Parallelities

by Alan Dean Foster

  The voice of the announcer was soothing and oddly familiar. It puzzled him that he was unable to immediately identify it, since he thought he knew most of the news stations’ anchors by name. Part of his job was knowing the competition, even if it happened to reside in a different medium. You never knew, he reflected, when a major radio or television station might need a writer/reporter with his particular abilities. It was not a call he was waiting for, but he knew he would be ready if it came.

  The voice droned on, reciting the usual litany of early-morning disasters that plagued motorists around the metropolis. As soon as the traffic report was completed, another reader took over for his predecessor. Max frowned slightly as he listened. It sounded as if the same man was doing both reports. That was uncommon, but not unheard of. Or maybe there was something wrong with his audio system.

  Not that it mattered. He turned up Wilshire, regretfully leaving the ocean behind for the balance of another day, and cruised east toward Lincoln. People were out walking, enjoying the weather, intent on errands or relaxation or work. The prominent billboard on the north side of Wilshire one block past Lincoln caught his eye, as it had been doing on a predictable basis the past week. Currently it was advertising a certain brand of Finnish vodka. He looked forward to the billboard, because it featured a full-length portrait of an up-and-coming young European actress clad in a white fur bikini that displayed her as mostly up-and-coming. The vodka, whose brand name he could never remember, was incidental to the presentation.

  His jaw dropped, his eyes bulged, he nearly rear-ended the car in front of him, and it was all he could do to keep from bursting out in uncontrollable sobs. Because the actress had—suitably made up, younger, and cinematically modified—a familiar face.

  His face.

  He shut his eyes and opened them again. The curvaceous figure, the prominent, thrusting bottle of faux-frosted spirits, the blatantly enticing logo—nothing had changed from his first sight of the sign. The starlet still had his face, though most definitely not his shape.

  Having run out of patience, the driver of the car behind him leaned heavily on his horn. Stunned, Max fumbled with his right foot for the accelerator, pushed down too hard when he finally found it, and shot forward, almost ramming the car in front of him for the second time in less than a minute. Fighting to get ahold of himself, he pulled over into the right-hand lane to let those behind him pass. He kept moving, but as slowly as possible.

  Bafflement changed to disbelief, then to fear, and finally to agonized resignation as he drove on. As he had discovered on too many previous occasions, there was no getting around the reality of unreality. He was too aware of it when it happened to disown it.

  In spite of a most relaxing, deceivingly ordinary morning, he was still not home, not back in his original world, but in yet another para. The Boles Field continued to work its mischief on reality, its effects as powerful as ever. Not that this world wasn’t his. It most decidedly was, in a way he could never have imagined.

  Actually, when you thought about it, he ruminated tiredly, there was nothing here for him to fear. Beyond the obvious fact that he was still slip-sliding between parallel worlds, he ought to be reasonably safe in this one. There were no Elder Gods or dinosaurs tromping about, no ghosts within view, no evidence of Armageddon or rampant diseases. He really should feel right at home.

  Because not only the starlet on the billboard, but everyone on the streets, and in the cars, and in what buildings and businesses he could see into, looked exactly like Maxwell Parker.

  Staying in the right-hand lane, he continued to drive up Wilshire as slowly as possible without provoking an incident. It was not only the adults who looked like him, the men and the women. The kids looked like him as well, as did the old people. Scrutinizing the streets, he saw himself as an old man with a beard, as a toddler with a rattle, as a nattily dressed street musician, and as a tired pushcart vendor huckstering twenty, count-’em twenty, varieties of hot bagels.

  Where a narrow alley met the sidewalk he was a rheumy-eyed bum loosely clutching a nearly empty bottle of cheap wine. In the copy shop against which the bum lay he was the entire busy staff of young people bustling about serving assorted impatient versions of himself. Max Parker drove a city bus; he was also all of its passengers. Max Parker in long hair constituted the entire population of a beauty salon. Max Parker drove Hondas and Fords, low-rider Chevys and Harleys, messenger bikes and scooters. One especially prosperous and hefty Max Parker even went cruising majestically past in a Mercedes 800SL.

  At every intersection there were pedestrian Max Parkers waiting for the light to change, and exhibitionist Max Parkers standing in the front windows of small restaurants tossing pizza, and more Max Parkers carrying bags full of groceries or pushing carts or dragging protesting infants in and out of Ralph’s. A matronly Max majestically bestrode a landscaped section of sidewalk, led eastward by a duet of dachshunds. Smiling, grinning, imploring Max Parkers beamed down from every billboard, every window ad, every soot-stained photo decorating the side of a bus.

  At last his dreams of great success had been realized, Max reflected numbly, and in a way he could not have imagined. Truly, Max Parker was everywhere and known to everyone. Not only did he dominate the world, he was the world. He knew this for a fact, because included among the matrons and pizza tossers and bus drivers and schoolchildren and shoppers and nameless pedestrians he had passed were suitable examples of Korean Max Parkers, Vietnamese Max Parkers, black Max Parkers, Hispanic and Native American and Jewish Max Parkers. It was Max Parker omnipotent, Max Parker omnipresent, Max Parker omni. He had conquered the world by becoming it.

  So it was hardly surprising that no one gave him a second glance when he pulled into the garage beneath the Investigator building and climbed slowly out of his car. Why should they? The garage attendant was a young Pakistani Max Parker and the two women who passed him as they headed toward the street were younger female versions of himself.

  They might all have his face, but surely they had different names, he thought as he slowly wended his way toward the elevator. Otherwise chaos would reign alongside uniformity.

  Thankfully, he was alone in the elevator, and was therefore for the duration of the ride spared the necessity of conversing amiably with himself.

  But once he was back out on his familiar floor, every face he encountered was his own. Bodies differed in size, shape, and sex, as did voices, but male or female there was no mistaking the endless parade of Max Parker pusses that stared blankly past him, smiled in greeting, or marched on by, submerged in private Parkerish reveries of their own.

  His cubicle appeared undisturbed, exactly as he had left it—in another para, he reminded himself. For several long moments he did nothing but stare silently at the achingly familiar computer station, the cut-out cartoons, the pictures pinned to the interior of the motile wall partitions, and the rest of the debris of his working life. Then he went for a walk.

  Passing by a number of the other cubicles and workstations brought him face-to-face with individuals whose bodies and voices he recognized, but whose faces he knew all too well. As for their inner selves, their distinctive personalities, the hidden whatevers that defined them as individuals, except for minor variations, all that was gone, subsumed in the overwhelming Parkerness of the population. Oh, there were differences, but they were the differences that arose from a dilution of a Sam or Dave or Milly or Nanci with Essense of Max. They were individuals with one underlying unifying linking commonality: all were, in addition to being the selves that he knew from other worlds, part Max.

  He knew he ought to have been flattered by the fate that had dictated the makeup of this world, but a certain nagging discomfort continued to trouble him. Certainly casual conversation was facilitated, since he often knew exactly what those he encountered were about to say. These predictions were correct about half the time: the Max half. None of those he chanced to speak with identified themselves as Mitch or Maxine, for whi
ch he was grateful. Jumping through parallel worlds was difficult enough to cope with without having several of them merge into one another.

  Having nothing else to do but wait for the next paradigm shift, he returned to his cubicle and resumed work. He was glad he was not a photojournalist. Working without images allowed him to concentrate on the story at hand. He would leave it to the editor to sort out and identify the appropriate Maxes he was now describing in his notes.

  From time to time, friends stopped by to chat or discuss upcoming projects. Some he was able to recognize by their distinctive voices, others he had to accept on trust. The diversity in Maxness was truly astonishing.

  As the day wore on and he went to lunch with several of himselves it struck him that if he had to be stuck in another reality, this one might not be the equal of the gentrified utopia he had visited earlier, but it had definite unbeatable attractions of its own. For example, he rarely had to explain what he meant or say anything twice. Those around him understood intuitively. Everyone enjoyed much the same food, films, music, and politics. It all made for the most easygoing, relaxed, friendly conversation imaginable.

  After the initial novelty wore off, it was also unutterably boring. Maybe homogenized milk was good for you, but a steady diet of the stuff would make anyone yearn for the comparative sharpness of two-percent acidophilus.

  Max, who had always thought himself clever and witty and entertaining, was now made forcibly aware of how boring he could be. Not to mention self-centered, obnoxious, overbearing, and downright rude. It wasn’t a pretty picture, particularly when he was forced to acknowledge his inadequacies several times in the space of a single conversation. Every bad habit he possessed was mirrored in every one of his lunch companions. Unlike him, they took no notice of their painfully obvious shortcomings.

  Maybe I’m not quite the journalistic genius, imminent Pulitzer Prize winner, and GQ-model-in-waiting I thought I was, he found himself thinking.

  Boles! Surrounded and overwhelmed by himself, he had forgotten about the inventor. There was no reason to suspect that he would look like Boles instead of Max. That didn’t matter. What did matter was whether he thought like Max—or like himself. If this world proved to be his final destination, Max suspected that the local Boles would not be one capable of terminating the field and allowing him to return home—not even if he was ninety percent Boles and ten percent Parker. Max knew himself well enough to know that that ten percent would surely be fatal to any scientific enterprise.

  Though he could handle the computer at work, at home Max had trouble determining which end of the videotape to insert into the machine. In short, his scientific knowledge was not of a kind and quality likely to facilitate breakthroughs in the time-space continuum. Or any other kind of space, including the one between his ears.

  Well as it began, lunch rapidly degenerated into the usual bickering and argument over matters trivial and inconsequential that Max was prone to. Multiplied by half a dozen takes on himself, it quickly became unbearable. Excusing himself from the table, he wandered outside, ostensibly for some fresh air but really to get away from a superfluity of himself. In that regard, stepping outside was not all that much of an improvement.

  Because no matter where he went or where he looked, he was still surrounded by Maxes. They filled the streets, drove the delivery vans, operated the businesses, occupied carriages, cars, and handicapped grocery carts, overwhelming him with their sheer Maxness. How they stood so many of one another he could not imagine. In less than a day he had already reached the point of barely being able to stand himself.

  Back off, calm down, chill, he told himself. He could handle it. It just took some getting used to, that was all. As he prepared to go back into the restaurant and rejoin himself, he caught sight of the several vending newspaper racks lined up near the entrance. In addition to the feature news stories of the day, there were several articles accompanied by photos. Unfortunately, the Investigator was not among the papers displayed for sale.

  Bending, he tried to read through the scarred and battered plastic cases. Sure enough, there was a slightly blurred color photo of himself, darker and slightly more hirsute but otherwise quite recognizable, loudly promoting his eminence as the murderous conquering warlord of some small, unfortunate African country Max could not place geographically. Below this story was another showing a slim him being led off to jail after being convicting of multiple counts of child molestation. On another rack, in another paper, he saw a short, stocky, undeniably belligerent redaction of himself on the stand in a local court accused of embezzling more than a million dollars from an outraged west-side charity.

  On the front page of the Sporting News it was revealed that he had also scored three touchdowns in last week’s pro game, only to be arrested later that same week on charges of conspiracy to distribute a quantity of banned substances. In the next vending case he was near the bottom of the page, grinning from ear to earring as he resigned his position as shock jock for a Chicago talk-radio station, only to announce that he was accepting a new position in Atlanta at a considerably higher salary. Socially diminished agents and much gratuitous profanity seemed to be involved.

  A hand tapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he found himself looking back into his face: lined, grubby with the filth of the habitually unwashed, fragrant with ancillary aromas dubious in origin, and blank of eye.

  “’Scuse me, mistah. Spare some change so’s I can get something to eat?”

  Digging blindly into his pocket, Max fumbled with his wallet until he found a bill. Without even bothering to check the denomination he thrust it at the looming panhandler, a distorted, disturbing vision of himself at his least appealing.

  “Here, take this.”

  Smacking his lips in a manner suggesting that the meal he now saw looming before him like a vision of the grail itself was to be of the liquid rather than the solid variety, the bum (an archaic but still efficacious term, Max thought abstractedly) shambled off clutching the bill before his eyes. He did not offer so much as a thank-you in return.

  The absence of common courtesy did not matter to Max, who by this time had had just about enough of himself.

  “That’s it! I resign from myself! I concede, I give up!” He shouted it at the sky, drawing some uncertain stares from passing himselves. They quickened their pace when he dropped his gaze to glare at them—even though it was a familiar glare.

  All the good that was in the world, he was responsible for, he knew. Also all the evil, and all the mediocrity, and every level of mendacity and moronity and goodness in between. Over all this he had no control. Only the knowledge that in his own, absent world he was the one and true Max Parker kept him from going mad.

  But how did he know that he was the true Max, he found himself wondering? Why should it not be one of his friends waiting for him in the restaurant, or someone still back at the office, or one of the dozens of motivating Maxes hurrying to and fro along the sidewalks? Did they not have equal assurance of their own reality, of their own individual uniqueness? Perhaps he was after all no more than a para Max deluding himself into thinking that he was the true Max, and the real Max was out there on the streets somewhere, or at this very moment up at Trancas conversing with Barrington Boles. Could the real Max be subject to para delusions? Or were his paras the same ones and the original Max delusional?

  Einstein was right, he decided. God did not play dice with the universe. Instead, it was set up as a kind of cosmic Las Vegas, where anything was possible and, if you hit the right combination of numbers, or ideas, or concepts, even probable. Yahweh not only played dice with the universe, but also roulette, baccarat, keno, and for all Max knew, reservation bingo.

  As for he, him, himself, Max, he had crapped out.

  About many things he was ignorant, and others self-deluded, but he knew with certainty that he did not have the type of mind required to deal rationally and sensibly with abstractions of such breadth and scope. All he knew for sure wa
s that he was tired, and bored, and worn out from trying to make sense of the insensible. All he could do was what he had done when cast into previous para worlds: try and ride it out.

  At least, he thought, this time he would not be forced to do so in the company of strangers. Though by now he would have found a real stranger, anyone patently different from himself, preferable to yet another insufferable version of Maxwell Parker.

  With a sigh that seemed to encompass not merely a single breath but entire worlds, he headed back inside the restaurant to rejoin himself.

  He made it through the rest of lunch by saying as little as possible and leaving it to the other multiples of himself to carry the conversation. Being him, this they had no trouble in doing. Instead of entertaining or enlightening him, the conversation only made him inescapably aware of what a puerile and self-centered conversationalist he often was.

  He was relieved when the dishes were removed and it was time to pay the check. Naturally, every version of himself tried to stick every other version of himself with it. He ended up paying it himself. And why not? Wasn’t he paying for himself, several times over?

  He allowed the others to walk on ahead, keeping to a deliberately slow pace so as to be able to avoid participating in their conversation. Back at the Investigator building, morose and unhappy, he found a message on his voice mail requesting that he report to his boss.

  Might as well, he told himself. Anything that hinted of non-Maxness was a welcome diversion from the lukewarm pit of himness in which he found himself inextricably trapped.