A Grander Multiverse
By Kimberley Allen McNamara
According to Brian Greene, author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, discoveries in astronomy and physics point to the possibility that our universe may be one of many universes in a grander universe. In an NPR interview, Greene explained that the reason why a possibility of multiverses is to be considered now a strong possibility, is because of string theory. String theory smooths out the differences between the theory of relativity and quantum physics.
"There are a couple of multiverses that come out of our study of string theory," Greene says. "Within string theory, the strings that we're talking about are not the only entities that this theory allows. It also allows objects that look like large flying carpets, or membranes, which are two dimensional surfaces. And what that means, within string theory, is that we may be living on one of those gigantic surfaces, and there can be other surfaces floating out there in space." (NPR)
Since March, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the multiplicity of universes. Perhaps it’s the surrealness of the situation, one day everyone was walking across Boston Common, jumping in Ubers, meeting friends for drinks and then the next day, there was silence, emptiness, and a pervasive stillness. The multiplicity of universes, parallel universes, gives me comfort. Somewhere in another universe: the pandemic doesn’t exist because the sign posts and warnings were heeded, and in that universe, too, maybe justice and equal rights for All really does mean All. Maybe in another universe, we get it right.
Writers create universes all the time. It's part of our writerly DNA. We build a world, in the future, the past or in the present. We pick the time, the place, and we put on the show. But to get the reader to believe it, we have to give the reader landmarks and a map. We have to let them know who to care about and the easiest way to do that is to get the main character to care about someone other than themselves. When the words come freely and land effortlessly upon the page our universe is balanced, in sync, when they don’t, well, then perhaps that is when a writer in parallel universe is spilling the words with ease on the page. Knowing that this might be a possibility, that my parallel writer is writing well when I am struggling is a comfort.
Consider the following scenario:
In one universe, a time that mimics pre-March 2020, our family goes to the movies. We see the newly released XYZ movie. After, one daughter dabs her eyes at the ending, the other one is so moved she is silent on the walk home and my husband says: that was pretty good, huh? To no one in particular. We murmur in agreement. Each one of us is caught in the web of the story captured in the movie.
Instead, in our present universe 2020, we decide to watch the XYZ movie on the television, and we are grateful that there is a platform, which lets us see it because we cannot go to the theatre. But the youngest one begs us now in this 2020-universe, not to watch it. She can’t take it, she says, can’t take the newness of it. She needs to watch something she’s already seen, something that doesn’t tax the brain. She cannot do NEW right now.
Unable to do New. That is the problem of this 2020. Everything is new and yet everything is similar. It is as if we stepped into a New universe and the geography is both distorted and recognizable. Everything is half a bubble off plumb.
Writers employ this “half-bubble off plumb” technique often. We have to, because the universes we create on the page exist for us, they are at once familiar and/or skewed from the reality of everyday even if they are about the everyday. Sci-fi, fantasy, and notably dystopian writers, use this technique when they world build: Margaret Atwood readily admits that everything in The Handmaid’s Tale is taken from history or the present and twisted just enough so it is eerily familiar but also not the same. In Atwood’s own words it was part of her plan.
“I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behavior. The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights—all had precedents, and many of these were to be found, not in other cultures and religions, but within Western society, and within the “Christian” tradition itself.” Atwood uses “Christian” in quotes because the atrocities christianity has committed in the name of being christian she believes the namesake would find offensive. (Atwood, LitHub)
In my family’s present universe:
We kick this idea of a movie that is not New around. We really should watch something new, after all Life is marching forward, right? But maybe we should save the new movie for later, for when there aren’t any new movies, because everything has stopped. We decide on something we’ve already seen, The Tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. To restore or maybe to preserve the balance in this current unbalanced universe, we opt for the movie we’ve already seen. We opt for what we know, even if by knowing the surprise twist because we’ve seen it before renders it not a complete surprise. Even if by knowing, it is just enough to know how we feel without questioning how we should feel about a new movie in this new world of unknowing.
In that other multiple universe, the one where we choose the new movie and see it at a theatre, and my daughter is so moved she dabs her eyes and my youngest daughter is quiet on the way home, thinking as we walk when my husband says, to no one in particular, “That was nice. Wasn’t it?” I am not sure how to answer him because I’m not sure what version of myself I am. So I just nod but perhaps I shake my head, or shrug my shoulders.
But tonight, after the Tourist, when I walked the dogs with my husband and he said: “That was pretty good, huh? Even though we’ve seen it before.” Tonight, I tilt my head back and look at the stars that are still in their place and I find the Big Dipper. Tonight, I agreed. Maybe it is enough that string theory allows for multiple universes, even if a Grander Multiverse is just a possibility. It is the possibility that gives me comfort, because there is hope we can get it right, after all anything is possible.
