Other Worlds Than These

by John Joseph Adams

“I honor no one but Myself!”

  For a moment, the Authority says nothing. And then, quietly, it asks, “Must we debate this point each time?”

  “Of course!” The Divine One laughs heartily for a long while. “Our debates are half the fun, my friend!”

  “Are we friends?”

  The Divine One stands at the shoreline—an outwardly ordinary man peering down into the opaque fluid. “In My life, every other creature is My slave. My personal, imperfect possession. You are the exception. Why else would I look forward to our meetings? Like Me, you are immortal. Like Me, you are wondrously free. You have your own voice and your own considerable powers. Even if I wished, I could never abuse you—”

  “I am a puddle,” the Authority interrupts. “A drop of goo. You could boil me to steam, to nothing, and fill the hole that remains with your own shit—”

  “I could never destroy you,” He replies. “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  The Divine One pauses, grins. “We both know perfectly well. This is but one world, and I am only one god. Removing you from this single place would be like stealing just one cell from my immortal hide.”

  A pause.

  Then again, the Authority says, “Three gifts.”

  “Three trinkets,” He rumbles. “That’s what I will give you.”

  A new slave appears—a beautiful young woman with a dead face and full hands. She keeps her eyes down, setting an ornate satchel at the feet of her Living God, and then she kneels and dies without complaint. Once her body has been drained of a little blood and thrown aside, He opens the satchel. Using His own little hands, He looks tentative, fingers unaccustomed to handling mundane objects. His first offering is a journal encompassing the last three moons of His life. The second is an immersion recording showing the Long Day Festival that He choreographed, half a million bodies parading and dancing along the Avenue of Honored Bones. And a nano-scale digital—His third offering—shows the sculpture that He fashioned at the end of that very good day, fashioned from the harvest of severed limbs and breasts and sexual organs.

  Without comment, the ocean swallows the three gifts.

  “Three genealogies,” He repeats. “You know my tastes. Each offering has to be different from my family tree, and different from each other. And I want stories. I want to see from my genotype’s origins, back into the deepest imaginable past, with biographies of the ancestors, when possible.”

  It is an enormous request, which means that it takes all of three heartbeats to accomplish. The results appear as sophisticated maps injected into His enhanced consciousness, and with a genuine relish, He sets those elaborate trees beside His own ancestral history, marveling at how genes and circumstances interact to produce what is always, in a very narrow sense, Him.

  “Are we finished?” the Authority asks.

  “When I found you,” The Divine One begins. Then He sighs, correcting Himself. “When My agents of discovery built the first quantum-piercing machines, and I reached into the optional universes...and found you waiting for Me...”

  “Yes?”

  “I was intrigued. And furious. Since I am just one existence inside an incalculable vastness...well, I felt righteously pissed...”

  “And intrigued,” the Authority repeats.

  “Deeply. Relentlessly.” With a decidedly human gesture, He shrugs. “How many years have we been meeting this way?”

  An astonishing number is offered.

  “It has been a rewarding friendship,” He claims. “Lonely gods need a good companion or two.”

  Silence.

  “Tell Me. And be honest now.” The god smiles, asking, “How many of My genotypes are learning from My lessons? As I stand here, as I breathe, how many of Them are taking what I give them and then setting out to conquer Their own little worlds?”

  “I cannot give a number,” the Authority replies.

  “But there is a multitude! Isn’t that so?”

  “Many,” the voice concedes. “Yes—”

  The Divine One launches into a roaring laugh, the sound swelling until the Great Temple quivers and crumbles, dust and slabs of rock falling on all sides.

  “Until later,” He promises.

  “Until always,” the Authority purrs.

  One of the more difficult concepts—one that can still astonish after a lifetime of study and hard thought—is that fact that your parents are not always your parents. Probability and wild coincidence will always find ways to create you. A couple makes love, each donating half of their genetic material to the baby. If each parent happens to contain half of your particular genes, who is to say that you can’t be the end result? Or perhaps, parents consciously tweak their embryo’s genetics, aiming for some kind of enhancement and getting you in the bargain. Or there is the less likely Earth where cloning is the norm and you are a temporarily popular child, millions of you born in a single year. And then there is an even more peculiar Earth where you have been built from scratch inside someone’s laboratory, synthetic genes stitched together by entities that aren’t in the littlest bit human.

  The salient point is that your parents don’t have to be your parents, and frankly, in the vast majority of cases, they are not.

  Which implies, if you follow that same relentless logic, that the grandparents and history are even less likely to remain yours.

  In three days, Josh will be twenty-six years old.

  He sits with his parents, eating their pot roast. When he was a boy, back in the days when meat bled and mothers cooked, their Sunday roasts were always dry as sawdust. But even though his mother has a fully modern kitchen, her cultured roast has still been tortured to a dusty brown gristle. This must be how they like it, Josh decides. Old people, he thinks dismissively. They can never change, can they? Shaking his head, Josh cuts at the tough meat, and his mother asks, “What are you doing?”

  “Eating,” he growls.

  “That isn’t what she means,” his father snaps.

  “I mean with your life,” she says. Then with a practiced exasperation, she reminds him, “We’ve always had such hopes for you, dear.”

  Josh drops his knife and fork, staring at the opposite wall.

  “You always had such promise, honey.”

  The young man sighs heavily. Why did he believe this night would go any other way?

  “Bullshit,” says his father. “It’s bullshit. You’re wasting your life, playing around with that goddamn Authority...!”

  “Yeah, well,” mutters Josh. “It’s my life.”

  “You don’t see us visiting it every day.”

  “It’s not that often.” Josh shakes his head, explaining, “There aren’t enough facilities for the demand, and there won’t ever be. That’s how it’s rationed. Once every six weeks is the most I can manage.”

  “And then what?” Mother whines. “All day and night, you play with your treasures. Isn’t that right?”

  Josh reaches under the dining room table.

  “And don’t give me your bullshit about leading a contemplative life,” Father warns, a thick finger stabbing in his direction. “I don’t want to hear how you’re getting in touch with your genius and the rest of that bullshit!”

  If Josh had doubts or second thoughts, they just vanished. Silently, with a cold precision, he opens the envelope and sets out portraits, arranging them in rows on the dining table. Ten, twenty, thirty pictures in all. In each image, some version of Josh smiling at the unseen camera. In each, a different set of parents smile with an honest warmth, loving hands draped across his shoulders or running their fingers through his hair. Clothes vary, and the backgrounds. In one image, Saturn and its silvery rings halfway fill the sky. But what matters is what remains unchanged—the seamless, loving joy of proud parents and their very happy son.

  Josh’s parents aren’t idiots; they know exactly what he is showing them.

  “Now leave me alone,” Josh snaps, backing away from the table. “I mean it! Stay out of my life!”


  What happens next—what will gnaw at him for years—is the weeping. Not from his mother, who simply looks sad and a little deflated. No, it’s Father who bursts into tears, fists rubbing hard at eyes and a stupid, stupid blubbering coming from someplace deep and miserable.

  A person with your genetics can emerge in any century, any eon. You might be a general in Napoleon’s army, or the first human to reach Alpha Centauri, or a talented shaman in the Age of Flint.

  Even your world is subject to the same whims and caprices.

  Stare into the deepest reaches of the gray ocean, gaze past every little blue Earth, and you realize that the basic beginnings of humanity can emerge from a host of alternate hominids, and from myriad cradle-worlds that only look and taste and feel like this insignificant home of yours.

  Josh is in his early thirties.

  Age is supposedly meaningless now. Aging is a weakness and a disease left behind in more cramped, less brilliant times. But most people who reach their thirties still start to sense the weight of their years, and with experience, they suffer those first nagging thoughts about limits and death and the great nothingness that lies beyond.

  “Three gifts, please.”

  This could be the same room as the first room. It is not, but the look of the place is exactly the same: a door, and white walls, and three make-portals. The gray ocean still lies at his feet. The Authority’s voice is quiet and insistent, and perfectly patient. Josh continues to visit every six weeks; a pattern has evolved and calcified. He brings the same ragged gym bag with the same three basic offerings. He has a comprehensive journal of his last forty-two days. He has written a story or poem into which he has put some small measure of work. And with a digital recorder, he has captured an hour of his life: A sexual interlude, oftentimes. A wedding or swap party, on occasion. Or like today, an hour of nothing but Josh speaking to the camera, trying to explain to an unseen audience what it means to be him.

  Again, the Authority asks, “Do you have three gifts?”

  Josh nods, and hesitates.

  “I was wondering,” he mutters. “How likely is it...that someone else actually notices what I’ve done here...?”

  Silence.

  “I know. Everything possible has to happen.” The gym bag is set between his feet. Staring at the worn plastic handles, he says, “Right now, a trillion Josh Thorngates are handing their gifts to you. We’re identical to each other, right down to the Heisenberg level. Our gifts are the same. The only difference is that in these other universes, some bug near Alpha Centauri runs right, not left...or a photon from some faraway quasar goes unseen... or some tiny bullshit like that...”

  Josh hesitates, for an instant. “So what are the odds?” His expression is serious. Determined. “If you have a random trillion entities with my genotype. Named Josh, or not. From this Earth, or somewhere else. What are the odds that just one of them is going to see this stupid-ass poem?”

  “That is a fine question,” the Authority replies.

  Josh almost grins. “Thank you. I guess.”

  “Three gifts. If you please.”

  “Aren’t you going to give an answer?”

  “No.”

  The grin dissolves into a grimace. With a practiced formality, Josh sets the three items on the surface of the ocean, watching them sink and vanish. But the Authority remains silent for longer than usual, prompting Josh to ask, for the first time, “Are they unique enough?”

  “Enough,” is the verdict.

  “Give me a journal,” Josh says. “I want a very specific journal.”

  “Such as?”

  “From a world where I’m the last living human.”

  A moment later, a drab brown journal falls from the first make-portal, bringing with it the scent of fire and rot.

  Grabbing the prize, he says, “And now, another journal. From a world where I’m the very first human being.“

  The second portal opens. Another volume falls to the floor. In every way, it is the same as the first: the same brown cover, the same stink of decay and heat, and inside, the same handwritten words translated into Josh’s language.

  The surprise freezes him. But aren’t there stories about this sort of coincidence, or joke...or whatever you want to call it...?

  “What else?” the Authority asks.

  Then after a quiet moment, it says, “Josh.” It says, “What else would you like today, Josh?”

  He snorts and shakes his head. “A digital,” he manages, sticking to his original script. “I’m the last human male on Earth, and all of the surviving women have to come to me for sex—”

  The disc hits the floor, rolls until it collides with his gym bag, and then falls onto its back.

  He doesn’t pick up the disc. Instead, with a low, wary voice, he asks, “Who built you?”

  “Everyone built me,” the voice replies. “Everyone builds me now.”

  “But who started you? Who built your foundation?” Josh presses, asking, “Do you know? What world, and what people, began piecing you together?”

  Silence.

  “I mean, it must have been ages ago, and a very advanced world.”

  “Unless I am lying,” the Authority warns, “and nobody built me.”

  Josh flinches.

  “You should ask your other question again,” the voice recommends.

  Eyes wide, Josh begins to open his mouth.

  “Not that I will supply any answers,” the Authority interrupts. “But you should pose the question. ‘How likely is it that I will be noticed?’ Ask, ask, ask, and perhaps something good will come from that wondering.”

  “You are to be the future,” they tell me.

  But there is no future.

  “The scourge doesn’t know your tissue, your taste,” they explain to me. “We made you so that we could cross with you. Our offspring will acquire your immunities, and you will father an entirely new species. Beginning now.”

  But the scourge spreads faster than anticipated, and when it doesn’t kill, it drives its victims insane. Even now, the mob runs like rivers in the street. Even here, inside this armored laboratory, I can smell the fires as the city burns—

  “Time is short,” they admit.

  I spend my days squirting my unique stuff into important little bottles.

  “Time is very short,” she moans.

  She is small and thick and smells like an animal. With my eyes shut and my nose wrapped in a towel, I crawl on top of her, and push, and pump, and in my head, I try to imagine any creature more desirable than this...

  What begins with an intoxicating, addictive joy can eventually grow stale. Imagination carries the soul only so far. More than you realize, you tend to make the same basic requests of the Authority: to see versions of yourself dressed in power, fame, and incandescent wealth. And to balance that equation, you occasionally glance at yourself in the throes of misery and despair. Sometimes, this is enough. You never ask for more. But sometimes, after ten years, or a thousand, your capacity to learn and feel astonished has become noticeably dulled. Gradually, inexorably, that sweet initial thrill fades into a soft emotional hum. Then your only obvious choice is to cast an even larger net. You want to see yourself, you tell the Authority. Except that you spell out an important change or two. Little alterations—a stitch here and a tuck there—all buried in your otherwise equal genetics.

  No matter how brilliant or wise, every male inevitably asks to see how his life would have progressed with a larger, more talented penis.

  While females always hunger for greater beauty.

  Many, many times, this is where it ends. You never progress past a diet of simple what-ifs and prurient eavesdropping. Then the rest of your narrow existence is spent sitting at home, watching digitals or immersions where gigantic or perfectly gorgeous versions of yourself share their days with equally spectacular specimens.

  They could be married. They often joke that they are husband and wife in every universe, except for this one. Pauline
is pretty, and she is sexually creative, and she absolutely adores Josh. And Josh worships her. Isn’t it astonishing that they found one another? Two people so perfectly meshed... it’s a rare blessing in any age...! Their friends and siblings aren’t nearly as lucky, they realize. Time after time, they find themselves taking bleak comfort from the divorces and other, larger tragedies that afflict those around them. Josh has been with Pauline for ten years, and in another ten or fifteen years they will start their family. That’s the plan. The inevitability. Another decade spent as the golden couple, and then they will gladly move to their next joyous stage.

  They always visit the Authority together. Two avid users, they first met in the waiting room, Josh leaving just as Pauline came inside. Of course they still use separate rooms. Only an official attendant can enter with a client. But afterwards, they always share their new treasures with each other. Josh likes to collect digitals showing alternate incarnations of them as a couple. Sexual interludes. Weddings. Babies born. Or graceful double funerals at the end of happy shared lives. On this particular day, he requests two digitals: Pauline’s birthday is next week, and he wants a celebration from a highly advanced world—a place where people never age and his love has turned a robust and youthful one million years old. The other digital comes from what might be an even stranger reality—where Pauline is a queen, the ruler of a decidedly alien world, and Josh is the ignorant peasant boy who has been brought in to serve the queen’s not-so-delicate needs.

  “And your third request?” the Authority presses.

  “The Divine One,” says Josh. “I want an undated journal from Him.”

  The despot has always intrigued him. Every year, without fail, Josh allows himself another little taste of that spoiled, silly god.

  With a thump, the last item hits the floor.

  Josh reads the first line. “NO NO NO, LIAR, NO!” He laughs, puzzled and a little thrilled. Then with the digitals in his pockets and the journal in his bag, he leaves, stepping out into the hallway to find Pauline waiting for him.

  She has been crying.

  “What?” Josh asks.

  She shakes her head, wipes at her eyes, and again, with her little mouth clamped shut, she shakes her head.