Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch

I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But I’m not one of them. The older I get, the less I understand. I love my son. He means everything to me. And yet, I can’t escape the feeling that I’m failing him. Sending him off to the wolves with nothing but the crumbs of my uncertain perspective.

it. Science is less advanced because you love your family.”

Probably embarrassed by our display of parental melodrama. I stare into the

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

but what I lose in brevity, I gain in solitude,

It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.

my heart rocketing inside my chest. I absorb my surroundings with a sudden and profound curiosity.

It occurs to me that if I do survive, I’ll carry a new revelation with me for the rest of my days: we leave this life the same way we enter it—totally alone, bereft.

The skyline dwindles in the side mirror, falling farther and farther away like a familiar and comforting piece of coastline.

my index finger clumsy on the touchscreen, each word taking two or three attempts to complete as auto-correct wreaks havoc.

Rage and fear and helplessness burgeoning inside of me.

I’m not cold anymore. It’s like there’s a core of heat in the center of my chest, radiating out through my arms and legs.

moonlight shines like mercury.

Straight ahead, there’s nothing but welcoming darkness, and I’m moving toward it, into it, like my life depends upon it. A strong, reviving wind slams into my face, and I’m starting to wonder where I’m going because shouldn’t there be some light in the distance? Like even a speck of it? But I’m running into an immense chasm of black.

I struggle to my feet, thirsty and tired and trying to process the last four hours of my life, but I don’t have the mental bandwidth at the moment.

“It’s

Will I keep fighting to be the man I think I am? Or will I disown him and everything he loves, and step into the skin of the person this world would like for me to be?

But I keep walking. Until I’m wet through to my socks. Until I’m shivering uncontrollably.

transparency

We’re all just wandering through the tundra of our existence, assigning value to worthlessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in and fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected onto Plexiglas.

Nothing exists. All is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you . . . And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought.

“Here I am. Lucid, warm, and breathing.”

“We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.”

“It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world.

“Imagine you’re a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone were standing beside the pond, watching you, you’d have no idea they were there. To you, that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine that someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was the entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you’re a part of a much larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of.”

“If there are a million ponds out there, with versions of you and me living similar and different lives, there’s none better than right here, right now. I’m more sure of that than anything in the world.”

The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that all possible realities exist. That everything which has a probability of happening is happening. Everything that might have occurred in our past did occur, only in another universe.

What if we actually inhabit the multiverse, but our brains have evolved in such a way as to equip us with a firewall that limits what we perceive to a single universe? One worldline. The one we choose, moment to moment.

The dynamics of my situation haven’t materially changed. My safety still depends on my usefulness. As long as they want something from me, I have leverage. The moment I tell them everything I know, all my power goes away.

In this moment, there is no logic. No problem-solving. No scientific method. I am simply devastated, broken, terrified, and on the brink of just wanting it all to end.

I can’t shake the feeling that the blackness of the skyscrapers is all wrong. They’re skeletons, nothing but ominous profiles in the pouring ash. Closer to a range of improbable mountains than anything man-made. Some are leaning, and some have toppled, and in the hardest gusts, high above us, I can hear the groan of steel framework torquing past its tensile strength.

Exhaustion bears down so hard on me that sleep seems sexier than water.

We are so fucking lost. Literally adrift in the nothing space between universes.

“When you write something, you focus your full attention on it. It’s almost impossible to write one thing while thinking about another. The act of putting it on paper keeps your thoughts and intentions aligned.”

I am hardwired to love and protect that woman.

1

“Why do people marry versions of their controlling mothers? Or absent fathers? To have a shot at righting old wrongs. Fixing things as an adult that hurt you as a child. Maybe it doesn’t make sense at a surface level, but the subconscious marches to its own beat. I happen to think that world taught us a lot about how the box works.”

What a strange thing to consider imagining a world into being with nothing but words, intention, and desire. It’s a troubling paradox—I have total control, but only to the extent I have control over myself. My emotions. My inner storm. The secret engines that drive me.

If you strip away all the trappings of personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make me me?

I thought I appreciated every moment, but sitting here in the cold, I know I took it all for granted. And how could I not? Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all hangs together.

Am I so different? Aren’t we both lost in worlds that, for reasons beyond our control, no longer align with our identity? The most frightening moments are those that seem to be arriving with increasing frequency. Moments where the idea of a magic box, even to me, sounds like the ravings of a crazy person.

Standing in front of the mirror, I look almost like myself again, though my cheekbones stand out with more prominence from malnutrition.

I can’t explain it, even to this day, but as I watch him chatting up this dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in a cobalt-blue dress—you—a flash of jealousy consumes me. Inexplicably, insanely, I want to hit him. Something in your body language suggests discomfort. You aren’t smiling, your arms are crossed, and it occurs to me that you’re trapped in a bad conversation, and that for some reason, I care. You hold an empty wineglass, streaked with the dregs of a red. Part of me urges, Go talk to her, save her. The other half screams, You know nothing about this woman, not even her name. You are not that guy.

Then it’s just the two of us standing in the shade of the hedgerow, and my heart is going like mad. I say, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it looked like you might need rescuing,” and you say, “Good instincts. He’s pretty, but insufferable.” I introduce myself. You tell me your name. Daniela. Daniela.

I’ve always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We’re all made of the same thing—the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead stars. I’ve just never felt that knowledge in my bones until that moment, there, with you. And it’s because of you.

I remember the pleasant buzz from the beer and the warmth of the sun, and then, as it begins to drop, realizing how badly I want to leave this party with you but not having the balls to ask. And then you say, “I have a friend whose gallery opening is tonight. Want to come?”

A terrifying spin on the Prisoner’s Dilemma that asks, Is it possible to outthink yourself?

All your life you’re told you’re unique. An individual. That no one on the planet is just like you.

In the early afternoon, we head to town on foot, walking down the middle of the faded country road, the pavement dry in the sun, snow-packed in the shadows.

It’s the simple fact that you walked into my life at the exact moment you did. You instead of someone else. In some ways, isn’t that even more incredible than the connection itself? That we found each other at all?”

I’m caught in that disorienting transition between inebriation and hangover, when the pleasure slowly morphs into pain.