And here…we…go, as the Joker said.

I’m writing something now on Wednesday on the way to work, in the back seat of a Lyft.  This time, I’m writing it on my little laptop computer, which has the disadvantage that its keys are not illuminated, and the back seat is dark, so I have to type by memory, to do my own bespoke version of touch-typing.  This isn’t too great of a burden, since I’ve been typing for more than 40 years*, but it does take away some degree of the advantage in speed that typing on a real keyboard otherwise gives me over the phone.

If I ever get another small laptop like this one, I mean to make sure that the keyboard lights up.  It’s just too useful.

Anyway, upon opening this laptop for the first time in a few weeks, I found that it was still at the point in Outlaw’s Mind where I had stopped when rereading through and further editing it.  It’s right after Timothy’s encounter with the policeman.  He’s about to be brought to the Vipassana Center, where things will begin to become stranger for him.

I really am more pleased with the nature of the story as it is than with the more straightforward idea that had sparked it initially and had been prefigured by the original opening, which I am removing.  Really, I have removed it, but it’s still there in my postings here on my blog, of course.  If I were ever to finish it and publish, I suppose I would take it down from here on my site, as would also be the case with Extra Body.

I doubt that any of that will ever happen, though.  I don’t have the impetus to do either thing, nor to start HELIOS, nor any of the oodles of other stories waiting in the back of my mind, some of which are already well-developed and involve an overall universe, linking to others in my stories’ omniverse.

I guess it would be nice to continue with them.  It would be nice not to have to worry about so many little things day by day that drain my hit points and my spirit points.  If I were to win a large lottery payoff**, I guess I would use it to move back up north and just write full time.  I could even spend my spare time studying mathematics and physics and other sciences, if I had the energy.  Why not?

It’s darned unlikely that anything like that is going to happen, unfortunately.  I have no rich relatives or friends, and even if I did, it’s hard to see one of them wanting to support me while I’m writing.

I have so many story ideas in the back of my mind, written down in quick notes in my phone and other systems, or just swimming through my brain.  And I still think of new little ideas for self-contained stories (I hesitate to call them “short” given past experience) as I go along, but unlike before, I don’t jot them down anywhere.  That’s a huge surrender on my part, but I have to be realistic.

If the Everettian quantum multiverse exists, then it’s likely that in some proportion of the wave function I succeed at doing all these things.  Likewise, if the universe is infinite in spatial extent, there are certainly a fraction of the infinite copies of me out there who will have some inordinate luck and go on writing.  However, these possibilities are no consolation, as I have no experience of what they experience anymore than of some small, furry thing from Alpha Centauri.

I guess that’s also a good thing, though, since there are certainly versions of my life that are much, much worse than this one.  I wouldn’t want to experience them.  But, of course, experiencing is one of the functions of the individual, separate identities, not of the conglomerate of those that share some common characteristics or past.  No one should expect to be able to experience both worlds that split after some quantum “measurement”.  It’s not logical.

Once their cells have split, identical twins are separate beings, individuals each in his or her own right, and there is no mingling or superposition of their experiences.  Thank goodness.  Because we are all descendants of an unbroken line of cellular ancestors, and have common past with every living thing on the planet (and a few orbiting in space).  Imagine if we somehow were able to experience every other living thing at some level.  It would be a bit like that weird Gaia planet in the later Foundation novels.

Anyway, while I can dream of having some benefactor or patron who takes care of my living logistics while I write, and maybe even who helps me market and promote my books and related items, I can also, any time I like, dream about having superpowers, or being universally loved, or some other such nonsense.

Such dreams are nice (as the Radiohead song admits), but reality is not obligated to make any of our dreams come true, good or bad.  It doesn’t even make some aggregated average of people’s dreams come true.  It just does what it does, and it is what it is, and we are merely one little, evanescent—although relatively interesting—corner of a universe that may be infinite in space and in time, and perhaps in other ways beyond those.

*Man, are my fingers tired.

**Difficult, since I don’t play.