\ Many-Worlds, Pt. 2 \

“Marsia, get back here.”

The scavenger didn’t perk up hearing her name in the sandstorm. She kept walking across the dunes like she’d been taught.

“Marsia!”

The inflection in Dr. White’s voice reminded her for a split second of Arufa’s. She stopped moving and turned around, a silhouette in the sunset.

“What? What’s left to say?”

White huffed, sliding through the sands with each step. “The desert isn’t safe at night. We can stay in the laboratory until sunrise.”

“Sure it is. And who is ‘we’?”

“You… killed my sister,” White said. “You owe me something, at least.”

“I owe you nothing.”

A loud boom rumbled the sand. In the distance, lit by the sun’s last light, the laboratory’s upper floors collapsed and fell into a widespread ruin.

“I saved you from that,” the scientist said.

Marsia’s heated reply: “You brought it here!”

“For a good reason…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! You’re lying to yourself, woman!” Marsia spat, fully turning around. Her wires pulsed with rage. “The whole project was a cover-up! You killed Skyler over it! Hell, you killed your own assistant over it! There’s nothing in the goddamn world that’s so good you have to keep it that secret!”

Dr. White was silent, the only sound the musical hum of the wind. Marsia heaved, her vision blurring with contempt.

“And you have the nerve to say I killed your sister! You have the nerve to say I owe you something! Who the fuck do you think you are?! Every single terrible thing that’s happened has been your fault!

“And you think you can escape the blame because of your ‘New Dawn’ bullshit? Bloody righteous. I’ll tell you what, I’d think you should owe me everything. And that’s not me being selfish, like the person you so clearly want me to be. This is justified! I’m in the right!”

She jutted a thumb at her chest, where a metal plate stuck out, wrapping around her shoulders and back. The subject was fuming.

“...What do you want from me?”

“I want you to conjure up some science and bring them all back from the dead, that’s what! And fix all this! Time travel, quantum crap, what have you—I just want them back and safe!”

“You can’t bring someone back from the grave, Marsia,” White muttered. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Then why would you ever kill someone, you psycho?! Did you know they have families? Sisters like you, who just want their siblings back? We’ll never know how many people you killed moving the lab over the parallel, or how many families you tore apart. Your grief shouldn’t have to be anyone else’s.”

The sun dipped just below the horizon, the colors of the sky oversaturated and vivid. Marsia looked down on White, below her on the dune, as they both braced themselves against the oncoming cold.

White grimaced. “What’s done is done. I did what I thought was right.”

“Think you were right all you want. You murdered and lied your way into the position you’re in right now. I’ll give you a little hint, for next time: doing the right thing scarcely involves homicide.”

“Then I suppose I owe you nothing? Since you said all you wanted was your friends back.”

“No. Instead, you’re going to tell me exactly what this ‘New Dawn Experiment’ was, and why you were so afraid of anyone knowing of it.”

Another moment of fragile silence. The laboratory’s groaning tremors quaked the ground as it sank further and further. Everything their scientists had worked for, completely destroyed by the corrupt ideals of a single woman.

And then, a giggle. Faint, under her breath, Dr. White laughed. Marsia’s brow twitched.

“I’m not telling you anything about that.”

“You’d better!”

“I have a reason,” she said. “Lots of scientists believe the Many-Worlds Interpretation is due only to our entire multiverse existing as a single quantum engine. In other words, we’re all simulated.”

“That means nothing!”

“Let me finish. You and I exist in as many ways as there are quantum computers running our code—as many as there are brains interpreting our existence. Which constitutes the idea of a possible observer, to whom we owe our conversation now, and the entire world we find ourselves within.”

Marsia stomped forward through the sand and grabbed White by her collar. “You can’t tell me because you’re a bloody schizophrenic?”

“I’ve resolved never to tell anyone until it’s complete. Which is highly unlikely, now,” she said, nodding in the direction of the abandoned laboratory. “But I can tell you something else which might raise your spirits, if you’ll let go of me.”

Marsia dropped her collar and backed up, maintaining the position of superiority. “What?”

“Quantum immortality. Have you heard of it?”

“No.”

“It’s an idea, a consequence of the Many-Worlds Interpretation. For any consciousness—say your own—you will follow the branch of parallels which prolongs your lifespan the most.”

Marsia squinted. “You’re a terrible person and you’re terrible at raising my spirits.”

“Which means, Arufa’s consciousness is still just fine somewhere in the multiverse. Because, like all things, a true consciousness cannot simply cease to exist. It only branches like a fractal along the parallels, growing forever as infinite choices are made.

“We’re only here because this parallel is our ideal reality. In another scenario, another universe, we may have died—and so our consciousnesses did not choose that path. It just so happened that some loss was inevitable.”

White crossed her arms. Her breath began to fog—the desert became notoriously cold at night. Marsia noticed her own breath didn’t do the same.

“Dr. White, you’re insane.”

“I assume that means you won’t be staking out the ruins for the night?”

“No. I know these sands. I know this sky. I know my way home,” Marsia said. She looked up to the stars, to the half-moon and to the Milky Way.

“Suit yourself. I think I’ll set up a nice little camp,” White said dismissively, turning around. “I’ll make sure to set it right next to Arufa’s rotten corpse, just in case you ever come by.”

“Wait. Before you go,” Marsia called.

White spun on her heel and rolled her lightning eyes. “Oh dear. I’m really not sure how much of this cold I can take, but since you asked so politely…”

“Enough with the attitude. I just want to know the truth. My mind won’t lay it to rest, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep at night if I don’t find out.”

“Sure. Ask away.”

“I read your diary. I saw the person you were before. I can see who you are now. How… did everything go so wrong?”

She stared into the tan sea below. “Arufa was my everything.”

“So that’s who it was.”

“She was my sister, two years older than me. She inspired me and made me the best version of myself. No matter how trivial, she would go out of her way to help me. She was the best sister anyone could ever ask for.

“And then she went and committed a terrorist attack. Something was wrong with her. She’d gone mad for no reason, so they executed her; I asked for the body, and, well, I was interning here then, so I hid it in our cryostorage. I hoped maybe one day we’d have the technology to bring her back and figure out why.

“The truth is, this Many-Worlds Project was just a futile attempt to get her back. I wanted to see her again so bad, I… stole another version of her from her world. But that’s all she was—another version. Not the same Aru I’d known since I was a kid. So I started getting mad. Not just at her, but at humanity, at existence.

“I prayed to every god and developed every scientific field to bring her back. And when none of it worked, not even a little, I decided I’d had enough. I closed myself off. I became ruthless, the way you were before. Not even Ghiles knew who I was anymore. And that was how it happened.”

Marsia turned to see the very last glimmer of dusk fade from the horizon. A sunset—the symbol of an ending.

“I hope you know none of that justifies what you’ve done here.”

“That’s the best part. I couldn’t care less, Marsia.”

White shuffled away through the sands, back to the crash site. Marsia stood still, her wires illuminating the dune below a vibrant sunset glow. Her reddish-grey hair blew back in the wind, looking out on the shadows of the night.

If people can change for the worse, they must be able to change for the better. That was what Marsia decided on then, overlooking the desert. She pictured her many conversations with Arufa and knew that, beyond the grave, she owed it to her to become a better person.

So, she took the first step, and then another, and then another, until she, too, disappeared over the horizon.

Act II: Parallel in Two

Dextro Fine.