Page 70 - Effable Encounters
P. 70

Autologue

          “Well, let me see. It didn’t happen to me, as I was then, or I would
        have remembered it. You’re right about that. That can only mean one
        thing: it didn’t happen to me.”
          “Then you’re not me.”
          “Not exactly. I’m you if you hadn’t received this call. That leads us
        to  the  conclusion  that  alternative  universes  exist  as  a  result  of  the
        infinity  of  apparently  possible  cause-and-effect  events  occurring  at
        every point in space and time.”
          “I don’t believe that at all. I’m a strict determinist.”
          “I know. But you can only see the causality chaining together your
        own  universe.  At  the  level  of  sub-atomic  activity,  nobody  can  say
        why one path is taken rather than another; so the physicists deal with
        those events in gross, statistically. You know that.”
          “But  some  path  is  taken,  and  only  that  path,  whether  or  not
        anyone can get a method of observation fine enough to explain it.”
          “Yes, but this proves that more than one path can be taken at the
        point of quantum activity, and that point must be at a juncture  of
        spacetime  enabling  those  multiplicities  to  pour  out  entropically,
        following the arrow of time, into separate  continua, forever out of
        contact  with  each  other—until  now,  until  this  conversation.  I  am
        talking  to  an  Irving  Vielfrass  who  did  not  become  me,  precisely
        because I have no memory of this conversation. You are living an
        alternative life, branching apart from mine at some point not much
        earlier than the moment you answered the phone.”
          “Then, you are not me at all. Whatever you have done since 1965
        has nothing to do with what I am henceforth going to do.”
          “Perhaps.  But  your  life  could  follow  a  path  almost  identical  to
        mine,  the  only  real  difference  being  a  bizarre  telephone  call  you
        received one night.”
          “So?”
          “Don’t  you  see  it?  If  we  assume  a  very  close  fit  between  your
        universe  and  mine,  you  could  benefit  from  my  experience,  my
        knowledge of history. Stock market, property values, things to avoid
        at all costs.”
          “Like what?”
          “Like  Vietnam.  Johnson’s  going  to  escalate  the  war  again  in  a
        couple of months. It will drag on for years. Hundreds of thousands
        of draftees and fifty thousand of our boys are going to come back in

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