STORY OPERATION DOPPLEGANGER

If you had arrived in a parallel universe that was in some way different to your own, the experiment might have been worthwhile for you and the team who sent you here. However, as you can see, we also defeated the Nazis in 1945, and the red paint on my office door here is exactly the same shade as that on the office door in my other self’s office on your own Earth. No one here is any closer to curing cancer than the medical profession on your World, Earth One – though to us, this is Earth One and you dwell on Earth Two.

We find no discernable differences in our respective dimensions. Perhaps all dimensions are exact carbon copies of one another. God’s imagination might be more finite than we imagined.  It’s rather like being at home where you have a TV set in every room, but all tuned to the same programme. Wherever you go you will find the same show. Oh, we could send our pioneers on to other dimensions and into other wormholes hoping to find a different one yet, where the Reformation never happened, or where Elvis lived another three decades, or where I chose to paint my office purple instead of white, but it seems unlikely there are any discernable differences. Each dimensional universe is an exact carbon copy of every other.

Your experts warned loud and long that the research was draining your economy and that the money might be better invested elsewhere, but you carried on with your mission, and look where it got you – exactly where you started – and your World bankrupt. We know your World is bankrupt due to this as that is exactly what has happened to our World too, Our you is facing an angry meeting with your World’s US President right now too – Thanks for nothing.

I am astonished that you feel an overwhelming desire to go home to your World. You are already in fact here, and there. Why not pull up a chair and relax. Accept that you are no differently, better or worse off than before.

Ah, I see you are admiring my photo. It’s my wife and me during our cruise on the Titanic. We sailed on her 1,000th voyage. It was so lucky she missed that iceberg back in 1912, wasn’t it? Oh my, you seem to have dropped your whisky glass. What’s wrong? 

Sorry to play such a joke on you, but that is not the Titanic. Sadly, the great ship did perish after hitting the iceberg as our respective history books record. The ship in the photo is the Expeditional. I sailed on her with the First Lady on our honeymoon. I just wanted to see how you might have reacted had you found a difference between our worlds. Sadly, there is no discernable difference. Welcome home.

Arthur Chappell