A Glitch in the World
Page 17
“In our universe, we call an electron with a positive charge matter, but in their universe, they might consider an electron with a negative charge matter, and the opposite antimatter. This may seem silly, but I hope you appreciate just how arbitrary the distinction is. We are composed of negatively charged protons, and positively charged electrons, represented by a plus sign for negative, and a minus sign for positive.”
While the rest of the class watched absentmindedly, save for a few students intending to do physics for their Rank Zeros, Stuart sat in his seat trembling with fear, feeling as if he was on the verge of passing out. He began to sweat. He didn’t even think to worry about whether or not the people around him would notice.
It had all been real.
He had ended up in the wrong universe somehow.
Alissa must have at least partially bridged the dual-verse, though he didn’t understand why he would have ended up here. Shouldn’t he have vanished in a burst of energy the moment he arrived? Wasn’t he matter in a world of antimatter now?
“Well, we thank you for listening, and we hope to see your name on the enrollment for theoretical engineering. Have a great day, and remember, Janus is about to become one of the leading planets in the galaxy.”
The program went on, but Stuart wasn’t listening. He whimpered out loud. A few heads turned to look at him. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Why couldn’t this all just be over?
Despite his English teacher’s protests, Stuart walked out into the hallway of the education building, leaving the classroom behind. She threatened to mark him off for skipping class, but he didn’t care.
As he walked, he wondered, what if this isn’t real either? What if I’m really not in the antimatter universe right now? What if I’m still on the trip from the first dose of HSP I took? or what if I’m still on the trip from the second one Alissa just have me?
...or what if I’ve been hallucinating this, my whole life, all along? How would I even know?
How can you define a standard, a point of reference, when that standard might be an illusion as well?
And what if there’s a life after this one? Like the ancients back on Earth used to believe? What if I died and went to heaven and met God? What could he do to prove to me I was really there and that it was really him? Couldn’t that all just be a hallucination, too? My experiences in the afterlife? He could make things appear out of thin air, he could teleport me from one place to another, he could manifest anything I wanted to see right before my eyes, defying all limitations of the mortal and natural, and yet...how would I know that what I was seeing was real? That I wasn’t dreaming it? What could he show me that would prove I wasn’t imagining his proof?
Nothing.
There’s no way to know.
Please don’t let it come to that, he thought. Please don’t let there be anything after this.
Stuart ascended the staircase, heading for the roof.
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