Chronopunk: A novel (Episode 11)

If you went back in time, what knowledge would you gift the past to save the future?

Dark matter turns out to reconcile Gödel’s incompleteness with Everett’s many worlds. Image Grok 3

Chapter 34

Deborah watches herself in the mirror at the hotel bar, sipping a large glass of wine as she reflects on the day in court. It’s early evening in Washington, D.C., and the usual crowd begins to filter in—bureaucrats, lobbyists, lawyers, and bankers, all dressed in near-uniform conformity, as if adhering to an unspoken dress code for the city’s power players. But not Mody. As he strolls through the crowd toward Deborah, his athletic frame clad in a light shirt and leather jacket, he stands out—like a flashlight cutting through the fog.

"Hi, babe."

"Watch it. Don’t want the whole town gossiping about us."

"Ah, they hate us anyway. What difference does it make whether we kiss and fight or just fight them? We’re the enemy—the ones tugging at their slush fund."

"You have a point." She turns to him and kisses his lips.

Mody orders a whiskey, watching himself and Deborah in the mirror.
"So, tell me more about your society," Deborah suddenly breaks the silence.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, how do you guys think about things? What are your morals, your philosophy? What drives you, and what pisses you off?"

Mody looks at her with a slight smirk, suggesting he likes where the conversation is headed. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Good question. How do you decide what’s important? I mean, it seems like you guys have figured out how to be everywhere at once. So why here? Why not somewhere else? How do you choose?"

Mody chuckles. "Ah, I see. You're asking the hard questions."

"No, just the most obvious one."

He turns toward the bar, studying it for a moment, then looks back and takes a slow sip of his whiskey. Without a word, he leans in and kisses her cheek.

“Take an organism and its parts. The organism emerges from those parts—whether they have agency or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that some rule governs how information flows between them. Call it the update rule. For this to work, there must be time—something that sets the rhythm, dictating how the rule propagates through the system. Each step forward is one update. The key to any successful organism is balancing power between its individual parts and the whole. Think of it as a delicate scale—you want to land right in the middle, avoiding both excessive individualism and oppressive collectivism. If the whole dominates, you get dull tyranny and stagnation, like Communism or the Atacama Desert. Individual parts still exist, but their roles are diminished. Walk through the Atacama, and you don’t notice particular rocks; their individual contributions are negligible, but the whole—the vast, desolate expanse—you absolutely see, feel, and experience. Now, take the other extreme—when individual parts overwhelm the whole. Think street riots, anarchy, even war. That’s chaos. And chaos isn’t interesting either.”

"Reminds me of entropy."

"Yeah, it's similar. Entropy is most interesting when it's in balance—too much or too little, and it doesn’t compute for us. The same applies to organisms and their constituents."

"So, you’re thinking deeply about the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy—always spreading. The real challenge is how to keep it in balance. Is that it?"

"Yes, you could say that. But let’s focus on the update rule. Our quantum systems are particularly sensitive to how states evolve under it. Once we understand that, we get a much better grasp of the system. In other words, if you want to understand an organism, study the update rule that governs its individual parts."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me ask you something—what does it mean to 'understand' a system? Whether it’s a country, a society, a person, or a forest—what does it actually mean to say you understand it?"

"I guess it means being able to explain its behavior. Like understanding why some forests grow larger than others or why certain countries succumb to corruption. That kind of thing."

"Okay, that’s a good start. Now, what if I asked you to build a model to predict that behavior?"

"You mean, like, program it?"

"Yes—well, we don’t really call it programming anymore. But essentially, yes. You’d develop an algorithm that predicts how the system behaves. A model that simulates the evolution of a forest, for example—from a single seed to something as vast as the Amazon."

"Wow. That’s quite a task. But I see where you’re going with this—you’re alluding to Feynman’s famous quote: ‘What I cannot create, I do not understand.’"

"Precisely. Complexity is just another word for ‘we don’t have all the knowledge.’ Or, to paraphrase Feynman, ‘we can’t create it because we don’t fully understand it’. What we truly understand, we can recreate."

"And I assume the key to understanding a system is the update rule."

"Exactly. To get from individual parts to the whole, you have to understand how they exchange information. That’s what we call the update rule."

"Like what, for example?"

"It can be anything—any rule that governs a system, no matter how simple. For instance, imagine starting with a black dot and a white dot. Then, define an update rule: a black dot can only appear next to another black dot if it was surrounded by no more than two white dots. Now, run this process a million times and observe what happens. That’s the essence of it."

"Hmm… I see. Kind of like Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science?"

"Yes, precisely. Wolfram had a big influence on my advisor, Prof. Mongarthy. They both explored the same fundamental question: How can complexity arise from simple rules? Another thing they have in common is that the science establishment excluded them.”

Mody pauses as if he reflects on some personal emotion. Then continues.

"Our time travel technology is based on identifying update rules. It’s obviously far more complex, but at its core, it relies on understanding the update rules that govern individuals while preserving symmetries. One of the key breakthroughs is realizing that each of us can be defined by a unique update rule. In other words, the very concept of a ‘person’ or ‘individual’ emerges from these rules. Names like Jon or Jenny are merely variables—placeholders for a specific update rule."

"Interesting. So, you're essentially a highly specific update rule. Where does this rule originate? Who creates it? Do you have any control over it?"

"Yes, that’s one of the major breakthroughs in quantum physics. Thanks to advanced quantum computers, we can now visualize agency as a chain of entangled states. Think of it this way: instead of focusing solely on your actions just minutes before you embark on a trip, you gain insight into the broader context of the entire journey."

"Explain."

"Okay, let me break it down. Until the late 2040s, quantum computers were little more than laboratory curiosities—justifications for hefty government grants. That all changed with a groundbreaking paper by my supervisor, Professor Mongarthy, from the University of New South Wales. Well, actually, he did most of his work at Berkeley before moving to Stanford—where they eventually let him go. But that’s beside the point. In his paper, he showed how entanglement could be reconciled with symmetry. Up until then, physics had been stuck in what was known as ‘shadow time.’ Questions like ‘What should I do next?’ couldn’t be answered clearly because actions today don’t just shape the future—they also affect the past. A person exists as a continuum of entangled states, and each move influences the present just as much as the past and future. In fact, past, present, and future are merely artifacts of a human-centered worldview. Nature doesn’t work that way. To nature, there is only the ‘now.’”

"That sounds like a recursive nightmare to me."

"Well, it was—until Mongarthy’s lab devised an elegant way to translate that ‘recursive nightmare’ for our static brains, which are stuck in shadow time. Their key insight was that entanglement has structure, and your actions today exert as much influence over tomorrow as they do over yesterday. Whether you should turn left or right at a junction depends on what you’ve done in the past. If you take a left turn, you might subtly shift the past to a point where left becomes the wrong choice. But if you take the right turn instead, it could alter your trajectory so that left would have been better—and so the cycle continues."

"So, you’re doomed if you do and doomed if you don’t."

"Yes, but there’s a silver lining. Your action isn’t an isolated event—it’s part of an entangled sequence, organized into what you might call trajectories in the multiverse."

"Trajectories of what?" she asks, looking at him with a hint of disbelief.

"Bear with me. An individual is defined by a sequence of actions that collectively form an entangled set of states. Your choice to turn left or right isn’t just about picking a direction—it’s about deciding which entangled state you want to embody. It’s a holistic perspective on your persona. Quantum computers can quantify this persona and provide deep insights. Your society today lacks the computational knowledge and power to do this, but that will change. My boss at SpaceX, for instance, explored these ideas during her graduate work and developed a theoretical framework for modeling symmetries in entangled states."

"You've lost me."

"Alright, how about we revisit the core idea - the update rule. As I mentioned earlier, each of us can be characterized by the unique update rule we follow. By the 2060s, advanced AI systems will likely identify people using this principle—imagine it as a next-generation form of DNA analysis. Rather than focusing on the chemical makeup of DNA, it examines the embedded code that determines your next action from all possible choices. What’s truly intriguing is that this idea doesn’t stop at individuals; it scales up to societies and even entire nations. Countries, too, are defined by their own update rules. In other words, the collective (the nation) emerges from individuals who shape its update rule, while the collective, in turn, influences each person’s update rule. As Douglas Hofstadter so beautifully described it, we are all part of ‘a strange loop.’"

Deborah’s eyes sparkle with recognition. She recalls reading Hofstadter back in grad school.
“Go on,” she urges.

“Each of us forms a unique node in a vast network of interconnected humans. For millennia, our shared update rule was something primal: ‘Grow strong, consume protein, mate, and produce as many offspring as possible.’ Guided by this instinct, humans first dominated the plains of East Africa before spreading across the globe. Over time, however, these update rules began to diverge, giving rise to competing variations. Take ancient Egypt, for example. Their tweak to the rule demanded that individuals devote their lives to securing the best possible earthly existence—and afterlife—for the Pharaoh. Later, the Romans introduced their own adjustment, granting greater agency to many, though not all, individuals. Slaves, women, and conquered peoples remained excluded, but most Roman citizens enjoyed newfound autonomy. This shift brought a subtle yet profound change: the idea of not just producing offspring, but caring for them. It’s wasn’t just about quantity anymore but also about quality. Roman fathers sought ‘good’ sons, not merely sons. This promising evolution hit a roadblock after the Roman Empire’s collapse. The northern European tribes that swept through its former territories rejected this refined update rule, reverting to a focus on sheer numbers. Even as Christianity spread across Europe after Charlemagne’s conquests, the continent languished through prolonged Dark Ages. Yet, at some point—perhaps during the Renaissance —the update rule evolved once more. A pivotal concept emerged: ‘Provide a better life for your children.’ Like any compounding system, this small tweak yielded outsized results over time. It’s a key reason European society surged forward after the 18th century. China, meanwhile, followed a parallel yet distinct path. Their update rule also valued strength, good children, and care, but with a unique emphasis: producing offspring who could support their elders. Chinese parents adhered to a rule centered on raising children to ensure their own security in old age. By contrast, we see the American Revolution as a defining moment that crystallized a new update rule: ‘Enable a better world for your children.’ This subtle shift proved transformative. It ignited innovation—the engine of wealth and progress—and propelled Western societies, particularly America, to unprecedented heights. Prioritizing children’s well-being didn’t just sustain growth; it redefined what growth could mean.”

Deborah tilts her head, a faint smile tugging at her lips as if she wasn’t entirely convinced. “So you’re saying the secret to success is building a better world for kids?”

“Exactly,” Mody replies, his voice steady with conviction.

Her smile lingers, skeptical but intrigued. Mody, now brimming with enthusiasm, presses on.

“But then something shifted around the mid-20th century, when Western societies tweaked the update rule again—this time toward ‘instant gratification of the individual,’ with little thought for what comes next. And, as you’d expect from a compounding system, this change snowballed. It birthed a culture of waste and corruption: ballooning national debt, vicious squabbling among elected leaders, and a sprawling bureaucracy so unchecked it might as well be a kleptocracy.”

Deborah’s brow furrowed. “Why did we change the update rule?” she asks, her tone probing.

Mody hesitates, then leaned forward slightly. “That’s a tough one to unpack, especially since your society doesn’t frame things in terms of multiverse trajectories. Picture this: trying to convince someone in Europe around 800 AD that a ship could sail west and circle back from the east. They’d stare at you blankly— the concept just wouldn’t compute. Or imagine explaining to a Greek philosopher in 2000 BC why it’s summer in Greece while Australia endures winter. You’d lose them before you even started.”

Deborah’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of irritation crossing her face. “Try me,” she says sharply, her tone daring him to stop talking down to her.

Mody grins, undeterred. “Alright, let’s try this. Why did Cain kill Abel?”

Deborah shruggs. “Jealousy, I suppose.”

“And what’s jealousy?”

She tilts her head, considering. “It’s an emotional reaction to the fear of losing something.”

“Like what?”

“Status, wealth, dignity—things like that.”

“Got it. So, is jealousy a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Bad,” she says firmly, giving Mody a playful nudge to his right shoulder.

“Why?”

She pauses, swirling her wine glass as she thought it over. “Because it can cause harm.”

“Be more specific.”

Deborah takes a sip of wine, her brow furrowing slightly. “Okay, it’s destructive.”

“More specific.”

She nudges him again, harder this time, a mock glare in her eyes. “Shut up. What’s your point?”

Mody chuckles, raising his hands in surrender. “Alright, sorry. I’m just asking—why is being destructive a bad thing?”

Deborah rolls her eyes, exasperated. “Because it’s destructive! What are you, Wittgenstein?”

Mody laughs, shaking his head. “No, not quite. I’m more of a Popper guy, actually. Since we’re on that path, let’s break down your claim: ‘jealousy is destructive.’ From a Popperian angle, it’s saying jealousy is a lousy solution to a problem.”

“How so?” she asks, leaning in despite herself.

“Take Cain’s predicament. His problem? He feels God loves him less than Abel. His fix? Murder Abel. That’s a terrible solution.”

“Why is it terrible?”

“Because it doesn’t compound well,” Mody explains, his voice gaining momentum. “Bad deeds don’t age well — that’s what makes them bad. They fail to compound effectively. Think of it like interest rates: 4% versus 5%. In one year, it’s just a dollar’s difference per hundred. But stretch that over a million years, and the gap becomes so massive your average calculator can’t even handle the digits.”

Deborah nods slowly, piecing it together. “Okay, I follow. So jealousy’s bad because it doesn’t compound well?”

“Exactly,” Mody says.

“But how does jealousy tie into this instant gratification and short-term thinking in our society?”

He smiels faintly. “You just answered your own question. Our society’s update rule has tilted too far toward the individual, neglecting the collective. Instant gratification, narcissism, entitlement—they all sprout from the same root.”

“And that root is?” she presses.

“Free money,” he replies, letting the words hang in the air.

Mody takes a slow sip of his whiskey, his eyes locking onto Deborah’s with a newfound gravity.
“No limit on resources is a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen. Humans just aren’t wired for it.”

Deborah raises an eyebrow. “So you’re saying Shangri-La’s a problem for us?”

Mody grinns, leaning in to plant a quick kiss on her lips. “Picture this: two hunter-gatherer tribes get the same offer. The deal’s simple: ‘Instead of hunting one animal at a time you’ll get more protein for instant consumption. It will impact future generations, sure, but right now, you’ll have more protein on your plate.’ Tribe A says yes; Tribe B says no. Now, fast-forward 20 generations. What do you think happens?”

Deborah furrows her brow, lost in thought. Mody jumps in before she could respond.

“Here’s what happens,” he says, his voice steady. “Tribe A slips into an Orwellian nightmare—straight out of his own playbook: ‘a world where the only emotions left are fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.’ They’ll ‘cut the links between child and parent, between man and woman… There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy.’”

Deborah blinks, taken aback. “That’s grim. What about Tribe B?”

“Tribe B keeps a steady balance between the individual and the collective—it’s their only way to survive,” Mody says, leaning back slightly.

“In the short term, Tribe A outpaces them. Better wealth, lower child mortality, more comfort—those metrics favor Tribe A early on. But stretch it out over the long haul, iterate enough times, and Tribe B pulls ahead across the board. Most crucially, it eclipses Tribe A in liberty and freedom. Tribe B invents new technologies, trailblazes moral and social innovations, and crafts a society that leaves Tribe A in the dust. Plot their paths on a graph: Tribe A’s growth grows linearly at first, then falls into complacency and decay. Tribe B? It’s a J-curve—starts slow, trails behind, then rockets past Tribe A.”

Deborah tilts her head, processing. “Okay, so we were Tribe B, but then we morphed into Tribe A. How did that happen?”

Mody shruggs, his tone matter-of-fact. “Credit. Debt. Power. Corruption. Take your pick—but debt’s the linchpin. The moment we figured out we could borrow endlessly with no instant reckoning, we flipped from Tribe B to Tribe A.”

He pauses, then continues, his voice darkening. “Our society really derailed in the early 2020s—during that pandemic I brought up earlier. That’s when instant gratification and left-hemisphere thinking seized the wheel. We threw civic responsibility out the window.”

Deborah frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

Mody’s expression hardens. “Our system of checks and balances morphed into a web of attack vectors. Lost Congress? Bribe the executive branch. Couldn’t sway them? Buy off the judges. And if that didn’t work, there was always a bloated bureaucracy ready to bend whichever way you pushed. Look at those grotesque voting schemes—gerrymandering was just the opening act. When that stopped cutting it, the DC blob upped the game: importing immigrants purely to churn them into voters. States like California even made voter ID illegal during elections.”

Deborah’s eyes widen. “What!?”

“You heard me,” Mody says, his voice steady.

“Why would people stand for that?”

“They didn’t,” he replies, shaking his head. “But the blob-elites bankrolled domestic terrorism and strong-armed regular people—through propaganda or, worse, workplace coercion—into putting up with it. We slid into a Soviet Union-style dystopia without even realizing it.”

Deborah leans forward, incredulous. “So what shifted? Why are you here? You clearly must’ve rejected that Soviet vibe at some point.”

“Yeah,” Mody says, a spark lighting his eyes. “Our quantum tech finally cut through the haze of instant gratification.”

“Hmm.” Deborah shoots him a surprised glance. “What do you mean by that?”

“You know the cookie experiment?”

“You mean the one where they hand cookies to five-year-olds and say, ‘Wait a bit, and you’ll get more later’?”

“Yep, that’s the one,” he nodds.

“Imagine this,” Mody says, leaning in. “What if you could see the ripple effects of instant gratification laid out over time—like a snapshot of countless iterations at once? You’d convince that five-year-old to wait by showing her the real payoff, not just promising it.”

Deborah nodds slowly. “Sure. But where does quantum technology fit in?”

“There’s a difference between me preaching that waiting is a virtue and actually letting them witness the results in a simulation,” he explains.

“Yeah, but a simulation’s not real,” she counters. “Why would they trust it?”

“In your world, it’s not,” Mody concedes. “But in ours, it is. Quantum technology has brought entanglement and superposition into our conceptual toolkit. We don’t just theorize outcomes—we can see them, even feel them.”

Her eyes lite up with recognition. “Oh, like ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ and ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’?”

“Exactly,” he says with a grin.

Deborah tilts her head, curious. “So what’s the breakthrough? What did your society crack that we haven’t?”

“Think back to that guy being told the Earth is round—that you can sail west and loop back from the east.”

“Yeah,” she says.

“You’d agree there’s a difference between just telling him that and actually sailing it, right?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Now imagine I could run an experiment in a real, physical system where I see every possible outcome at once—watching how one choice reshapes every trajectory. That’s what quantum computers unlock starting in the mid-2050s.”

Deborah’s eyes widen with realization. “I get it. You’re here because Congress saw how Bernanke’s moves tanked society, so they sent you back to our time to fix it.”

“Bingo,” Mody says, a faint smirk tugging at his lips. “Took years to hammer out the tech—making it roubst and precise enough for a mission like this. Mountains of theory and engineering went into it. But here I am.”

She nods, piecing it together. “I follow the entanglement angle. But what’s superposition got to do with it?”

“Superposition is just a fancy way of saying ‘multiverse,’” Mody explains. “It’s like a window into countless worlds and their paths—letting you peek at all the cats in Schrödinger’s box and pick which one to save. Something like that.”

Deborah frowns, still puzzling it out. “But how do you tell which trajectory matches which event? And what’s a trajectory, anyway?”

Mody chuckles. “Ha, you’re quick. That’s exactly what I was wrestling with in Sydney before they yanked me for this mission. Symmetry’s a loaded word in physics. In my little academic niche, it’s not just something you spot—it’s the thing itself, like Kant’s ‘Ding an sich.’ The raw reality, molded by how we see and grasp it.”

Deborah grimaces, squinting at him. “Lost me again.”

“Alright, let me break it down,” he says, softening his tone. “Your world sees trajectories like a binary tree. Take Columbus setting sail from Seville for India: one branch where he makes it, another where he doesn’t. Sound about right?”

“Yeah,” Deborah says, smirking faintly, “but I’ve got a hunch you’re about to say that’s not how it really works.”

Mody grins. “You’re spot on. That binary tree? It’s not what reality actually is. The ‘Ding an sich’—the thing itself—is way more intricate. Columbus doesn’t just have two paths; there are countless possibilities, an infinite sprawl of outcomes unfolding across the Atlantic. Quantum computers, with hundreds of logical qubits, can simulate his trip and map those many worlds in virtu—like a virtual sketch of his voyage.”

Deborah grimaces again, her expression a mix of intrigue and exasperation.

“Okay, try this,” Mody says, shifting gears. “Picture scrambling an egg, then unscrambling it. Our quantum computers can trace that path—scrambled to unscrambled and back again, looping endlessly. One specific route through that mess? That’s what we call ‘the trajectory.’”

Deborah’s eyes narrow, intrigued. “So you’re seeing other worlds? How many?”

“Potentially infinite trajectories,” he replies. “The trick is zeroing in on the most efficient one—or, sticking with the egg example, the path where unscrambling uses the least energy.”

“So Columbus could take infinite paths, but there’s one trajectory that burns the least energy?” Deborah asks, tilting her head.

“Something like that,” Mody says, leaning back with a thoughtful look.

He pauses, then continues, his tone shifting. “You know, there are moments in life that just don’t add up—little thorns that stick in your mind. One of those for me was when Richard Feynman supposedly said, ‘If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t actually understand it.’ It drove me up the wall. How could someone so brilliant, so creative, drop something that stupid?”

Deborah raises an eyebrow. “Why’s that stupid?”

“Because it felt defeatist—like we had no way to truly understand nature. But then I realized I was wrong. Feynman wasn’t being pessimistic; he was just way ahead of his time. A real genius.”

“How so?”

“What he really meant was something he said in a 1965 interview: ‘If you think you’ve understood it, you haven’t looked at it closely enough.’”

“Oh… okay?” Deborah replied, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“It’s not that we can’t understand—it’s that Feynman never meant it that way. To truly grasp something, we have to look at it the right way. Think of Columbus: he imagined the world from above and realized it was round. Or Descartes, who showed us how to express complex relationships through Cartesian coordinates. If you approach it from the wrong perspective, you’ll never get it. But shift your viewpoint, and suddenly it clicks. That’s what Feynman really meant.”

“Keep going?”

"Think of nature as a language—a language in which the words define the meaning, and the meaning, in turn, defines the words. As we speak, we reshape the sentence, and the sentence reshapes the meaning of each word. At its most fundamental level, nature works the same way. Just replace ‘word’ with ‘elementary particle’ and ‘sentence’ with ‘matter.’ This constant looping and reflexivity, Feynman believed, is what makes things so confusing. But confusing doesn’t mean incomprehensible. Feynman urged us to keep looking, to widen our perspective. In essence, we are the perfect example of reflexivity ourselves—we study nature while being part of it. We try to explain the very thing that explains us."

"Now you're giving me a headache."

"Bear with me. It's not that deep. Are you familiar with Kurt Gödel and his incompleteness theorems?"

"Yeah, kind of—like, math is considered true because everything we derive is based on axioms, but those axioms themselves can't be proven within the system. So we're trying to explain things using rules that depend on the very thing we're trying to explain."

"Exactly. Gödel showed that logic and reason have limits. But he did more than that, even if he didn't realize it. He gave us a theoretical framework for understanding quantum physics."

“How?”

"Well, in a nutshell, Gödel's theorems say that a system can't fully explain itself from within. Like, you can never completely understand who you are—you need an outside perspective to define who you are. Everything in nature is only fully explicable from the outside."

"So, like… if I think I'm sexy," she says, blushing, "that only makes sense by comparing myself to other women?"

"I’d happily give you that attribute without any comparison," he says with a grin, "but yes, you’re getting the gist. Gödel showed that even math can’t fully explain itself from within. Or more precisely—it can be true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can be proven. "

"Okay," Deborah says, taking a sip of wine before turning back to Mody. "So how is this relevant to physics and nature?"

"Because truth within is not the same as truth when it’s validated by an outside observer. Truth from within runs the risk of being a tautology. But when there is an outside, it has more validity. It means more."

"Thanks, Wittgenstein," she smirks. "Now explain it to me like I’m five."

"Every single event in the universe—every photonic shift, every electron spin, everything—only exists if it's seen from another perspective. Without that, it’s not."

"Not what?"

"It doesn’t actually happen."

"Okay, now you're getting spooky. Are you saying a tree doesn't fall unless we hear it?"

"No, it’s not about us. We’re just bystanders in the grand opera of the universe. Things happen only because they're observed from outside. Observed means, something else relates to it. It can be a human or an electron. That’s what 'happening' actually means. The electrons spins up because there is a parallel universe where it spins down. The photon is polarized horizontally because in another universe the same photon polarizes vertically.”

"Okay, so you're saying that what we observe here has parallels elsewhere—and without those parallel events, there wouldn’t even be such a thing as an event?"

"Yeah, you could say that. Now, you’ve heard of Hugh Everett, right?"

"The many-worlds guy who killed himself?"

"Yes, kind of. But I don’t think he literally killed himself—it was more his lifestyle that eventually led to his demise. Everett wrote his doctoral thesis in the late 1950s, at a time when people were still grappling with the weirdness of quantum mechanics. For example, the idea that a particle can exist in multiple places at once drove people crazy. Instead of trying to force an explanation, he just followed the math. And the math led him to a wild conclusion: everything that can happen, does happen. In other words, reality splits into all possible outcomes. But we humans only perceive one of those outcomes—one branch of the tree. That’s the core of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics."

He looks at Deborah, whose expression hovers in a superposition of disbelief and curiosity.

"So take a single photon. It has infinite possible spins, infinite paths it could take. But we only experience one version—that’s our world. The rest? That’s the multiverse. Now imagine all the photons in the universes and every possible permutation. You get... a lot."

"Okay, so lots of things happen, but we only see a tiny fraction of it. What does Gödel have to do with this?"

"Well, Kurt Gödel shocked the world when he formulated his incompleteness theorems. He essentially proved that while math—and thus our foundation of logic and reasoning—might be true, it’s not provable from within. You need an outside perspective to be sure that something is rock solid. This is where I connect Gödel and Everett. Both of them assert that reality requires an outside observer. The notion that 'something is happening' relies on the parallel idea that there is another entity observing that 'something.'"

“So, Gödel proved that some truths can’t be proven? Talk about a recursive mind-bender!”

“Okay, it’s something that fascinates me, I’ll admit, but it’s definitely a head-spinner. Good old Gödel—much like Everett, in a way—ended up literally killing himself through his lifestyle. Could there be a connection there?” Mody asks holding Deborah’s arm.

She whispers in his ear; “Hah, maybe if you think that hard, a few screws are bound to come loose.”

“Perhaps. My point, though, is that until we went through the second and third quantum revolutions, most of these ideas were just academic chatter.”

“What was the first one, anyway?”

“Planck, Heisenberg, Pauli—those guys.”

“Aha. And the second and third?”

Mody takes a sip of his whiskey, then turns back to Debroah. “The second quantum revolution gave us quantum computers—physical systems that bridge the gap between reality, which is quantum, and human understanding, which is classical. For millennia, humans have worked to decode nature’s language, crafting powerful tools like mathematics, physics, and the rest of science to make sense of it. Things get really exciting when major breakthroughs happen—think fire, the wheel, or Copernicus figuring out the solar system. Those moments often spark culture wars, and quantum physics is no different. It’s a new language pulling us closer to nature. What Feynman and his peers wrestled with most was superposition—the mind-blowing idea that something can be two or more things at once.”

“The Schrödinger Cat, right?”

“Yes, Schrödinger’s Cat—a simple thought experiment that exposes the absurdity of quantum physics. Or, more accurately, the absurdity of trying to interpret the new reality of quantum physics using the old framework of classical physics.”

“You mean we didn’t fully get what nature was telling us, and that’s why Feynman said we should look elsewhere ?”

“Exactly. It’s not just that we didn’t understand—it’s that we weren’t looking at it the right way. Think of it like this: we read text from left to right. One word follows another, building the sentence, which then gives meaning to the whole sequence. Following me so far?”

“Sure.”

“Now, nature doesn’t speak like that. Nature’s language flows back and forth—words shape the sentence, and the sentence reshapes the words. It’s a reflexive system, always shifting.”

“Sounds like a headache.”

“Hah, yeah, it’s messy—but only if we cling to a static, classical lens, like reading strictly left to right. Now, picture a machine that can process superpositions of words and sentences and turn them into meaning. That’s the heart of a quantum computer—a tool that decodes those reflexive dynamics for human minds. Feynman nailed it. It took us decades to figure out not just where to look, but more crucially, how to look. From our usual perspective, the world feels random because we’re still seeing nature the wrong way.”

“You mean it’s not just left to right, but a constant back-and-forth?”

“Let’s put it this way: from our perspective, nature’s default is randomness. Everything’s possible, and everything actually happens. That feels like total chaos to a brain like ours. Quantum computers help us glimpse a lot—not all—of a system’s potential states.”

“Why not all?”

“Because there’s no ‘all’ to capture. Even if we could map every possible state of our universe, there’d still be infinite variations of universes, each with its own laws of physics. We couldn’t possibly cover them all. That’s a riddle for future scientists to wrestle with.”

“I see. So even the laws of physics aren’t set in stone?”

“Exactly. In theory, there’s no cap on the possible variations of physical laws. Think of them as the grammar of our universe—different languages have different grammars, and the same could apply to other types of universes. But for practical purposes, let’s stick to our universe and its rules.”

“So, randomness is just something we perceive, not something that actually happens?”

“No, randomness is real—it’s just not a big deal. It’s an anthropomorphism, something that only matters to us. Nature doesn’t care one way or the other.”

“Kind of like the fish who’s asked about water and says, ‘What’s water?’”

“Yep, that’s a perfect analogy. If you asked a quantum computer about random events, it’d probably reply, ‘Random what?’ To the quantum computer, all possible events happen, and it can represent all those states—so the idea of ‘random’ wouldn’t even register.”

“And how do they translate all that complexity for our monkey brains?”

“Well, one of those monkeys, a guy named Heisenberg, dug into it and came up with some wild ideas. He argued that quantum physics is in essence a theory about all possible outcomes. From his view, reality is just a fact.”

“A fact?” Deborah shoots him a skeptical glance. “That’s terrifying. I don’t want everything predetermined—it’s boring. Where’s the space for choice, free will, or human creativity?”

“It’s not that grim. We still have control over the paths we take. Less uncertainty doesn’t mean fewer choices—in fact, it opens up more meaningful ones. Quantum computers, in a way, are freeing us from the tyranny of uncertainty.”

“Like there are tons of storylines, and we used to be stuck following just one? Now, thanks to quantum computers, we can explore a bunch at once?” Deborah says, her tone lifting with a hint of relief.

Mody nods, then continues.

“Feynman pitched quantum computers as simulators for materials. He figured that particles behave in wild, complex ways, and quantum computers could pin down and map out those behaviors. In theory, the same goes for humans. We get to pick from all these possibilities—that’s where choice, will, and creativity kick in. By cutting down uncertainty, our choices actually gain more weight and meaning.”

“And how do we choose? What decides what’s good or bad?”

“We look for symmetry. Quantum computers help us spot symmetries in entangled states. Picture it like this: there are countless ways to scramble an egg, but only a handful of ways to unscramble it with limited energy. Quantum computers show us those boundaries—where what seems random flips into symmetry. That’s what we call a trajectory.”

“Trajectory?” Deborah asks, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“Trajectories are paths through the maze of all possible outcomes. Like any path, you should—in theory—be able to move back and forth along it. That’s why we tie trajectories to symmetries.”

“But how can you go one way and not the other? Isn’t every forward path also a backward one by default?”

“Yeah, in principle, yes. The catch is energy. We define trajectories as paths you can reverse under the constraint of a certain amount of energy. Sure, there are many ways to scramble an egg—and just as many to unscramble it—but if you limit your energy budget, only a much smaller number of iterations back and forth make the cut. Those are the trajectories.”

Deborah moves her finger gently around the glass. “And let me guess: there’s one ideal trajectory that uses the least amount of energy to unscramble the egg?”

“Bingo. That’s what we call knowledge—transformations that require the least amount of energy. It’s the heart of what science chases.”

Deborah pauses, letting it sink in. A spark ignites inside her—not a physical one, but a mental flare. Something clicks.

“So you’re here because your quantum computers showed your people their path was veering off, and Bernanke was the culprit?”

“In a weird way, yeah. My society got better because the ones before us botched a few things.”

“Like instant gratification?” Deborah asks.

“Yes. My people decided to change that. That’s why they sent me here.”

“But if your society is so advanced, why not just fix the problem and move on? Why all this time travel and suing Bernanke business?”

“We’re too deeply entrenched. It’s like a wildfire—once it spreads, it’s nearly impossible to contain. But if you trace it back to the source, sometimes a small nudge is all it takes to stop it.”

“And you’re here to give that nudge?” Deborah asks, laughing.

“You could say that. I’m here to subtly shift a critical sequence of events—just enough to alter the trajectory of our society.”

Deborah takes a sip of wine. She opens her mouth then pauses. Looks at Mody. “Hmm, your society has found a new way to interpret God?”

Mody looks at her surprised. “If by ‘interpreting God’ you mean discovering a new way to communicate with nature, then yes—I suppose we have.”

Deborah raises her glass and clinks it against Mody’s. “Cheers to that. You’ve found a way to see through the fog of nature,” she says. “Isn’t that like seeing God from a different perspective?”

“Funny you mention that. Our society is actually much more spiritual than yours.”

“How so?” Deborah asks, leaning in.

“Well, for one, we don’t draw such a sharp line between spirituality and science. To us, they’re two sides of the same coin—both are ways of translating a complex, fuzzy reality into something more comprehensible, more human. Spirituality sees nature as a whole and searches for meaning by deduction. Science starts at the smallest scale and builds upward. Quantum computers bridge these approaches. They reveal the reflexive relationship between the individual element and the greater whole.”

“How has that changed your society?” Deborah asks.

“Well, I’d say we’ve become better at accepting the consequences of our actions. It’s not that we can predict the future, but we’re much more aware of how certain choices shape long-term trajectories. I suppose it comes down to having more knowledge—and with that, less fear. Quantum technology has pulled the rug out from under superstition and empty hype.”

“That sounds nice. So, you’ve gotten rid of snakes?” Deborah says with a laugh.

“Not quite,” Mody replies, chuckling. “But we’re a lot less susceptible to snake oil.”

“I’ll take that,” Deborah says with a sigh, leaning in as Mody continues.

“Imagine Christopher Columbus sailing to India—completely at the mercy of the elements, with little control over the wind, the currents, or even his final destination.
Now compare that to modern shipping, where detailed atmospheric models predict wind patterns and ocean currents, allowing ships to navigate with far greater precision.Our society is a lot like that. We can map out multiple trajectories and optimize for the ones we find most favorable. So, circling back to your earlier point—you could say we’ve developed a better relationship with God, or nature, if you don’t like the G-word.”

“And… in your world, ‘favorable’ means… less energy?” Deborah asks pensively.

“That’s a blunt way to put it, but yes. We analyze all possible trajectories and choose the ones that require the least energy to unfold. In that sense, you could say ‘good’ is inversely related to energy.”

“Does that change your morals?” Deborah asks.

“Absolutely. Not just morals, but truth as well. In fact, ‘truth’ and ‘good’ are closely related—both are emergent properties that arise from optimizing energy across infinite trajectories.”

Deborah smirks, her tone playful but edged with skepticism. “So you’re saying if I lie today, I’ll end up on a multiverse trajectory that burns more energy than one where I tell the truth?”

“Yes, exactly. Over countless iterations and updates, actions that increase energy consumption are less favored than those that reduce it. So you could say that lying, killing, stealing, and the like are suboptimal. Or, to put it another way—lies don’t compound well. Truth does.”

“Ah, now I see the connection between Gödel and Everett. Truth is an emergent property defined by actions that optimize for energy over many iterations. But from within, you can’t prove it. Only by comparing it to other trajectories in parallel universes can you say; ‘this is true, and that isn’t.’”

“Pretty close. Yes, that’s a good way to connect Gödel to Everett.”

Deborah tilts her head, intrigued. “Funny, isn’t it? Those ideas of morality, like ‘don’t steal, don’t lie’ etc. were conceived millennia before quantum computers started simulating all this. Doesn’t that strike you as interesting?”

“I think it’s yet another powerful confirmation that science and spirituality are two sides of the same coin,” Mody replies. “As I mentioned, it’s all about finding a language to communicate with nature. Whether it’s a shaman in the Peruvian high Sierra chewing coca leaves to invoke the gods or a quantum physicist at Berkeley running simulations, they’re both converging on the same goal: a closer connection to the natural world by better understanding. ”

Deborah looks at him, kisses him, and then takes another sip. They pause, staring at their reflections in the hotel bar mirror.
“You mentioned a third quantum revolution. What is that?”

“Well, that’s the real breakthrough. I probably shouldn’t be talking about this with you, but what the heck—it’s just bar chatter. Remember, the first quantum revolution was the discovery that elementary particles behave in strange ways. The second revolution visualized Everett’s conjecture that everything that can happen actually happens. The third is more of a revolution in its own right, but let’s stick with the nomenclature. So, the third quantum revolution was the solution to the dark matter mystery.”

“Dark matter?” Deborah frowns, disbelief etched on her face. “How did we get from quantum to dark matter?”

“Well, that’s a long story, but let me give you the shortcut. Dark matter is something we know exists in the universe, but we couldn’t visualize. In other words, it doesn’t interact with light, which is why we call it dark matter. Scientists searched for decades, using increasingly sophisticated technology, to find traces of this elusive substance. Researchers at Berkeley theorized that ultra-sensitive quantum sensors might pick up signals from dark matter, but for a long time, nothing happened. We just couldn’t find it. Then, somewhere in the mid-2040s, serendipity struck. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara connected a large quantum network with Berkeley and Stanford to create a massive quantum computer with over 200 logical qubits. The experiment aimed to demonstrate that this mini-quantum internet could work in principle. They conducted several experiments, one of which involved simulating entangled states of photons over those 200 logical qubits, resulting in a huge number of possible states. As it turns out, the Berkeley part of the network was located at a site previously used for dark matter detection. Now, here’s where the mystery deepens: as they conducted experiments with these photons, the results just didn’t add up. It felt like something from the outside was interfering with the photons. After several more years of research, a lot of guessing, and a lengthy visit to the theoretical physics department, they eventually solved the puzzle. What this quantum network detected was dark matter interaction. It turns out that what we used to call dark matter are actually traces of other parallel universes.”

“So you found dark matter?”

“Well, for starters, we found that it’s not actually dark. But that’s not the main point. The key to the discovery was realizing that our universe is intertwined with other universes, and what we used to call dark matter is sort of the glue that connects them. The reason we couldn’t find dark matter before the advent of large-scale quantum computers was that we were looking in the wrong places. It’s like searching for needles in haystacks with just a flashlight. Good luck with that. Now, imagine you have the ability to create a flashlight with an enormous number of beams, and you can tune those beams so they interact with the needle. Suddenly, you have a much better chance of finding it. In essence, the third quantum revolution not only enabled us to finally solve the dark matter problem, but it also validated Everett’s thesis of a many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. It took almost a hundred years, but he was finally vindicated.”

“To Hugh and his creative mind!” Deborah lifts her glass, kisses Mody, and turns around on her bar stool. Mody takes her hand, closes the tab, and gently guides her out of the bar toward their hotel room.

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