The Piper

I have been dancing, unwillingly, for 17 hours. Not feeling physically tired, strangely, I feel that I am starting to lose my mind.

The Piper is sitting in front of me, still playing. Almost like the piper I imagined when I heard of the story of The Piper who took care of rats, and children as well. Damn. I just can't stop dancing to his music, which, even from the point of view of a music amateur as myself, is not at all that great.

Last night when I was planning for the job today, the Piper knocked on my door and asked for a glass of water. My situation did not really allow me to show any generosity to strangers, but there was something persuasive in his voice that made me open the door. He pulled out his pipe after sitting down. For a second I almost thought he was an assassin sent by the people who are after me. Then again, it is still quite possible. They might actually want me dance to death.

I really shouldn't have opened the door.

Parallel Universe

Dear S,

I understand that It might feel awkward to receive letters from strangers, even though we actually do that everyday, junk mails for instance. Please be patient and read on, and I will explain why I have to write you this letter.

You don't know me, although I have known you for quite a while, in many senses. My name is J.

Recently I have had a chance to communicate with myself, except that this 'myself' lives in another universe, a parallel universe to be precise.

Yes, to answer your question, parallel universes do exist. I didn't believe it at first either, but it is true. And yes, there is, somehow, a way for people in different parallel universes to communicate with each other.

To avoid confusion, in this letter when I refer to the name J, I would mean myself in this particular parallel universe who managed to send me information through a radio transmitter. And, of course, there is a S in that universe, and I will be talking about her when I say the name S in this letter.


It all happened one day when I went to a friend's garage sale and brought back home a second hand radio, you know, AM and FM and stuff. I tried the radio but I failed to tune in any radio station, it was just plain silence. Thinking the volume knob might be broken, I turned the volume all the way up, and I did hear some music. It was played on a piano, a piece of music which can never, ever, be on any radio station. Why did I know that? Because I wrote that piece, on guitar, and had the half-way-finished score on my desk everyday, trying to finish it. At first I thought it was just some coincidence, that somebody somehow came up with the same sentences, but it was not the case. The music from the radio was exactly what I had on that day, half-way-finished, and repeating. I thought it was a joke, because I might have shown it to some of my frields.

What really made me believe that there was something going on was what happened in the following day. I added some more bars to the half-way-finished score, and you know what, 17 minutes later (I kept the radio on), the added bars were added, too, in the music from the radio!

I was more scared than ever. But then I decided to add some more bars, except this time I added some nonsense, bad harmony, incorrect guitar fingering, notes so high which cannot be played on usual instruments. Then I waited for 17 minutes, then the music stopped. After a minute or so of silence, there was a light cough from the radio, and then J spoke to me, but of course at that point I didn't know it was J.

His voice is just like mine, but with slight English accent. The first thing he wanted me to do was to write some more bars of music, and I did, and he played exactly what I wrote. We did some other tests to verify that we were really somehow talking to each other (although I actually have no way to talk to him), but let me save you from all this tedious detail.


After several hours J started explaining to me know he built a transmitter with which he had been sending out messages. Something interesting about parallel universes is that, parallel universes actually are alike on some aspects. For instance, J is a theoretical physicist, and an amateur pianist, while I am a (sadly currently unemployed) guitarist, and an amateur theoretical physics lover. He has a theory about parallel universes and how one could possibly force interactions between parallel universes.

He then explained to me about the music thing. He said that when he tried to write music, very often it felt like he was not really the one writing it, but there was another himself who was responsible for the music, and this was the beginning point of how he started to construct a practical theory of parallel universes.

We needed a way so that I could send messages to him. He did try to describe how I could build a transmitter like his, but there was no way I could understand what he was talking about. Eventually we came down to a very primitive approach: I would think the thought I want to let him know, then he would try and 'feel' it, and verify through radio and the musical score trick. For some reason, if I try and write music on that score, he could get it without any trouble. His explanation was that music exists on top of our parallel universes, and somehow forces a kind of uniformity between our universe and his. Yeah, he is the physicist, what could I say. Once J feels some thoughts, he would verify through the radio, and I would write one bar of reasonable music if his feelings are correct, and a really bad one if incorrect.


You are probably tired of all this detail of how J and I could talk to each other, in a sense. So I might as well tell you something about S.

It turns out that J and S are married with a daughter. S is a part-time school teacher, and I didn't make this up because you are a teach, really. They love each other very much, but J, as a scientist, can't help wondering what he would be like (or I should probably say, what I sould be like) in a parallel universe. And that is why, based on his theory, he built his transmitter. He was quite disappointed when I told him that in this universe I don't even know anybody named S. J believes that these two parallel universes (as there are many many more) must be somewhat extremely close to each other, and that should be why he could so easily get in touch with me, and so he encouraged me to find you.

These days it is not hard to find a specific person, with all the technology. I soon found out, not too surprising to J, that you live in the same city as I do. The tricky part, really, is to meet a particular person in this city with millions of people. And when I went to pick up my nephew from school one day I saw you, and then I knew it was you, and J verified you appearance. (By the way, J tried to let S talk to me, but somehow I couldn't hear her voice at all. J of course has a theory about this, but this is really beyond my understanding.)


To be honest, I have been following you for quite a while. You might or might not have noticed me, though. We even talked once.

The reason I am writing you this letter is that, S is sick. And as I might have mentioned earlier, these two parallel universes are very close to each other. After comparing historical events, we are convinced that something might happen to you too. You might also get sick, or get into an accident. Now this would not be a big deal if S's health problem were not very serious. The fact is, she is dying.

J thinks that you might be able to hear her voice, and she really wants to talk to you. I guess we all are wondering what would have happened if we did something differently, and now this might be a chance to really see it. (J actually has some doubts about this: although J's parallel universe theory and the usual sci-fi alternative future theory might be related, there seems to be some problems.)

So would you want to know what you are like, in a different, but parallel, universe?


Sincerely yours,
J

Far, Far Away

When I was travelling, I passed by this small village somewhere in southeastern Asia. It has been a while and I don't remember exactly which country it is in. People there don't speak English, nor any Asian language/dialect I knew of.

I was starving when stepping through the gate, which was ridiculously huge when compared with the size of the houses, which were made of bricks of strange shapes. I somehow got some food, which wasn't tasty even for me.

Somehow I had to pretend that I was going somewhere else, and got to this village when I was lost. But this was not the truth. I was on a mission of finding certain missing person whom had been spotted near the village. This certain persion was supposed to know certain things which those people who hired me did not want to give out any detail about. So anyway, my job was to find this person, hand him a package, and I would have enough money to continue my travelling for a couple more years. I was almost curious why those people didn't try to go there themselves, it was afterall not difficult nor dangerous to get to the village. Anyway, they told me to go there (with precise directions) and warned me not to look like I was looking for someone.

"Then how am I going to find this certain person?" I asked.

"You'll find this certain person alright." they said, "No worries."

So I went, and although morally not justifiable, I actually opened the package before I got to the village. It was a small, white, plastic box, and it was empty. I figured that this certain person would put the required information in the box and ask me to bring it back to those people.

There was something terribly wrong about this job. And I didn't realize it until it was already too late.