THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: LAST (AND/OR) ONLY

No one talks seriously about quantum immortality. When I was in school, it was a glorified thought experiment third years used to freak out their girlfriends. I read the Tegmark paper in 1998, I think, though I don't recall much now. Back when it was an idea, it was a funny thing. Like a hexaflexagon, or a Möbius strip. Something to noodle over while sitting on the bus, or waiting for your burger to come up.  

Of course, today, no one talks about anything anymore.

Any outcome requires consciousness. In the many-worlds interpretation, this means — no matter how improbable survival of a situation is — an observer survives to continue on in a universe where they somehow outlasted the unnamed calamity. 

Sit class. Sit, please. 

A hard gamma burst kills the planet, except the observer, in one of a billion adjacent worlds where they miraculously survive untouched despite any odds. A world like this one. And this raises so many questions. So many things that had been put to sleep by my old man brain as finished could no be reopened. Questions like: were there ever any other people? Is this all some sort of illusion? Have I gone mad, raving in some room somewhere? 

Jennifer, my dear, can you hear me?  Were you ever there? Or is all of this world some game for my consciousness to play upon, like a maze for a rat. And what comes after the maze? 

The CDC called it Unknown Viral Hemorrhagic Fever, or UVF, while the news just called it rot, and I recall the first news stories about it were from Cincinnati. An infection that caused the body to swell and bruise and the lungs to fill and the eyes to hang-dog like some basset hound before they turned yellow, you shat out your innards, and finally expired. Initially, reports tagged it to bodily fluids and limited airborne capacity in particulates. That didn't last. On that Monday night, I was eating takeout. By the next Monday, Washington D.C. was burning.   

It wasn't like the movies. It was clear from the first day that it was bad. There was no attempt at subterfuge. It was evident the people on the news had all the up to the minute news, and the Army wasn't fooling around. Within four days, it was all that was on television. At ten, a slow video walkthrough of two dozen national guardsmen sprawled on a city street, fat and meaty, and blue-black ripe with flies painted a picture of a government that couldn't handle the crisis. Piles of bodies stacked in Brooklyn, and Moscow, and China. It had gone airborne, the news said, back when there was news. Twice, I saw late-night anchors purporting that it had come from Fort Detrick, and was purposely released by a guy that looked like Eric Estrada named THEODORE R. WESSEL. But who knows? 

Then the TV stopped. The power was fine, and the internet lasted a little longer, and stories crept out of other places in the world. People in France claimed to be immune, but soon, they died too. Video calamities were posted. Someone pissing in the Louvre, and taking an electric chainsaw to Davincis. Two dozen bodies dangling from the Eiffel Tower. Spain burned. Germany vanished. China went dark. Then, lone voices: Is anyone still not sick? Can you help me? Help me.   

Past that was a lot of sounds. Things went past me. Firetrucks. Soldiers. Bullets. In every situation, I managed to stumble my old man way through it, somehow. Once, I ran out on to 7th avenue, and an APC fired what must have been a heavy machine gun into the street. I stumbled right through it with my cane, hearing the giant rounds careen off the cement, whining. It rolled away shortly after that to hunt other prey while I wept and, breaking into a Nike store, changed my pants and shoes.  

The clock on the Citibank tells me it's been 15 days since the APC, so, 39 days since the first news reports. I have seen no one alive in 10. New plants have begun to bloom in New York City. Blue-black bodies that grow and split, and expel gas that makes entire areas of the city impassable. Black things, becoming soft, becoming liquid. Growing. Changing. Everywhere.

I go home. I go, and I don't see anyone. The streets are choked with the dead, with ruined cars and the contents of apartments tossed out into the streets. I realize I'm dragging the rifle with my free hand, and pull it up and hold it, and it is surprisingly light.  

I took it from the National Guardsmen at Madison Square Garden, and his fingers came off with it, but I don't want to think about that. Inside my apartment on floor 3, I leave the door wide and dumping my cane, drop the rifle on the table. I consider the book on the table, as I have never fired a gun before. 

Are you waiting for me, Jennie? 

I follow four steps from the book and manipulate bolts and locks on the gun, and then, holding the gun firmly in two hands, pull the trigger. The report is incredibly loud, and the gun bucks in my hand, but less than I thought it would. A perfect, black hole has appeared across from me like a miracle. I follow the instructions again and sit down. 

The barrel tastes like metal and oil and makes me immediately want to vomit, but I don't. In my mind, I imagine Jennifer in 1986 before the hospital. My thumb finds the trigger, and, without hesitation, I pull it. 

CLANK.

Misfire. 

I stand, circling, my breath hitching, tears spilling down my face. The rifle is on the ground, dropped hard, slowly spinning on the tile. Then, I'm laughing. I laugh until I can't breathe, and I'm saying things like "oh man, oh god, oh Jennie, oh..." 

I pick up the rifle and point it at the window and pull the trigger. There is a BOOM, and the window shatters. 

"Oh. Fuck me. Fuck. It's just a thought experiment. Fuck. It's me. Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck." 

For this experiment class, imagine I am the observer.