A Ghost in the Multiverse

Written and posted April 2026

(Disclaimer: Gemini helped me edit and format this).

I found myself thinking about Granny and Grampy the other day. If they were still here, they’d be 106 this year. It’s an age that sits right on the edge of the possible—highly improbable, but not impossible.

Naturally, my mind drifted toward the Many Worlds theory, as it often does if I’m being honest. I found myself wondering: Is there a version of reality out there where one of them is still alive?

The Cost of a Long Life

There is a bittersweet paradox in looking for those we’ve lost in other timelines. If Granny or Grampy were still here in 2026, the ripple effects required to make that happen would be massive. Perhaps they would have had to make different choices 50 years ago—decisions about where to live, what to eat, or how to move through the world.

But if they had lived differently, maybe my parents would never have met. Maybe the specific chain of events that led to me would have been broken. It’s a sobering realization: there likely isn’t a world where they get to live past 100 and I still get to exist. To have me, the universe had to let them go early.

This led me to a quiet realization: I should go visit their graves. Maybe on their wedding anniversary later this month. I wondered, briefly, if I ever explained the Many Worlds theory to them while they were here.

From Macro to Micro

I’ve been obsessed with these "what-ifs" since 8th grade, when I read Timeline by Michael Crichton. That book permanently altered my hardware; it made me look at the "macro" scale of existence—how a single battle or a political shift could rewrite the map of a region.

But lately, my perspective has shifted toward the "micro." I recently read The Gone World by Tom Sweterlich, and it refocused my lens on the individual paths a single life can take. In that story, specific futures only exist as long as an observer is there to witness them. There’s a haunting sequence where a man begs to be taken back to the terra firma timeline because his children, dead in his world, are still alive in another.

I struggled to understand that desperation. If there is a version of me living a "fabulous" life—or a life where I can still visit Granny—I don’t feel the need to be her. I don’t want to hijack her reality. I’m just happy for her. I’d want to sit down and hear her stories, but I wouldn't want to take her place.

The Collective "Me"

I’ve started to view the "True Me" as a mosaic—a combination of every possible version of myself across the multiverse. I feel like I am standing in the center of a vast spectrum of "Me’s":

• The Waterloo Me: The one who never left home and still works at Walmart.

• The Agent Me: The one who actually joined NCIS after my internship.

• The Mother Me: The version of me who has children.

• The Wealthy Me: The one who got lucky somehow and ended up rich.

• The Lost Me: The version who didn’t make it to age 39.

• And so many others.

I realized that I love all of them. I hold space for the version of me that failed and the version that soared. But in the middle of all that cosmic imagining, I reached a final, grounding thought:

Maybe I need to learn to love present-day, present-location me as much as I love all the others.

I may not exist in the world where Granny is turning 106, and I may not be the version of me that lives in a mansion or carries a badge. But I am the version who dreams of them. I am the version that is here, now, in 2026, planning a trip to a quiet grave on a wedding anniversary. And maybe that version is enough.