September 10 - Parallelism

Parallel universes are created at an exponential rate every millisecond. It happens every time you make a decision.
For instance, say you have a choice between cereal or a bagel for breakfast, and you choose to have the bagel. You make the bagel and eat it. This is your reality.
However, at the exact same time you choose the bagel, a fully functioning parallel universe is created in which you make the other choice instead. And this parallel universe in which you choose and eat the cereal instead of the bagel is every bit as real as the one in which you choose the bagel. Both the you eating a bagel universe and the you eating cereal universe reside on different planes of existence, completely independent of one another, but they are both real.
Parallel universes, parallel existences, one for each possible choice.
With me so far? Good.
But of course in most cases, the choice you make isn't a simple binary either/or choice. There almost always virtually limitless options. To continue with the breakfast example, you could have an onion bagel, a blueberry bagel, a cinnamon raisin bagel, or any other of dozens of kinds of bagels. You could toast your bagel or not toast it. You could eat it with cream cheese, butter, peanut butter, lox, whatever. You could put it on a paper plate, ceramic plate, a napkin, etc. There are easily thousands of different iterations of the bagel for breakfast scenario. And the choice you end up making (toasted blueberry bagel with cream cheese on a white ceramic plate) exists in its own universe. And every other possible choice you don't opt for splinters off as its own parallel universe that immediately lead to new scenarios each with its own infinite set of resultant universes that in turn spiderweb infinitely.
And they're all the result of a seemingly simple choice between a bagel and cereal.
OK?
And so very soon you have a never ending, ever-multiplying, spiderweb of spiderwebs. An infinitesimal explosion of universes begetting explosions of universes every microsecond.
And that's just for you and the results of your actions. The same explosion of explosions exists for every other living thing in the world.
And then when we interact with each other it gets really hectic: Every possible thing you could say to someone at any given moment exists in its own universe. And every possible reply that person gives you also exists in its own universe. As does everything you say to their reply.
And on and on and on.
The rate at which parallel universes are created is impossible to comprehend. The exponential level of multiplication involved is beyond fathoming. In order to write the number of parallel universes that have been created just since you started reading this story, you would need to change the first character of the story to a 1 and every character thereafter to a zero. And in the time it takes you to read this sentence that number to the power of that number of parallel universes will have been created.
In short, there are a lot of parallel universes in existence.
Now.
There are some people--very few--who have the power to 'jump' at will to any other parallel universe that they might like better than the one they're currently in. For example, if the bagel you eat for breakfast isn't all that good, you can jump to a universe in which you had a better breakfast and continue your life in that reality instead.
Or if you choose the wrong answer on a test, you can jump to an alternate universe where you choose the right answer.
And on and on and on.
That was Roland's gift. And he used it often.
For instance, Roland was a football fan. And if his favorite team, the Philadelphia Eagles, lost on the final play of the game because they ran instead of passed, he would just jump to an alternate reality in which they passed instead of ran. And if they scored on that play in that reality he would stay there. And if they didn't, he would jump to another reality where some minor change in variables brought about victory.
All of those realities were out there. He just had to jump around until he found the right one, which he did all the time--and not just with football, although he certainly did it with that. In the universe in which he resided, his Eagles were the winningest dynasty in NFL history: 12 straight Super Bowl victories.
But his blessed life wasn't limited to undefeated seasons for his favorite football team. He was triumphant in every way imaginable. If there were an annual award for Biggest Winner in the Universe, his bookshelves would be full of them. He got overwhelmingly positive outcomes in every situation he ever faced in life. He got the most beautiful women, drove the nicest cars, and won the lottery whenever he felt like it. He never had a bad meal, never experienced a disappointing outcome in any sporting contest (as a participant or a spectator), never saw a bad movie (except those that were so bad they were good), never got sick, and never had anything not go the way he wanted it to.
And the bottom never dropped out.
He never got bored of winning, never grew sick of exquisite meals or amazing experiences, never found greatness tedious.
How could he have?
It's a big world with virtually infinite possibilities and unlimited treasures to experience. In that kind of reality, there is no bad. There's only different manifestations of amazing. For instance, at the moment he felt like he might possibly become bored of hiking in the Himalayas with Bill Murray, he would just jump to a parallel universe where he was sailing in the Aegean Sea with a Brazilian lingerie model.
If he ever grew remotely tired of being a champion race car driver, he would jump to an alternate reality where he was the biochemist who perfected the AIDS vaccine.
As soon as he lost the slightest bit of interest in being a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and bed mate of Halle Berry, he would jump to a different plane of existence where he was a cattle rancher in Wyoming who dabbled in bounty hunting.
And on and on and on.
Some people might think Roland should have had some sort of epiphany at some point where he realized he'd lost his moral groundings and decided that he should stay in one reality and experience the richness of an existence filled with all the ups and downs and highs and lows and triumphs and tragedies of a normal life, but they're wrong.
It would kick ass to be Roland.
And that's that.