Writing DNA was easy. They had mapped everything. Sure, there was still an element of randomness. They could write the plan, but it didn’t mean the cells and aminos would always cooperate. Mutations still occurred. Genetic predispositions were all but eliminated, though. Cancer still happened because, well, cells were still cells. They went rogue sometimes. But want blue eyes? No problem. Curly hair? No problem. Genetic markers for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — gone.
This was all surface-level stuff. Dr. Wendy Hopelle was looking deeper. Her work was not limited to biology. Biology couldn’t help her. She stayed in her basement, under the three-story home in the hills of Northern Virginia. The money flowed in from her tech company, Psiomax Inc, having made a better battery, eye implants that enhance human capabilities and eliminate degradation, and targeted bone-repairing nanobots. Biology was the simple part.
In her basement laboratory, she’d toiled for months seeking to break the next code — the quantum code. She’d been close. It was far more data than any DNA strand, for every atom in the strand would have its own underlying cipher. She’d seen it. Particle spin layered on top of even smaller base units, the quanta. The grand unifying quanta of it all.
Each thing has a base level quanta below its spinning particles. As time and spin occur in unison, the quanta reveal themselves probabilistically to the world. What this meant was an exploded Murphy’s law. Poor Ed Murphy, the man who is so frequently called upon whenever something goes wrong. His oft-quoted idiom states, “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”
Dr. Hopelle — Wendy saw it differently. It was why she had to break the code. In her infinite optimism or hopelessness–for if one examines close enough one might find there is no difference–she chose to quote Murphy in a different way. She preferred to say, “Whatever can happen will happen.”
The quanta confirmed this. Looking at an object at a subatomic, sub-particle level revealed an interweaving of quanta, creating patterns for the world to see as we perceived it. It also revealed that if one looked closely enough, one could see what would have been revealed if things had gone a different way.
Wendy saw that everything was happening all at once. She only observed, as everyone did, what was probabilistically true given all the forces acted upon by the corresponding reality weave. Looking closely enough, there were moments where the alternate truth showed through though, at the crux point of action. This was affected by everything. Imperceivable everything. The mouse sneezing in the other room, a butterfly landing on one leaf versus another, the oxidation in the nearby pipes — everything.
A daunting task. How could one map something or find meaning in a thing without a place to start, a north star? DNA has its markers and so must the underlying code of everything. In time it occurred to her to use an object unchanging throughout the ages. Her engagement ring held a small diamond that was uncut. It was natural. Jonathan, ever a romantic, found this to be more unique than a standard diamond. It was not conventionally pretty, but it was unique. And despite its movement in location, it was 99.9̅9% unchanged.
And then she examined. Looking at the configuration. Particles spin over time, denoting temporal shifts, shapes denoting physical location, temperature, gravitational effects, dark matter interactions, electrostatic effects, magnetic fluctuations. Each marker slowly tested until a string address came into being. Wendy kept this for herself. Testing. Always testing until she was as sure as a coder in a video game about what the total output of the perceived reality of an object should be. And while she did not understand all the code, she could see the beginning and end of it for the current temporal plane and in effect, have a unique identifier for objects.
Then she began interacting. Introducing subatomic stimuli, targeted by the most advanced tech her company had created. She began to shift the code at her console. And slowly, over the months, peer into small windows for her diamond of what could have been.
At first, the views were unimpressive, as the diamond, in any reality, would be mostly unchanged, incapable of being changed given its mostly static circumstances. But slowly, the most probabilistic realities held in her console, allowing her to see what if she had placed it facing in the exact opposite direction at the beginning of her experiment, which was until then and given the shape of the uncut shard, a nearly 50% probable difference. Small flashes of what ifs showed in the console, but mostly, when locked in, a static representation of the diamond flipped over.
But it held. And while the code was not completely sorted, Wendy found the markers that allowed her to see highly probable realities through her limited window. She could see what could have happened if obvious differences had occurred.
She repeated the experiment with a rock. Then with other shaped solid objects. After months she moved on to fruit. She would take an apple, examine it. Then flip a coin to determine whether she would take a bite. The result would be a bitten or not bitten apple in the real world and sometimes a window into the opposite through her console. She took on more complex objects and refined her markers.
In time, the code was mapped, not for everything, but universal markers for certain identifiers and forces were clear. Wendy found that the common markers could hold alternate possibilities for longer periods of time and their apparent environments. An apple couldn’t move itself, but a person or a force could.
The mobile viewer took this information on the go with Wendy. She put the headset on and looked through the opaque facemask. After locking in the code, she could see the alternate path in front of her. She did the experiment with the apple again, but now she saw a shade of her hand as well, grabbing the apple and moving it — not just the end result. There was only one thing to do now.
Jonathan never took off his watch. It was a family heirloom. A windup watch. He would give it a twist, sync with his phone and be on his way. Wendy took it and examined it. The crystal in the watch face was original. It was not dissimilar to the initial experiment with her diamond. Wendy found a lingering static strand of spatial movement not represented in the current reality of the watch. She tweaked the code, looked through the viewer. No change.
She stayed at this for weeks. If she could not do this, then it was all pointless. Wendy had come this far, though. She would not be beaten. She noticed as time went on that a particular strand became less prevalent — Wendy reviewed the data and locked in on it. What if she simulated the spin to see what the configuration would have been on that day so long ago before this all started?
The strand of reality she viewed grew wider and wider until it reached a crux point, a 60-40% crux point where what happened happened but the 40% was still strong. Jonathan and she had, that particular morning, argued about how much time he was spending at work. He’d forgotten his office keys as a result. Ten minutes later he came back through the door to collect them. He said he was sorry. So did she. They kissed. He grabbed the keys, said I love you and went on his way, happier but flustered at being late. He didn’t slow down at the track. The train sent the car flying off the road. The funeral was a week later. She kept his watch. One minute of difference, forward or backward, could have changed it.
Wendy loaded in the probabilistic identifier for the moments where the argument occurred. With bated breath, she placed the viewer over her head at two in the morning on Saturday and made her way up the stairs of her home. She went into her bedroom and, in the soft glow of a night light, saw a lump in her bed that had been gone for three years now.
She sat on the bed and reached into the shade, unable to touch it. The tears of victory and defeat rolled down Wendy’s cheeks.
The next morning she observed the shade move, reach over and kiss her alternate self, now in the range of perception. She could not hear, but saw them converse. He rose, and laid his watch down on the dresser. For a moment she lost him as he went to the bathroom, out of range of the watch. But soon he was back, placing the watch on his wrist and leaving the room. He went down the hall to the study and stood over the desk. Only, it was not a desk in this reality. He reached into the furniture and pulled out a small person, a baby. He smiled and rocked the child.
Wendy watched as the husband she missed cared for the child she never had, with the shadow of who she could have been. She could see it but not touch — a hazy silent dream. She followed her husband around the house and watched her family live a quiet day at home. It’s what they would have done.
Sunday evening, she watched Jonathan get back into bed and toss and turn. Eventually, he fell asleep, and after enough time watching the rising and falling of his chest, Wendy removed the mobile viewer from her face.
Dr. Hopelle went downstairs, back to her basement. She took the hard drive from the console, data and backups, and deleted all of it.