Every time you tap SNOOZE you create an alternate timeline

ADB-160314#151

I hit SNOOZE a lot. It all started in middle-school with my first clock radio. I trained my arm to wake up on its own, grope around blindly for the source of the music, and then pound it into another ten minutes of blissful REM.

I do the same thing now with my iPhone. Some mornings my masterful hand will grab it off the nightstand and cradle it gently, my thumb over the power button. Milliseconds after the first bleep, SNOOZE has been reflexively pressed. On a sleepy Saturday morning, this might go on for ninety minutes, to my partner’s infinite annoyance.

But this morning, as I cusped the hypnagogic state between dream and reality, a thought was planted firmly enough in my mind to recover it from consciousness. It felt like a warning from superior beings in another dimension:

Every time you tap SNOOZE you create an alternate timeline!

Had I maxed out my possibilities? Had I procrastinated wakefulness to the fullest extent of universal law? And in which multiverse was I independently wealthy, without the need for alarms and early obligations? I’ll never know. I woke up, wrote this down, and headed off to work.