There is a theory that’s popular among physicists, writers, and lunatics. Supposedly, we inhabit just one of an infinite arrays of universes. Multiverse theory serves more purposes than a device for sci-fi writers. It’s a way to make sense of the insensible.
I feel like we passed from a tense but logical world into a new and far more illogical one. Do you feel it too? This universe, where I seem to have landed by chance, lacks the bounds within which I grew up. Did an unfortunate phase shift send my presence from a stable Republic to a chaotic oligarchic mess? What really happened at roughly at 3 am EST on November 4th, 2020?
How often has this happened; both for good or ill? Haven’t I benefited from the occasional shift from one inescapable path to another, entirely unexpected, new world? Who, mired in the mindset of the Cold War, expected it to end with the dissolution of the mighty USSR? Hardly a shot fired to resolve a stalemate that had been dragging us all, inch by inch, toward total thermonuclear war.
Mutually assured destruction didn’t happen. Rejoice! It was a bullet dodged!
What about the karmic balance? If a bullet can be dodged, can’t we also stupidly leap into the path of one? We certainly have done so. Is that not what vexes me?
Yet, is the balance worthwhile? Who am I to fret that the universe tilted on its axis? It put a potato in the big chair but in my youth it let us duck the noose on complete and instantaneous radioactive annihilation. Not such a bad bargain.
Furthermore, didn’t we know this was coming? Who didn’t glimpse this reality on the horizon? Wasn’t it always at the very least a possibility? I feel like I was thrown bodily into the pit of sketchy votes and a puppet president run by God knows who, but I should have seen it coming. The hints were always there. Nobody has believed vote counts in Chicago since Al Capone walked the earth. More recently, didn’t we go through a trial run on this very thing with words like “hanging chad” and “determine voter intent” in 2000? Didn’t Hillary scream bloody murder and agitate for “faithless electors” in 2016? Everything flows downhill into 2020.
Nor do presidents emerge from the mess looking clean. Didn’t we have an impeachment process in 1998? Why wouldn’t this lead to two or three more shots at the same thing in 2019 and 2021? Nixon’s issues are minor compared to the stink of the last few decades. We have chosen as a society to deliberately obfuscate the voting process. We have chosen to resolve political differences with lawfare. Was 2020 when it really hit the fan or just the moment it was so tainted that nobody seriously denies it. Polls say roughly half of Americans have the same concerns as I. There aren’t enough deplatformed Twitter accounts to put that genie back in the bottle.
As you can tell from my writing, I was still out of sorts. I’d barely ventured from my remote homestead back into a sliver of multiverse assigned me and it had been both good (happy people at a bar) and bad (a rough night’s sleep).
I imagine a loop and I’m in it. A reliving of past misery. Carter’s Malaise Version 2.0. The year dawned with inflation, Iranian expansion, and gas shortages. The parallels abound. Will Kabul become Saigon? Will there be price controls at the pump? Why the fuck not? Might as well start listening to disco, revert to making gutless cars that rust out before the payments are done, and turn all video games into pong. Yuck! All that stuff sucked. I don’t want to do it again. Then again I’m not in charge of such things.
I reflected on my bad, jittery, unsettled night. Somewhere there’s a Curmudgeon in another universe. That fool never left the bar. He went for it. He didn’t coyly take a mere sip and then slide into his tent like a cautious exhausted geezer. He was full on dancing on tables and getting into fights until he was kicked out at 1:00 am to vomit in the grass by a desolate ATV trail. He crawled off to lay in misery until the dawn found him; human wreckage lying in the grass. I know that guy. I’ve been that guy. He’s a damn maniac.
That was my explanation! I had a bad night because the son of a bitch in another universe drank so hard his hangover bled across the cosmic realms! Somewhere he was sleeping it off the mother of all hangovers! I, having carefully chosen the path of a milquetoast, was suffering indirect second order effects of his wild indiscretions.
Asshole!