Original link: https://onojyun.com/2022/07/10/6306/
△ 191｜Happy Death Day
Because it happened to be a new moon at this time last year, and I just woke up from the hospital bed on that day, I marked this day as “Death Day” on the calendar. In these aspects of my life, I am a weird person with a very “ceremonial sense”. Although these rituals do not have any practical value in the eyes of others, probably only I can understand the logic inside – it’s just I want to remind myself that on that day in that year, I almost died, and what happened later, maybe the self on another “if branch” replaced me, in another “if” branch Live online.
I conceived a novel a long time ago in which the protagonist is looking for a storyline to survive in the “world of what if”. Because there can only be one “self” in a story line, he must encourage the other self in the original “if world” to make a decision that goes against the original “if”, so as to squeeze him out of this story line , to allow himself to remain in it. But the problem is that although those “ifs” are all half-to-half branches, after all, there are more and more branches, and they will be farther and farther away from his original “goal”, so he can only live in the world of these “ifs”. ” to find the story line that is closest to the “target”.
And those story lines that have changed because of their own changes have repeated “self”, and that story line will split and overlap again because of the “ifs” made by the parties. In this way, he lost his original story line in the “World of If”, and he could only wander in the already confused story line. Because of their own intervention, in the “world of if”, “self” is separated into two factions, one is the very inclined self, they want to survive in the story line, they are not allowed to criticize the other ” The other group is the gentle conservatives, who are cowardly, inferior, and always compromise themselves in the fate arranged by others, but they are more and more aware that they will be cornered by the other “self”, They can only be assigned those “Bad Endings” in the “World of If”, so they started to resist. In this “what if world”, they broke out an unprecedented war. Aggressors, and very logical-minded conservatives, start a war for a story line that looks better after the “what if”.
And the initiator, after being involved in the war, realized that he seemed to have made an irreversible mistake – in fact, the goal at the beginning was very simple, he just wanted to “live” because he was in the “world of if” He happened to experience that “Worst Ending”, and he did not succumb to the established fate of his life, so he made this seemingly rational decision.
In fact, I didn’t think about the ending of the story, because it was “dug”. Because I always feel that I probably need to experience a “wrong choice” in my life to fully understand the profound meaning here. Similar to the theme of “time travel”, people like to discuss the topic of “time machine can’t actually change fate” – so I also think that if the fate is given, the parties can freely choose to go in the “if branch”. On which side, does his fate become a fact that can be “changed”?
I originally planned this novel to be a writing game similar to Brave New World , but it turned out that on the “if branch” where this work was created, even myself went to the “if” where it will not happen again. . Its creation is a later story, and the reason for turning it out from the old things is that at that time I set an “if”: if I experienced a “wrong if”, am I right about life and this The novels in the planning will have a better understanding – and after the “death anniversary” last year, I was in the “if” and took another branch. There is even a possibility that the original self has I died in another “if” story line that branched off, and now I am alive, at the moment of “if”, split into another self – this kind of thinking does not have much practical significance, Although it is somewhat romantic, it is not good enough.
When I woke up in the hospital bed last year, I was talking, thinking, and crying almost non-stop. Every time I cried uncontrollably, I joked with my wife that I was detoxing my liver. In fact, it’s not “wanting to cry”, but a strange process of releasing the emotions that have been suppressed for too long and that can be controlled by me. Because of the worst days of the disease, I was almost half asleep and half awake, having all kinds of nightmares that I couldn’t control, ranging from doomsday movies like Hollywood blockbusters to me alone in a spaceship that was running out of energy, waiting to die. The tragic ending, the intense pain caused by being twisted by time and space in the tunnel of time, and even pulling up Meng Po at the entrance of the Naihe Bridge and fleeing… I still remember those nightmares, it may be a part of my life. An indelible pain and fear, but also a joy, they will one day become some unknown bridge in the story I write.
This is also the reason why I leave a “? Happy Death Day” schedule reminder on the calendar. I actually don’t want to forget those painful memories, they deserve to be deeply immersed in the creation.
In fact, when I woke up, I had a hard time falling asleep every night because I was afraid of having those horrible nightmares again, but another fun was that I started to play a game of “what if” with myself, and those dreams were all because of I have made a certain “if” decision, and I will experience it again and again, and those ifs are really another person in the “what if” world, and they may still be experiencing those painful experiences at this moment. Nightmare, but in the “if” branch, they helped me choose a “better ending” and let myself suffer those endless pains, but we can no longer change the past, we can only move towards each other without right or wrong The story line continues.
When I remember those dreams, I also remember the other me who has passed away, or who is still repeating nightmares in the “what if” branch.
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