This week, Futures is pleased to welcome Judy Helfrich with her time-bending story Playing for keeps. You can keep track of Judy’s work at her website or by following her on Twitter. Here she reveals how her latest tale came about (probably) — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Playing for keeps

What happens to the past?

According to the block-universe theory of time, the past exists. As the present drives us towards the future and we leave the past behind, it stays put, like a road we once travelled. But if the past is extant, how is it stored?

Obviously, everything comes down to doughnuts.

I was at my local doughnut shop one morning surrounded by seemingly infinite choices — from Boston cream to French cruller and everything in between — when it struck me that I was in a superposition of doughnuts. If I believed the Copenhagen interpretation, the moment I made a choice, my doughnut superposition would collapse down to, say, a maple-glazed state. But if I went with the many-worlds interpretation, then every possible choice would be played out in a different universe, and I could have all the doughnuts.

I don’t know what happened in all the other universes, but when I finished my maple-glazed in this one, I wondered what happened to that collapsed maple-glazed state. Did I leave it behind somewhere? Was I still in the past, forever eating that doughnut? Essentially: does the past consist of previously collapsed quantum states? And if so, where are they stored? Are they like dark matter, hovering on the edge of our limited perceptions until we can figure out how to access them?

Rather than time-travel to visit the past, I mused that maybe it comes down to simply expanding our human perceptions to observe previously collapsed quantum states. And if someone from the future observes the exact same states I once observed, perhaps they could live my past, make copies of me, play me like an avatar, or even (gasp) eat my doughnut.

It might be fun, I thought, to act out the parts of historical figures, or even change their endings (or their doughnut choice). If all the world’s a stage, why limit it to the present?

Well, I thought, it might not be so fun if someone changed my collapsed states and thus changed my history. And what if they deleted my collapsed states? Would it be as though I never existed? And by observing all the collapsed states I observed during my lifetime, they would learn my darkest secrets. Not that I have any. *coughs*

I might not even be the original me, I mused, but someone from the future who’s playing me. Or maybe I am the original, but others are playing me, messing with my stuff, changing my collapsed states willy-nilly, springing forth new copies of me and my universe with each quantum-level change. And if someone from the future plays someone from the present who is playing me, on and on, ad infinitum, then eventually every possible quantum state representing every choice I never made, every thought I never had, every doughnut I never ate, would be played out in infinite universes, proving both the Copenhagen and the many-worlds interpretation.

Anyway, that’s what compelled me to write Playing for Keeps.

At least, I think it was me.