The many-worlds hypothesis asserts that all possible realities exist. Every action, no matter how small, causes the universe to branch. For instance, if you roll a die and it lands on a six, other “universes” are created where each of the other numbers were rolled, infinite numbers of them at that, all with slightly different outcomes.

I’m a quantum physicist and this is what I study. When I realised I could prove it, it hit me like lightning, literally. I theorized the life you experience is the one that is the longest out of all those possibilities, just like lightning. When you see a photo of it, you see that it forks out in many different directions, but only one lights up the sky. All those other routes lead to dead-ends and are ultimately futile.

When I told my wife about my discovery, she being a fellow physicist, was ecstatic.

“How are you going to prove it?” she asked, and my head hung.

She knew what it meant. Leaning over the table, she took my hand.

I exited the basement with the gun in my hand and sat for what seemed like hours, glancing at my wife who stared back at me anxious.

I put the pistol to the side of my head.

I prepared to pull the trigger and thought of my wife, the infinite number of her seeing me blow my brains out, and then thought of the one that would see the gun fail and prove my hypothesis.

I pulled the trigger.

My wife managed a smile, “You did it.”

All I could think about were the countless versions of her screaming.