Time travelers have always known that there is a bend in the universe leading to all yesterdays that could have been.  People lead “normal” lives there, with trees, schools, and newspapers, differing only from ours because of a chance occurrence that created a quirky fork in the road.

Simply for the fact that someone was born or not, our world proceeded on this different path. To visit your alter-existence, you must go beyond our Milky Way to enter a non-space, anti-gravitational space-time disequilibrium. But be sure you are well protected with moon-tan lotion as there are several hundred moons plus one sun that might come around during the night.

Unfortunately, people there pay for things with Thank-You’s instead of money, so their economy is very vibrant but chaotic. What appears to be paper currency is used to wrap presents or as wallpaper. You might find your alter-grandmother in her living room making you a new hat to wear on your nose, or perhaps you can peek at your other self in the bathroom showering with flowers instead of water.

Unfortunately, everything is not peaceful there since Gandhi was never born. The streets are filled with posters commanding that we must recycle our discarded chewing gum into glue. Also, all animals have three feet and it is necessary to keep them from falling by giving them props to lean against. People are born as ancient adults, then progress down to childhood and infancy, eventually returning to the womb of an ancient woman, who will then continue to her own infancy, etcetera. You know, the cycle of life.

In short, everything might appear rosy, yet there is that irksome feeling that something is missing. So you see, nothing in your own world was for nothing. In order to be comfortable where you are, where you live, and with who you are, that butterfly you had sat on without thinking about it last summer during your canoeing trip had somehow played a part in your life as it is today. That other universe does know the cure for all cancers, but is plagued by polio and dysentery. Our world’s integral calculus is their world’s music, and our art is their religion. Time travelers who have ventured beyond our known galaxies into this wrinkled up time-space have seen the difference that a single bacterium has made within our own world — the one that led to penicillin.

I guess our alter egos in that other universe can be just about as happy or unhappy as we are in ours. It is still really a matter of how we choose to react, isn’t it?  I wouldn’t mind those three-legged animals, though. What a laugh I’d get watching cute, constantly slumping sheep.

(Seoul, Korea, 1996)