Other Earths (collection)

The sun was up and the air steamy, baking the weeds and the little houses, when we came to Phu Tho. A putrid stench proceeded from the pale green house where the fat Cradle had died, and the innumerable ruined and stranded boats looked almost festive in the morning light, like the remnants of a regatta at which too good a time had been had by all. We had reached the banks of the canal when I remembered something. I told the man to wait, that I had left certain of my possessions in the fat man’s house. He sank to the grass, grateful to have a rest. I walked back to the house and peeked in the door. Bian had fled and taken her records. I tied my T-shirt about my nose and mouth to cut the smell and steeled myself. It promised to be a disgusting business, retrieving the notebooks of my dead brothers, but I had my career to think of.

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.