All My Nows

by:  Gary Charles Wilkens


Men were trying to kill Dr. Brian Caraway, but that was not the weirdest part of his week. The weirdest part was that all of these men were him, Brian Caraway. Not exactly like him: they were generally leaner, more muscular, dirty and sometimes scarred, wearing ragged clothes or something like armor, carrying long knives or strange guns. But their faces were basically his, and from the eyes of each he got a shock of recognition: they were his own. They said nothing to him when they appeared, but immediately tried to wipe him out.

The week had begun as one of his best: on Monday he had received a phone call from the Nobel Committee informing him that he, along with two colleagues in the Czech Republic and England, had earned the Prize in Physics for their experimental confirmation of the existence of parallel universes. Decades of work, years of failure, professional ridicule, and the slow, grueling proving of himself had paid off. He had fallen over in his chair and hit his head. It was when he was dashing across campus to tell his wife first that the first Caraway had attacked. He had escaped only through sheer luck, being no fighter: a group of students, rounding the corner of the library, had shouted as the man stood over him, ready to cut his throat. Caraway got one long look in the man’s gray eyes, his eyes, before he ran away.

The police had interviewed him, filed a report, and told him to be careful. News of the Prize broke worldwide, and Caraway had written the attack off as a coincidence and celebrated with family and friends. Then the others had attacked, as he was leaving a studio interview, in his hospital room, and finally in his home. Each time only luck, a security guard or another Caraway had stopped the man. To protect his family he had gone on the run after the last attack. He was in his 50s, out of shape, and had never fired a gun, but now he hid in a cabin owned by his brother, a stolen gun in his sweaty hand, peering out the window at the dark woods.

“You forget, Caraway, that we are you. We know where you would hide,” came a voice from behind him.

Caraway spun to face a near copy of himself, standing in the candlelight of the living room. He pointed the pistol at the man, who did not react. “Who the hell are you?!”

“Hmm,” said the other Caraway, a long knife in his right hand. “None of us has told you yet, and you haven’t figured it out. Disappointing, Doctor.”

Caraway raised the gun in a trembling hand. “What do you mean? Why have you been trying to kill me? Why do you––“

“Look just like you, save for having led a rougher life? Because we are you, Brian. From other world lines. And we’re here to take your place. Or rather I am.” The man moved in.

“Stop!” Caraway screamed and tried to aim. “I, I will shoot! Tell me who you really are!”

“He just did,” said another voice. Both Caraways spun to find another one in the room. “You didn’t prove the existence of other universes, Caraway the First, you created them, and doomed us.” That man advanced.

 But he was stopped by the appearance of yet another Caraway, who held a gun on all of them. “I will be taking his place, I’m afraid,” he said.

Caraway looked at each of their faces. Lean, haggard, but undisputably his own. “This is insane, impossible. I was just measuring duplicated particles.”

“And by observing new worlds, brought them into being. It’s old physics. The worlds multiplied, each like the first, except in ours things went much worse than in yours,” the first new Caraway said. “Failure, disaster, loss. Somehow only in this world do you reap the rewards of our genius.”

“But how did you get here?” Caraway said.

“Never mind that,” said a Caraway none of them had noticed yet. Turning, the first several Caraways saw that the room was filling up with Caraways, each subtly different from the other. All were intent on killing him and each other to be the only one.

As they closed in, knives or guns raised, Caraway screamed and fired wildly. One of the Carways went down, the others paused. They moved in again, and Caraway began screaming and shooting. Someone disarmed him and stabbed him in the stomach. He screamed a final time, and blacked out.

Caraway awoke, if it could be called that, to find himself in something like a hall of mirrors, infinitely extended. He was at a center point, like a singularity, and in all directions stretched endless worlds, all Brian Caraway, at all times in his life and in all places. Distorted, refracted versions clashed and fought, ended in blasts of color to be replaced by uncountable others. He saw himself being born a million times, living millions of childhoods, dying many times and being born again. All possibilities played out, every movement of every particle, every choice, every consequence. Brian Caraway, in infinite worlds, screamed.

Then infinite Caraways folded in on themselves like a pop-up book. Some choices were made, some paths closed, others opened. Death came swiftly, slowly, in a splay of colors. Long happy lives were lead. Patterns emerged, some choices came more commonly, and universes canceled each other out like the sides of an equation. There were millions, thousands, hundreds, dozens, a handful, fitting together into a whole like a shuffled deck of cards. Dr. Brian Caraway, a few years out from getting his Ph.D., sat in a cramped lab, his hand poised over a button that would activate the experiment. He felt a shudder and looked around. He was alone. He hit the button.