Is the world you are living in, real? And if it is, are you happy with it?
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch is a stem-winding dive into the unfathomable world of human mind where one thought, just one thought can branch off into a new world, and spin a zillion different realities, most of which are merely alternate realities that have nothing to do with the present moment.
All it takes is one thought. Like a sticky ghost, this thought clings to the person and pulls their attention away from the present moment, luring them into parallel universes that mimic their greatest desires and fears. The person is choicelessly yanked into these alternate realities, and they need to navigate, traverse, and cross them in order to return to the present moment. In the fictional world of this book, a man named Jason Dessen was the person who found himself lugging into this bizarre and ambiguous world of parallel, alternate realties.
It started on a hearty family evening, backslapped with romance and toastiness. Standing in his kitchen, Jason was cooking pasta and sipping wine, having romantic moments with his wife. Their son, Charlie, was there too, painting landscapes. Unbeknownst to him, the world outside his house awaited him with a rude awakening.
Are you happy with your life?
Jason was jolted into the chasm of this question one night when he stepped out of his house to attend a party in a bar with his scientist friends. On the return trip, before he could stop by to grab a tub of ice-cream for his family, a strange masked man knocked him off, and dragged him into a car. When he woke up, he found himself in a world that was not his own. He came across something he never knew he had been searching for.
In this world that resembled weirdly-duplicated versions of his home-city Chicago, he was not an ordinary physics professor. He wasn’t married and his wife Daniela didn’t even know him. She was rather the girlfriend of his friend and colleague Ryan Holder. Their son Charlie didn’t exist. On the surface, everything appeared real, but within the trenches of this world, he was not just one Jason. He was many different Jasons at the same time.
The abductor took him to a place he didn’t recognize. Soon enough, his reality started to feel disorientating. Each time he tried to flee from where he was held captive, he would be caught again by these mysterious men. In this strange new world, Jason finds himself strapped to a gurney. He meets Doctor Vance, officer Leighton, and a woman named Amanda who calls herself his therapist. With his body and brain oozing with drugs that these people injected into his system, Jason feels too disorientated to think or decide what is real versus what’s unreal.
After multiple attempts of escape, Jason feels powerless, helpless, and agitated by all the storms that seem to cloud his head in this psychotic drug-induced state. At some point, Amanda, the therapist, helps him escape. They flee from the hospital and enter into the “great unknown,” which is precisely “The Box.”
“The Box” is a remarkable device developed by Jason2, the other version of the real Jason. This box is a manifestation of “quantum superposition,” a principle quite similar to Erwin Schrödinger's cat experiment, in which a person can exist in multiple realities at once, until they make a choice. When someone enters “The Box,” they need to take a mind-altering drug and imagine the reality they want to step into. After fleeing from the numerous alternate versions of Jason, the real Jason and Amanda, enter the multiverse through “The Box.” The countdown of this drug, called “ampoules,” keep on decreasing after each trip. The Box is a one-way portal. Once someone steps inside, there is no way back.
During this time, while they still have their ampoules remaining, the two travel through various, alternate versions of the Chicago city. In some of these worlds, Jason is a filthy beggar whereas in some others, he is a top scientist who is conducting a revolutionary research on a brain-altering drug. He, in fact, is thought to be the creator behind “The Box.”
In one world, Amanda leaves Jason alone to navigate the parallel universe, while she goes on to build a new life for herself by settling in this new, alternate world. Meanwhile, Jason uses a clever chatting program to track all the other Jasons and make them gather in one place so he could resolve the entanglement and return to his original world. His intention is not to kill all the other Jasons, but just to tell them to stay away from his family, his wife Daniella and their son Charlie. After a series of ferocious chases and brawls, Jason finally returns into his original world, reuniting with his family.
This book is an anecdote for all those moments when you feel discontented with your life. You may shift your focus on what you lack and start taking things you have for granted, but a moment will arrive when you’ll realize that all the other worlds, the parallel universes, the alternate realities, you are spinning in your head with your thoughts and imaginations aren’t that fascinating as you think them to be. Until everything topples and until your world crumbles apart, you don’t really know how precariously, mysteriously, beautifully, all of this hangs together. And you are privileged to experience it. There is no need for another reality. Your present moment reality is sufficient and exciting enough not to pay attention to.
In the end, the book leaves us with an insanely brutal exercise for self-reflection. Who are you if you strip away all the trappings of your personality and your world? Who are you without any of this?
Because, infinity, really, really, is horrifying….unless you know where you are in it….
“We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.”
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