Jim Ad Infinitum

When Jim wakes up in a taxi being delivered to a strange hotel, things go from straight-up to sideeways pretty damn quick...

 

“Everything you think you know is dwarfed into nothing…”

Antonio Padilla, 2022

 

Honestly, it was all a bit hazy.

I opened my eyes and swivelled them in their sockets. The interior of the cab was tatty in a ‘pre-loved’ kind of way, rather than a neglectful kind of way. The ceiling was Harlequin patterned, green and white, and smoke stained. The seat backs were worn velveteen and crimson damask, edged with faded gold.  There was a small chandelier, projecting orange soda light, that swung back and forth between me and the back of the head of the driver. His hair was neatly combed and smelled of Score, for Men. Old school. There was a similarly neat crease in the back of his neck, his head bobbed and pitched slightly with the motion of the car.  Whorls of dolphin grey smoke rolled upwards and stretched out across the ceiling before being whipped out of the cracked window in desperate, grasping tendrils.

I wrinkled my nose and felt my mouth water, Diplomáticos, 1966.

“Are you smoking?” I hadn’t seen someone smoking in a cab since 2007, seemed a bit discourteous.

“Doesn’t matter,” the driver replied dispassionately. He said it with a level of disinterest that made me realise that revisiting the subject again was utterly pointless.

Music drifted up through the haze from the Pianolo SS-5380 8 track car stereo crammed into the dashboard. The reception was patchy; it was a tune that I recognised but couldn’t quite place.

…ain't nothin' you can't do
If you conceive it, you can achieve it
That's why, I believe in you, yes I do…

“I recognise this song,” I said conversationally.

“Yep.” The driver’s voice was curt and disinterested. “Brand New Heavies.”

“Ahh… I remember then.”

My head felt groggy. The sort of groggy you feel when you hit snooze and then jerk yourself awake in a wild panic when the alarm sounds again 9 minutes later. That’s because the sleep cycle you’ve just forced your brain back into, hasn’t had time to kick in. It takes around 90 to 110 minutes to get into a full circadian rhythm and I’ve fucked it up, so my brain’s all over the place: they call it sleep inertia. It will take a good four hours to get my head straight and recover. I knew enough to know that my critical thinking would suffer.

I had no idea how I knew that.

But I knew I felt like s**t.

#DONOTHITSNOOZE

Beyond the window, the light was traveling so fast that it seemed like we weren’t moving at all. And then, with a lurch, we weren’t.

The driver reached around and opened my door in a well-practiced movement. He was a dab hand at opening car doors.

I slid out of the seat and pressed my feet onto rain-lashed concrete. Mizzle was caught on the faint breeze and rolled around me, dampening my cheeks. I patted my pockets awkwardly. Fumbling.

“I… er don’t seem to have any c-“

“Doesn’t matter,” the driver said, adjusting the rear-view mirror, chewing on the fat end of his s****y French cigar.

“Well, I…”

The driver dangled his right arm carelessly out of the window, shifted into gear with his left, and gunned the engine. “Eat s**t.”

Like that, he was gone.

I looked up at the hotel. Its lights blinked and the sign read, Vacancy / No Vacancy, repeatedly, in neon green and red.

 

HILBERTS

#THEINFINITEHOTEL

Bare concrete pockmarked with deep set, iron framed, windows that threw broken shafts of light into the darkness; the light seemed to go on forever.  The exterior was bland - that kind of trendy industrial look that modern venues often go for when they try to make it look as if it’s all been reclaimed and thrown together like nobody gives a damn; but they really do.

And it was big. I mean f*****g big. It leaned away out of sight, like it went on forever - arcing away like the Great Wall of China.

I assumed.

I’d never been there.

I pushed in through the walnut doors. They were heavier than I’d anticipated.

 

The interior was not unlike the inside of the cab: damask covered walls in an unending pattern above walnut panelling. It made me think that it was highly likely that the dashboard of the cab was probably walnut too, as if it was a microcosm of the hotel. An extension of it, or vice versa.

I ran my hand over the wallpaper. I won’t lie; I kind of have a thing for damask. The repetitive nature of the print is reassuring. I don’t like change.

F**k. Am I autistic?

#AUTYNOTNAUGHTY

The woman perched behind the walnut desk was sat comically low, so that her head poked just above the glossy surface. She looked bored and stared at me, her eyes dull and heavy lidded. Her name badge read, ‘Charlotte’, there was a lipstick smudge on the lower left-hand corner: Urban Decay Vice, super-pigmented and long wear. Her voluminous hair was French Vanilla blonde and sculpted into the style of a 1950s Hollywood starlet.

Hilbert’s own Mamie van Doren.

Smash.

#INAPPROPRIATE

I got the impression that she was vaguely annoyed with her lack of elevation on the chair. Like she was embarrassed about it and somehow it was my fault.

On the desk was a brass bell and a regal looking leather edged blotting pad.

She stared at me, blinked, slowly.

Seeing as she’d said nothing, I reached over to tap the bell. She quickly covered it with her hard.

“Don’t f*****g do that,” she mouthed with a sense of finality.

We regarded each other for a bit; a weird standoff.

Eventually, she breathed in through her nose, closed her eyes, took an internal count and then said, “Welcome to Hilberts, The Infinite Hotel, where the possibilities are limitless. How may I help you?”

I smiled broadly. Seemed the right thing to do.

“I’d like a room ple-“

“We currently have no vacancies.”

“Oh… I-”

“Please bear with me.”

She cocked her head slightly, her full lips, twisting slightly as she raised a finger and placed it delicately on the button of a silver intercom.

“Bing Bong. Dear Guests, this is Charlotte in reception; we hope you’re enjoying your stay with us here at Hilberts, where the possibilities are limitless. We have a new guest arrival this evening, could we please trouble you to follow the relocation plans marked on your doors? We thank you for your continued patience and co-operation in this matter. Bing Bong.”

Seemed weird to me that she’d actually say ‘bing bong’, but I let it slide.

Waiting.

Above her head was a wooden framed oil painting of a marble Hindu temple complex. “That’s the Muktidham Temple in Devlali,” I muttered.

“In the Nashik Road suburb, in Maharashtra,” Charlotte replied. “You have a good eye. That’s going to come in very useful.”

There suddenly came the sounds of many, many doors clicking open, some general mumbling and shuffling and then many, many doors, clattering shut in unison like gentle thunder rolling down the corridor.

“We have an availability. Lucky you.”

“Right…”

I leaned heavily on the counter, still trying to get my bearings and clear my head. I didn’t want her to think I was hungover; I don’t know why.

She stood and turned away, reaching for a key and then something else that was stuffed securely into one of the pigeonholes. A package, cast in brown paper. For some reason she was absurdly tall. She craned her neck to stop her head bumping into the magnolia painted ceiling.

She slapped the key and the package onto the walnut desk. It landed with a hefty thunk.

“Room 1.”

I pocketed the key and pulled the gun from the brown paper bag. I shifted the cool weight in my hand.

“It’s a LeMat .42 Revolver, circa 1856,” Charlotte appraised me. “Unusual from other 19^th century revolvers due to the 9-round cylinder and a secondary 20 gauge smooth-bore barrel that can be used to fire buckshot. We’re fresh out of buckshot, so it comes with quantum rounds. Be careful where you aim it.”

“Quantum rounds?” They rattled, hummed, simmered and crackled with black light within the cylinder. “Well, that makes me a bit nervous…”

“It’s good to have you back, Mr Furphy.”

Apparently, I’d been here before.

“Please,” I replied with an easy smile, “call me Jim.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Ah… well…”

“One final thing…”

She reached down beside her and lifted a box up onto the desk.

“A cat carrier?”

“You’re going to need it.”

I twisted the box, there was no grill, the whole thing was completely sealed (which was a bit worrying). “Wait…there’s a cat inside?”

She gave a non-committal shrug.

I traced the fine filigree etching on the feline shaped bronze plate with my fingertips: Hallo, my name is Erwin.

“Ah, okay, yeah I get the reference…”

I gave the box a shake.

“Don’t be a c**t,” Charlotte said. “There might, or might not, be a cat in there.”

“Wow.”

Seems Charlotte was a cat-lover.

Understanding coalesced in my mind, unfurling like a parchment plan. Grasping the cat carrier, like a Davy Lamp, in my left hand and the LeMat, heavy with quantum rounds, in my right, I moved down the unending corridor of the Infinite Hotel. The walnut and crimson damask interior stretched away to an invisible point in the immeasurable distance, and I couldn’t help but think.

Who in the f**k wallpapered all of this?

“Mr Furphy?”

I glanced back. Charlotte looked almost concerned. “The man you’re looking for is in the Kaprekar Suite: it’s room 6174.”

I shifted the LeMat in my right hand and gave her a nod.

“And be careful. The Colonel won’t be found easily.”

The Colonel, eh?

I took a few steps and she seemed to stretch away, moving further backward than I was walking forwards.

And there it was, Room 1.

The key slid effortlessly into the lock. Sexual.

I was surprised to note that the door was a warm Maple; still nice though. I pushed through into the room. It was smaller than I had anticipated.

A single bed. Woollen knit blankets, heavy, deep green and crisp white Egyptian cotton sheets. Just how beds should be, functional - I never bought into duvets. There was a battered old sea trunk at the bottom of the bed, with the faded initials JF on the side.

There was an old TV on the desk opposite. One of those fat back box things that you had to tune in to find your station. 1 of 3. Those were the days.

Binge watching The Gilmore Girls on Netflix was for the birds. Quirky dialogue.

I placed the cat box on the trunk and carefully laid the LeMat on the desk.

I removed my coat and hung it on the coat peg on the back of the door. It partially obscured the ‘Hotel Relocation Plan’ that Charlotte had mentioned. I moved the damp tweed aside and cast an eye over the document.

I’m pretty such it was tongue in cheek.

“Dear Guest, in the unlikely, but also utterly certain, event that a new guest arrives during your stay, we would ask you to vacate your room as soon as possible and go to the room that directly succeeds this room number i.e. Room 1 to Room 2, Room 2 to Room 3, Room 3 to Room 4 and so on…

In the equally likely, and unlikely, event that a coach arrives, please relocate to the room 2n, that is to say, the room that is numerically double that to yours: Room 1 to Room 2, Room 2 to Room 4, Room 3 to Room 6, Room 179 to Room 358, Room 595 to Room 1190 and so on. This will ensure that all the even rooms will be occupied and all the odd rooms will be vacant for our new guests.

We recognise that this may mean a considerable walk for those of you staying in the higher numbered rooms; if you do require any assistance in this, please call reception on #3.14

Thank you for your patience and co-operation in this matter.

David Hilbert, CEO.”

 

How many rooms has this place got?

As is always the case with hotels, I fiddled with the TV which was set predictably just off-station and was surprised to come across an old re-run of the classic British comedy, ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum’ - you know, back when colonialism was something to laugh at.

Except, when I looked, the TV show I had sat through with my casually racist 1970s parents, chucking away at how stupid third world chai wallahs were, wasn’t quite right.

As I fine-tuned the dial and the static wavered and fizzed, I could see that the growling, menacingly vociferous Battery Sergeant Major wasn’t Windsor Davies at all.

“That’s Alan bloody Rickman…” I whispered.

He was mid-bollocking; tearing yet another strip off a flinching Don Estelle when he stopped and turned.

He was looking at me, or at least seemed to be staring, his lips slightly apart, his moustache curled at the tips and his eyes luminous with fear. The same look he had when he fell off the Nakatomi Plaza, incidentally.

I tapped the screen with my middle finger, it was certainly surreal.

And then, at once, Rickman leaned forward, his shocked countenance relaxing into one of vague disappointment and he mouthed, “What idiot put you in charge?”

That seemed fair enough.

#OHDEARHOWSADNEVERMIND

 

I cast around the room trying to piece together my thoughts. There was a small deep-set window on the far wall, with plain drapes. I pushed them aside with a finger and stared into the void beyond. Utter blackness above and the street below. The light from a quintillion stars couldn’t reach me here and nothing moved.

Everything frozen in time.

I sat on the edge of the bed and clasped my hands together. I tried the bedside drawer: a pristine copy of a Gideon’s International Bible. Some things don’t change.

I tapped the cat carrier absentmindedly, drumming my fingers on the hard surface and then scratching it with my nails. I made that kissy sounds that people make when they are trying to lure a stray cat into an awkward, one-sided friendship. No sound, nor movement came from within; I knew that meant nothing. That’s the problem with 3^rd state cats, completely unreliable. I worked with a guy like that once, he’d only come to life if he thought he was being observed too.

Ironically, the only time that didn’t happen was when they found him dead in his cubicle, one Christmas Eve, after a party.  

I looked around the small room. Back at the cat carrier. Back to the room.

There was a small atomiser at the top of the bed, on a shelf. Gentle whisps of patchouli and geranium rolled into the air - I wondered what gradually decaying radioactive isotopes smelled like. I knew that Lewisite smelled like geraniums; if that was the case, I was already hosed.

Apparently, I have an in-depth knowledge of chemical warfare agents.

Do I know everything?

The gun. The man in room 6174 (the Colonel). The cat carrier. Alan Rickman pretending to be Windsor Davies.

With the finality of man who had been waiting for the end of a tortuously boring social encounter, I slapped my thighs and stood up. “Whelp… better go kill the f*****g guy in room 6174.”

 

Grasping the cat carrier in my left hand, I tucked the key into my pocket and the LeMat into the waistband at the back of my trousers and stepped back out into the yawning corridor.

I started walking.

3 days later, I plonked the cat carrier down and sat down beside it.

This was taking forever.

#IRONIC

I had to get things straight in my head; I had been walking for 3 days straight and I didn’t even need a wee.

I stared at the wall, trying to piece together this particular existential crisis. We all have them in times of uncertainty, but this was different.

Of course it was. They always are.

“What is my purpose?”

First, I’d need to work out what I know: separate fact from opinion.

I tugged the gun from the waistband of my trousers and turned it over in my hands. The quantum rounds continued to crackle and hum in the chamber, like angry little lightsabers. I set it down on the floor. Why would Charlotte give me a gun?

There are three reasons you own a gun: Offence, defence and deterrence. Friedrich Hayek stated that the ‘purpose of a gun is not to kill’ and that a tool, or instrument cannot be defined outside of human purpose. You eat dinner with a fork, but also, if you chose, you could jam it in someone’s eyeball. That’s up to you.

Okay, so why is my gun loaded with quantum rounds?

The object of a quantum round is to utterly decimate a target down to quark level - Planck Level destruction. That’s 100 quintillion times smaller than a proton, in case you didn’t know.

That rules out physical defence - you can’t wound someone with a quantum round. That leaves me with deterrence or offence. I could deter some with a lead pipe - a quantum round is serious overkill. Like pinging a bug into a black hole.

It’s a VERY offensive weapon. Ipso facto.

I ran my hands over the coolness of the cat carrier, tracing the small (cat-sized) panel in the top. There’s no way I’m opening that. What I do know, is that the cat in here is neither dead nor alive, until it is observed. It is in a quantum superposition - a 3^rd state, both or somewhere in between. Simultaneously dead and alive.

This, I figured was a metaphor.

This hotel is my cat box. This is not necessarily a fact, it’s an opinion, but I have nothing else to go on at the moment. I knew I was alive, but to anyone else in the Universe right now, I was in a paradox of superposition. 

I removed the key from my pocket and placed it next to the gun. This opens my hotel room door. That’s a fact - I’ve proved that, and it’s bound by empirical evidence.

But… what else does it open? This remains unsolved.

This corridor appears unending. If this truly is an infinite hotel, then I’m never going to reach the end (because there isn’t one). Infinitely plus one, is infinity.

But… I have a finite destination.

Room 6174.

This means that it is attainable. True.

“Be careful. The Colonel won’t be found easily.”

What would make him hard to find?

No, what would make him nigh on impossible to find?

An impossible problem.

A paradox.

I stared hard at the wall in front of me, secretly enjoying the damask. It was uniform in its perfection. An endlessly repeating pattern, with no faults. Flawless.

Except… it wasn’t.

I leaned in.

Where the wallpaper joined there was the tiniest of gaps. An irregularity so small, I might have missed it had I not been sat here staring at that exact point at this exact moment.

A dog-ear. Where the paper had been misaligned and then folded back on itself ever so slightly.

This was my in.

Using my nail, I teased back the dog-ear and pulled. The wallpaper peeled back a bit. Cheap adhesive. The glue that held the Universe together was bargain-basement.

Poundland cosmology.

I pulled more and it came away.

There was something underneath.

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero…

If you think carpe diem really means seize the day, you’re a f*****g idiot and you need to pick up a book.

Pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the future…

I’m plucking and there is no future as time is a construct.

Underneath, there was a message scrawled in lipstick: Urban Decay Vice, super-pigmented and long wear.

Charlotte, you beauty! This was why she looked concerned.

The message read - Don’t trust Zeno.

 

I was right. It was a paradox.

Zeno’s Paradox. Ensuring that I’d never reach my destination.

Let me break it down for you.

 

Everything is infinitely divisible. In order to travel from point A to point B, you first have to travel to the halfway point (X) - from there, you still have the same distance to travel. Travelling from point X (midway) to point B, this is also bisected, creating a new journey comprising two halves, and so on and so on and so on…

As a result, Zeno postulated that you can never truly gain your destination. But of course, Zeno was constructing an abstract path; this is what happens when you apply mathematics from nearly 2500 years ago.

“But…” I put a finger in the air, addressing no one. “If this is an abstract pathway, then I really am screwed.”

I couldn’t even go back to my room, for the same reason. I’d never get there. I was trapped like a rat in a never-ending maze - like a cat in a box with no way of knowing whether the outside knew whether I was alive or dead searching for a room forever out of reach.

The room…

Think, think, think.

6174.

The Kaprekar Suite.

Why did that ring a bell?

“Be careful. The Colonel won’t be found easily.”

I rested the back of my head on the wall and stared along the Damask wallpaper, looking along its length - the constant pattern stretching off into the distance to an infinite point.

And then it hit me. All the clues tumbling into place, at once, like Peter Falk punching me flush in the mouth.

#JUSTONEMORETHING…

 

The Muktidham Temple.

Re-runs of ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum’.

Kaprekar.

6174.

The Colonel.

Constant.

“You’re a f*****g idiot.” I gave a short laugh, massaging the point between my nose and my forehead. “It’s not a Colonel… it’s a kernel.”

‘Everything is Googleable…’

Jim Furphy, 2023

 

I can give you five minutes to look it up if you like; I’m here for eternity. I can wait.

 

No? Okay, you lazy f**k; put down your mobile phone and work on your attention deficit. It’s piss poor.

Focus is EVERYTHING.

Dattatreya Ramchandra Kaprekar was a self-taught mathematician, and schoolteacher, from Devlali, in India. The setting for Charlotte’s painting and also, weirdly, where the sitcom ‘It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum’, was set.

Kaprekar devised a process known as Kaprekar’s Operation whereby you take random 4-digit number, i.e. 6381, and then rearrange the digits into descending and ascending numerical orders and then subtract them, smallest from the largest.

With that answer repeat the process. Within 7 iterations the number will reach its fixed point: 6174.

i)                    6381 would become 8631 - 1368 = 7263.

ii)                   7263 would then become 7632 - 2367 = 5265

iii)                 5265 would then become 6552 - 2556 = 3996

iv)                 3996 would then become 9963 - 3699 = 6264

v)                   6264 would then become 6642 - 2466 = 4176

vi)                 4176 would then become 7641 - 1467 = 6174

 

6174 will remain the constant. (6174) becomes 7641 - 1467 = f**k me… 6174.

 

Try it.

Go ahead. Grab your s****y iPhone, because your arithmetic skills have eroded so much in the face of pocket technology that you can’t do simple subtraction anymore, and punch in any number. Any number.

6174 is constant.

Which means…

I stood up, scooped up the LeMat and the cat carrier.

Everything here is constant. A perfect circle with infinite angles. This whole place, a never-ending repeating pattern, infinitely complex, like a fractal.

#FRACTALROCK

Dance your cares away, worries for another day…

Let the music play…

                I slid the key into the locks of door directly in front of me. If 6174 is constant and every iteration leads back to that, every door… must…

I turned the key.

Click!

Open.

A figure was sat in a chair, shadow obscuring his features for obvious literary and cinematic suspense. He sat, relaxed, with his thick legs crossed, right over left and his shoes polished bright at the toes. He appeared to be wearing an old Naval Uniform replete with bellbottoms and medals. A cat box sat at his feet. Cigar, smoke trailed away in lazy coils and that familiar Brand New Heavies song played on a battered radio:

Only a dreamer, could afford this point of view,

But you're a driver, not a passenger in life,

And if you're ready, you won't have to try 'cause…

 

“I knew you’d find me sooner or later…” he said as I levelled the quantum gun at him and gently set down the cat carrier. “It was… inevitable.”

#THATWASABITTHANOS

He leant forward into the light as I heel tapped the door shut behind me. “Welcome to infinity, James.”

I rolled my eyes; such was my complete lack of surprise.

“It’s Jim, and this is, like, the least shocking reveal ever,” I said staring at myself sitting in the chair.

“So many Jims, Jameses, Jimbos, JimJams, Jays and ‘Furphs’ - who knows who’s going to walk through my door.”

“No one’s ever called me JimJam.”

“Oh, they have, Mr Furphy, countless times, but that’s a nickname for another reality. I see Charlotte smuggled you the LeMat… like she always does.”

“I’ve been here before?”

“Infinite times.”

I started to feel dizzy and I adjusted the grip on the gun that had begun to weigh heavily in my hand.

“You’re probably starting to feel dizzy right about now.”

F**k.

“What do you know about infinity… ‘Jim’?”

I leaned casually (but not casually at all) against the sideboard next to me, pressing my hip into the hard surface to give me a sense of perspective - grounding me against this utter lunacy.

“It’s pretty big.” Wow. Apparently, I hadn’t given the answer much thought.

James smiled, “Yeah, it’s pretty big. Now you have questions; you always do.”

I brandished the LeMat .42. “Well, I guess my first question is why am I here?”

“Look at you, all Captain James T. Kierkegaard right out of the blocks.” James Furphy gave a little chuckle. “In short, you have a choice to make,” he nodded towards the gun.

“So, it’s shoot you… or don’t.”

“Or you could shoot yourself…” He jammed a finger into the roof of his mouth and pulled his thumb trigger.

“I’m not a fan of that.”

“Infinity throws up every conceivable and inconceivable eventuality from missing, to misfires, to murder, to mercy, and so on. You should have stayed in your room…”

“I’m beginning to think the same.” I looked back to the door, my mind pinwheeling to the corridor outside. Infinite doors, infinite rooms, infinite Furphys. Those who settled. Each with a mission unfulfilled.”

The other James derailed me train of thought. “Tell me, what do you know about inflation?”

“I know that a pint of milk cost 9p in 1976…”

“Cosmic inflation, you f*****g tool.”

I gave a wry smile. I hoped it was wry. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure what a wry smile is these days without the help of an emoji. I was f*****g with him, and he knew it. Nevertheless, I relented. “It’s the theory that the universe expanded exponentially lasting around 10^-36, from 10^-33 to 10^-32 seconds after the big bang and, it’s still going, apparently… what’s your poi-? Oh wait,” I cast about looking around the room. “Is this a multiverse thing, because Marvel have done this to death?”

The not-me James Furphy, gave a subtle shrug. “It’s either that or you’re dead and waiting for your awareness to be uploaded to a giant computer.” He twirled a finger in the air, over and over.

“Let me guess, I buffering right now?” It was a bit too Black Mirror for me.

“Think about it. What’s in your gun?”

“Quantum bullets.”

James Furphy gave a short laugh. “That’s like the ultimate McGuffin. We get to a point in a story, and we don’t know what to write next so we jam the word ‘Quantum’ into the stovepipe and hope the readers don’t have a PhD in theoretical physics. Logic breaks down on a subatomic level so who knows what’s really happening.”

“That would really suck if you were reading this. Like a huge cop out.”

“Infinitely huge.”

I stared him down. “So now what?”

“Like I say, you have to make a choice Jimbo. We are two entities clattering into each other at the speed of light and we can’t occupy the same spacetime. Maybe we are bubbles, each one inflating, growing, pushing and jostling for space and spreading out over and ever-expanding cosmic blanket, forever stitched by unseen hands.”

“Bubbles burst.”

James in the sailor suit smiled. “Indeed they do. Energy moves from order to disorder. We are fit to burst, we need to work out which one of us is the prick.”

“If I shoot you, you’ll end. I’m going to say, ‘surely it’s that simple’, but I’m guessing it’s not.”

“It’s not, nothing ends… not really.” He took a deep draw on his cigar. “Entropy is the measure of the movement from order into chaos. At the moment, I’m ordered, nicely packaged in a James Furphy shaped shape - everything tickety-boo, with all my molecules behaving as they should. If you shoot me, I’ll move from order into chaos.  Over an infinite amount of time my energy will move through various states - from flesh to dust, to plasma, to ion nuclei and photons. The neutrons will decay into protons and so on, blah, blah, blah…. BUT!” He held a finger up. “There are finite states that my energy can assume over an infinite amount of time - it can only ever have been James Furphy in a state of properties moving from order into disorder (or chaos). So, left over an infinite amount of time it is reasonable to suggest that that my energy rearranges itself into all conceivable states… including…”

“Including one shiny, newly reordered Furphy.”

“That’s what they say…” He waved the cigar. “You should probably shoot yourself.”

“Still not a fan.”

“Well, it seems like we are at an impasse…”

“What’s your theory?” I asked.

“My theory?”

“You don’t know what this is either, do you? When you came here, was the room empty or was it occupied? If it was empty, well… you’re just the same as all the other Furphys, sitting in your room, jerking off and moving from one room to the next when the next gutless Furphy turns up.

Or… there was someone here before you. Did you shoot him, or did you talk him into shooting himself?”

James gave a smile, “Now there’s the question…”

“This happens over and over, doesn’t it? Infinite Jims all clattering into each other over millennia.”

“Jim Ad Infinitum.”

“Sounds like a great title to a terrible f*****g book.” I levelled the gun at him again and recognised a subtle change in his features. “How many were there before me?”

Other-Jim-perhaps-original-Jim splayed his hands. “I’ve lost count.”

“And they’re getting smarter, aren’t they? Each one that smashes into you gets stronger, more resilient, sharper, smarter. Each one leaves a little piece of himself behind, a little trail of Jim-crumbs for the next to follow. And you never know whether the next one is going to put a bullet in you.” I glanced back to my cat box. “This is the metaphor isn’t it? You’re Schrödinger’s Cat and I’m the gradually decaying atomic particle holding the flask of poison in my hand and no one knows whether you are dead or alive. The only way we’ll know is if I pull this trigger…”

“Or not!” Schrodinger’s-James had paled visibly, and he held out a steadying hand. “You could still take one for the team!”

I motioned to the cat box beside James’ bed. “Open it.”

“What?”

“Open it. Only once observed will the cat move out of the third state, neither-alive nor dead.”

“You’re putting me in a helluva position here, Jim.”

“You’re in a superposition - let me take you out of it. Open the f*****g box.”

Superposition-of-States-James’ shoulders slumped. His fingers worried at the latch on his cat box, I could see he was sweating.

The Brand New Heavies song played out over the old radio, crackling into being, having been sent through time over and over and over hurtling through the void.

I cocked the pistol.

“Open, The. Box.”

If you conceive it, you can achieve it
That's why, I believe in you, and I believe in me

James Furphy, with shaking hands prised open the top of his cat box and peered in.

Yes I do
Believe in you
I do

He blinked and swallowed, looking directly at me. “Oh, f*****g Hell.”

You're a driver, not a passenger in life
And when you're ready, you won't have to try 'cause

You are…

“The Universe.”

I pulled the trigger.

 

When it was over, I took a seat on the plush chair and rested my feet on the cat box. I placed the LeMat onto the desk beside me, prodded that s****y radio and folded my hands in my lap.

I gazed out of the window, in the distance there was a faint circular bruise in the blackness - an imprint on the cosmic microwave background caused by temperature fluctuations on the boundary during a collision. They say in a multiverse jam-packed with bubble universes that they may sometimes collide, and it seems we had. When they do, space-time will be stretched; everything may slow. Say, long enough to set up a hotel.

I looked down at the street below. Hurtling out of nothingness, at 186,000 miles per second, was a taxi - I wondered what the stopping distance was in wet weather.  A man stepped out awkwardly patting his pockets for loose change.

There wouldn’t be any.

There never is.

You're the future, and you've come for what is yours
The hidden treasure, locked behind the hidden doors
And the promise of a day that's shiny new
Only a dreamer, could afford this point of view
But you're a driver, not a passenger in life
And if you're ready, you won't have to try 'cause

You are the Universe…

InFin