THE SOLIPSIST by
Don Berry
My name is Martin Coy. This narrative is the record of how I learned to travel to alternative universes, using the principles of quantum mechanics.When I was a youth -- not callow, exactly, but not seasoned, neither -- I rather fancied the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory. I was frankly enchanted by the prospect of an infinity of probable universes lying invisibly interleaved with each other. Sleeping Worlds, as it were, only awaiting that magic moment of Observation, the kiss of the Prince of Consciousness, to waken into Actual Existence.
In most of those alternative universes, I reasoned, I was probably making out a bit better than I am Here, (however Here might be defined). For example, there is doubtless a universe very nearby, where four spades and a diamond become five spades. A tiny thing on the cosmic scale, a minuscule flicker of consciousness that causes the probability wave to collapse just a bit -- otherwise. But even such a trivial alteration could well make a considerable difference in my standard of living.
Gradually, of course, as I took my adult place in the mainstream of life, that wondrous sparkling champagne of limitless possibility flattened out into the warm beer of barely getting by. I became, like almost everyone else in this society, a plodding, pedestrian potato of an Aristotelian.
"A" was either true or not true. "B" either existed or did not exist. No in-between states of reality for us Good Ol' Boy Aristotelians, no worlds of potential, no probable universes. For old Bubba Aristotle a rock was just a rock, by god, unless it was a hard place. The excluded middle of Aristotelian logic also seems to exclude most of what is potentially creative in the world.
Aristotle, of course, has always been the perfect philosophical basis for a society of imperialistic materialists, heavy into rape and pillage and major engineering projects. By which I mean the Roman Empire, and with a mere touch of historical extension, Us. He was, you will recall, the first philosopher to fawn at the feet of the powerful, to run a government financed think tank, to define Woman as Inferior Man, to reduce the sacred Pythagorean geometry to a way of measuring real estate. But I digress. I was telling you how I learned to travel in alternate universes.
I do not now remember the exact moment when I came to realize that the Many Worlds interpretation is more than merely a theoretical fancy. It is a simple statement of fact; the parallel universes, no matter how vast their number, are all equally real.
The only reason Here seems more Real than the others is -- is what? I have cruelly -- or mercifully -- abbreviated my researches for you. In fact it took almost two years for me to realize that this was indeed the central question of reality. The secret of the alternate universes is not hidden at all, but lies in plain sight in this one. I had been looking outside for something that lay only within, a practice the better class of mystics has always frowned upon.
Why is it that this universe, of all the infinite probabilities, seems Real, while all those others drift like lazy iridescent fog just beyond my range of perception?
For one simple reason, and that is because "I" am at the center of it. It seems Real only because of the evidence of my senses.
My senses yield up form where no form is, sound from the Silence, color from the invisible spectrum, and the illusion of Order from the undifferentiated Chaos. What appears to my consciousness as a World is neither more nor less than my mind observing the working of my senses. The universe is not a bunch of stuff, it is an act of perception.
Very well. Nothing new in that; it is inherent in all interpretations of quantum theory. What remained was to transform this common insight into a means, a vehicle, a device that would take me from the Here-Reality to the Over-There-Reality. A metaphysical Mercedes, so to speak, though I would cheerfully settle for a fifth-dimensional Chevy. Once I realized the literal possibility of changing probable universes, it became something near to an obsession. I wanted to dance in the meadows of probability like a satyr, to swim in the oceans of Might Be with serene cetacean calm, to soar above this mundane Aristotelian clod like a long-winged albatross.
I freely acknowledge that my enthusiasm for departure has something to do with the subtle and not so subtle disappointments of my life. When I graduated from High School, my dream was to study higher mathematics. The world of ideas sang a siren song for me even as a child, and I longed to be recognized in life for some great contribution to the intellectual history of the world. I remember scribbling on the cover of my notebook such phrases as Coy's Theorem, The Coy Phenomenon, The Coy Hypothesis, trying out how I should name my great discovery most gracefully.
I will not belabor the story of my trials here, but in the event, this dream suffocated before it was born, smothered by the tedious injustices of mundane life. It is appalling to realize that the stifling of intellectual brilliance can be summed up in the prosaic phrase -- Times Were Hard.
Perhaps times Here are always hard, though some seem miraculously to escape that misery. In any case, for purely financial reasons there was no question of following my dream of higher mathematics. Rather than a glorious career at MIT, my higher education was a couple of years at a rather mediocre community college. Among my fellow students, I found not one who had the faintest glimmer of interest in ideas. Their highest intellectual aspiration was to be able to sign their union card without making any obvious error.
In addition to that career disappointment, my early marriage to Julia was no greater success. We were both far too young for such commitment, I think, though Julia chose to attribute the failure to my frequent abstraction. She was probably right, at least in her universe.
It is these depressing vicissitudes of mundane life that make Aristotelians of us all, and for quite some time in my mid-twenties I lost sight of my goal, I drifted away from my mission.
However, by then I had reached the point in my researches where I understood clearly that the ticket on the probability bus was somehow punched by the act of perception, and only through control of the senses would I be allowed to ride.
This perhaps seems like a small yield for what was, by then, almost a decade of mining the probability lode. As a mere intellectual understanding, I will grant you it is meager -- but for me it was not merely an intellectual understanding, but a method. I knew with absolute certitude it was the key I was seeking -- but I still didn't know how to fit it into the lock, or even where the lock was.
The first glimmerings of how to put this insight into practice came about almost by accident, and as a result of the trials I was undergoing in mundane life.
After Julia left me, I fell into bleak depression for a time. At the time I was working at The Snapshot, a photography shop in a suburban mall just outside the Seattle city limits. "Assistant Manager" was my somewhat overstated title. I was a clerk, but I worked alone in the evening and made a couple of dollars over the other clerks for that responsibility.
There is nothing inherently wrong in that. I sometimes reminded myself that Einstein had been working as a patent clerk when he wrote his world-changing paper on Special Relativity.
Without Julia's additional income, however, I could not afford the rent on the little, 60's built house in the suburbs. I moved into a studio apartment in a rather seedy part of downtown Seattle. Every morning I took the bus out to the suburbs, and each evening came back to city center.
This turned out to be a small revelation, because it turned me 180 degrees against the normal flow of commuter traffic, and the difference was amazing. Suddenly the freeways were no longer so jammed, the frustrations of the commute so irritating. I was, in effect, living in a different world, merely by reversing the direction I traveled during rush hour.
The significance of this stunned me. Timing had immense importance in creating the nature of the World as I perceived it. The World you see is the World you are in sync with. I suppose this is what the occultists mean by "raising your vibrations" -- to be in sync with a different reality. But this was no mere theory. This was actually the first practical step.
That year I intentionally took my vacation week in February -- and found the beaches and motels of the Oregon Coast essentially empty, with rooms costing about half what I had paid before. As far as my senses were able to confirm, I now lived in a world where the population had dwindled by at least 50%. Sometimes I would fantasize that a great plague had swept the 20th century as it had the 14th. And I for one, like all survivors of great disasters, was the better off for it.
The next stage of my journey was even more dramatic. I lost my job at The Snapshot. By now, I almost welcomed hardship, since through it I was gaining control over my senses and the world they revealed to me. In vicissitude veritas, perhaps.
It is probably clear from this narrative that my social skills are not highly developed. But then, neither are my social needs. I have always felt slightly uncomfortable in social situations, and am certainly sensitive enough to perceive that certain people are somewhat uncomfortable around me as well. I don't know exactly why. I accept it as a fact of life, and on the whole find my own company sufficient.
When I lost my position at The Snapshot, I decided to leave the urban milieu and move to the more rural setting of Cascade Island, on the other side of Puget Sound from the metropolis.
I found a small cabin, built in the 40's, that had once been the weekend fishing camp of a Seattle family. It had neither running water nor electricity, but it was near the water, and the silence was comforting and serene. Often the only sound at night was a raucous cry of a Great Blue Heron across the bay.
And then, by a stroke of incredible good fortune, I found the job that would allow me not only to continue my researches into probability worlds, but to perfect it, conclusively.
I answered an ad in the local island newspaper for a "Systems Monitor," and discovered that it was essentially a night watchman working graveyard shift at Cascade Alarm Systems.
In the beginning I had very mixed feelings about taking this job. But nothing else was available, and I had no other options. What little cash I had been able to squirrel away from The Snapshot had been consumed merely in moving away from the city.
I have always been a victim of the vicious cycle of economics. I was deprived by economic circumstance of the education that would have used my intellect to practical purpose. Without even the meaningless intellectual credentials of a respectable education, I was never able to move upward. All my attempts met with failure, and without those credentials no one took my insights into the nature of reality seriously.
The single factor that made defeat after defeat bearable was the certainty that this was only one of countless probable worlds. But, until I went to work for Cascade Alarm Systems, never before had I been reduced to working at the actual minimum wage; society's final valuation of my worth.
However, from the first week at Cascade Alarm Systems I was mysteriously elated and at ease, as though I had finally come home. Everything my little ramshackle cabin lacked, the Cascade Alarm building provided. There was not only hot water, but a shower. There was a little microwave and a big TV with remote control. It instantly became more my home than the place I actually slept.
I was not permitted to smoke in the office, but even that now-satanic indulgence was provided for. I had a hand- held room monitor from Radio Shack, and a little transmitter in the office. Whenever I wanted a smoke, I could go outside on the porch with that monitor, and the alarm signals coming in were relayed to me instantly. Monitors monitoring the monitors. Recursive, re-entrant and reiterative.
Walking to work at midnight was a sheer delight. In the middle of the night the island was as deserted as though a neutron bomb had destroyed all life, leaving only a deserted civilization of which I was the sole population. I saw no one on my way to work, and by choosing my morning route home with just a little care, I saw no one then. What had begun with the coincidence of traveling against the commuter grain had culminated in a world in which I saw no other person unless I made a special effort to do so. And I did not.
The center of my job, the heart and soul, is the black Box. The Box is the electronic brain of the alarm system, and my job is to watch it, log all signals into one or another loose-leaf binder, and dispatch the fire department or the police to answer any alarm that seems genuine.
The Company has approximately 300 clients, whose property (and conceivably lives) are in my hands, and rest on my decisions. While I physically see no other person, I am deeply involved with the lives of hundreds. Many are commercial businesses, but there are also a good number of private homes.
The Box has become the center of my life, the point of focus for all my consciousness. Through the Box I have an astonishingly wide scope -- my new senses are cast out like a great net over an area of hundreds and hundreds of square miles on both sides of Puget Sound. It is as though I live on an uninhabited planet and peek through a dimensional window into one that is fully peopled.
The Box alerts me with a high-pitched beeping whenever a signal arrives along the web. At the right side a roll of adding machine tape emerges from a slot, is printed with data by a hidden dot matrix, and disappears into another slot. I don't know where it comes from or where it goes. It is equivalent to long term memory, but superior, since it forgets nothing and distorts nothing.
The hazards of life on that peopled planet are simplified into an elegant symbolism which, like all great philosophy, communicates exactly what is necessary, and nothing that is unnecessary. As I write this, I am looking at a typical signal, and it reads:
DATE 08-15-96 TIME 02:55 ACC. 02-314 CODE 7
I know them. Account 314 is a pizza parlor, which has been closed for three hours. (CLOSE ID# 04 - 23:58). CODE 7 is an automatic test; the senses are checking in with the brain. Beyond the knowledge of the absent pizza cooks and their sleeping wives, outside the scope of hungry clients, only I, of all intelligences in this world, know this is happening. Because the senses that are reporting their fidelity and readiness to perceive are my senses now.
These electronic extensions of my intelligence are, in many ways, superior to those with which I was born. Those biologic senses are imperfect, and more often deceptive than faithful. Since we are wholly dependent upon them for knowledge of the world we inhabit, we are deceived more often than not, because at bottom we do not remotely understand how they do what they do.
How is it possible for a picture to form in the mind, based solely on a thin train of electronic impulses from the optic nerve? I do not know. And while biologists can describe many details about that transmission, description is not enlightenment. It is always, and only, description. The saddest illusion of the Aristotelians is that if you can acquire enough description it will eventually be transmuted into understanding.
My new senses describe the world more precisely than the old, because they are not the random result of some uncertain evolution. They are designed intentionally, and I know with great accuracy what they mean.
I can detect the making and breaking of tiny magnetic contacts; they tell me when a door has been opened or closed, and whether the opener has the authority to do so.
CODE 3 - AUDIBLE BURGLARY FRONT DOOR. I can smell smoke, and perceive heat.
CODE 1 ZONE 2 - AUDIBLE FIRE SUITE #205. I know when there is a danger so great the victim dare not even make a sound; I picture her cowering against the wall, trembling fingers reaching toward the keypad.
CODE 2 - SILENT HOSTAGE. My infra-red motion sensors tell me when there is movement, my shatter senses tell me when a window has been broken, and my exquisitely made perceptions even diagnose themselves.
CODE 8 - LOW BATTERY. I am at the center of a great sensitive web, a delicate tracery of sensation that extends for miles and miles, while I am warm and comfortable in my own place, knowing exactly what I need to know, and exactly what to do about it. Not only do I provide security, I am myself secure, for the first time in my memory.
It is important to understand that the various fantasies of speculative fiction are not a useful guide to the actuality of probability travel. The translation from one probability universe to another does not take place as a "leap", nor is it accompanied by whirling lights, eerie sounds or other special effects.
The actuality is more like a crabwise sidle than a leap, and it may even take some considerable time to realize what has happened. As best I can interpret it, it is like planting a causal seed, and then being alert to the consequences. This new probability coagulates gradually around your creative impulse; it, too, has its material side, and matter is slow to change.
This process is difficult to describe. But then, Bach did not describe his music -- he simply provided the musician with enough instructions to duplicate the experience, and that is what I am doing here.
These are the stages:
First is the deliberate and intentional change of perceptions. In my case this began with setting myself against the time schedule of the mainstream.
At the second stage -- and this is the evidence the process has begun -- events appear to develop that are not of your own conscious intention, but which change your perceptions. In my case, this was when I lost my city job and moved to the Island.
It is worth noting that many of the events that seemed to be hardships or defeats were essential elements in shifting my perceptions from one probability world to another. The critical factor, of course, was my own reaction to them.
Gradually, after you have at least one foot in the alternate universe, the materialization of the new reality begins to quicken.
Be careful not to attempt to control too much detail in the alternative reality -- it won't work. I have found it easier to control very large parameters, such as world population, than tiny details like the suit of cards in a particular hand.
Once the process has been initiated, it continues of itself, with the same sense of inevitability as usual, and the same sense of a world "outside." But over a time you will become aware of the changes you have accomplished.
You may also become aware that the new probability is generated not from your superficial desires, but from your deepest needs.
This is important!
My superficial desire, had I stated it, would have been for a probability world where my own abilities were given the respect they deserved, and perhaps a more comfortable physical life.
In actuality what I needed, what I hungered for, was simply a world in which there were fewer people to interact with. It was not their contempt I resented after all, but only their existence.
As that necessity for recognition ebbed, I became more and more at ease with my life. I had time and opportunity to contemplate the world of ideas, the world that has always drawn me as a moth is drawn to the light.
Once the wheels of causality have been set in motion, they continue to work without your conscious attention. For example, in my case it eventually became clear that the principal difference between the Old Probability and the New was population density. I now found myself living in a very sparsely populated universe indeed. And over a period of time at Cascade Alarm Systems, the process of depopulation continued without my conscious willing.
At first I had a certain number of alarms every night -- many of them false, but nevertheless requiring me to telephone for confirmation, or dispatch one of the emergency services.
Slowly, so slowly I did not recognize it, the number of actual alarms began to diminish.
By now I was accustomed to, and content with, my nightly walks in serenity and silence, my nightly vigil over the electronic web that had replaced my previous senses. I realized how full of distractions and annoyances my previous life had been, and how grateful I was for my present condition of solitude and contemplation.
Almost the only sense I had of others around me came from the Intruder sensors at the doors of this building. These are infra-red motion sensors placed at the front and back door of the Cascade Building. Unlike the sharp beeping of the alarm signals coming from distant clients, the Intruder sensors respond with a rather comical little warble, like a slightly befuddled canary. It is actually quite pleasant and amusing.
It would seem that in the early hours of the morning there would be very few moving creatures around the building, but the warbling of the Intruder sensors happened quite frequently.
I first thought of a malfunction, since most times I was unable to locate anyone when I checked. Perhaps the Intruder alarm was being triggered by animals; cats, perhaps, or a stray raccoon -- but there was no more evidence of animals than of people.
Then I realized, with what I frankly admit was a touch of paranoia, that there was someone around the building, and they were watching me every time I went out to smoke. This alarmed me.
More often than not, when I went out on the front porch, the little hand-held radio would forward the inane warble of the Intruder signal from the office. Several times I ran back as quickly as I could, but found no one either at the office or the back door.
This came to happen so frequently it began to trouble me seriously. In my new universe I was literally free of all human entanglements -- except for this single person I had begun to think of as the Invisible Watcher.
Why was he watching me? What earthly purpose did he have, lurking about the darkness? I was grateful for the Intruder sensors, or I might never have known about the Watcher.
Then, yesterday morning, in the beginning of the pre-dawn light, I realized the Truth.
I went out on the porch for a smoke, moving very quietly, hoping to surprise this malign Watcher in case he were hiding in wait for me. Nothing.
Relieved, I set the hand radio on the railing and began to roll a cigarette.
The Intruder alarm sounded in the office.
I was enraged.
"Get away from here!" I shouted into the darkness. "I don't want you here! Leave me alone!"
I stormed to the edge of the porch, and the warbling of the alarm in the office sounded repeatedly through my small monitor.
Suddenly, my anger evaporated. I looked at the ceiling of the porch and the small infra-red sensor that hung suspended there.
I waved my arm and the alarm sounded in the office and my little radio returned it to me on the porch. I froze, and the alarm stopped. I waved my arm again. The alarm warbled.
I was detecting myself. I was the Watcher and the one Watched. I was the Intruder and the monitor, I was the Cause and the Effect, the Self and the Other, Subject and Object become One.
All duality was extinguished in that ineffable moment of realization. In this universe of probability that "I" created, only "I" exist.
I went back into the office and looked at the log-book of the three previous nights. All the entries, for all the accounts, are the same:
CODE 7 - AUTOMATIC TEST CODE 7 - AUTOMATIC TEST CODE 7 - AUTOMATIC TEST That is not going to change. They are all gone, now. There will be no more alarms. I know that now, with perfect certitude. "I" am here, and "I" am alone.
It is what, in my deepest soul, I have always wanted. I should be very happy. Only one small thought, flickering in the deepest recesses of my consciousness, troubles me at all. Perhaps it is the thought that accompanies all final triumphs, the thought of a god whose creation is complete.
What now?
end
The Solipsist
©1995 Don Berry