The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(129)
In contrast, the young Dodgson’s universe was a theater with no audience, where the only spectators were the actors themselves. Yet they were observing “from the inside,” while they were performing, and so their point of view was necessarily limited, partial, and yet infinite, for it depended upon the infinite decisions each actor took at any given moment. It was as if in that empty auditorium infinite versions of the same play were being performed on infinite parallel stages, superimposed upon one another, and the infinite number of different theater troupes were oblivious to their twins’ existence. All of them believed they were the only ones, because there was no spectator to determine which of them was the only one. Perhaps young Dodgson’s universe was no more than that: the sum of the infinite possibilities of what his universe could be, all somehow existing simultaneously.
The idea was too beautiful not to be true, the three of them agreed, almost with tears in their eyes. That explained the Wellses’ problem with randomness, their feeling of being assailed by a deafening clamor when confronted with the most trivial decisions . . . They had spent their entire lives within the four walls of a theater where the audience’s respectful silence allowed no possibility of randomness. And, thanks to the other Dodgson’s magic hole, they had crossed the street to the theater opposite, where the terrible cacophony coming from the other stages was a murmur only they perceived.
For all the other inhabitants of this young Dodgson’s world, accustomed as they were to it from birth, the infinite possibilities created by free will were imperceptible.
“But who is the spectator who watches the play in the theater on the Other Side, compressing the infinite possibilities into one?” remarked Wells. “Is it God sitting in the stalls?”
“Why would God choose some theaters and not others?” said Dodgson. “And if he were in all of them, or none of them, the differences we have found between them wouldn’t exist, because all the theaters would be the same. Rather than consider God as the audience, I think we should see him as the director, the playwright who follows the performance from behind the scenes or even from the prompting box . . . Someone who is too involved with the work to be able to compress the infinite stages into one.”
“And yet in the theater we come from there is only one play,” Jane added, “which means someone must be watching it. For whom are we acting out our lives?”
There was a pensive silence. And then Wells said excitedly, “What if the power to compress all the different possibilities into one came from the actors themselves?” Jane and Dodgson looked at him, baffled. “Imagine a troupe of actors with an exceptional gift for observation, an extraordinary capacity to watch the play from inside and outside simultaneously, as if part of their minds could sit in the stalls while they declaim their lines onstage. The universes whose inhabitants possessed that amazing gift would exist as a single, predetermined reality that wouldn’t disintegrate into a set of infinite possibilities the way this one does.”
“Are you saying that we possess that gift?” Jane asked, surprised. “If so, why were we never aware of it?”
“Because you had nothing to compare yourselves with,” replied Dodgson, after pausing to reflect. “Would a man who could see through walls be aware of his gift if he lived in a world where all the buildings were made of glass?”
From that moment on, Dodgson dubbed the inhabitants of the Other Side “Observers.” He referred thereafter to “Observer Dodgson” or “Observer Queen Victoria” so as to differentiate between them and their twins who lived in the theater on Dodgson’s side of the street. And in the days that followed, the Theory of Theaters came into its own, for they soon discovered they could use it to explain any doubts they had. It also fitted in well with the mathematical theories Dodgson and Wells delighted in elaborating, as a pastime more than anything else, even though this obliged Dodgson to grapple with the terribly advanced mathematics of the future and Wells to dust off his knowledge of one of the subjects he had found most boring at university. Nonetheless, with cheerful diligence they began to trace intricate mathematical maps that aimed to chart, the way ordinary maps did, the various highways and byways a traveler could take to go from one world to another, inventing formulas allowing them to work out the coordinates of any corner of the universe from its opposite end, as if the entire cosmos could be reduced to a single, formidable equation.
Alas, the first empirical proof of the Theory of Theaters came about because of an incident that left Jane very distraught. It happened five months after their arrival. Wells, Jane, and Dodgson had gone on an excursion to the meadows at Godstow with the daughters of the college dean, the young Liddell sisters, as was their custom after the good weather started. That day in particular was a golden afternoon in late spring. The sun was baking hot, the flowing waters made the reeds on the riverbanks rustle, and the three little girls were playing hide-and-seek while the grown-ups laid the picnic things out on a rug on the grass, chatting about this and that. Newton meanwhile rushed about chasing butterflies and, when he had grown tired of that, sniffed around the picnic baskets, trying to filch a cold cut, until Jane half jokingly shouted, “Shoo, disappear, greedy dog!” Upon which, as if he hoped to earn the title of most obedient pet in the world, Newton literally vanished. One moment he was there, his four paws planted on a corner of the rug, and the next he was gone. All that was left of him was the imprint of his four paws in the cloth. Jane had the impression she had magicked him away. She screamed. There followed an absurd, desperate search of the surrounding area, until finally they had to accept what they had at first been reluctant to believe: Newton had indeed disappeared before their eyes. After consoling Jane as best they could and making up a convincing excuse for the little girls, they returned to Christ Church with the aim of rethinking what had happened. Aided by several pots of strongly brewed tea, they arrived at the only possible conclusion: the cronotemia virus worked. And whilst for Jane this was no great consolation, Wells felt a surge of satisfaction.