farewell to candide
There are some things that shouldn’t happen, some realities that ought not exist. Sam thinks sometimes about all the other dimensions, all the other versions of herself, the infinity of lives being lived out, and wonders about Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds”. She can’t, although she often sends herself to sleep in the attempt, decide how he would respond if confronted with a quantum mirror. There are too many possibilities, and they spool away from her like a ball of twine rolling down a hill, too fast to be seen.
(But this is false: there is no infinity of Leibnizes. There are only two: believer, with faith shaken but unfaltering, and blasphemer, who turns his face away from God and curses Him in the darkness.)
Sundays, when she’s on planet and her schedule allows, she goes to church-a different one each week-and sits in the back row, and has faith because the people sitting next to her do. In her lab under the mountain, though, she believes in nothing but uncertainty and an ever-unfolding multiplicity. The only faith she has is in her teammates and the people she works beside. The only gods here are false ones, and her world only one of myriad.
(But she wonders sometimes, a little, because every alternate world they’ve stumbled against is worse off than theirs, disaster hovering on the horizon or having already struck. She carries her dead with her, but her load is so very light compared to that of the other Sams, and sometimes at night she thinks of all the many ways things could be worse.)
(But this is false: there is no infinity of Leibnizes. There are only two: believer, with faith shaken but unfaltering, and blasphemer, who turns his face away from God and curses Him in the darkness.)
Sundays, when she’s on planet and her schedule allows, she goes to church-a different one each week-and sits in the back row, and has faith because the people sitting next to her do. In her lab under the mountain, though, she believes in nothing but uncertainty and an ever-unfolding multiplicity. The only faith she has is in her teammates and the people she works beside. The only gods here are false ones, and her world only one of myriad.
(But she wonders sometimes, a little, because every alternate world they’ve stumbled against is worse off than theirs, disaster hovering on the horizon or having already struck. She carries her dead with her, but her load is so very light compared to that of the other Sams, and sometimes at night she thinks of all the many ways things could be worse.)