Multiverse: The Dot-Line Universe

It has been a trying time the last few weeks. My father sick and in the hospital required me to fly back to visit the family. For those inquiring, he is ill, and it is a matter of time before he passes.

To take my mind off the rigors and realities of life, I spent time with some very old friends, and the topic of multiverses and parallel realities came up. Wow! There is a great deal of misconceptions of multiverses and the implications of such things occurring. A confusion regarding my multiversal setting and the Dreamers who inhabit it, how can they “walk between worlds” as I call their ability to traverse time, space and various realities.

Multiverses are a great way to explain situations in stories that are complicated. Things like time loops, alternate realities and space travel without the realities of distance for story continuity. However, in hard science fiction the readers are fairly versed in science, so trying to tap dance around it is difficult.

With a grin, I explained to my friends that as a writer I accept that parallel universes exist; therefore, the concept of infinity is also true. Infinity is an abstract concept describing something without any limit. Quickly a cough and hand went up asking how can infinity exist?

Well infinity exists if there is always an in-between state between two possible outcomes. Say, you draw a line on a piece of paper; at the end of the line, you place a dot. There is a myriad of outcomes to where one dot maybe in relation to the other dot along that line. The space between the two original points is where the dots can be moved closer to one another and as long as there is a space between them there is always a third outcome.

Each parallel universe is a reflection of another but there are differences in that universe that caused it to split from the universe it is reflecting. For instances our lines and dots universes are all reflections of the one universe where the dots are at the terminus of the line. Each parallel universe is a dot and line; however, the location of the dots is different in each universe therefore making a universe, parallel to every other dot-line universe, save for the location of the dots. Thus creating an infinite number of possible dot-line universes.

This comes from Hugh Everett III, who in 1957 while at Princeton, came up with the idea that if two alternatives can interfere with one another, then these alternatives must exist simultaneously. If they exist simultaneously they cannot occupy the same space, hence they must be in a separate but parallel universe.

So each universe is wholly unique and separate from each other by some alternate placement of the dots.

As I explained this to my friends, several noted that they had bought e-books that held similar concepts but were all over the place with them and in no way made sense. With a begin smile, I told them to buy my books, and that there are many sci-fi e-books out there with similar concepts but if the writer doesn’t put time in trying to understand them, even at a basic level, their science fiction often lacks focus. 

The best parallel universes are different but not overly, so, to make them radically different  doesn’t make sense. Star Trek used the parallel universe concept with opposite personality differences in the crews. The crew everyone loved and the other a dastardly pirate crew.  It was great the familiarity of the setting and characters was the base dot-line universe and the personality dots had been moved slightly to give us the pirate personalities.

Infinite parallel universes are great and offer so many avenues of exploration to the writer, but to use them with any competence a working knowledge of the concepts is a must.  Now where did my dot go?