Recommended by Ricochet Members Created with Sketch. Quantum Blip

Andrew Miller
By Andrew Miller
Andrew Miller Member
Website: https://www.awlmiller.com/.
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17 COMMENTS
 

‘What happened here?!’ He almost had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Did someone throw the switch on the next parallel universe or something?’

‘It’s fading.’ A hand grasped his. It was a nice hand. ‘It was worth a try,’ she said. Something sparkled around her eyes. ‘If we get separated again – remember me.’

‘I wouldn’t forget you.’

She looked at him as though her heart would break. ‘Believe me, it can happen. After the last time— Duck!’

‘What – where?’

‘No, duck, you moron!’ The nice hand grabbed his collar and pulled him down as quite a large tree was uprooted and flew past the ditch they were sheltering in.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Duck …’

The lights on the buildings opposite flickered, as lightning crisscrossed the sky. She shouted over the wind and the storm, ‘We’ve skipped through a thousand parallel universes, lived a thousand lives, and I keep hoping – that this one will be the right one, the one where it all works out right. I hate quantum blips,’ she added, as the rain-soaked them through – and pulled him into a hug as if she was afraid the wind would carry them both off. Which, to be fair, was looking like a real possibility.

He felt like there was a lump in his throat. It was going to be a long lifetime between now and whenever they next met, in whatever parallel universe, in whatever parallel lifetime.

She pulled back slightly and looked at him, wet hair flying in the breeze, as if something had just occurred to her – like it had been bugging her for a while and she wasn’t going to get another chance to say it where she remembered. ‘It just about figures,’ she called near to his ear, ‘you’d be doing something stupid out here, and we’re stuck in the middle of the biggest storm of the century!’ She paused to think about it, chewing her lip on one side in that way he remembered from another lifetime. ‘That kind of thing happens a lot!’

‘I’ll try and remember that next time!’ he called back, his voice almost lost in the storm.

She started going fuzzy and concentrated herself back into existence. ‘In some of the worlds we end up in, we’ve even met early on. The ones where I don’t find you, after they end it’s like – it’s like there’s a hole in my world.’

He stammered as he faded in and out, ‘In the universes where you aren’t there, there is no world. There’s only a black hole. I remember the other lifetimes, sometimes. In dreams.’

She tried to blink back the blurriness that was coming over her vision. And then her glasses disappeared with a pop! into the realms of quantum instability. Or had she just made that last part up? She was going to have to write a paper about this when she got back to – oh, that was right, wasn’t it? She eyed the nearing, now-blurring funnel of air on the horizon. Maybe they’d fade before it got to them. ‘We found each other in the end in this one, though,’ she said, her voice going all crackly.

‘Whatever happens next time, I—’

He faded – disappeared in a sparkle of hazy lines. His eyes remained looking into hers in outlines of electrostatic blue for a moment, like the Cheshire Cat had heard of weird physics and wanted to give it a try. The teardrop that fell from them burst in the air as her other hand reached out to catch it.

Even as she disintegrated into a thousand motes of light, she found herself murmuring what was by now an old refrain: ‘Remember me …’

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  1. Percival Thatcher
    Percival Joined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Nice mood-setting there.

    • #1
    • July 23, 2020, at 3:45 PM PDT
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    • 2 likes
  2. Percival Thatcher
    Percival Joined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    I have a friend. His nickname once upon a time was Duck due to his unique gait. Once when we were attending a jazz festival outside of Chicago, the group got separated. As we wandered about, I spotted Duck about half a block ahead of us.

    So I yelled “Hey, Duck!”

    He turned around. Everybody walking in his general vicinity went into a crouch first.

    It’s an inherently dangerous nickname to have.

    • #2
    • July 23, 2020, at 3:50 PM PDT
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  3. Samuel Block Support
    Samuel Block

    Really good!

    • #3
    • July 23, 2020, at 4:12 PM PDT
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    • 1 like
  4. Andrew Miller Member
    Andrew Miller
    Post author

    Percival (View Comment):

    Nice mood-setting there.

    Hopefully it both makes sense and is still enjoyable. Goodness knows why my brain seems to be set on vignette at the moment. 

    • #4
    • July 23, 2020, at 4:27 PM PDT
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  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant

    Andrew Miller (View Comment):
    Goodness knows why my brain seems to be set on vignette at the moment. 

    They’re nifty. Maybe some day, they’ll get stitched together into a whole sail and your ship will sail free.

    • #5
    • July 23, 2020, at 5:53 PM PDT
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  6. Percival Thatcher
    Percival Joined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Andrew Miller (View Comment):
    Goodness knows why my brain seems to be set on vignette at the moment.

    They’re nifty. Maybe some day, they’ll get stitched together into a whole sail and your ship will sail free.

    Yep. Wind up the characters and watch them go.

    • #6
    • July 23, 2020, at 6:16 PM PDT
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  7. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Andrew Miller (View Comment):
    Goodness knows why my brain seems to be set on vignette at the moment.

    They’re nifty. Maybe some day, they’ll get stitched together into a whole sail and your ship will sail free.

    This is the one that provides the framework for that. You’ve got a universe for volcano goddesses, one for serpent women, mermaids stretching across a multiverse.

    Andrew, I hope I get to see that.

    • #7
    • July 23, 2020, at 8:59 PM PDT
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  8. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental

    Then, they make a movie and you get Terry Gilliam to direct, because it’s gonna be weird with a beard.

    • #8
    • July 23, 2020, at 9:48 PM PDT
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    • 4 likes
  9. Arahant Member
    Arahant

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Then, they make a movie and you get Terry Gilliam to direct, because it’s gonna be weird with a beard.

    Better do it soon. He’s approaching eighty.

    • #9
    • July 23, 2020, at 11:04 PM PDT
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    • 4 likes
  10. She Reagan
    She Joined in the first year of Ricochet Ricochet Charter Member

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Then, they make a movie and you get Terry Gilliam to direct, because it’s gonna be weird with a beard.

    Better do it soon. He’s approaching eighty.

    Only in this lifetime.

    • #10
    • July 23, 2020, at 11:53 PM PDT
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    • 5 likes
  11. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator

    Percival (View Comment):

    I have a friend. His nickname once upon a time was Duck due to his unique gait. Once when we were attending a jazz festival outside of Chicago, the group got separated. As we wandered about, I spotted Duck about half a block ahead of us.

    So I yelled “Hey, Duck!”

    He turned around. Everybody walking in his general vicinity went into a crouch first.

    It’s an inherently dangerous nickname to have.

    There are parts of Chicago where dropping to the ground is a good habit to develop.

    • #11
    • July 24, 2020, at 5:56 AM PDT
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    • 3 likes
  12. HankRhody Freelance Philosopher Contributor
    HankRhody Freelance Philosopher

    As usual, an emotion that can be best expressed through the medium of Drift Racing

    • #12
    • July 24, 2020, at 6:33 AM PDT
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    • 2 likes
  13. Andrew Miller Member
    Andrew Miller
    Post author

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    Really good!

    Thank you, that’s encouraging to hear. This one just sort of wrote itself a few weeks back and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Someone reminded me recently that I should keep putting up what I write, and this one seemed to have something (although I’m not quite sure what). If people enjoy it, that’s the main thing. Beats having it mouldering in a file and never seeing the light of day. 

    • #13
    • July 24, 2020, at 3:06 PM PDT
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  14. Andrew Miller Member
    Andrew Miller
    Post author

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Andrew Miller (View Comment):
    Goodness knows why my brain seems to be set on vignette at the moment.

    They’re nifty. Maybe some day, they’ll get stitched together into a whole sail and your ship will sail free.

    Can but hope. 

    • #14
    • July 24, 2020, at 3:23 PM PDT
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    • 3 likes
  15. Andrew Miller Member
    Andrew Miller
    Post author

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    Andrew Miller (View Comment):
    Goodness knows why my brain seems to be set on vignette at the moment.

    They’re nifty. Maybe some day, they’ll get stitched together into a whole sail and your ship will sail free.

    This is the one that provides the framework for that. […]

    Andrew, I hope I get to see that.

    I hope so too. (Although I’m not sure about what lines up where or how, exactly.)

    • #15
    • July 24, 2020, at 5:23 PM PDT
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    • This comment has been edited.
  16. Architectus Coolidge
    Architectus

    Love it! Can’t wait to read “the whole thing” after this wonderful teaser… ;-)

    • #16
    • July 25, 2020, at 7:45 AM PDT
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    • 1 like
  17. Andrew Miller Member
    Andrew Miller
    Post author

    Architectus (View Comment):

    Love it! Can’t wait to read “the whole thing” after this wonderful teaser… ;-)

    Thank you! That’s always encouraging to hear. Whole thing, eh? This is what I get for dabbling in quantum! 

    • #17
    • July 25, 2020, at 8:01 AM PDT
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    • 3 likes