Short story: 'The Roads Not Taken'

The Roads Not Taken
By Chris J. Hart

"By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."
— Aldous Huxley


Detective Investigator Myles Vexlynd crouched beside the body, watching the blood flow gracefully along the smooth warehouse floor.
After a while he glanced up at his apprentice partner, Hal Stapp. The poor guy had been assigned to one hell of a first job.
“Not a pretty sight” he observed.
“Indeed not” replied Stapp.
He donned a pair of white gloves and crouched among the remains, careful to hold his coat away from the pools of blood.
“So, the many-worlds interpretation states that each possible outcome of this suicide attempt is played out in a different universe. And therefore what we are experiencing is merely one in which he died?” Stapp pondered.
“Exactly” said Myles, impressed.
“Most of us experience life linearly. Like this” – he traced a single, straight line through the more clotted blood on the floor with one gloved finger – “But this is an illusion, because everyday life presents us with a myriad of choices. As a result, life should look more like this” – he traced two further lines off-shooting in separate directions from the end of the first, then paused and gazed up at Stapp for a moment to check that he was following.
“Each choice leads to a new path,” he explained, tracing more and more off-shooting lines at the end of each of the previous ones.
“And each choice we take creates a new reality,” finished Stapp. “A succession of roads not taken.”
“Precisely” said Myles.
He stood up, stripped the gloves off and placed them on a table. “What our friend here was trying to prove is something called quantum immortality. It dictates that with every life or death situation, there will always be at least a small chance – however minuscule – that we will survive.”
“And thus an alternative reality exists to accommodate that survival” chimed in Stapp.
“Exactly. And they say that our consciousness will always follow this route, no matter what. For example, the odds of this guy surviving these many lethal devices that he rigged for himself is extremely slim, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would” nodded Stapp.
He walked around the victim slowly as he talked. “Yet quantum immortality dictates that in at least one universe he has somehow miraculously beaten the odds and managed to survive. If the theory is true, then that is the one in which he exists now, having narrowly escaped death. We just happen to be perceiving one of those many universes in which he did not.”
“According to this theory,” he said, “each of us, by our own perception, will outlive all of those around us and live forever. We will live to see civilisation fall, and even to see the end of the world itself. And after all life around us has ended, we will each of us be alone in our own universe, existing in whatever strange state of being that allows consciousness to continue.”
“Each in our own private Hell” concluded Stapp.
“Indeed” said Myles, bitterly.
“An extremely depressing theory” figured Stapp, joining him in scanning for clues. “So why try to prove it to yourself? Why not just believe in the science?”
“If there was a chance that you could be immortal, wouldn’t you rather know for sure? I imagine that realisation is very liberating, not to mention dangerous to those around you – to know with absolute certainty that no matter what you do, you cannot die. The world would be your playground.”
Stapp’s attention was caught by something across the room, and Myles watched his partner walk over to an air vent on the wall and begin to remove its cover.
“Are we looking for anything in particular?” Stapp asked.
“In almost every case so far, the victims have not left suicide notes behind. I suppose they don’t care about leaving one family behind, in clueless grief, when they have another one to welcome them in their alternative universe.”
He walked among the technical gadgets, timers and weaponry that surrounded the corpse. “If you ask me, this guy seems somewhat cleverer than the rest. If you are going to try to prove to yourself that you are immortal, by miraculously beating the odds of death, then it is best to choose a method of suicide that has an extremely high probability rate of killing you good and proper. That way you ‘awake’ in the other reality having witnessed what was seemingly an impossible miracle before your eyes; allowing you to know you are immortal.”
“Serge” called Stapp. “I think I’ve found something.”
He looked over to see Stapp probing into the ventilation shaft with one arm, to the shoulder. With a jolt, Stapp pulled his arm free to reveal a small piece of paper in his hand.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s a note,” Stapp said, glancing up at Myles briefly. “It says;
Good luck getting out of this warehouse alive. I wish you a particularly improbable and miraculous escape. This paper you just pulled started a mechanism that will detonate the explosive charges at the base of this building in a few seconds time. Enjoy immortality – my gift to you. A.”

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