John Adams: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

ME: I mean, sure. But those aren’t really… real. Are they?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Depends on what you mean by real.

ME: Factual. Corresponding to an agreed-upon reality.

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Given the current state of the American polity, I’m wondering whether you are overestimating the level of agreement. But that’s not the point. You’re right, they’re not real in your universe. But these alternative realities do exist. And they’re closer than you think.

ME: [looking around] Close? How close?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: They are what is known as the adjacent possible. If you can imagine it from this universe, then they must, as a matter of definition, touch your universe.

ME: So all twenty of those stories are actually other possible worlds that border this one.

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: [nodding] You’re a quick study. Yes, they not only surround this world, they buttress it. They actually define it.

ME: What do you mean, they define it?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Imagine your universe on a map. To the left, an ocean. To the right, mountains. Above and below, other features of the topology.

ME: We’re bounded on all sides by our imagination. Leaving us in the middle.

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Your universe is the negative space defined by these natural boundaries.

ME: Our reality is defined by what we can imagine.

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: All these imaginary worlds are fundamentally grounded in your consensus reality. They depend on it.

ME: So the bigger our imaginations, the richer and more stable our own reality becomes. But then, what about…

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Right. So you can see why this current situation is so dangerous. What’s happening now is that the imagination is being challenged. The diversity of viewpoints, the ability to create stories, to have different perspectives, is being systematically destroyed. In its place, a narrative is being decreed.

ME: They’re trying to legislate and enforce a single master narrative.

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: And that master narrative is not coherent. It is unconnected from the base reality. It does not depend on consensus. It is an impoverished substitute for reality. The destruction of truth can’t go on indefinitely. Reality will continue to fragment, until reality itself loses use as a meaningful term.

ME: This sounds pretty bad. Is it too late?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: It’s not too late. That’s where this anthology comes in. The stories, this technology you have invented, they are engineering solutions for structural repair of micro-realities. This is the material science creating an invisible structure that actually strengthens because it depends on the underlying consensus reality. By connecting to the substructure, the foundational reality, it reinforces and delineates, giving a shape to truth. A mosaic, created by the imagination, of independent and pluralistic voices, which form in the aggregate a hidden framework, protecting your world from collapse. They don’t assert the truth, they depend upon it. [Checks her interdimensional gadget] Whoops, sorry, I was wrong. Looks like it’s too late after all. Bye!

At this, Susan disappeared out of existence.

Turns out the bifurcated reality collapsed, so only one was left. You know what happened next, probably.

The other reality took over. It won. There was just one reality. This one.

(NOTE: This is also completely true. All of this also happened.)

I was just getting over the whole Susan of it all when another interdimensional being showed up.

ME: Let me guess. Anthropologist.

INTERDIMENSIONAL BEING: Actually, no. I’m a cop. My name is Stan.

ME: This seems bad.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: I’m not going to lie, sir. It’s not good.

ME: Are you going to arrest me?

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Not you. You’re not very important. And anyway, if I were going to arrest someone, it’d be all of you.

ME: So then what are you here for?

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: You people have a lot of explaining to do.

ME: I suppose by “you people” you mean humans.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Not all humans. Just Americans. Are you an American?

ME: Please don’t talk to me. I don’t know anything. Really. You could not have picked a worse person to speak on behalf of humanity. Go talk to that lady over there, with the earbuds, pretending not to notice you. Or maybe that guy with a little bit of cream cheese on the corner of his mouth. Anyone but me.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: It’s good that you’re just sort of an average person. A nobody. Someone at random. That way we can be sure we’re getting a representative sample.

ME: [gulping] A representative sample for what?

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: This universe is taking up a lot of space. And not producing much in the way of interesting ideas. We’re thinking of shutting it down. Plus America seems to have really caused some distortions in reality. The whole place is really just not working out.

ME: Please don’t shut down our universe. We like existing. You just caught us at a weird time. Could you maybe come back, like, four years ago? Or maybe a few thousand years from now?

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: [looking around] This is a bad situation.

ME: I know. We know. We know it is.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Can you justify your existence? Give me one good reason not to collide this whole place with antimatter and toss it on the junk heap.

I was sort of at a loss for words. I’d never been great under pressure, and this was a little bit above my pay grade. Stan raised his universe-annihilation gadget, set to Total Annihilation. I closed my eyes and said to everyone, Sorry. I did my best, but I guess my best wasn’t good enough.

And then I realized: I was still holding the book.

I dropped to my knees, pleading for not just my own feeble existence but that of everyone in the cosmos.

ME: If you’d just… read this.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: [holding the book] What am I supposed to do with this?

I hear a deafening noise. I close my eyes, fearing the worst.

Nothing.

And then I hear a voice.

VOICE: Read it.

I opened my eyes. Susan!

ME: Susan! I’ve never been happier to see an interdimensional anthropologist. Why did you come back?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: To make sure Stan read that book. And also, it’d be bad for my research proposal if he destroyed this place before I published.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: What’s so special about these twenty stories?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: They represent what the species is capable of. A cross-section in space and time, and look at this. Their actual tech might be primitive, but their conceptual machinery shows promise, shows the potential of what they can do. They investigate selves and others, minds and bodies, differences. Truth and illusion. Universes, large and small, extensive and interior. Slip expertly from their own consciousness into another, inhabiting it. These are empaths, all of them, that I’d put right up there with the Teleflugans.

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Bullshit. The Teleflugans. Right. Wait… really?

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Really. Just read it, Stan.

Stan pressed it to his cheek for a few milliseconds. Susan watched him expectantly, waiting for his reaction.

SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Well?

STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Well.