In Any Lifetime

by Marc Guggenheim

In a universe of infinite possibilities, the only constant is love. —Henri Thibault, PhD

The love he felt for her was almost overwhelming. He felt himself bathing in it, soaking it in. He wanted to take her in his arms, to find words to capture the feelings that swelled his heart.

“Tonight, it is my privilege to introduce this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his mathematical theorem confirming the existence of parallel universes—otherwise known as the ‘Many Worlds Proof’—Dr. Jonas Cullen.”

But the not-so-simple principle underlying his work is this: our universe is just one among countless others.”

They shared a knowing look. An instant of private rapture. The happiest moment of their lives. Neither had any idea this would be her last night on earth.

Quantum decoherence—the loss of a definite phase relation between a quantum state and its environment—led to a wave function collapse, among other things.

Jonas watched her go, drinking in every detail of her form, her gait, the way her ponytail bounced with each exuberant step, its sheen catching the afternoon light. He carved each detail into his memory. It wasn’t every day that one’s life changed forever.

With apparent reluctance, Gillard utters through gritted teeth, “Si vous avez un coup de feu, prenez-le.”

He watched her expression change, revealing an interest he hadn’t detected earlier. Like she was seeing him for the first time. The look on her face was the same one Jonas had seen staring back at him in the mirror since he’d met her.

“Nous sommes l’hôpital le plus grand,” Guyer continues, “proche de l’endroit où vous avez été trouvé.”

“The multiverse does prefer efficiency, which it achieves by limiting branch points—instances where circumstances could go right or left and, therefore, birth a new universe—by constraining the number of times that it happens.”

“By favoring certain outcomes. Which limits the total number of realities in the multiverse from the impossibly infinite to manageably so.”

Just seeing Amanda again was like unwrapping a present. She was light. She was sunshine. Radiant warmth in human form. And she was here. Real.

He knew right then and there that he could spend the rest of his life looking at her.

“What I mean is, any woman would be lucky to have a man willing to search the world for her. Your wife has a man willing to search an infinite number of worlds.”

“Every car. Every window. Every street corner teeming with life. As many lives as the stars at the Hayden. As many as in the evening sky.”

“But each star here holds someone’s hopes and dreams. Each one, its own tiny universe.”

“I’ll always find you,” he said. “In any multitude. In any lifetime.” The promise felt like a vow.

It felt like fate. When they were together, there was no time. No past. No future. There was only now.

His voice cracked, and he fought off a swell of emotion, surprised by the tidal wave of sadness hitting him, driven by the realization that every minute he had spent without her was dim in comparison. Falling in love with Amanda, and Amanda’s falling in love with him, was the equivalent of Dorothy’s journey from Kansas to Oz, from black and white to Technicolor.

“I was never alive until I met you.”

Without Amanda, the world was empty, as bleak and stark as the moon. An ocean of sympathy couldn’t quench the desert of his soul.

From there, the equations reach out to embrace the theories and calculations that underlie the science behind untethering from one universe to travel to an infinite number of others.

“He thought I’d ‘break’ the multiverse.

“And what do you do if you can’t find Amanda? What do you do when the effect wears off and you’re trapped in a reality without her?” “Then I kill myself and be with her that way.”

I know you’ll find me. You won’t let anything stand in your way. Not even the universe. I know what people tell you, what you sometimes tell yourself, that it’s impossible. But I know—I know—it’s not impossible.

It’s not impossible because you’re doing it. You believe in the existence of a multiverse, but I believe in you.

“Inspiration isn’t imitation, Jonas. Artists and scientists both build on the work of those who came before them.”

They sat together on the bench, their fingers woven. Overhead, the stars blinked down on them in silence.

“I’m still figuring out the universe.” “Aren’t we all?”

“Freedom,” she said, “is hard for some people. I suppose it’s hard for most people. Life is easier when there’s someone above you telling you what to do.”

She reminded herself that her tears and her joy weren’t the products of the promise of marriage but rather her appreciation of Jonas, a man who had gone from thinking that singing was “silly” to doing it as loud as his lungs permitted in front of anyone around to witness it.

Loving her made him want to be a better person, and all the things that once frightened him now seemed insignificant.

The truest freedom, she realized, is not to be aware of how free one is.

But a life spent wishing things were different . . . isn’t a life.”

He finds a bench and watches the park fill with joggers and dog walkers. As they pass, Jonas thinks of each of their unique lives multiplied by an infinite number of universes. He imagines an endless tapestry woven from threads of such variety that they form a sea of color, rainbows on rainbows.

“Loving you means helping you,” she says, answering the question held in his thoughts but not formed. “I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. Because if you don’t find her . . . then it was all for nothing.”

He’s panged by the guilt of knowing that loving him as she does means letting him go to be with another woman in another universe.

“Somewhere . . . there’s another me. And there’s another you. And that you . . .”—her voice pitches upward—“that you chooses to stay.”

“I did it,” he breathes. “I made it back to you.”

He had learned that dancing was one way to convey the feelings that he lacked the words to express.

Jonas thought of his Many Worlds Proof and imagined the other Jonases of the multiverse. Did they have an Amanda? He felt pity for the ones who didn’t. Theirs was a world without music—bland, desaturated, muted. Jonas decided he would rather die than surrender to that kind of existence.

“You can’t swim against the tide of the universe.”

So Jonas lets go. If there’s an afterlife, there’s an Amanda there waiting for him. He goes to her.

“What I do know is that I found you again. And no one—in any universe—is ever going to take you away from me.”

As they walk, Jonas looks to the night sky and considers the stars in their multitude. Their light—hundreds, thousands of years old—winks down on him. For each one, he imagines a universe populated with an almost countless congregation of souls. He thinks of their lives and their deaths, their hopes and dreams, their crushing losses and disappointments. Some will die without ever having made a mark upon their world. Others will conjure breathtaking works of art—plays, songs, paintings, poems, symphonies—from nothing. Like Jonas, a select few will give birth to insights that will challenge their very perception of reality. All will experience the exquisite torture, the brutal blessing, of what it means to be human. Each of these lives is its own universe.