The Ultimate Reprieve

by Daniel Romm

  “Yes. I finished it yesterday.”

  “Good. I can do no better than to quote it and elaborate. ‘Everett's attempt to reconcile quantum reality with logic is by far the boldest and most flamboyant.’ He contends that the world splits into infinite parts every instant, but each part occupies its own parallel universe. ‘A human being dwells in just one of these universes at a time and cannot perceive the others. Likewise, the inhabitants of the other universes are not aware of their parallel partners.’ Every human being perceives only a single universe. Each time a split occurs the new universe will have the same past as its predecessor, but their futures will be different from that point forward, some in minor ways, some radically. ‘We do not know why human perception is limited to such a small sector of the real world, but it seems to be an unavoidable fact dictated by quantum theory. Although we are not directly aware of these alternate worlds, our own universe would not be the same without them.

  “‘Everett's theory describes the world as a continually proliferating jungle of conflicting possibilities, each isolated inside its own universe. However humans do not happen to live in super-reality, but in the world of mere reality where only one thing happens at a time. We can picture Everett's super-reality as a continually branching tree of possibilities in which everything that can happen actually does happen. Each individual's experience, lived out in mere reality, not super-reality, is a tiny portion of a single branch on that perpetually flowering tree. In Everett's bountiful multiverse, every little ‘could-be’, no matter how improbable, gets its time to shine.’”

  “Fascinating. But is he right?”

  “Nobody knows for sure. Many physicists today think so, including me, but only partially. It seems likely a parallel universe can only arise if triggered by a certain type of critical event. Rather than an infinite number, the tree will have only as many branches as the number of these occurrences, with each branch growing from either the trunk or from a previous branch.”

  “What types of events are ‘critical’?”

  “Ones that would nontrivially alter the future. Mere blips have insufficient impetus to split the universe; it will merely distort imperceptibly and settle back into itself relatively undisturbed.”

  “Have any happened?”

  “Not to anyone's knowledge. If so perhaps we could validate the theory. If one never occurs there will be only a single universe for all time, so no branches on the tree's trunk. But enough introductory discussion, let's turn to the mathematics…”

  Ben left Professor Ryan's office wondering, “Could quantum theory, as bizarre as it is, really be true?” He decided he would ask Wayne Smith, his verbose but insightful professor of philosophy and mathematics, what he thought about the matter.4

  ____________________

  3 Written in 1985 by Nick Herbert

  4 This lengthy and elaborate discussion takes us far afield, but the Appendix (Part V) contains it in its entirety for those of you who possess a philosophical and/ or mathematical bent.

  6

  Ben's Reverie

  Ben wanted to relax and unwind before seeing Jenny; first dates always flustered him. Besides, his professors had disclosed a spate of thorny new material and he needed to temporarily quench the firestorm of new ideas kindling in his mind. His method of choice was to bask in the ambience of the splendid arboretum alongside the dean's office and ponder all the things he should be thankful for. Selecting a secluded niche, he yawned, took a few deep breaths, imbibed the lush verdure surrounding him and began to reminisce about his years as a student, which were rapidly coming to an end.

  He recalled how he first attracted attention in his freshman physics class. Finding his teacher boring and redundant, he decided to use the lecture hours to read the chapter rather than attend class. This seemed quite reasonable since the lectures were little more than verbatim iterations of the text, which Ben understood quite well without additional guidance. When he showed up for his result on the final exam the teacher asked, “Are you in my class? I don't recognize you. What's your name?” Everybody was amazed to discover Ben got the highest score — especially the teacher! From then on his classmates viewed him as something of a legend, a reputation he relished.

  His next antic occurred during his sophomore year. Ben could absorb and remember lecture material without resorting to notes. He merely listened attentively and followed the reasoning as it was presented, which of itself further enhanced his classmates’ admiration. One day his mathematics TA, told him, “I notice you don't take notes but I suggest you write this down.” Being no fool, Ben borrowed a sheet of paper from his neighbor and copied the material. On the final exam only Ben got the bonus question. He didn't need to scan pages of notes to try to find the applicable theorem; it was contained in his one and only note! Few of his classmates had the foresight to highlight the theorem, even after the teacher's admonition.

  Then there was the time in his junior year when he received a score of zero on an extremely difficult true-false test by intentionally switching all the answers. He was rewarded with an A+ since the caper might have gone awry had even one answer been correct.

  His biggest coup came when he bailed his mathematics TA out of a predicament during a lecture on probability. The teacher was using the famous Monty Hall problem to illustrate the inadequacy of intuition. “Back in their golden age, Monty Hall emceed a quiz show that used the following format; the contestant is shown three doors and told, ‘A new car is behind one of these doors and it's yours if you pick the right one.’ After a door is selected, Monty, knowing what's behind each of them, opens a second door (which is of course empty) and says, ‘You may switch to the other unopened door if you wish.’ Does it matter whether or not the contestant switches?”

  Most of the class responded, “It makes no difference! The chance of winning in either case is one in three.”

  When no more hands were raised, the teacher crowed haughtily, “Switching will double the odds to two in three.”

  “Prove it!”

  He scrawled the conventional solution across three boards. It was replete with fractions, consisted of convoluted reasoning, and was so abstruse the dissenters remained unconvinced. In exasperation, he asked if anyone could provide a clearer explanation.

  Only Ben volunteered. His succinct two-sentence explanation, which the teacher had never before encountered, quickly and easily satisfied everyone. “If you stick with your first choice you win when the car is behind it — one time in three. But Monty is constrained to open a door without the car behind it, so if you switch you win whenever the car wasn't behind your first choice — two times in three.”

  Ben next recalled his favorite exploit, hitting the game-winning home run against the Academy's bitterest rival. He was a good athlete, a useful attribute for a future astronaut. Yet despite having taken numerous jolts and tumbles playing football, basketball and hockey, the only body part he had ever broken was his nose as a result of unceremoniously walking into a door! Lest you think such a ludicrous incident could never befall you, he was looking straight ahead and being appropriately cautious, although perhaps walking a bit too fast.

  It happened like this: while in bed at night with the lights out, his telephone rang. As he headed toward the nearest light switch with arms extended horizontally in front of him, he was whacked in the nose by what he thought was an intruder. Reeling backwards in astonishment, he collected himself from the shock, made it to the switch, turned on the light and braced for a confrontation. But the room was empty! It just so happened that as he groped forward in the dark, the open bedroom door managed to fit snugly between his outstretched arms and he smashed into it edgewise, nose first. Not until this morning's manuscript had his personal space been so profoundly violated.

  7

  Ben's Reverie — Continued

  Ben's thoughts wandered to exotic lands pregnant with grandeur, unforgettable romance and diverse cultures. At his parents’ suggestion and with their fi
nancial support, he had gratefully taken a one-year respite from the grueling pursuit of scientific knowledge in order to see the world. It was the best year of his young life. Being something of a daredevil, he took every opportunity to squeeze the utmost thrill out of every adventure including: bungee jumping over Victoria Falls; visiting a Mongolian nomad's gurt situated in the middle of the stark Gobi desert miles from any other human life yet surprisingly stocked with computer, refrigerator, washing machine and all other modern appliances; taking a safari in the Serengeti where he scaled a Skopje to watch wildebeest migrate, from which vantage point they resembled a ten mile long stream of ants; scuba diving along Australia's great barrier reef; and sampling the various gaits of camels, elephants, llamas, yaks and other beasts of burden.

  His favorite place was India where every day he saw something he had never before seen. There was the bird gnawing on the entrails of a dead woman floating on the surface of the Ganges river, her hastily wrapped corpse having been thrown into the holy water by people too poor to afford a proper cremation; the outlandish swami willing to jump off of a one hundred foot tower onto the ground below; the timid plant that withdrew its petals at the slightest touch; the astounding anonymous painting looking directly at you from any angle while hanging ignominiously from the wall of a sumptuous, but isolated, castle instead of the Louvre where more than a mere handful of devoted patrons of art could get the chance to see it; modern high-powered automobiles patiently sharing the same road with sheep, asses, camels, horse drawn carts, defecating pedestrians and slow-moving cripples; enormous statues carved out of a mountainside from top down in less than a century by holy men using only spoons; side streets swarming with shoppers wearing resplendent saris, many of them pausing in aromatic boutiques to join the debate on the topic of the hour while seated on quilted pillows; the lavish, intricately choreographed, garden of Lahore displaying symmetrical layers of indigenous plants, including fragrant flowers and pungent herbs and spices providing perfectly coordinated visual and olfactory palettes, that were perpetually splashed by refulgent man-made waterworks spewing geysers illuminated with a dazzling multitude of colors; the lone rickety bus, with dozens of freeloaders hanging precariously along the top and sides of its exterior, pulling into a depot where hundreds of squalid would-be boarders nearly crushed the life out of the people in front of them, including Ben, in an effort to purchase tickets for the only transport available that day; stranded cars along the roadside with hoods blown off that had sent would-be office holders to their deaths instead of their intended destinations (politics in India is and always has been a war of attrition); Calcutta's streets strewn with swarms of suffering, destitute beggars waiting like vermin to die in misery; worshippers oozing with an otherworldly depth of piety as they knelt before the ancient awe-inspiring shrines of Varanasi; Agra's pearly and sublime Taj Mahal at sunset, to which no photograph could ever do justice; the Towers of Silence, a chasm located adjacent to Bombay's central park in which laughing children gleefully frolic that serves as a Zoroastrian burial ground above which ravenous vultures eagerly circle to swoop upon and devour the rotting corpses within; a lavish exotic palace situated in the middle of a lake that had once domiciled a sultan's entire court and was now merely a sumptuous hotel for tourists; and the pornographic eroticism of Khajuraho's sculptured Shiva temples.

  Given sufficient time and means, Ben felt he could spend an entire lifetime exploring India without exhausting its unique treasures and oddities. It wasn't as if India had no competitors; many other countries have must-see wonders. But India's overwhelming splendor surpasses them all since it springs from a rivalry among seven neighboring dynasts, each striving to outdo one another in magnanimity, as contrasted with the comparatively meager beneficence that a single pharaoh, king, emperor, or nobleman could muster. As if this weren't reason enough, Ben found the luxurious dark beauty, ebon eyes, high cheekbones and perfectly proportioned faces of India's women irresistible.

  He was reminded of another dark beauty, Sherry, well tanned from frequent weekend outings at the beach where they met and the first woman he had slept with. As the aggressor she had maneuvered him into her bedroom before he thought he was ready; but he was wrong. Her initial tender touch, the sight of her soft smooth luscious skin, the titillating feeling of her breasts brushing his chest, the pleasant tingling when she fondled his genitals and the moisture of her lips and other body parts aroused him and easily dissolved any nervousness arising from the anticipation of his first sexual encounter.

  After satisfying each other to the fullest, Ben thought he was in love but Sherry's maturity prevailed; she was a year older and more familiar with love's peculiarities. Sensing his vulnerability, she handled it without a hitch. “What you are feeling isn't love. I'm eager to continue sex for a while; after all, my pleasure is on a par with yours. But eventually we will go our separate ways harboring delicious memories and perpetual gratitude for what we have given each other.” And so it has turned out. Sherry was good for Ben. The fondness he still bore for her soon turned his thoughts to Jenny. It was time to go.

  8

  A First Date

  To Jenny's relief Ben arrived promptly at six sharp; waiting was torture. She looked ravishing in her favorite rose-embroidered taffeta dress draped leisurely, but provocatively, around her svelte body.

  Ben had never seen her in anything but office attire, which was discreetly designed to deemphasize her enticing femininity lest it stir the natural prurience of her male clientele. Transfixed by her stunning beauty and gracefully fetching curvature, he gaped wide-eyed and speechless for a full five seconds before regaining his composure and stammering, “You look great.”

  “Thank you.” Jenny couldn't help but notice his approving stare and was quite pleased.

  “Where would you like to eat?”

  “What kind of food do you like?”

  “All kinds.”

  Jenny was disappointed he hadn't already chosen a place. Realizing she had to make the call without help she suggested, ‘a nice Italian place a few blocks away.’

  It was dimly lit and quite charming. Ben had skipped lunch and the tantalizing aroma wafting from the kitchen further stimulated his appetite. He didn't have to wait long, Jenny was a frequent customer and a generous tipper. A waiter sporting dinner jacket and cummerbund immediately waved them over, thrust two menus in their direction, and escorted them to Jenny's preferred table embellished with garlic bread, butter, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, ground pepper, ice water, cloth napkins and gleaming silverware. Seating them, he asked her, “Would you like your customary glass of Chianti?”

  “Yes, but perhaps we should get a bottle. Do you like Chianti?” she asked Ben.

  The table was bathed in candlelight. Scrutinizing the menu with difficulty he replied, “I like all red wines. I guess we can start with a bottle. That will give me time to decide what I want.” When the waiter had gone he asked Jenny, “What do you recommend? Everything looks terrific.”

  “I always get the pepperoni pizza and an appetizer of calamari.”

  “Sounds good. Should I get salad?”

  “Okay.”

  “Which one?”

  “As your counselor I know you have trouble making decisions but I didn't realize it was this bad!”

  “You're right as usual. I can't decide anything. It's frustrating. Whenever I try I soon start waffling. If I can't make small decisions, how am I going to make the big ones I'll soon be facing?” he moaned.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as after I graduate must I continue to live like a hermit so as not to jeopardize my career or will I be able to afford a break and start some kind of romantic life?”

  “That is a tough one. It's always a good idea to postpone tough ones for as long as you can while you gather facts. Do you have any prospects?”

  “I'm not sure. Only one girl interests me and I don't know how she feels about me.”

  “Why not ask her?”

&nbs
p; “I've been meaning to, but I can't make up my mind to do it.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” said Jenny with a chuckle.

  Ben screwed up his courage, “Okay, it's you! I've had my eye on you for awhile.”

  Jenny had anticipated this reply. Her keen feminine intuition rarely failed when it came to reading men and Ben had let slip many telltale signs. Nevertheless, she pretended to be taken aback. Although delighted he had finally confessed his feelings for her, for one of the few times in her life she wasn't sure how to proceed. Deciding it would be a good idea to keep him on pins and needles a little longer she murmured unconvincingly, “Me? I had no idea. Let me think about this.” At that very moment the waiter propitiously arrived with a decanter of wine.

  “We'll have pepperoni pizza, calamari and the house salad soused with honey mustard dressing,” said Ben firmly, proudly puffing his chest at having decided on the salad.

  This didn't escape Jenny's notice, few things ever did. “That wasn't so hard was it? There's a technique for making decisions that one can easily learn at an early age and hone with experience. The key to replacing haphazard decisions with effective ones is to consistently follow a fixed process. Among other advantages, this eliminates futile second-guessing since applying the same process to the same set of facts must inevitably lead to the same conclusion.”

  “I didn't know there was a decision-making process.”

  “There are several. They all contain the same essential ingredients; gathering and verifying facts, narrowing alternatives, setting priorities, making the best available choice based on them, and postponing the decision as long as possible.”