I Wish I Hadn’t Done That!
Is that thing recording? Right. Where do you want me to start…?
Okay, well, my name is Colin Pattison, and I’m a grad student in the Physics department, researching quantum behavior in super-cooled crystals with solid-state lasers. Or at least, that’s what I was there this morning before the world went all ‘Twilight Zone’ on me. God only knows what I do now…
Right, so… It happened just before the coffee break. I was getting more and more pissed off debugging fiddly-little doodad bits of the laser system’s detector circuit and was just about ready for a break. Well, okay, the wall clock in the research room read 10.27, which is technically not yet break-time, but I could hear that coffee and KitKat calling my name ever louder with each time the bloody detector thing failed on me…
What? No, not KiteKat; that’s cat food! I said a KitKat. Oh, c’mon; a pair of chocolate wafer fingers? Don’t tell me you don’t have those here!? Bugger…!
Yes, yes, I know; least of my worries and all that. But still… Anyway, as I was saying. It was nearly more or less break time this morning, and I was just getting frustrated with a bit of electronics when this familiar-looking bumfluff-faced hippy in NHS-specs, flared jeans, and a red Escher-print tee-shirt burst in yelling with this… this thing under his skinny arm.
What did it look like? It looked like a jalopy jump-starter machine designed by one of those Cosplay loony tunes at a Frankenstein-punk festival. Or a prop for the Rocky Horror Show. Something all ‘Sci-Fi mad scientist‘-esque… Shiny black Bakelite plastic with lots of ivory buttons, radio valves, and back-lit dials. Certainly not anything Earth-shattering, just silly.
Anyway, this lad plonked the thing down on the table in the middle of the physics lab and started demanding that we do something about the ‘Woo-woo gizmo!’ I was nearest and made the mistake of engaging with the crackpot; the rest of the guys started edging away and then slipping out of the room until it was just me, whoever-he-was, and the whatever-it-was. And from there, things just went plain bat-shit crazy…
Well, he was like, this wasn’t his York, the cars were all wrong, the buildings were in the wrong place, the people were dressed funny…
What did I think? I thought he stank of weed and was obviously high, and so it was hilarious at first, and that’s why I dropped the line on him, you know. I was like, “What year is it? Who’s the president?”
What line? The line! From the ‘Fast Show’; or, uh, maybe ‘Back to the Future’ originally I think…? Oh, c’mon, you must have heard of that. Bugger, no Marty McFly and Doc Brown here; no DeLorean flux capacitor!? That sucks…
Anyhow, that’s the point when it started to get really, really unsettling. The lad claimed the president was Joe Biden. I mean, c’mon: Joe Biden? He didn’t make it through COVID. It’s been that Harris woman for the last year or so. After the big funeral and all that stuff in Washington. Hasn’t it…?
Obviously, I thought he was joking to begin with, but he seemed genuinely confused and upset. Scared, in fact. That’s when it suddenly struck me why he looked familiar: underneath the old specs, long hair and attempt at a beard, he reminded me of my brother; and so naturally I asked his name. And as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, it was the same as mine! He was me! Cue Twilight Zone music…
Okay, sorry: forget the Twilight Zone music… Guys, you’re such killjoys, jeez!
Where was I? Oh yes, this was when I began to imagine what had happened and what that machine was all about. Parallel universes. Which sounds mad, I know, but hear me out… You see, according to quantum mechanics, there’s an infinite number of parallel universes holding a different version of each of us, universes that fork off from one another as different decisions are made. Different worlds with different histories and different realities; worlds in which you didn’t say something daft to that girl at the disco, didn’t take a swing at the school bully, didn’t choose that job or that car or that partner or that house… The weird ‘woo-woo’ machine must be a way to move from universe to universe somehow, and the hippy was ‘me’ in one of those parallel realities, somehow transported from there into my reality. (Though what decision fork led to hippy-me and that excuse for a beard, I’ll never know!)
Who’s the prime minister? Like, our prime minister? That ‘Britain First’ Brexit muppet, Farage… Not here? You’re lucky! So, who is it here, then…? No! Biffo Boris for PM and Trump of all people as president of the free world? Again!? You’re kidding me, right? Neither of them could find their arse with both hands and a mirror in a well-lit room. But then again, I suppose they’re not as bad as Farage and his crew. Dear God, an infinite multiverse and these divots are still the best we can do…?
Anyway, back to hippy-me. I asked him to explain what had happened. He said he’d found a student who looked just like him, in a daze in hippy-me’s carrel in the university library, and that when hippy-me-1 told hippy-me-2 that the carrel was his, hippy-me-2 had got all amped and said he was going to find somebody in the Physics department who might help; and that on no account should hippy-me-1 touch the gizmo on the table.
Naturally, hippy-me-1 chose to ignore that important bit of advice and prodded away at the thing to try and suss it out. So, of course, I asked hippy-me-1 what the device was meant to do. He was like, “I have no pigging idea what it’s meant to do, but I can tell you what it did do; it made a big blue flash, a bang loud enough to make my ears hurt, and somehow kicked me from my York to your York. So I’m doing what that other ‘me’ should’ve done; I’m bringing the bloody thing to you lot to figure out. Now, science boy, make it take me back home!”
And that’s when I did something I really, really wish I hadn’t done… I was like, Okay then, let me see; what’s this button for? And like the geek that I am (just like hippy-me-1 and hippy-me-2) see a button, push a button! There was a big blue flash (just like hippy-me-1 said), a bang, and then I was lying on the floor with my ears ringing, surrounded by a bunch of weirdoes in what turned out to be a seminar room in the Department of Transgender Studies, whatever the hell they are. Surprised them, I must say!
What happened next? Well… If I said that behind a huge pair of pink glasses and a bleached mullet haircut, one of them looked a lot like me and was wearing a red blouse, would that be enough of a clue? No…? Please, dear God, don’t tell me that you haven’t got Star Trek in your universe. No wonder you’ve got transgender studies in the building where you should have physics! Anyway, a Redshirt equals a disposable character; like a spear carrier, there is a part of the scenery or somebody for the hero or the baddy to kill on their way past. Redshirt equals a pretty short future!
Suffice it to say, the girlie-me in the redshirt decided that she would fiddle with the obviously dangerous toy because, hey, what could possibly go wrong!? And so, of course, before I could say anything, another blue flash, another loud bang, another shit-for-brains bam-pot version of me gets kicked into another parallel universe, taking the bloody damned-blasted ‘woo-woo’ universe-jumping device along with them.
And so now here I am, stuck in a world without my favourite TV show, my favourite mid-morning snack, or my ride home. And yeah, thanks. I know just how ‘hilarious’ it is that I put on a red hoodie this morning!
