Cosmic Confluence

Chapter 3: worst reality

I often wonder if the Mary writing this lives in the worst reality. That is to say, I believe in the multiple universes theory (or the multiverse) which is the hypothetical set of possible universes, including the universe which you live in. These other possible universes are the product of every decision you didn't go with, meaning there exists multiple realities that have branched out from every choice you didn't make in this one.

I've made some pretty shit choices.

So I wouldn't be surprised if I lived in the most shit reality.

But then again I wonder: what if after everything, this one is the best way it can go? Like even after every horrible event in my life and all the horrible aspects of it, it can't get any better. If that were true, I wouldn't want to see the realities that were worse.

I thought it was a little funny though; how I had managed to do absolutely every choice that led me to this huge mess where my life was in the hands of a Man With Long Teeth who definitely wasn't even a man. It felt like I had typed a bunch of random keys into my computer that were actually the impossibly specific code to launch every nuclear weapon. I started to quietly laugh at myself thinking about it.

Dad's black Camero pulled into the driveway at four, as it always did. I was very happy for him to be home, I really loved my dad. I cried over him a lot too. Sometimes it was over no particular reason other than me loving him, but most of the time it was because I was afraid of him dying. He wasn't in a critical condition or nothing like that, but he had Huntington's Disease which is a progressive brain disorder that causes uncontrolled movements, emotional problems, and loss of thinking ability. Those symptoms hadn't fully kicked in yet for him but there were some instances I can remember that had been clear signs of it. Dad's memory problems seemed to be getting worse but once again, nothing horrible.

"Dancing dog! Dancing dog!" He chanted a moment after walking through the door. He was referring to the weird excited shuffle Nelly did at the top of the stairs whenever someone came home.

"Dancing dog!" I echoed before giving my dad a big hug.

"She always does that dance, every single time." As mentioned my dad's memory was fading, but I was glad he hadn't forgotten this piece of critical information yet.

"Anything interesting happen at work today?"

He hung up his coat before replying, "hm, not really, no. Well maybe, I diagnosed someone with Schizophrenia today. But that's not much." It really wasn't much, one of the worst things my dad has ever had to deal with in all his years as a therapist was a woman who literally ate her fucking baby. Ate. Her. Baby. She probably lived in her worst reality now that I thought about it.

"Yeah okay."

"The person goes to your school I think, he's about your age too." That didn't mean too much to me at first, my school was fucking huge and a boy my age was probably someone I almost definitely didn't know.

But of course things in my life didn't take the higher probability in most situations, I was dumb to of thought otherwise.

"Yeah? What's his name?"

"It was Elijah Johansen I think, you know him or anything?"

"No."

I wasn't surprised actually. Ok well I was a little taken aback, but if I had more time to speculate then guess who was visiting my father—the therapist— and was diagnosed as a schizo, I would have answered with Eli. All of a sudden I became extremely sad. I felt like I was leaving a planet to die because I didn't want to get sucked into the black hole either. Then again, maybe he felt that way too.