Waiting to Happen

Leah Cypess brings us this week’s multiverse hero who’s just doing her job (that is, unless you ask her mother)… ~ Julian and Fran, March 23, 2025

March comes to you with Sunday Morning Transport stories by Stephanie Burgis, Eric Smith, Sarena Ulibarri, and Leah Cypess. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

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Waiting to Happen

by Leah Cypess

You should have seen it coming. That is literally your job. It’s your job in almost every universe you’ve seen, at least the ones where you (1) were born, and (2) did not die young.

You died young in a lot of those other universes. Which, frankly, does not surprise you. Your mother was always so careless, so sure that things would work out. She took chances you would never take with your own kid, if you had one. Borderline-safe booster seats, unsupervised playdates in the basement, taking a nap while you were riding your bike.

In your universe, she’d gotten lucky, and thus got to believe she was right. But in other universes, in many other universes, the inevitable consequences must have befallen you.

You mentioned that to her once. It didn’t go over well.

In the universes where you don’t exist, the multiverse mirrors were discovered anyhow. (In most, they were called something less confusing and stupid than multiverse mirrors, but in your universe, that name won’t go away.) There were too many people involved, too many concepts rising to the surface of scientific consciousness at the same time. Turns out, their discovery was inevitable.

(Then again, it’s possible that you can only see into the multiverses that are also looking outward. That’s the debate ripping apart theoretical physics departments at the moment, which, like most of their debates, is all the more vicious because the outcome doesn’t matter at all.)

The point is: you weren’t necessary to the discovery of the mirrors. You helped—at least, you did in your universe—but they could have found the multiverse without you. The really important thing is not what you did back then, those equations you discovered or those conferences at which you presented. The important thing is what you do now. Sitting in a small room, staring through the mirror, calibrating and recalibrating so you can see what you need to see. The hundreds of people whose lives you’ve saved, whose avoidable deaths you’ve prevented—you were necessary for that. That’s what you’re really talented at.

Which makes it even more puzzling, and more tragic, that you didn’t see what might happen to you.

#

You don’t need a multiverse mirror to know what’s going to happen when you discuss this with your mother. And yet you do discuss it, every couple of months, usually while sitting in her elegant green-and-black living room with its view of the Mediterranean Sea.

“I can’t quit, Mom. Not until we’ve recruited and trained more people who can do what I do. This work is too important.”

She does that thing where she doesn’t roll her eyes but makes it really obvious that she’s refraining from rolling her eyes. “You don’t seem to be moving very fast on that.”

“I’m sort of busy.” And then, before she can not-roll her eyes again: “It takes years to sync the kablai-transmitters to any individual person, so we can’t afford mistakes. There aren’t many people whose brains can sync with the mirrors to begin with, and there’s no simple way to select—”

“You don’t have to carry the whole world on your shoulders,” your mother goes on, and you remember, too late, that she is always prepared with answers to her own questions; she considers anyone else’s answer a rude interruption. “Look at the pressure you’re under! It’s too much. You’re going to have a nervous breakdown. You need some time to take care of yourself, to live your life.”

By take care of yourself, she means take care of your looks, and by live your life, she means date, get married, and give me a grandchild. But this is low on the list of things you want to argue about, especially because you can’t risk her realizing that it bothers you that you’re alone, and that you’ve taken to avoiding actual mirrors. In some universes, you look pretty good, with hair that’s reasonably styled and no bags under your eyes, and that’s where you get your mental image of yourself.