What's in a name?

It's hard not to like parallel dimensions. I grew up seeing He-Man and Krang come from their dimensions to save or plunder ours, according to their preference. That stuff probably had an impression on me. Since I haven't donned a mask or dismembered innocent people with a sword, I'm going to say that impression was good.

To some maybe that was bad thing, though, because I've spent an awful lot of time thinking about things that didn't happen. Or at least, didn't happen in our timeline.

I can't blame Saturday morning cartoons for all that fantasizing, however. Science gets to take some credit, too. Imagine my delight when, as a young man, I discovered the beautiful possibilities in post-Einstein physics.

Men with a PhDs were out there saying parallel worlds were not only possible, but likely. The technicolor hue of reality began to suffuse my created domains. Maybe this stuff was happening somewhere. Rather than make me feel small or unimportant, these theories excited me. What if you could meet your other selves? What could our world look like with just a small change in history?

Physics didn't just give me justification in that way. It inspired me. I stumbled on all sorts of fun ideas, like the fact if I were in the right reality, I might be immortal (you might be immortal too, by the way). I also learned along the way that my ideas weren't daydreams, they were thought experiments. I could pat myself on the back. All those hours I whiled away glassy-eyed in school weren't wasted, they were mental exercise.

The rabbit hole, as people like to say, just got deeper. Turns out, it wasn't just weirdos like Tolkien or Lovecraft that dreamed up imaginary worlds. Even some literary types engaged in the practice. There were tons of thought experiments out there. Some were fantastic places where the possibility of legends were realized, while others were like our history, with a slight twist. Science fiction isn't just speculation about what might be in our world, it's a speculation about what might be period.

What separates thought experiments from ideal dreaming is the structure. Fake histories take work. They require an understanding of cause and effect. A math problem on a classroom blackboard was tedious. But a math problem created by a die roll to represent a fake reality is exciting!

Small surprise then that anyone who knows me will tell you that when I'm playing, it looks an awful lot like work. When I was younger it involved pencils, paper, and fingers stained with graphite. Nowadays, it involves furious typing. Sometimes I even scowl.

It's all deceptive, though. When you play sports, you sweat (this is an absolute for me; I live in Florida), The fact you're sweating doesn't make you say "hey this is work"--what would sports be without sweating?

So a lot of my fun looks like work to other people. Hopefully, the finished product doesn't feel like work, though. The goal, as with everything else, is to make this look easy. So take my hand, follow my lead and, if you'll let me, I'll show you other worlds...