Dark and Light at the Same Time

Last night I hesitantly started watching the sci-fi series Dark Matter. The plot sounded harrowing, and my tolerance for imaginary stress is inversely proportional to real-life stressors. (My country is falling apart, and I knocked the driver's side mirror off my car—don't ask.) But who can resist the lure of a multiverse? Not me.

The premise (mild spoiler alert) is that a physics professor's dark double from a parallel universe forcibly swaps places with him, sending the good guy to that other reality and taking over his life in this one. Why? At a pivotal point in their lives, the double had made a choice that led to his being successful, rich, and unhappy, while the protagonist had chosen the other path to become a happy teacher and family man. Using technology he invented, the bad physicist aims to steal the life that he failed to choose, rationalizing the theft by giving the other guy the chance to live a different life. However, the protagonist is determined to find his way back to his wife and son. To do that, he has to choose the right doorway out of an infinite number of possibilities. Here's where things get really stressful: the key to getting back home is to form the right intention, not just consciously but unconsciously. It's not enough to say, "I want to go home"; in the moment he opens the door, he also has to not feel scared of his family getting sick, or...else. To pilot his way back to his world, he needs to ensure that his love is stronger than his fears. And who the heck knows how to do that? (No really, who, and where do I donate?)

To explain the multiverse traversing technology, Dark Matter refers to the concept of quantum superposition:

When an electron is in superposition, its different states can be thought of as separate outcomes, each with a particular probability of being observed.

Superposition has been represented by intersecting ripples in water or the creepy thought experiment of Schrödinger's cat: quantum particles are like a cat in a box with a poison that has a 50-50 chance of killing it. The cat is both alive and dead until an observer opens the box to check. Many novelists and self-help gurus have supposed the quantum observer effect is about the power of our intentional focus or strong feelings to shape our reality. Disappointingly, Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral suggests that really the opposite is happening: reality shapes us, not the other way around.

Fittingly, quantum physics is very cool and confusing at the same time. I'll leave it to the physicists and keep thinking about stories. In Dark Matter, the futuristic special effects are thrilling, but I kept watching for the oldest and simplest of human reasons: because I wanted to see love win and the main character make it to safety. (Also, Dutch-Australian actor Joel Edgerton has fascinating cheekbones.) A story's cycle of conflict and resolution has a real effect on our nervous systems, subtly changing us by encoding new ideas about how to make it here on Earth 1 or 1,000,000,000. Whatever other forces are at play, we shape stories, and stories shape us.

Four episodes in, I finally left the quantum Odysseus to his wanderings and went to bed, dozing off in the eerie red glow of my bedside lamp. The red bulb is an experiment to see whether, as suggested by some studies, the absence of blue light makes it easier to fall and stay asleep. Apparently it works a little too well, as I conked out before turning off the light.

Now soft morning light is touching my desk. Somewhere, a version of me that remembered to fold in the side mirror before dragging the trashcan up the drive is out having coffee with a friend, while I sit here writing to you about love, choices, and stories.