Physics

YESTERDAY, I was lucky enough to convince Ally that I had amnesia so it was a lot easier for me now. I got Black's schedule from her and got myself a map of the whole school like I was a new student. I had to memorize my path and buildings if I wanted to attend Black's classes regularly. Ally also told me the days that we were allowed to not wear our uniforms and it happens to be today.

I wore black jeans and a baby pink shirt. It was hard for me to find simple clothes from Black's closet. Almost half of the clothes she own are skirts and dresses which I find uncomfortable to wear when I tried it on myself.

After my father dropped me off, I head straight to my first class which was apparently Physics. When I got there, I already see Ally sitting in the front row with her feet up in the chair like she was at home. She turns to me and waves. I sat next to her but she just stares at me up and down. "You also forgot how to dress yourself?"

I look at myself and I see my red shoes. I twist my body terrified that I might have walked around the school with a hole in my butt cheek but there wasn't any of that. "What's wrong with it? Is it scratched?" I turn my back on her who was shaking her head.

"No. You're looking so simple right now. You casually dress up like a Barbie doll."

That explains the clothes Black had in her closet. She was a fashionista. "I just don't really feel like dressing up today," I lie but no one notices so it was okay.

Ally doesn't argue after that and we both waited for our classmates to slowly fill up our room. By seven fifteen, it was a lot noisier than before. I guess everyone was in already and we were just waiting for our first teacher to arrive so when he did – yes, our teacher in Physics was a guy – we stood and greeted him.

In the middle of class, I was captivated by his lecture that made me more attentive than usual. "The parallel universe is the same as ours but a little different." At that, he draws a straight line. "What I mean by this is that it's like a mirror world of ours but a little different." He draws and small house at the top and draws a bigger house in reverse. "In this parallel universe, this world," he points at the small house, "Made decisions that this world," then he points the bigger house. "Didn't make. That is parallel universe."

Violet, do you believe in multiverse?

Multiverse.

Earth is not one but infinite. Bartax said it is and I want to prove his point someday because I believe in the multiverse. It might seem crazy but with Science, I think it's possible to create a breach to another universe.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE. This is the parallel universe for me but not the parallel universe for the ones that are living here. I am in a parallel universe. How can I not have thought of this when I was trying to figure out where I am? I am not in the future, I am in another Earth because of Mrs. Dee's ring robot that she was working on.

After class, I tell Ally that I'd catch up with them later so I could talk to our Physics teacher. "Mr. Johnson, can I ask you something? About the multiverse." Our teacher turns to me and fixes his spectacles as he tries to study my face.

"Ms. Allen. I never imagined the day you would come up to me and ask me something about our class and going to school in general." He lets out a big sigh. "But what is it that you want to ask?" He stops fixing his things and diverts his attention to me.

"You said that the parallel universe makes decisions that our world did not make so, is it possible that the people living on one Earth are present in another Earth?" I ask hoping it made more sense.

He looks away. "Probably alive or dead. Our Earth mirrors another Earth but it could be that they're alive or dead in another Earth. They could be a different person in another Earth. No one can really tell because no one still proved the existence of a parallel universe."

"Mrs. Dee's portal worked." I mumble to myself catching my teacher's attention. When he asks about what I said, I tell him that it was nothing and excuse myself from him to catch up with my friends. Now I'm getting some progress in trying to figure out my situation. I am still me but I'm not the same person in this Earth. That explains the huge difference between my friends and family. They're the same people that are from Black's universe.

When I reached my friends, Ally asks me what I had to discuss with Mr. Johnson which made me remember the exact same thing that happened to us on my Earth when Mrs. Dee asked me to stay and asked about my parents. "Something about the lesson,"

She frowns at me in disbelief. "You were never interested with class discussions or school for that matter," she opens her notebook and brings out a feather pen creasing her brows. "I can't believe you're casually changing ever since you got amnesia."

I press my lips together. "Sorry?"

She shakes her head and chuckles. "Enough about school. I heard an Engineering student just transferred and he's superhot. The name's Andy Lee. Will you be checking him out?"

I never realize how much different Black and I were until now. Black was really playful and from the looks of it, Black appears to be more rebellious and bratty – or maybe she even acted so mighty on this Earth. "I don't know about that,"

After our discussion during Physics class, I couldn't focus on my other subjects that day and I've been so desperate to know more about this multiverse and I needed to learn more about this because I am in a position where I still find things unclear.

BY the time I reached home, I could see Mint in the living room. She was sitting down the floor and used the center table as her study table. There were piles of papers in front of her and she was so busy writing down her notes. It is funny how opposite everyone is on my Earth and here. Everything's so much better here. She turns to me. "Black! I'm so confused with the integers. Can you help me out? I can't fail Math and not be an honor student for this grading. I'll die out of shame."

I smile and walk closer to her. I sit over the floor next to her and studying her given examples. "When you're trying to subtract numbers with different signs, the sign of the number below will change. So if this is negative 5, it becomes positive 5. Then proceed to addition."

"Why is it like that though? I don't get why they have to include subtraction of integers when you're bound to add them in the end." She rolls her eyes but tries to follow what I just I taught her. "Change, add..."

I've never imagined Mint getting so frustrated and stressed over school and seeing her like this – working hard for something is making me love Black's Earth too much. If I was greedy, I would just stay here and forget that I even existed on my Earth.

"Break time, girls." Mother comes in and plants two glasses of juice in the table.

"Thank you," I smile, taking a sip of the orange juice.

I am in a parallel universe so that only meant that they are my family still. My family in Earth B. Learning that this is still my family from a parallel universe makes things much more comfortable for me now that I'm stuck here and I have no idea how to get out. I wasn't sure if I still wanted to go back to where I really belong but I know I'm going to enjoy my time here.

I was still in the living room with Mint who was still trying to solve the given numbers they were assigned to answer and I was just looking around. I never realized how our house would turn out if my parents made other decisions and I guess this was it. "No back-home hugs for dad?"

My head turns to the entrance and see my father taking his red bag off. I stand up from the floor to give him an embrace. He still smells good despite the visible sweats running down his forehead. "I'll bring you coffee dad,"

"I would love that, sweetheart. Thank you," He smiles and pats my head.

I head to the kitchen to prepare my father's coffee. Maybe my father on this Earth is also fond of coffees. Who knows.When the coffee I made was ready, I went back to the living room and see him and Mint cuddling each other as they laughed out loud.

"Dad, stop! No!" Mint giggles and moves around father's embrace.

"This is why you don't tickle your dad's foot okay," He replies and they both laugh as father ends the teasing with a warm hug. He turns to me so I walk closer to them, handing him the coffee I promised to serve. "Thank you,"

"That's new. You never give dad coffee before. Blue used to do it a lot for you when dad tries to let you do it."

Another thing I learned from Black's personality. She was very lazy. It was as if she was a queen of her own little perfect life and that bothered me. She had this great family and she takes advantage of the good things out of it.

Father playfully shuts her mouth with his huge hands. "Stop teasing your sister hm? Don't listen to your sister okay Black? Now come and sit with me so we can make fun of your sister together. She can't subtract simple integers." Father teasingly points at Mint as he laughed out loud.

I sit next to him, smiling. If my father on my Earth was like this, I would be very happy but he wasn't. If my dad on my Earth was playful like this, life would have been more colourful for me and not dull.

"As if you know yourself dad!" Mint crosses her arms and furrows her brows glaring at father intensely.

"Easy. Very easy." He grabs Mint's notebook and pen. He suddenly leans to me. "How do you do this?"

I turn to him and chuckled along with Mint. "Nice try, dad. Nice try." She grabs the notebook from dad and smirks.

"Stop disturbing the kids, Ron. They're doing their assignments." Mother walks in with crossed arms and pulls father's ears up so he was out of the sofa. It would have been nice to grow up with people like them – a family like them.

I was back in my room after dinner. I brought the books I borrowed from the library out of my bag and began scanning through the pages while taking small sips of the milk my mother had prepared for me.

There is a proposal out there that suggests that there could be other universes besides our own, where all the choices you made in this life played out in alternate realities. So, instead of turning down that job offer that took you from the United States to China, the alternate universe would show the outcome if you decided to venture to Asia instead.

Mr. Johnson was right when he said that parallel universes are mostly choices you didn't make in your own Earth and I still can't believe that Mrs. Dee made her portal work and it got me here – on Earth B.

The concept is known as a "parallel universe," and is a facet of the astronomical theory of the multiverse. There actually is quite a bit of evidence out there for a multiverse. First, it is useful to understand how our universe is believed to have come to be.

Around 13.7 billion years ago, simply speaking, everything we know of in the cosmos was an infinitesimal singularity. Then, according to the Big Bang theory, some unknown trigger caused it to expand and inflate in three-dimensional space. As the immense energy of this initial expansion cooled, light began to shine through. Eventually, the small particles began to form into the larger pieces of matter we know today, such as galaxies, stars, and planets.

One big question with this theory is: are we the only universe out there. With our current technology, we are limited to observations within this universe because the universe is curved and we are inside the fishbowl, unable to see the outside of it (if there is an outside.)

Yes. We were limited before Mrs. Dee managed to successfully make her portal to another universe and my only question now is how. How she managed to gather a lot of energy and everything science it needs to satisfy the portal's standards for it to actually work.

There are at least five theories why a multiverse is possible, as a 2012 Space.com article explained

1. We don't know what the shape of space-time is exactly. One prominent theory is that it is flat and goes on forever. This would present the possibility of many universes being out there. But with that topic in mind, it's possible that universes can start repeating themselves. That's because particles can only be put together in so many ways.

It would make sense if the world is flat and the flow of parallel universes is continuous. It doesn't really contradict to my mindset since I was always a believer of the flat space-time. It does make sense if we put it that way rather than having the Earth round and ball-ish.

2. Another theory for multiple universes comes from "eternal inflation." Based on research from Tufts University cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, when looking at space-time as a whole, some areas of space stop inflating like the Big Bang inflated our own universe. Others, however, will keep getting larger.

So our universe is like a bubble. It's sitting in a network of bubble universes of space. What's interesting about this theory is that other universes could possibly have different laws of physics than our own, since they are not linked.

3. Or perhaps multiple universes can follow the theory of quantum mechanics (how subatomic particles behave), as part of the "daughter universe" theory. If you follow the laws of probability, it suggests that for every outcome that could come from one of your decisions, there would be a range of universes — each of which saw one outcome come to be.

On this Earth, my parents had my sister Blue as to which on my Earth, my parents lost her and was never born. Alternate endings would sound more understandable if it's parallel universe we're talking about.

4. Another possible avenue is exploring mathematical universes, which, simply put, explain that the structure of mathematics may change depending in which universe you reside. "A mathematical structure is something that you can describe in a way that's completely independent of human baggage," said theory-proposer Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as quoted in the 2012 article. "I really believe that there is this universe out there that can exist independently of me that would continue to exist even if there were no humans."

Structure of Mathematics was pretty possible too aside from Physics but I wasn't that convinced of the equation until I saw Mrs. Dee computing equations before I even got to this place. Maybe she did something about mathematics too.

5. And last but not least as the idea of parallel universes. To go back to the idea that space-time is flat, the number of possible particle configurations in multiple universes would be limited to 10^10^122 distinct possibilities, to be exact. So, with an infinite number of cosmic patches, the particle arrangements within them must repeat — infinitely many times over. This means there are infinitely many "parallel universes": cosmic patches exactly the same as ours (containing someone exactly like you), as well as patches that differ by just one particle's position, patches that differ by two particles' positions, and so on down to patches that are totally different from ours.

I pulled out one of Black's notebook and started jotting down some of the names I've met in Earth A – where I originally lived – and those who I met in Earth B – where I am right now. Now everything was making more sense. If Mr. Johnson never mentioned about the parallel universe, I never could have realized that it where I am right now. Mrs. Dee was making a portal and her portal worked. It led me here – where I am right now.

I am now living in a world with different decisions in life. Blue is alive in Earth B which she wasn't on my Earth. George and Margoue is my friend here. George is gay. Ally is a lot more caring. Ezreal is a lesbian and Donna talks a lot here too. And Mark. On this Earth, Mark liked me back. In my Earth, Mrs. Dee made the portal. If this is really the parallel universe, I should find Mrs. Dee of this Earth. Everything in this universe was much more pleasing but I'm so confused now and I'm amazed at the same time.

Who knew parallel universes really existed? I am a woman of Science and I doubted the theories that involved the multiverse but looking at it now, I guess you really can't say something is fictional without trying to prove its existence otherwise.

If I am in a parallel universe and I am Violet Allen in Earth A, Black Allen is me in Earth B – why is my name Black if everyone else had the same names and faces? Why is my name Black if my family from my Earth and her Earth is the same? Why am I Black Allen in Earth B?