The Tree of What Could Be

by Rudi Dornemann

He read the directions. Five times. The machine had to run, a persistent low whine, for ten days to calibrate itself to his reality, to his “multiversal node-ality.”

After ten days, the button on the front glowed green like page 12 said it would. He pushed it, as described, gently, firmly. The whine became a hum.

In the early hours of day 72, it was lack of hum as much as the machine’s shrill chime that woke him. He dragged a kitchen chair over, sat there in his bathrobe and slippers, the machine’s chilly visor on his eyes, its navigation gloves too tight on his hands.

The interface was anything but intuitive; after an hour, he asked the house for coffee, stronger and more of it than usual. That helped.

The display branched and rebranched, a vast tree, a neuron’s dendrites, a river delta, dividing ever finer. He figured out the twist of hands that allowed him to sync with a particular branch. To drop into the consciousness of his parallel self in that alternate reality.

In the first, he noticed his bathrobe plaid was redder. In the second, his mug brimmed with herbal tea. He went further, twisted gloves, and spent ten minutes searching before he realized that the movies on the arthouse calendar on the fridge were in a different order. But the titles, stars, synopses, were the same, and the same scattering of magnets held it in place.

He’d hoped for something more dramatic–a world ruled by Nazis, or communists, or dinosaurs. A home built of mudbrick, glass, or pure light. A body that was taller, in better shape or half robot. But no matter how far out across the tree of alternatives, all he saw was too-close versions of his too-familiar kitchen.

He began to twiddle the machine in ways the manual discouraged, in ways it warned against, and finally in ways dared not mention. He was sure his other selves were doing the same, all looking for somewhere other.

He twisted in to see, just as another reality turned to nothing but light. An explosion–he saw it in one universe after another, and was too busy watching to do fiddle any further with his own machine.

When his was the only branch left, the machine made a sound like a lightbulb burning out.

He stood and rubbed his eyes, feeling very, very alone.