Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Leiahdorus "Parallel Universe" ::
I've mentioned in the past my affection for the parallel universe/alternate reality plot device in fiction writing. You can seriously get some interesting and weird stories by using them. What about parallel universes in actual reality, though? Have you ever thought about the possibility that they might actually exist?
The way I understand it, parallel universes occur every time we are faced with a choice. It could be something as everyday as "chicken or beef" or "red shirt or blue shirt?", and depending on the one we pick, there is another universe where the opposite happened. A universe is spawned for every choice every single one of us makes over the course of our lives, so the sheer number of them in infinite, stacked innumerably one on top of the other, occupying the same space and time on a different "frequency." Like I said, that's my understanding. I ain't no scientist or even a university graduate, so I could be wrong, but this is how I always thought of the concept.
I know most of us humans will look back on our lives and think "what if?" to those big choices we made. What if instead of getting married I went back to college and finished my dissertation? What if I went with my friends to backpack across Europe instead of taking care of my family? You know, those sorts of things. We never really retrospectively question our clothing or between meal snack choices, but they are just as powerful in determining the course of not only our life but also this entire universe! You may never even know what felt like an insignificant decision actually steered everything one way rather than another, and here we are right now at this very moment because of it!
I wonder what the infinite number of my other selves are doing at this exact instant on their parallel world? One cannot even fathom the possible ramifications of seemingly the simplest choice. Maybe one day I decided to have a chicken sandwich instead of a hamburger, got sick and died? Or maybe chicken instead of burger split off into another world where he decided to go to the hospital and not only lived but married a pretty nurse? Maybe I decided to move away from my childhood town to a big city? Maybe I took proper art lessons? Maybe I am the unquestioned ruler of Eurasia? Perhaps the combined "other" choices of everyone on earth unite into one "perfect storm" and have created a world where the zombie apocalypse is happening right now??
If I never decided on a whim to sign into an online Buffy, the Vampire Slayer chat room six years ago, you probably would not be reading this very writing right now! I could have decided chat rooms for nerds and stupid people and not tried it for myself. I never would have met cool people from all over the world who quelled my fears of the internet being populated by self-involved idiots who were either gamers or 15 year old girls who whine about boys. I, William the Bloody, may very well have remained fearful of the internet and its users as a whole and never became the sorry addict of the interwebs I am now. But I did log on to Buffy Chat and I have come to like the internets, and I have no idea what else I would be doing with my time at this moment if I weren't typing this. I bet all of the infinite other Williams in their own universes are think exactly the same thing, whether he is engaged in a sword fight or somehow mutated into a giant cockroach and stomping Tokyo, what else could he possibly be doing right now?
William the Bloody (is it as pretty on your side?)
