Parallel

replaced with your parallel’s memories, causing you to remember her life experiences as though they were your own. Not only the things she has already experienced, but also the things she will experience over the course of the next year,” Dr. Mann explains. “These experiences have yet to happen, but we remember them as though they already have. It’s the way our brains make sense of the gap.”
    “And my real memories?” I ask. “The things that actually happened to me . . . ?”
    Dr. Mann snaps his fingers. It’s a loud, jarring sound. “ Ausradiert! Gone.”
    Relief washes over me. This can’t be the explanation, then. If our worlds were really entangled, then I wouldn’t remember the movie, or Bret, or my summer in Los Angeles. And I wouldn’t have just one day’s worth of new memories, I’d have the whole year.
    “But there could be anomalies, right?” Caitlin interrupts my thought as if reading my mind. “People who’ve kept their old memories, for example. Or who haven’t gotten a complete set of new ones.”
    “I’m counting on it,” Dr. Mann says enigmatically, fixing his eyes on me.
    My eyes bolt to Caitlin, but she’s scribbling furiously in her notebook.
    Another student approaches Dr. Mann with a question about the lecture. “Excuse me for a moment,” the professor says to us, turning away.
    “If my past has been overwritten, why do I remember the way things were before?” My whisper sounds like a hiss.
    “You heard what he said,” Caitlin replies, not bothering to keep her voice down. “There are always anomalies.”
    I shake my head, unable to accept it. I wanted an explanation, but this is too much. Lunacy would’ve been easier to digest.
    “Where were we?” Dr. Mann asks in a booming voice, startling both of us. The student he was speaking to is halfway up the aisle. How much did he overhear?
    “Anomalies,” Caitlin replies, holding my gaze.
    “To recap,” I say, staring the good doctor down. “You’re telling me that if my parallel self and I are entangled ”—I spit the word out like it tastes bad—“then right now I should remember not only the stuff she’s already experienced, but also everything she will experience in the time between her present and mine?”
    “You should, yes.” He’s looking at me strangely again. This time, I don’t look away.
    “So her future, it’s already determined, then.”
    “Ah—good! The very heart of the matter.” The professor grins at me like a schoolboy. “ Of course, it’s hard to be certain of these things,” he says, “but in my view, the answer is both yes and no. I believe that at every moment, whether in our world or another, each person’s future is, to some degree, already mapped out. Because each of us is naturally inclined to make certain choices and to go a certain way, there is, in a sense, a default trajectory to our lives.”
    “A ‘most likely’ path,” Caitlin offers.
    “A most likely path,” Dr. Mann agrees. “Which isn’t to say our fates are sealed. In fact, I believe the very opposite is true. At every moment, each person has the freedom to choose a different path, thereby changing the trajectory of his life. Nothing is set in stone.”
    My mind jumps to my own life path. The series of choices that led me to L.A., starting with my decision to take that drama class last fall. That single moment—the seemingly innocuous choice between two electives—radically altered the direction of my life. But I didn’t know that then. I had no idea what hung in the balance that day.
    Did she?
    “Are our parallel selves real people?” I hear myself ask. “Like, living, breathing human beings?”
    “Absolutely,” replies Dr. Mann. “They inhabit a different world, but it and they are no less ‘real’ than we are.” He pauses thoughtfully. “I find that this concept is often the most difficult for students to grasp,” he says then. “If our world has indeed been entangled with a parallel world, you have not become your parallel self. Nor she, you. You haven’t switched bodies or traveled through space. You remain separate and distinct beings, living in two distinct physical worlds. Those worlds have simply become linked.”
    “But what does that mean for me?” I ask. “What happens if my parallel self makes some crazy life-altering decision tomorrow? Where will I end up?” I am fighting to keep the panic out of my voice. I am failing.
    “That’s the beauty of it,” Dr.