Sorry Please Thank You (14 page)
Read Sorry Please Thank You Online
Authors: Charles Yu
Dear Alternate Self,
I’m confused? I think you’re confused.
Anyway, whatever. Here is why I’m writing. This morning, I was eating breakfast (I had Cheerios with thin slices of banana and nonfat milk), and I was reading the paper and came across an article in the science section about the multiverse (I don’t normally read that section, but Cheerios with sliced banana is my favorite and I still had about a third of the banana left unsliced, so I had a second bowl, not a full bowl, about a third of the original bowl, so that the Cheerio-to-banana-slice-ratio would be correct). I had finished browsing the sports and business sections, and
Dear Self,
You randomly picked up the Tuesday science section.
Dear Alternate Self,
That’s right. How did you
Dear Self,
Know what you were going to say? Come on, dude.
Dear Alternate Self,
Oh, right. Gotcha. Nice one, heh. Don’t I feel silly.
Dear Self,
I feel silly for you.
Dear Alternate Self,
Anyway, what was I saying?
Dear Self,
You were saying … wait, before we get into that, can I bring something up?
Dear Alternate Self,
I think I know what you’re going to say.
Dear Self,
Yeah. You probably do. In fact, there’s like a 99.99999999999 percent chance you do. You aren’t my alternate self. You’re still confused. Wait, does that mean I’m confused? Now I actually am confused.
First, and this is kind of a small thing, but it is not unrelated to the bigger thing that I want to say, there is the matter of how you address me. I don’t think it should be “Dear Alternate Self.” It should just be “Dear Self.” I’m not a version of you, or a copy. I am you.
Dear Alternate Self,
Identical in every way, down to the quantum state of every last particle. I couldn’t agree more.
Dear Self,
Right. And that’s what this is about, isn’t it? Quantum computation. That’s why you are writing to me, to yourself, to ourselves. How can I be so certain? Because that’s why I am writing to you. So don’t call me Alternate Self. Just Self. You call me Self, I call you Self.
