In Any Lifetime

by Marc Guggenheim

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.

It wasn’t every day that one’s life changed forever.

When your life is over, he has discovered, you have all the time in the world.

“Do you imagine I wouldn’t at least google you before walking in here?”

Proving the existence of parallel worlds was the academic equivalent of summitting Everest. But to travel to one . . . that’s landing on the moon.

Even though his stretch in police confinement proved mercifully short, freedom is a cool drink on a scorching day.

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

Who wouldn’t find such devotion attractive? Who wouldn’t want to be coveted the way Jonas covets Amanda?

“It’s never pathetic to love someone, and it’s certainly not pathetic to mourn them.”

His work and her art (as she practiced it) were even bounded by the same inalterable physics. Light. Perspective. The limits of human observation. They were both in the business of understanding and interpreting the marvels of creation.

I think . . . parallel universes are one of those things everyone’s heard of but never really understands.” “That’s an accurate way of putting it,” he said.

“Seriously, if you haven’t pulled this with at least one of your students, that’s just a tragic waste.” “Maybe I’ve just been waiting for the right student.”

“Do you want to meet someone even smarter than you?”

There’s a bitterness to her words that Jonas didn’t think she was capable of. A reminder that, in the end, everyone shares the same human shortcomings, the same pain.

“How did you convince me to do this?” he whispered, already knowing the answer. “You trust me.” Jonas chanced a glimpse downward. A concrete canyon spun below him, and vertigo made a return appearance. “That’s what they’ll write on my tombstone. ‘He trusted her.’ After they squeegee me off the pavement.”

“For the record, no one ever died in a planetarium.”

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

The reputation New Yorkers have for jaded apathy is well earned, no matter the universe.

He has traveled through multiple realities, entirely different universes, to find the Starbucks logo staring back at him.

No doubt it helps that the only thing people want out of an encounter with the downtrodden is for it to be as short as possible.

“The only thing I know anymore is what we do once hope is lost.”

You can travel across the multitude of realities, he thinks, but you still end up in a bathroom.

“Tantric Sexual Healing & Orthodontics.”

“No one understands plagiarism as well as an artist. I might not be able to appreciate the nuances of parallel worlds or quantum theory, but I’m pretty confident in my ability to recognize theft.”

“I’m unemployable, with no savings to speak of. To be honest, I’m pretty close to broke.” “I’m an artist. Broke is our default.”

She waited for his reaction, and it was worth it. Slowly, at the speed of a sunrise, Jonas began to smile. Starlight bounced off the edges of his eyes, slick with tears. Their lives really were entwined, and she would never let him give up on his gifts. They sat together on the bench, their fingers woven. Overhead, the stars blinked down on them in silence.

“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.”

“No one is afraid,” she said. “Because no one ever thinks it’s going to be them.”

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

“You have a choice. You can choose to live. You can choose to be happy.” “But I don’t want to.”

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

“Oh my God, are you okay?” she asks. He was just hit by a car, but the question doesn’t strike either of them as stupid.

“Are you talking to yourself or the universe?” Jonas truly doesn’t know. “Is one more sane than the other?” “Good point.”

“This doesn’t make any kind of scientific sense,” Eva says, disbelieving. “That’s what every scientist says,” Jonas answers her. “Right before it does.”

A stage is an interval you pass through, a time that eventually ends. She felt only depression, like a new, permanent destination.

Jonas had won the Nobel Prize for proving the existence of a nearly infinite number of realities, but for Amanda there was only one, a universe where the man who had been her entire world was gone.