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December 16, 2001

Choices

[inspired by Jeannette Winterson - but not in the lesbianism sense]
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I think I know how to do this now.

It started with a random conversation in the pub last night. I was waiting to be served; the woman next to me, sitting at the stool, was lighting her cigarette. She inhaled deeply, then frowned at it; only a fraction of it was glowing. She looked at me ruefully and said, You’d think I’d have figured how to do that by now.’ I laughed and replied, ‘You too, hey?’ Then we both stopped. We stared at each other, shock growing into recognition. But not even that - mutual recognition. I scrutinised her further, as she was doing me, to see how much more of her life I could read from her face, her eyes, how she was dressed, even how she was holding her cigarette. If I knew then what I did now, I’d have been burning to ask, ‘Which was it? Which choice was it that you made and I didn’t?’

I’ve always assumed this sort of thing belongs to separate universes - that there are multitudes out there peopled with replicas of ourselves that made different choices from us, at any given time, and are leading lives varying from our own to different degrees. But I suppose it’s not unreasonable to assume that this is happening in the here and now: that one day you choose to turn left, and an aspect of yourself materialises and turns right. Perhaps the reason for that separation isn’t immediate, but it requires that subconsious decision to deviate that sets a new chain of possibilities into motion. It doesn’t have to be profound: being attacked, injured, meeting the love of your life; perhaps the image of light against a wall, an instant of music from a busker, a particular smell, a snatch of conversation - something that sets your imagination into motion and creates a new, small resolve within yourself. Or being offered a job, going out when you wanted to stay in, returning that phone call…small random events, as I call them. But for each decision, there is a new ghost out there who chose differently, who is leading the life you might have led had you known.
I think I know how to recognise them now. The question, though, is how aware of me are they? Can they identify me as I can them? How receptive would they be to my questioning them? Or even approaching them? I suppose they would see it as invalidating their existence; that their only reason for being is a choice I decided against. That they are simply there to explore what might have been. And how real are they even? Though the ones I have seen so far seem completely real, it seems farfetched to accept that there are hundreds, if not thousands of myselves out there.

The woman and I were both too baffled to start a conversation; a man returned to his seat next to her, and she turned his attention to him. But not before giving me a long puzzled stare, as though similarly full of questions and confusions.

I returned to my seat and gave Nick a baffled look.

‘What is it, don’t tell me you’ve seen a ghost?’

‘I don’t know. Something really weird just happened, and I don’t know what it was.’

‘X-Files kinda weird?’ He sounded excited.

I shook my head, knowing I was flattening his energy. I tried to act animated for the rest of the evening, and appear to be enjoying myself, but my mind was whirring frantically, trying to understand what had happened. Nick occasionally gave me a concerned look, but I’d brush them away, not wanting to discuss my ideas further with him.

I lost myself in thought as soon as I sat down on the tube. What was it that I had noticed? And why me, why now? What was the message behind this evening’s encounter? What was it about my life that I had been shown this way to explore all the other paths I could have taken? Was it to reinforce that I was doing the right thing – or was I somehow unfulfilled and frustrating, needing this guidance to redirect me?

Or was I simply being too vain – that it was something that had simply happened. Nothing more profound or complex than that. For some reason, I found that option more chilling – perhaps the randomness of it, the false illusion of meaning.

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