Elan Mastai

We imagine all these postapocalyptic, class-stratified, new-world-order techno-futures. But actually the real world, the world we live in, this is the dystopia.

The truth is, there are no alternate realities. At least not the way Penny describes them. Maybe an infinite multiverse is born from every action, whether it__ two atoms colliding or two people. Maybe reality is constantly fluctuating around us, but our senses aren__ equipped to detect those quantum variations. Maybe that__ what our senses are, an ungainly organic sieve through which the chaos of existence is filtered into something manageable enough that you can get out of bed in the morning . Maybe the totality of what we perceive with our senses is as clumsy a portrait of reality as a child__ chalk drawing on a sidewalk compared to the face of the woman you__e already falling in love with lying next to you in a mess of sheets and blankets, her lips still pursed as they pull away from your mouth.

Greta abides by the reasonable philosophy that there is nothing in the universe more boring than someone else's dreams.

I remember, as a kid, when I first understood that only half of every tree is visible, that the roots in the soil are equal to the branches in the sky, that a whole other half is underground. It took me a lot longer, well into adulthood, to realize people are like that too.

You believe what you do.