Future Chronicles Special Edition

by Samuel Peralta

“This?” laughed the Alex-God-thing, “this is just a place your mind made for reference. It can get a little jumbled without some kind of order. But it could be anything.” The Alex-God-thing snapped his fingers and they were standing in a dark field, above them was a night sky. “This is my favorite. I just have to pick a star to get to the point I want. Sometimes you like this one,” he snapped his fingers again and they were standing on a massive road map. “Bit literal for my taste. Oh, but you loved this one for a long time.” He snapped his fingers and they were in front of an advent calendar with a giant tree on it. “But you grew out of religion a long time ago, right Alex?” the Alex-God-thing winked at him. They were back in the staircase room. “We can stand on the same stairway, you just have to think it. There are only two rules here. Number one: two Alexes can never go through the same door. Number two: New iterations must start without a memory of this place or of other iterations. And… it’s best not to go through the door you came in. You could get caught in a repeating loop. Luckily, you only had a near death last time, not a real death.”

  Alex concentrated on the other staircase. The black and white marble materialized beneath him. The Alex-God-thing stuck out a solid looking hand. Alex hesitantly reached out to shake it and was surprised when their hands met.

  “I thought you said I had no body.”

  “You don’t. Not until you pick a door and go through, anyway. This is just a meeting of the minds,” the Alex-God-thing thought that was hilarious and laughed loudly.

  “What happens if two of us go through the same door?”

  The Alex-God-thing shrugged, “Hallucinations. Failure to reconcile versions. Madness. Schizophrenia, maybe. Same with violating rule two. Memories of different rule sets just make it confusing and harder to smoothly transition.”

  “It hasn’t happened before?”

  “It hasn’t happened to my version of myself before.”

  “How many— how many Alexes are there?” asked Alex, bewildered.

  The Alex-God-thing shook his head. “I’m not sure. One for each door maybe? Or maybe we are it. Or maybe I am it and you are just a construction I’ve made up to keep from being lonely. Never can tell.”

  “No, wait. I’m the real one,” said Alex. “If anything, I’ve imagined you.”

  The Alex-God-thing smiled and it made Alex squirm with unease. “If that’s what makes you feel better,” he said. “The truth is, we imagined all of this. The doors, each other, the world beyond the doors. Without us, none of it is real. With us, it all is. We’re both just iterations. I’m just closest to a perfect iteration, that’s why I stayed here, to guide the other iterations until they all approach me.”

  “If I had a head, it would be aching,” said Alex.

  “Think really hard. You had physics in your iteration, right?”

  “My iteration? You mean my life? Sure, I know about physics. Sort of. What normal people know, anyway.”

  The Alex-God-thing rolled his eyes. “Normal people— never mind. Do you remember relativity? How time passes differently depending on how an observer experiences it?”

  “Yeah, sure. Like the watched pot never boils thing.”

  “For Alex’s sake,” sighed the Alex-God-thing, “it’s like talking to a toddler. Try to focus.”

  Alex was becoming increasingly convinced that, in fact, God did not like him. He tried to follow along to avoid being scolded.

  “Space works the same way. The tiniest bits of matter will act as either a particle or a wave depending on whether you are watching or not. They even seem to ‘know’ whether you will be watching or not.”

  “Right…so what’s that mean?”

  “They don’t know, numbnuts, they act the way they do because you are making them act that way. Your expectations and wishes make them turn into a tabletop or a green light or a bear or whatever.”

  Alex laughed. “No they don’t, I can’t control anything. I’m here because I locked myself in my crummy apartment and lost my job because after a freak near miss with a garbage demolecularizer. I was too scared about what I couldn’t control to go out again. So my sadistic shrink killed me. For therapy. Does that sound like my expectations and wishes were in control?”

  “On some level, yes. You make the rules. The world has to follow them. And once they are made, you have to follow them. At least until that world comes to an end. Until you die. And then you come back here. In your world, there are garbage demolecularizers. You have personality backups. Disease is abolished. Old age is no more. You even made the existence of a deity a moot point. There’s no room for the unexplained, the miracle, you are even trying to make the accident both preventable and explainable. Death is almost optional, as you would say. It’s pointless and unnecessary. You made the rules before you even opened the door. Except here you are again, on the other side of the rules.”

  “So what does that mean? Does it mean I’ve failed? Does it mean you— er, we, are a bad God, a bad rulemaker?”

  The Alex-God-thing shrugged. “You designed the experiment. It’s your iteration. What were you testing? If an experiment doesn’t prove what you expect is it a failure? Or is it just a result? Not good, not bad, just there.”

  “But I’m not done with it yet,” cried Alex, “I’m only thirty-five.”

  “There’s another door on your staircase, you can go back.”

  “I can?”

  “You can. The door will take you anywhere. Time and space are up to you.” The Alex-God-thing snapped its fingers and the staircases morphed into endless strands of glittering beads, each strand a different shape or color, all stretching out beyond sight. “Stop thinking of the doors as one destination. Stop thinking of the stairs as progress. Each choice, conscious or unconscious, is a bead in your strand. From as tiny as whether you take your next breath to as big as whether you lock yourself in the apartment forever. Just a bead. You can pick any bead. And once you have, you can change that bead. Sometimes that means jumping to a different strand. Sometimes it just means changing the order of the beads.”

  “I want to go back. That’s all. This is too much. Back to my apartment.” The strands of beads slithered and pooled, morphing into a door.

  “Be my guest,” said the Alex-God-thing with a little bow.

  “That’s it? I can leave?” Alex eyed the door suspiciously.

  “You aren’t a prisoner. Actually, this is the most free you can possibly be. It only in there—” he pointed at the door, “that you constrain yourself. That you are bound to your own rules of reality.”

  “What will I find behind the door?”

  “Your iteration. Your life, maybe a minute after you left it, maybe an hour or more, it’s up to you.”

  Alex put his hand on the doorknob. “Wish I could see before I opened it,” he muttered and let go of the doorknob in surprise as a small window formed in the top half of the door. He peered through. He could see the backs of four doctors, their unhurried bustle was oddly comforting as they worked on reviving his body. Alex turned the knob, but stopped and turned to the Alex-God-thing. “Uh— thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “See you, I guess.” How are you supposed to say goodbye to God? He felt ridiculous and opened the door before he could humiliate himself further.

  Alex’s eyes popped open to see Dr. Granger again standing over him. “How are you feeling?” the doctor shouted.

  “Ugh. I’m not deaf.”

  “You were a minute ago.”

  “Well, I’m back now, you can stop yelling.”

  “You aren’t screaming. I assume that means your hallucination didn’t repeat itself?”

  “It wasn’t a hallucination. He explained it to me,” said Alex.

  “Now, Alex, you know that your brain works very hard to build a plausible explanation during times of crisis, sometimes those explanations are not true.”

  “How long was I— How long was I gone?” asked Alex, not comfortable asking how long he was dead. Dr. Granger che
cked his watch and then one of the monitors.

  “Brain activity stopped about forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Then it couldn’t be a hallucination. I was still talking to Him just seconds before I opened my eyes.”

  “It just seemed like a few seconds, Alex. You lost time, because your brain wasn’t functioning.”

  “He— He said something similar. He said I lost relativity though. That time and space didn’t mean anything because I wasn’t here to make them mean anything.”

  Dr. Granger smiled and patted Alex’s shoulder as if he were a good dog. “There, you see, your mind was explaining the situation to avoid discomfort. Time and space did stop for your consciousness while they went on for the rest of us.”

  “No, but He said I make the rules. That without me, there is no time—”

  Dr. Granger helped him sit up after being unstrapped. “It’s normal for the ego to regard itself as the center of existence. But as you can see, time has passed, we’ve gone on to revive you and the world continued for forty-five minutes without you in it. Just as it will continue on when and if you choose to die permanently.”

  Alex was confused. Dr. Granger was right. Time had passed without him. It hadn’t mattered in the least bit that he was gone. Had the Alex-God-thing lied? Had it all been a mind trick? And what did that mean for Alex?

  “What’s the matter Alex?” asked Dr. Granger, “I expected you to be relieved. Cheerful and relaxed to find death isn’t this terrible torturous event. But you seem depressed.”

  “It’s just— if you are right, and the world goes spinning merrily on without me, not even noticing, then I might as well not exist and have saved everyone the trouble. And if He is right, then even though my will created this world, it’s almost exactly the same as several hundred others, and there are thousands of other Alexes just like me. I’m not unique in any way. My world is not unique in any way. And if I made it, does that mean you and everyone else are just my creations too? Just very advanced dolls I use to fool myself? And there’s really no one to notice when I’m gone anyway? Not even the other Alexes. I didn’t know about them… why should they know about me?” he trailed off, dizzy with his own insignificance.

  “Ohhh,” said Dr. Granger, “You are looking for meaningfulness in your life. I understand. Well, I think that’s cause for celebration, really. You’ve made a giant leap forward in your therapy. Since we have eliminated your fear of death, we can start working on underlying issues regarding what mortality means—”

  “Meaning,” sputtered Alex, “Yes, that’s what I want to know. What’s it mean? What’s the point of the iteration— I need to ask Him. I won’t be able to complete the iteration without knowing what I was supposed to be studying. You have to send me back.”

  “Iteration? Send you back? What are you talking about, Alex?”

  “You have to kill me again. One more time.”

  Dr. Granger shook his head. “I don’t understand— you mean to talk to this deity that your mind made up? It’s not real, Alex. It was a story, a dream that your mind made.”

  “Call it whatever you want, I need to talk to it again. I need to find out what I’m doing here.”

  “We’ve both had a long day, Alex. Let’s not get worked up. We can talk about this in our next session.”

  “Yes, next session. We’ll do it again.”

  “But we’ve moved beyond your phobia. The immersion therapy worked. It’s time to try some other methods— preferably less intense ones—”

  “You mean, you won’t kill me again?” asked Alex.

  Dr. Granger just stared at him. One of the nurses was getting ready to remove Alex’s IV. Alex shoved her aside. “Sorry,” he said, “but I have to know. I’ll bring back proof this time, Dr. Granger. You’ll see. You’ll see how much I matter.” He leaned sideways to smack the red button that activated the backup drugs even as Dr. Granger was calling for the others to restrain him. The room around him was bursting with noise as he sank back onto the gurney and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  The Alex-God-thing was sitting in the dark field looking up at the stars, this time. “What’s the point?” asked Alex. The Alex-God-thing looked over at him.

  “The point of what?”

  “Of the iteration. Of my world, what is my reason for existing?”

  “Oh. Not my department.”

  “What? How can that not be your department?”

  “I didn’t design your iteration, you did. If one of the rules you made is that you don’t know the purpose of the iteration ahead of time, then I won’t know until you finish.”

  “You mean if I don’t know my own purpose then you don’t either?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Well— how am I supposed to find out?”

  The Alex-God-thing shrugged. “Maybe you aren’t. Maybe that’s the point.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” scowled Alex.

  “Don’t be an idiot then. You were perfectly happy living without knowing your ‘purpose’ until your shrink told you that the world went on without you.”

  “That’s because I always assumed there was a purpose to my life, even if I hadn’t found it yet.”

  The Alex-God-thing shrugged. “You know what they say about assuming. It makes an ass out of you and me. Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why does there have to be some mystical meaning?”

  “Because there has to be some measure of what life is worth. Whether it’s good or bad or insignificant.”

  “Why? Because your doctor says so? Forget him. You can go anywhere, change anything from here. You want to be good? Then make your iterations conform to your idea of good. Live only in the utopias. You’ll get bored pretty quick though, trust me.”

  The last statement made Alex pause. Is the Alex-God-thing the devil too? He brushed it aside and refocused on the matter at hand. “But I want to do this iteration the right way,” protested Alex.

  The Alex-God-thing stood up. He looked angry. “Who says you aren’t? Your way is always the right way. It’s the only way. You create the rules, the people, time itself— and all you care about is whether some quack psychiatrist thinks you’re good enough?”

  “I’m— I’m not a perfect iteration like you—” Alex began.

  “Obviously.”

  “I just, I just want my little experiment to be the best it can.”

  The Alex-God-thing scowled. “It’s no good lying, you know. You’re me. I know what you are really thinking. Fine, fine. If you want to go try out some petty fantasy for approval, suit yourself. But it won’t work. Dr. Granger will never believe in an afterlife.”

  “I’ll tell him about you,” said Alex.

  “He’ll lock you up. Just because it’s not against the rules to remember this place once the iteration is in progress, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to talk about it. As iterations go, you have a pretty decent one. Don’t screw it up by obsessing over this meaning crap. You did the therapy in order to get over your fear of the unknown, right? Well, now you know what happens. Go back, live out your iteration. Show Granger you aren’t crazy and move on. The best revenge is living well.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?” asked Alex.

  “What did you expect?”

  “You could help me prove it to him. Answer a prayer, do a couple of miracles— we don’t have to go through the same door for that, do we?”

  The Alex-God-thing smacked his forehead with one hand. “How can you still not get this? One Alex per iteration. The world, everything that happens, everything that exists is because you are there to notice it. You, your ‘self.’ If you were a praying type of ‘self,’ you’d be praying for a miracle from your own consciousness. I’m not in any iteration. I’m the Alex of here. Of the staircase room, since you are too dense to think of it any other way.”

  “But you said that you’re me. Or I’m you. Or something.”

  “AAGH! I am you, but only here. I’m the c
ompilation of Alex. The super-self, I guess. I’m all the information that the iterations gather. I’m you, and I’m infinitely more. Do you get it now?”

  Alex nodded, even though he was still confused, forgetting the other man already knew he was lying. The Alex-God-thing was too frustrated to scold him and let it slide.

  “So, then, if I’m all powerful in my iteration, I’ll just make it so the garbage demolecularizer never malfunctioned. Then I’ll never have to meet Dr. Granger at all, and I won’t be depressed,” said Alex brightly.

  The other Alex stared at him for what felt like an eternity (and probably was, Alex realized)as if he were trying to decide whether it was worth arguing about. At last he shrugged, pointed over Alex’s shoulder and said, “Three stars to your right.”

  Alex turned to look at a twinkling star. “No,” he said, “I want to finish my experiment.”

  The Alex-God-thing flung up his hands in frustration.

  “All my friends are in this iteration, my Mom and Dad…” offered Alex feebly.

  The Alex-God-thing shouted, “They are in thousands of iterations!” He took a deep breath to calm down. “Look, you can’t keep the same iteration and change the rules halfway through. It’s like— it’s like getting frustrated that your test group isn’t performing in the manner you expected so you start testing on what’s supposed to be the control group too. It’s cheating. Not only that, it makes the experiment pointless. You want it to have meaning? You have to stick to the original plan. You already set up the rules beforehand. No paranormal events, no miracles, no unexplained phenomena were allowed in your iteration. Your rules. Some nonsense about ‘ultimate free will’ or something of the sort. Since time travel hasn’t been scientifically developed in your iteration, you can’t use it. You want to change something in the past, that’s fine. You either jump to a different iteration where the event just didn’t happen or you jump to one where time travel isn’t against the rules and hope you figure it out without your memory of this place. But you can’t stay in this iteration and expect things to turn out differently.”

  “What if I just went back to an earlier door?” asked Alex.