Flash Fiction: Of All Possible Worlds

[Note: this story was written for the New Scientist 2010 competition Forgotten Futures, which asked entrants to write a very short story -- 350 words or fewer -- about how things might have worked out if some scientific event or discovery had turned out differently. My entry wasn't shortlisted, so I'm sharing it here.]

Hugh Everett III eased himself into the oversized leather chair, taking care not to spill his cognac. Outside, he could hear the laughter of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, still loudly celebrating the 80^th birthday of the Grand Old Man of Physics, as he had become known. The door opened quietly and his son Mark slipped inside, cradling the glass display case that held Hugh’s Nobel Prize medal. Mark reverently returned the medal, the centerpiece of the party, to its accustomed place on the bookcase.

Hugh gestured to the chair next to him where another glass of cognac waited, and Mark settled in next to his worlds-famous father.

“It’s ironic,” said Hugh, toasting the medal with his glass. “The press called me ‘the new Einstein’, and just like him, they gave me the Prize for my second-best work.” Few people outside the physics community realized that Everett’s Prize had been awarded for his audacious doctoral thesis that introduced the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, not his later quantum gravity insights that had led to the exploitation of Dark Energy, the basis of the peace and prosperity enjoyed by everybody on Earth, not to mention it’s colonies on Mars and Ganymede.

“I’ll tell you what else is ironic,” replied Mark with a mischievous smile. “If everything possible happens in some universe, then somewhere out there is a world where everything went as wrong as it possibly could. Imagine if nobody had paid attention to your thesis and you had abandoned physics. In that world you became bitter and disillusioned, turned to cigarettes and drink, and died long before your time, leaving a world still suffocating and sweltering in its own pollution.”

Hugh laughed warmly. “Mark, that story gets worse every time you tell it. Many Worlds requires everything possible to happen, but it doesn’t allow for the impossible.” He took another sip of cognac and pushed away the thought of a life and a world gone to ruin. What ever might be might be, he mused to himself, but whatever must be must be.

The worst romantic comedy in recent movie history

Somebody recently referred to "Something's gotta give" in my hearing as "charming". Hence this rant...

The essence of any rom-com is an ill-matched couple, kept apart by some apparently insurmountable barrier, destined to somehow be together by the end of the movie. "Sleepless in Seattle": they live on opposite coasts. "You've got mail": opposing political beliefs. etc. Age, culture, distance, class, political beliefs, disapproving families: something has to keep the couple apart for ninety minutes before we can all go home happy.

"Something's gotta give" offers us the unique sight of a romantic comedy about a couple who are kept apart by... absolutely nothing.

Harry and Erica are two independent, financially stable people of similar age, both well-established in life and successful in their careers. Both are single and unencumbered. Circumstances force them to live in the same house. Erica has no obligations as her adult daughter is self-sufficient. Everybody approves of their relationship, including Erica's daughter (who might have been expected to object since she had previously dated Harry) and Erica's ex-husband, with whom she has such a comfortable relationship that he drops by for coffee. Even Harry's rival in love, Julian, simply smiles and gracefully steps aside when the moment comes, accepting that Harry and Erica should be together. There's not a shred of conflict or difficulty or incompatibility in this entire setup.

The only reason they're not a couple after the first five minutes? "He only dates younger women", the other characters repeatedly tell us, although this essential fact is something that the movie completely fails to show. We don't even get to see all of these alleged younger girlfriends until almost the end of the movie, and none of them is dignified with a name, let alone a personality, a story, or a motivation for dating him. We have to take the word of the other characters, sitting around a dinner table, that he is a desirable, eligible, notorious bachelor who was featured as such on the cover of a New York magazine. (I believe that "featured on a magazine cover" is what movies go for to illustrate that somebody or something is well-known when they can't afford the obligatory scene of Jay Leno telling jokes about their movie's subject: "How about that Harry Sanborn? His latest girlfriend is so young, he has to leave her outside when he goes into a bar!". Or perhaps there are some things that even Jay Leno won't do?) Oh, and there's also some business about her being too busy/vulnerable for a relationship, although again there's no reason offered for why.

And since the movie provides no coherent explanation for why Harry collects notches in his headboard, we also get no explanation for what resistance he is trying to overcome nor why he chooses to change. At the start of the movie, he doesn't date women his own age; at the end of the movie, he does.

Even the title of the movie falls flat. "Something's gotta give" implies that both of them have deeply-held positions that are incompatible and that one of them will have to "give". Harry could accept that he should date women closer to his own age; or Erica could... I don't know, become a younger woman?

Once Erica and Harry have met, the rest of the movie is just marking time until it delivers its unearned and emotionally flat payoff and pairs them off. There's not a single moment in the entire film that rings true, emotionally or dramatically.