Other Earths (collection)

NINE ALTERNATE ALTERNATE HISTORIES Benjamin Rosenbaum

1. The point of convergence. If any given event may have two subtly different alternate causes, perhaps both may obtain. If history books from two alternate timelines that arrive at the same place have different reasons to tell the same lies, convergence is possible, maybe inevitable.

2. The point of convergence, theological. Perhaps we evolved from apes, from shambling lichen molds, were molded out of corn after the destruction of our elder mud siblings, coalesced out of wishes, lost our way in the unused back service hallways of the fifth floor of a metadepartment store in the dreamlands and took the wrong elevator, were created by a loving god, were trapped here by an evil demiurge, were banished here to unlearn false ideas, are dreams in the mind of the Red King, made up this game and forgot we were playing it. Or all these at once, and this is the point of convergence, the point at which the histories become indistinguishable, and, as of today, it no longer matters what story we tell.

3. The point of divergence, personal. It’s raining now in Freie Strasse. Without moving my head, I see five hundred new white explosions every instant: rain-drops punishing the dark sidewalk, the dark street, five hundred tiny fists, and then five hundred more. Had I left Starbucks fifteen minutes ago, I would be at the office now. Dry.

We humor ourselves that these decisions matter.

Or else we console ourselves that they don’t.

4. The point of convergence, personal. Instead of asking, “Had I but …?” or “Had I not …?” ask “Did I really?”

You broke his doll. He cried. And then there are stories as to why. You maintained your innocence; you thought you had a right to play with this doll in this way. You were accused of insensitivity. He argued for malice. Secretly you suspected yourself of an irrepressible caprice, a wild demonic hunger for the world to go bang. Like a beast inside you that was beyond your control. But maybe that was not how it was at all.

You know the one you kissed when you shouldn’t have? You had a headache. There was not really time. Also, it was too early, not right. And it ended badly. Did you really want that kiss? What were you thinking? Maybe you were showing off. Maybe you were about to cry, and the kiss stopped it. Maybe you would have done anything just to feel something. Maybe you were giddy. Maybe you were angry. It’s hard to recall. Was it really you who broke the doll? Sometimes you take an old photograph out of a box, or compare two dates in your mind, and suddenly fall into a new history.

Maybe you have an army of pasts, crowding around each of those moments. Maybe an army of ghost-yous were cheated, tricked into sharing a future, when they could have lived so many different lives.

5. The pandemonic history. You made every decision, you took every choice. You kissed and killed and greeted meekly and ignored everyone you ever saw. You ate rocks, tossed babies out of windows. Broke and mended every doll. At every moment you were conscious of a choice, you made all choices. At every moment when you thought you had no choice, that circumstances forced your hand, you chose everything then too, you kept and broke and ignored and rein-vented every promise, incurred and evaded every consequence. At every moment your memory elides, because you were sunk into habitual action, just getting from point A to point B, you did every possible thing then too—crashed the car, stopped and stared out at the marsh, sang country songs in languages you don’t even know.

In fact, you speak every language, even languages that don’t exist, because right now, right this moment, you are in the midst of using your tongue and throat in every possible way. It makes a huge howl filling the space of all those yous.

And every person and pigeon and raindrop makes all choices too, filling the space. Filling the possible space.

The history of all this destroys narrative; it is a sculpture, a thick fabric, each instant a knot exploding into a flower of threads.

And you are tracing your finger over one thread, choosing a life. But you could stop right now.

Isn’t that restful?

Isn’t that a restful thing to think?

6. The alternate history is here, it is just not evenly distributed. There are places the South won the war. There are places the Nazis won the war. There are places the Revolution succeeded and lapsed into the everyday. There are places the rightful king was restored. There are stacks of skulls. There are clusters of adobe buildings in the sun, where water runs, cold and clear, in secret shaded places, and the women’s hands sift the grains of corns and there is peace. There is just government and technical brilliance and magic. There are those who heal with their hands, and there are places where superstition was banished by the light of Reason. There are lithe, furry, upright creatures with heads the size of softballs who carry spears, running among the vines.

7. The definite history.

We love choice. Choice is liberty, choice is the bounty of the common man. When we tell ourselves alternate histories, we are reassuring ourselves of the profaneness of events. We might have lost the war, we tell ourselves. We might have lost. And then everything would be different. There was a point of divergence. For want of a nail.

(If you had kissed the other one, instead …)

And so too in this moment: For want of will, for want of clarity, for want of love, we could lose this moment, this war, this choice. We stand at a fork in the road, and one road leads down into darkness and the other up into light. Choose, choose, choose, choose, choose wisely.

We stand in the supermarket aisle and read ingredients. These cookies have partially hydrogenated vegetable oil; these do not. Plus they are made with organic flour. This stock has a P/E of 15. This browser has better security. This job is nearer to my house. This one loves me best.

But perhaps this cry of “choose” is like the hooting of an owl. Perhaps choice is limited to the Planck radius, and damping effects make of our macroscopic world a clockwork machine. Perhaps God guides the nail from the shoe, dropping the horse, grounding the king, losing the battle, because God wants the war lost. Perhaps this is all overdetermined by historical inevitability. Perhaps the date of your death is written already in the pages of the Book of the Norns, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or no.

Perhaps this history is the only history, perhaps it is a series of equations with definite solutions, perhaps it commands our obedience. And this is to say that it is sacred, that there are secret numbers behind apparent choices, that if we could see the world finally, we would not see choices but only things. And then when we wrote alternate history, we would only write: No.

8. The provisional history. Conceivably, the world is a machine designed to solve some problem. Perhaps it is a problem that cannot be solved analytically or intuitively; it requires a world, it requires a sequence of events. The solution cannot be apprehended from afar, all at once; instead, a tree of possibilities must be exhaustively traversed. Moments must be gone through, one after the other, each moment the startling, unpredictable result of the last, a chain of events followed until it becomes clear that the chain is not approaching a solution. Then the machine must back-track, erasing the events, resetting the state, and then embarking down a different path.

So this time you are living in now, perhaps it has no durability. Unless it yields results, it will be erased. Your choices are provisional; if they work out, they will be retained. Otherwise, you will choose again. We may say, adjusting the framing of our narration to the bounds of your phenomenological experience: You will have the chance to choose again.

You will have a chance to unbreak the doll, unkiss the kiss. On the other hand, all this will be lost.

What is it like, then, to tell such a tale, to tell a story that turns out to have no consequences? A story of a draft universe, a narrative transaction that is rolled back and eliminated, of deaths postponed, shadow lives swirling and then clearing, as a mist, until the final, the correct life is found?

(If the machine ever even halts; some problems are insoluble).

Restful, restful.

9. The provisional history, theological. I am crying for you, Beloved. I am killing you, and I am crying. And then you are here again. And on and on, until you have done your duty. Until I have understood. Thank you. Thank you. I am sorry. Thank you.