Robert Sawyer: Iterations

We printed the books and delivered them: five hundred and twenty cartons, all shipped at our expense to Harada’s warehouse in Oshawa.

And Harada had his people sit on them, never even putting them out into the stores.

And then, in January 2000, he returned them all. Every single copy. They were in the same cartons we’d shipped them out in; they’d never even been opened.

Y2K didn’t turn out to be a disaster—so said all the newspapers.

But it was a disaster for Mary and me.

Books are fully returnable, and Harada’s chain had used its buying clout to get not just CanScience but all publishers to offer them extended payment terms. The books came back before his company had ever paid a single dime on the original invoice.

And, of course, there was no longer any market anywhere for that title.

I couldn’t pay even a fraction of the printer’s bill, and the printer sued, forcing Mary and me into bankruptcy.

We lost our company.

We came within inches of losing our home.

Why had Harada done it? Because I’d spoken harshly about his company’s bullying practices in an interview in Quill & Quire , the Canadian publishing trade journal.

Why had he done it?

Because he could.

Of course maybe neither he nor I had ever really existed. We were merely possible combinations of genes, recalling possible permutations of memory. Maybe all these iterations of him and me have no basis in reality.

In which case, killing him wouldn’t be so awful. After all, maybe he never was meant to exist. Maybe I was never meant to exist, either.

No, no, when you came right down to it, killing him would not be that bad. And it would be a way for me to regain mental peace, wouldn’t it? I didn’t like arguing with Mary; I didn’t like laying awake at night, haunted by what had happened.

If I killed Harada, if I made him pay for what he’d done to us, then maybe I could relax. Mary and I wouldn’t get our publishing company back, but at least I’d have the comfort that came with knowing he hadn’t gotten away with it.

And—let’s face it—there must be trillions of iterations of the simulation, if all theoretically possible humans have been generated. I’d made a start, to be sure, but I couldn’t possibly track down all the versions of me that have already gotten rid of Harada.

But if I killed him, too, in this reality—

Well, then, I wouldn’t be so tortured by the existence of other versions of me whohad killed him, and—

No.

No, dammit, no.

Be honest with yourself, Erik.

I’m not tortured by them.

I’m jealous of them—jealous that they get to live in worlds without Roscoe Harada, and I do not.

But if I joined them…

If I joined them, I’d at last be free.

The smorgasbord of possibilities made me giddy. Stabbing? Gun shot? Electrocution? Drowning? Poison? Dismemberment? Running him over with my car? Hacking away at him with an ax…

I savored the options, but finally came back down to Earth. It didn’t have to be anything dramatic; indeed, I didn’t have to do it myself. In fact, I probably shouldn’t do it myself. When I need wiring done I call an electrician, because I’d just mess things up if I tried to handle it on my own.

So why not call a professional this time?

The phone call came a week later. Just two words, in a lilting Québecois accent: “It’s done.” I didn’t tell Mary, of course, but it was the lead story on the CityPulse News at Six : “Book company executive found shot to death.”

Mary and I made love that night like we hadn’t for years, like we were the only people in the universe.

I was free. At last, I was free of Harada.

Mary left for work in the morning—she, at least had a marketable skill; she’d found work at a midsize accounting firm. But I decided to call in sick—I worked as a clerk at the Chapters superstore in Bayview Village now, making not much more than minimum wage. But at least I was still in the book business—although nobody from the trades ever called to ask me for a quote anymore.

No, today was a day to kick back and, for the first time in years, it seemed, to relax.

I didn’t think much of it when I heard sounds coming from downstairs a few minutes after Mary had left; she often forgot her purse or gloves and had to come back to fetch them.

Still, I decided to head down. Maybe I could entice her to stay home, too. We could spend the day drinking wine and making love, and—

I should have seen it coming, of course.

Downstairs, in my living room, was another version of me, holding a gun. He looked into my eyes, and I looked into his.

“I can’t live knowing that what you’ve done is going to go unpunished,” he said.

“He deserved to die,” I said. “You know that.”

The gun was pointed at my chest, unwavering. The other me said nothing.

“You want him out of our lives—out of every version of our lives—as much as I do,” I said.

“But I can’t countenance what you did,” said the me with the gun. “It’s not right.”

“But it’s what we wanted.”

“But to live, knowing that you’ve done this and will likely get away with it…” he said. “I’m sorry, but there has to be a version of us that is at peace.”

And, as the gun fired, I realized, there was—or, at least, there was about to be.

And it was me.