Measuring – A Flash Fiction

Every second, every moment, universes peeled away from him.

The meters in the lab measured it. Waveforms oscillated, dials spun as the quantum choices he made created alternate universes. Every either/or choice, every decision, every collapsed waveform created the universe where it went one way… and the universe where it went another.

It was physics. He had been sure that the many worlds interpretation was true. The math had always felt right, but there had been no proof. He and Anne had been trying to prove the theory – and a final connection had made it all come together.

The meters were crude, but accurate, measuring his particular effect on the quantum soup. Anne opened the door, and the universe where he didn’t look up at his partner spun off, its departure measured by the spiking of a dozen dials.

“I’ve done it,” he told her. “Finally, after all these months, I’ve managed to measure the alternate universes we create.”

Anne smiled at the gleam in his eyes. The simmering thoughts they had both had – but never shared – raged through them; the sublimated passion finally moving aside for another. Anne stepped forward into his arms, kissing him thoroughly.

For that moment, every meter in the lab lay perfectly still.