0:00

I have a report here from Gordon Zank,

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the director of the Division of Realities. Thank

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you for getting in touch, Mr. Death. I am

0:08

happy to tell you my story, but I have

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to acknowledge that it might not do anyone any

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benefit. I run the

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Division of Realities, where we try to

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contact and experiment on other realities, or

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dimensions, or whatever you want to call

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them. Parallel universes. These

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have been theorized for a long time, but it's

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not the easiest thing in the world to prove.

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You may remember the time when we made

0:32

contact with the universe just slightly darker than

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ours. Sometimes, if the universe

0:36

is too similar to the one we're in,

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you can hardly tell the difference. It's

0:41

an open question whether alternate universes

0:43

are created by little differences in

0:46

decisions by conscious actors, or

0:48

if those universes always existed and

0:50

simply weren't distinguishably different until

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the moment that the decision was made. It's

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not possible to know right now. What

0:58

we do know about the universe we live

1:00

in is limited, and while we say that

1:02

it's infinite, we also say that

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it's expanding, and we don't really

1:06

have a clear explanation for why. It

1:09

is possible that we are several paradigms

1:11

away from having the understanding that we

1:13

need. Perhaps our

1:15

need for paradigm shift will scale with our

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understanding of the universe. Perhaps

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it won't. These are the

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kinds of thoughts that keep me up at night. My

1:25

job is only to make use of these

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alternate universes for evil, but having a greater

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understanding of the nature of them makes

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it easier to do that. We spend

1:34

a lot of our resources on research

1:36

and development for that reason. I

1:38

was in bed one night beside my partner having

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trouble sleeping when it came to me. An

1:43

experiment that could potentially generate a

1:45

whole other universe. Now,

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I know that this might sound comical

1:50

based on everything I just said. Either

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you can't generate another universe, or you're

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generating them all the time. But

1:57

this experiment was different. It could just-

2:00

generate just one other universe and

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a very specific copy of the universe

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you're in. You will

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understand, of course, that I have to keep some

2:08

of the details of the experiment out of the

2:10

records here. These kinds of

2:13

experiments are extremely dangerous if left in

2:15

the wrong hands and the only thing

2:17

keeping us safe here is ignorance. I

2:22

will summarize briefly. The experiment

2:24

is somewhat like the concept of quantum

2:26

death. You set up a machine that

2:28

kills you based on the outcome of

2:30

a quantum state and you essentially become

2:32

immortal in the reality you remain in.

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The trouble with that thought experiment is all

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of the realities that you end up leaving behind

2:39

with your corpse sitting there for that version of

2:42

all of your loved ones to deal with.

2:45

In this scenario, no one needs to

2:47

die but there is a similar quantum

2:49

element. This one answers a question.

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You ask a question in

2:53

a certain way and a particle

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collapses leaving you in a reality

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where the answer can be easily

2:59

given. There's a catch though. In

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the universe where you ask the question,

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the answer is always true. Every

3:06

single time, it cannot be any

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other way and if the

3:11

experiment was a total failure, the answer

3:13

would also be true. So

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in the universe where you ask the question,

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you don't really get to find out the

3:19

result of the experiment. While

3:22

this seems kind of silly from a certain

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perspective, I think you have to agree that

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making that other universe question its whole existence

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is a pretty evil thing to do. Letting them

3:32

know that they are from a copy

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universe, a fake universe, a universe that

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was created just for the sake of

3:38

this experiment. Well, based

3:40

on the amount of bloodshed in my office, I

3:42

think you know where this is going. We

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asked the question simply enough, we asked

3:47

the experimental apparatus and we allowed the

3:49

collapse of the wave function to do

3:51

its job. After everything I

3:54

did to set up the experiment to make

3:56

sure that the outcome would be accurate, we

3:59

lost that cosmic coin toss. I

4:02

regret to inform you and everyone listening to this

4:04

that this is the fake

4:06

universe. The result

4:08

came back false. I can

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tell you with confidence there is simply no

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way that that could occur under the circumstances

4:15

unless we are the universe

4:17

generated by the experiment, and

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not the universe that originated the experiment.

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It is possible that nothing you know

4:24

really existed before the experiment, and that

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we are some kind of copy of

4:28

the original universe living in its shadow.

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Certainly some people might think that this

4:34

doesn't really matter much. We have

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a whole universe to ourselves and

4:39

this concept of real versus fake

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universe doesn't really matter. But

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for others the implications are clear

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and they are terrifying. We

4:48

are in a shadow universe. There

4:50

are implications for physics here that we

4:52

are just barely beginning to understand. Obviously

4:56

I was weighed down by the situation and

4:58

I needed some time to think about it.

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I went home. I spent time with

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my partner. I tried to bring

5:05

myself up from the subatomic level back to

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the human level and it worked

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to some extent. I could

5:12

convince myself that it didn't matter. I could

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convince myself that everything was going to be

5:16

fine at least as long as I was

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around, probably longer than for the sun to

5:20

burn out. The consequences

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could wait a long time.

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I came back to the lab the next day

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to find that my assistants had not gone home

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and they wouldn't ever again. The investigators

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seemed to think that there were

5:36

two murders and three suicides, but

5:38

that could shift either way by at least one.

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It was a messy scene Mr. Death

5:44

and one that will never leave me.

5:46

What might be even worse was the little

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slips of paper on the ground. There

5:51

were dozens of them. True here,

5:53

false there, true again, false

5:56

again. They must have

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run the experiments another 40 or 50. 50

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times. That's 40 or 50

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more universes. All

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of them are copies of the fake universe.

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Well, all but one. They

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all have consequences. Compounded consequences.

6:12

Consequences on a time scale

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we might be able to

6:16

experience. At this point, I

6:19

don't know how many times removed we are

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from our original universe, and I

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can't know in what order the paper slips came

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about, because everyone who is there

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is dead. All

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I can say is that we aren't where

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we started. Then

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it dawned on me how many universes must

6:37

have been created in the other universes in

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that same night. The tragedy

6:41

was exponential. I

6:44

not only condemned our universe to its fate,

6:46

but also potentially infinite other

6:48

universes. And then

6:50

there's my lab assistants in all of those

6:53

other universes too, all dead.

6:55

Perhaps the ratio of murders to suicides

6:58

changes based on which universe you find

7:00

yourself in. I will

7:02

be cursed with this knowledge and this guilt

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for the rest of my life. Still,

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there's one thing I keep thinking

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about. There's the universe that started it

7:12

all, the one that made the rest

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of us. They won't ever

7:16

even know if the experiment worked.

7:19

Hell, they might run it a dozen times

7:21

just to see, and every time for them,

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the slip of paper will say true, and they

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will have no idea what they have done to the

7:29

rest of us.