“I built the second machine. It may kill me, but I intend to use it,” I say.

  “There is no evidence this will work, zero guarantee here,” says my friend and cohort, Andrew. He is idly scratching some initials carved into the picnic table we’re sharing and pushes up his glasses, which half-disappear into dishwater hair. I can see bags under his eyes now as he continues. “Listen, when this was only research, it was fun to debate, but you built it. You really built it! I’m compelled to report this to mental health services, if I have to.”

  “What, why? You helped me prove it,” I say, then—before he can get a word in, “yes, the multiverse is real, and there is no concrete evidence that our consciousness follows the path where we live the longest. But the research, my friend, indicates that this is the only way it can work.”

  Andrew gazes upward and waves at someone. I turn and notice a dark-haired adjunct I have met once before, Stephan, walking across the park. He adjusts the thick black frames on his glasses. He’s in one of the soft sciences, anthro or econ, if I recall.

  “Here he is,” says Andrew, standing up to shake hands. “Perhaps you can help me talk some sense into this guy,” he says, glancing at me with a tired smile. “You remember Stephan, right?”

  “Yes, what department again?” I ask.

  “History,” he says. “I’m not hardcore like you physicists, but Andrew thought it would be helpful to have another viewpoint on your theory. You may also be surprised that history can provide a sane context in a fast-changing world.”

  “Alright, you may know of our experiments,” I ask as he nods. “Good! The basics of it are that when we run that famous double-slit experiment, the one that shows the quantum-mechanics wave-particle duality, it displays that an observer, just by observing, has a profound effect on the experiment,” I say, while watching him to see if he follows. I continue, “We decided to figure out what that was. Some physicists subscribe to the waveform collapse theory—that our minds collapse multiple realities in on themselves—as the only option for a particle being in two places.”

  “Yes, it was in the news article I read about you guys,” he says.

  “Well, that never sat well, and I thought instead that we are riding along in multiple universes and our brains are just making sense of reality splitting itself. This was what started it all, but then we were talking with some friends at CERN and they had tried the experiment the accelerator and discovered some odd readings. Digging into that data, we realized one—”

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  “Only broad strokes,” interrupts Andrew.

  I stop, realizing he won’t know what I was about to say, “Oh, yes, yes, you know about the new particles they inferred,” I ask with a nod from Stephan. “In the CERN data, we found we could detect the of those, but couldn’t directly observe them. , we determined we could create a localized inference detector and make it small, small enough to fit in your pocket.” I pull out a little black project box with dials and switches turned at right angles. There is a large green LED that blinks once. “With this,” I turn it over twice, “we proved photons in the experiment really were in two places at the same time. In fact, they were in separate universes. That is where my latest theory comes in.”

  “Crazy theory,” Andrew says.

  The LED on the box flashes.

  “Think of it like this; I’ve formalized in my unpublished paper that our consciousness follows along in whatever universe, in the multiverse, that we live the longest. This means that you are not part of all universes where you are dead. Anything that happens that could cause your death will not happen—for you—because you can only be in the specific universe where you live the longest. The rest effectively collapse for your consciousness, which just skips to the one where you live.” I stop to let it sink in.

  The black box blinks.

  “If I may … There are historical anecdotes here,” says Stephan, “many believe in alternate histories and think that we reset the timeline dozens of times during the cold war, there were many close calls, almost too many. It was considered a miracle we didn’t blow the entire world up during the Cuban missile crisis. I guess with your theory, maybe we did.” He looks out over the park as the sun sets.

  “Exactly,” I say. “I survived being drowned, falling from a cliff, being hit by a car, and I know I should have died each time. Every person alive has a story about how they almost died, and many have multiple experiences. This cannot be a coincidence.”

  The project box flickers.

  “The problem here,” Stephan says, “is that if you publish this, and the media get word, then the natural thing people will do is decide what they want—and if they don’t get it—they will kill themselves over the lottery, an audition, a contest, a job, a Nobel prize, anything else they may want badly. It’s a dangerous idea.”

  As Stephan realizes the full implication, I say, “I can’t publish it until I prove it.”

  “Wait, how are you thinking of testing this?” Stephan asks.

  “I’ve built a machine that wirelessly connects to the lottery results, I key in a ticket I bought and if the numbers don’t land for the ticket, it injects me with enough morphine to do the job,” I say as I roll up my sleeve, exposing a small device wrapped around my forearm, it already has four numbers alight on its screen.

  Andrew jumps up, “get that off!”

  “It will kill me if I take it off before the sixth number,” I say.

  A fifth number appears and the box blinks.

  Stephan looks on in horror.

  Andrew covers his eyes.

  The box blinks.