Luniverse

“ … Is the universe we are living in the only one? What if, when you got into your car this morning to drive to work, another you in another universe got into a different car and drove to the beach instead? Seems hard to believe and maybe more like science fiction, but some theoretical physicists say we might exist in one of many universes, or in a ‘multiverse’, as they call it …”

Ira Flatow introducing the author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos on National Public Radio’s Science Friday



Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 8:30 a.m.

Hi. Are you one of the other me’s that I’ve been hearing so much about? I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical about this new Facebook Multiverse App, but with my wife Janice finding so many of her other selves in parallel universes I thought I’d try it out. Anyway, I’m getting into my car to go to work right now, so - if you’re me … or I’m me - write back when I get a chance. I’d love to find out more about myself.

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 8:30 a.m.

Yep, you found me. I was just about to get in my car to go the beach when I saw my message. I’m actually just one of my other me’s. Not sure how many other me’s are out actually there, but last time I checked on Facebook I counted 574 me’s in 575 different universes (not sure why there’s no Bert Esposito in that 575th universe except that I might still be embarrassed about getting drunk at Bobby Klosterman’s barbecue and trying to unhook Melba Puccini’s bikini top). Anyway, I’ll be home from the beach by the time I get home from work so write me back if I want to (unless I write me back first in which case I won’t have to).

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:30 p.m.

Hi. I just got home from work and it was no day at the beach, let me tell me. By the way Freddy at the courtesy desk told me to tell me that the next time I go to the beach when I’m supposed to be at work in a parallel universe he’s going to talk to Mr. Owens about it. Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything about it to Mr. Owens (because after all I was at work), but I would watch myself If I were me. I’m just saying. BTW – Don’t say anything to Janice about that thing with Melba. She really means nothing to me, but I don’t have to tell me that, do I.

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:30 p.m.

No Bert, my secrets safe with me, and I wouldn’t feel guilty about Melba if I were me. All 575 of me know that Janice doesn’t really understand the real me. And speaking of guilt, tell Freddy that if I want to take a day off and go to the fucking beach, I’ll take a day off and go to the fucking beach. I gotta tell me that it was a lot easier to take a god damn day off before theoretical physicists figured out a way to break through to parallel realities. And by the way, just wait till I tell Mr. Owens about the time that Freddy spent three hours with that hooker at the sports book in Atlantic City while he was at the courtesy desk in a parallel universe trying to help that Pakistani woman exchange her deep fat fryer.

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:31 p.m.

Bert, it sounds to me like I’ve still got a little leftover anger from my childhood. Isn’t it time that I outgrew that? And, BTW, don’t forget that revenge never got me anywhere (remember Ernie Kelly and that time with the elephant dung at the petting zoo for handicapped animals? Just think about that mess for a minute and tell me if you still want to get even with Freddie at work).

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:31 p.m.

Bert, I’d really appreciate it if I’d stop patronizing me. Who do I think I am anyway? Do I think I’m so much better than me? How about that time at Sarah Berman’s house when her little sister found me in their upstairs bathroom fondling her mother’s nylons. I forgot about that, didn’t I? Remember, Bert, if I don’t forgive me, who will?

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:32 p.m.

Bert, I really don’t appreciate my tone. And how dare I bring up that time at Sara Berman’s house. I thought that that was just between me and me. We’ll I guess I’m seeing the real Bert now. I have to say that I never did like me from the first time I met me. Look, don’t try to get in touch with me anymore. I’ll write me first if I want to hear from me.

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:33 p.m.

Bert, don’t be this way. Think about how much I love me. Don’t you remember when I took me out to get drunk after Sara Berman dumped me? Remember how I held my head over the toilet all night so I wouldn’t break my neck and then how I sat up all night crying with me? Doesn’t that mean anything to me?

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:33 p.m.

I told me not to contact me anymore.

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:34 p.m.

Bert, please don’t be this way.

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:34 p.m.

Bert???

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:35 p.m.

Bert???

Bert Esposito, July 1, 2067, 5:35 p.m.

Hi. Are you one of the other me’s that I’ve been hearing so much about? I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical about this new Facebook ‘Multiverse’ App, but then I checked on Facebook and counted 574 me’s in 575 different universes …

Pla.net

Right now, from where you are sitting, if you want to spin the globe and spy on the beggars in the streets of Mumbai, you can spin the globe and spy on the beggars in the streets of Mumbai.   Should there be a lady you’d like to meet in a dark room in Saint Petersburg, that lady will appear to meet you tonight.   That old drum-tight circle of life as we know it no longer applies.  So fly on a theoretical wing of relativity to stare at that woman teaching you from a classroom in Paris then smash your mind’s reason until you are admiring the bronzed face of a tycoon to whom you’ve been connected - through a friend’s friend’s friend - on his mile wide terrace at the edge of a private beach in Hilton Head.  

Touch the keys.  Swipe the screen.  Tap your finger, and go.     

A generation of master minds has labored to bring us the world in just this way.   And they have created it all from a lace of mathematical magic and the tiny truth of electrons flaming through an infinite array of atomic eyes.   We don’t know how or when they did it.   All we know is that they did and living now is no longer what it used to be.   

Connect through a billion cameras.   Network yourself into a million lives.  Stare through an ocean of screens.   Be a part of everything while you become a part of nothing at all.  

That son of yours in college has linked to a webcam hanging from a streetlamp in Rome.   In the morning light of his dorm, he watches Italians walk home from work through the exhaust of evening.   A girl with an exotic sway walks toward the lamp and, looking up at the camera, she smiles directly into your boy’s eyes.   He melts and out loud he tells the girl that he loves her - then he stops in mid breath when her older lover sneaks in from out of frame and thrills her with the reality of his kiss.

Your aging mother finds herself in the life of some suddenly new friend to whom she and hundreds of others have connected through that flip top box which sits on the kitchen table.   This new friend, a woman your mother’s own age, posts videos of her children, her grandchildren, the old man outside her window who picks tomatoes from his garden, the days she spent last summer on a cruise in Alaska.    One day this new friend stops posting videos and she no longer respond and your mother begins to grieve.   Is she dead?    You whisper.  Was she was ever really alive?

Tonight, when you finish here, you will Google the earth to look down from space onto the home where you were raised.   The porch will sag more than you remember it.  And you will try to push the bar on the screen to get a better look.  But the more you push and the closer you get to the home you left a quarter century ago, the more you flatten it until it ultimately sinks into the ground and disappears.  This is only what you should expect from something that doesn’t really exist in the first place.

So you’ll stumble up away from the planet, fly back into your mind and heart, and you’ll fire up your camera and open up a screen so you can see your sister who lives miles and miles from you.   The last living and closet trace you have to your parents who are long, long gone.    She arrives and the grey wires of her head jerking and poking this way and that makes you want to cry from longing and loss and the real, living, passage of time .  And so you weep, just a little.  And when your sister sees it she says I wish I was there to hug you.  And then you do it, both of you.  You hug the screen. 

Today you can see the traffic and the human rage on just about any choked street from anywhere you are anywhere in the world.  You can learn Tai Chi from the sweep of a tutor’s hands in a studio ten thousand miles away.  Should you be one who needs this sort of thing, you can even connect and share secrets with someone so disconnected from you that neither of you really exist.    But that’s the point.  You may get something from all this.   But it won’t be flesh and blood.  It won’t be living as it we have known it to be.

Someday out of a desire for connection you will spin the planet and you will root around until you find a home and descend into a room where you pull up just the right angle to find the only connection that is left to you – the image of another person who has spun the planet and rooted around to find a home and descend into a room where they have pulled up just the right angle to see your face looking back at them looking back at you.

And if you think reality is strange today – that the world is too much too bear and sometimes you can’t seem to believe what is happening all around you – wait until then.   

And if you believe there may only be a thin veil between this life and the life of the hereafter, imagine what will happen when what we know of the hereafter becomes just another image on your screen. 

 

Imagine when you are staring into the face of God and he is staring back at you wondering what we have made out of this reality he gave us.