, John knew, was the study of the origin of the universe. Quantum theory, however, was applied to individual particles, such as atoms and electrons. It was a statistical way to model those particles. Quantum cosmology, John figured, was a statistical way to model the universe. Not just one universe, either, John hoped, but all universes.

  He sat down at a terminal. This time there were thirty hits. He printed the list and began combing the stacks.

  Half of the books were summaries of colloquia or workshops. The papers were riddled with equations, and all of them assumed an advanced understanding of the subject matter. John had no basis to understand any of the math.

  In the front matter of one of the books was a quote from a physicist regarding a theory called the Many-Worlds Theory. “When a quantum transition occurs, an irreversible one, which is happening in our universe at nearly an infinite rate, a new universe branches off from that transition in which the transition did not occur. Our universe is just a single one of a myriad copies, each slightly different than the others.”

  John felt an affinity for the quote immediately. He had seen other universes in which small changes had resulted in totally different futures, such as Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the electric motor. It almost made sense then, that every universe he visited was one of billions in which some quantum event or decision occurred differently.

  He shut the book. He thought he had enough to ask his questions of Wilson now.

  The second floor hallway seemed identical, right down to the empty offices and cluttered billboards. Professor Wilson’s office was again at the end of the hall, and he was there, reading a journal. John wondered if it was the same one.

  “Come on in,” he said at John’s knock.

  “I have a couple questions.”

  “About the homework set?”

  “No, this is unrelated. It’s about quantum cosmology.”

  Wilson put his paper down and nodded. “A complex subject. What’s your question?”

  “Do you agree with the Many-Worlds Theory?” John asked.

  “No.
”

  John waited, unsure what to make of the single syllable answer. Then he said, “Uh, no?”

  “No. It’s hogwash in my opinion. What’s your interest in it? Are you one of my students?” Wilson sported the same gray jacket over the same blue oxford.

  “You don’t believe in multiple universes as an explanation . . . for . . .” John was at a loss again. He didn’t know as much as he thought he knew. He still couldn’t ask the right questions.

  “For quantum theory?” asked Wilson. “No. It’s not necessary. Do you know Occam’s Theory?”

  John nodded.

  “Which is simpler? One universe that moves under statistical laws at the quantum level or an infinite number of universes each stemming from every random event? How many universes have you seen?”

  John began to answer the rhetoric question.

  “One,” said Wilson before John could open his mouth. Wilson looked John up and down. “Are you a student here?”

  “Uh, no. I’m in high school,” John admitted.

  “I see. This is really pretty advanced stuff, young man. Graduate level stuff. Have you had calculus?”

  “Just half a semester.”

  “Let me try to explain it another way.” He picked up a paperweight off his desk, a rock with eyes and mouth painted on it. “I am going to make a decision to drop this rock between now and ten seconds from now.” He paused, then dropped the rock after perhaps seven seconds. “A random process. In ten other universes, assuming for simplicity that I could only drop the rock at integer seconds and not fractional seconds, I dropped the rock at each of the seconds from one to ten. I made ten universes by generating a random event. By the Many-Worlds Theory, they all exist. The question is, where did all the matter and energy come from to build ten new universes just like that?” He snapped his fingers. “Now extrapolate to the nearly infinite number of quantum transitions happening on the earth this second. How much energy is required to build all those universes? Where does it come from? Clearly the Many-Worlds Theory is absurd.”

  John shook his head, trying to get his arms around the idea. He couldn’t refute Wilson’s argument. He realized how little he really knew. He said, “But what if multiple worlds did exist? Could you travel between the worlds?”

  “You can’t, you won’t, not even remotely possible.”

  “But —”

  “It can’t happen, even if the theory were true.”

  “Then the theory is wrong,” John said to himself.

  “I told you it was wrong. There are no parallel universes.”

  John felt the frustration growing in him. “But I know there are. I’ve seen them.”

  “I’d say your observations were manipulated or you saw something that you interpreted incorrectly.”

  “Don’t condescend to me again!” John shouted.

  Wilson looked at him calmly, then stood.

  “Get out of this office, and I suggest you get off this campus right now. I recommend that you seek medical attention immediately,” Wilson said coldly.

  John’s frustration turned to rage. Wilson was no different here than in the last universe. He assumed John was wrong because he acted like a hick, a farm boy. He was certain John knew nothing that he didn’t already know.

  John flung himself at the man. Wilson’s papers scattered across his chest and onto the floor. John grabbed at his jacket from across the desk and yelled into his face, “I’ll prove it to you, goddamnit! I’ll prove it.”

  “Get off me,” Wilson yelled and pushed John away. Wilson lost his balance when John’s grip on his jacket slipped and he fell on the floor against his chair. “You maniac!”

  John stood across from the desk from him, his breathing coming hard. He needed proof. His eyes saw the diploma on the wall of Wilson’s office. He grabbed it and ran out of the office. If he couldn’t convince this Wilson, he’d convince the next. He found an alcove beside the building and transferred out.

  John stood clutching Wilson’s diploma to his chest, his heart still thumping from the confrontation. Suddenly he felt silly. He’d attacked the man and stolen his diploma to prove to another version of him that he wasn’t a wacko.

  He looked across the quad. He watched a boy catch a frisbee, and then saw juxtaposed the images of him tripping and not catching it, just missing it to the left, to the right, a million permutations. Everything in the quad was suddenly a blur.

  He shook his head, then lifted the diploma so that he could read it. He’d try again, and this time he’d try the direct approach.

  John climbed the steps to Wilson’s office and knocked.

  “Come on in.”

  “I have a problem.”

  Wilson nodded and asked, “How can I help?”

  “I’ve visited you three times. Twice before you wouldn’t believe me,” John said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” he said. “You’re not one of my students, are you?”

  “No, I’m not. We’ve never met, but I’ve met versions of you.”

  “Really.”

  John yelled, “Don’t patronize me! You do that every fucking time, and I’ve had enough.” His arms were shaking. “I don’t belong in this universe. I belong in another. Do you understand?”

  Wilson’s face was emotionless, still. “No, please explain.”

  “I was tricked into using a device. I was tricked by another version of myself because he wanted my life. He told me I could get back, but the device either doesn’t work right or only goes in one direction. I want to get back to my universe, and I need help.”

  Wilson nodded. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  John nodded, tears welling in his eyes. He’d finally gotten through to Wilson.

  “So you’ve tried talking with me — other versions of me — in other universes, and I won’t help. Why not?”

  “We start by discussing parallel universes or quantum cosmology or Multi-Worlds Theory, and you end up shooting it all down with Occam’s Razor.”

  “Sounds like something I’d say,” Wilson said nodding. “So you have a device.”

  “Yeah. It’s here.” John pointed to his chest, then unbuttoned his shirt.

  Wilson looked at the device gravely. “What’s that in your hand?”

  John glanced down at the diploma. “It’s . . . your diploma from the last universe. I sorta took it for proof.”

  Wilson held out his hand, and John handed it over. There was an identical one on the wall. The professor glanced from one to the other. “Uh huh,” he said, then after a moment, “I see.”

  He put the diploma down and said, “My middle name is Lawrence.”

  John saw that the script of the diploma he’d stolen said “Frank B. Wilson” while the one on the wall said “Frank L. Wilson.”

  “I guess it’s just a difference–”

  “Who put you up to this? Was it Greene? This is just the sort of thing he’d put together.”

  Anguish washed over John. “No! This is all real.”

  “That device strapped to your chest. Now that’s classic. And the diploma. Nice touch.”

  “Really. This is no hoax.”

  “Enough already. I’m on to you. Is Greene in the hall?” Wilson called through the door. “You can come out now, Charles. I’m on to you.”

  “There is no Charles. There is no Greene,” John said quietly.

  “And you must be from the drama department, because you are good. Two more copies of me! As if the universe can handle one.”

  John stood up and walked out of the office, his body suddenly too heavy.

  “Don’t forget the shingle,” Wilson called, holding up the diploma. John shrugged and continued walking down the hall.

  He sat on a bench next to the quad for a long time. The sun set and the warm summer day vanished along with the kids playing frisbee with their shirts tied around their waists.

  Finally he stood and walked toward the Student Union. He needed food. He’d skipped lun
ch at some point; his stomach was growling at him. He didn’t feel hungry but his body was demanding food. He just felt tired.

  There was a pizza franchise in the Student Union called Papa Bob’s. He ordered a small pizza and a Coke, ate it mechanically. It tasted like cardboard, chewy cardboard.

  The Union was desolate as well, all the students driving home or heading to the dorms for studying and TV. John spotted a pay phone as he sat pondering what he would do next, whether he should confront Wilson again. John realized that he should have taken a picture of the man or demanded he write himself a note. But he would have told John that it was computer generated or forged.

  He walked over to the phone and dialed his number. The phone demanded 75 cents. He inserted the coins and the phone began to ring.

  “Hello?” his mother answered.

  “Hello,” he replied.

  “Johnny?” she asked, surprised.

  “No, could I talk to John please?”

  She laughed. “You sound just like him. Gave me a fright, hearing that, but he’s standing right here. Here he is.”

  “Hello?” It was his voice.

  “Hi, this is Karl Smith from your English class,” John said making up a name and a class.

  “Yeah?”

  “I missed class today, and I was wondering if we had an assignment.”

  “Yeah we did. We had an essay on the poem we read, Tennyson’s ’Maud.’ Identify the poetic components, like the last one.”

  “Oh, yeah,” John said. The poem was in the same unit as the Hopkins one. He remembered seeing it. “Thanks.” He hung up the phone.

  This universe seemed just like his own. He could fit right in here. The thought startled him, and then he asked himself what was stopping him.

  He walked to the bus station and bought a ticket back to Findlay.

  *

  John helped his father around the farm the next day. He took it as penance for upsetting his parents. They still thought he was Johnny Farmboy, and so he had to act the part, at least until his projects started churning.

  As they replaced some of the older wood in the fence, John said, “Dad, I’m going to need to borrow the truck on Saturday night.”

  His father paused, a big smile on his face. “Got a big date, do you?” He said it in such a way that John realized he didn’t think his son really had a date.