In 500... (or less)

A Note for All the Tomorrows

I'll write you this note, Gary. I don't know whether you'll find it. I guess it depends on how things go.

The experiment was a complete disaster. I hope this gets to you before you try again. I'm already a dead man, it's almost impossible to focus on writing this, let alone surviving this nightmare.You should see it, it is utter chaos. The same car in thousands of different places at once, overlapping with other cars. The stop lights are lit up with all three colors at once. Traffic is moving and stopped at the same time.

I should have predicted this. The only thing for certain here is that I didn't expect it. Everywhere around me, every possible outcome of every other decision from all of mankind is happening all at once. It doesn't work the way we thought it would.

Gary, you don't go to the future. You go to a future. The only certain thing in this future is that I stepped into our device. My decision is set in stone. The rest, well, that's up to everyone else.Do you have toast or a waffle for breakfast? Someone might die because of your choice. It sets off a sequence of events, a chain of probabilities. There are eight billion people all doing the same thing, making the same choices. I see the results of each choice all at once. The chain spawns nearly infinite possibilities. This is what tomorrow looks like.

You could wake up fabulously wealthy tomorrow, Gary. Or you could be dead. Or your brother could be. The chain of decisions could be five or so people doing one thing or another. Or it could be a million different people, following their own agendas.

My head is pounding, it's too much to take in. Don't do it, Gary. I'm going to put this note in my pocket, I hope you find it when you discover my body. Or you could go out for coffee and mess it all up. I won't know. If you do find this, look up Schrodinger's cat. I guess I can at least say I proved it's true.

One last thing: Turns out our definition of tomorrow is arbitrary. It's already tomorrow somewhere. I could go for some Excedrin, but the damn bottle is in 15 different places at once. I can't grab it. The hell with it.

Destroy the machine. Don't try it.

Damn, I see you now. At least a few thousand of you, suffering from the same symptoms as me. You idiot.