How to Travel to a Parallel Universe

by Matt Leibel

Find the portal. It’s located behind that Dim Sum place in Chinatown, just off of Kearny. Make your way through the kitchen. Act like you belong and no one will question you. Say that you’re searching for a bottle of soy sauce because table 18 has none. Follow the pathway to the door of an ostensible supply closet and enter another dimension. There, in the parallel universe, the colors shine 29.6% brighter. People are kind to each other, more patient, no one honks in frustration, even in the most suffocating traffic. Also, there’s rarely suffocating traffic because people walk or take public transit, because it’s easy to access the things you need, the places you want to go. Buses are clean and orderly, homelessness has been eradicated as all usable space has been utilized, and racial and gender discrimination has been eliminated, not because people have become “colorblind” but the literal opposite: people see and appreciate the differences between them, because the parallel universe highlights those differences by making them shine in high definition. Disagreements are handled thoughtfully at Disagreement Stations, demarcated throughout the city, and mediators are appointed as necessary: calming, professionally-trained presences who can help people reduce their anger, as it will inevitably bubble up, and makes enduring long-term grudges a thing of the past. In the parallel universe, there are professional sports teams, and people root for them vociferously. But if they lose, if a player makes a mistake, they’re never chastised by fans or the media; it’s understood that they’ve tried their best, and are applauded for the effort, not the result. And even if the effort itself is not great, that’s understood too: we can’t always put in 100% effort at our jobs every day, and for us non-athletes, bosses in the parallel universe will understand this, and lead with passion, rather than power plays or appeals to hierarchical bureaucracy. Bureaucracies will be streamlined, and waits at the DMV will never exceed 5 minutes. Dating and marriage will be more pleasant in the parallel universe, because everyone will have grown up in healthier, more supportive, communicative homes—it’s not that there won’t be divorces, but they will always be amicable, with friendships maintained, the best interests of children always put at the forefront without sacrificing the personhood of the adults involved. In the parallel universe, citizens will live longer lives, jokes will be 56.3% funnier without being more offensive, or “punching down.” Politics will be notably uncorrupt and service-based, though “career politicians” will not be instinctively sneered at or demagogued. Shops you wish had never gone out of business will be back in business. Songs you love will never get old. Books you always wanted to read but couldn’t find will be readily available, and will be the exact book you needed to read, right at the moment you read it. In the parallel universe, you will still experience sadness and anxiety and frustration but therapy will be extremely available, affordable, de-stigmatized, and clinically, provably effective for everyone. The parallel universe itself will have portals you can use to travel to further-flung parallel universes, like one where everything is green—not just ecologically, but literally. Once you cross into the parallel universe, your life will be reset, like the cookies on your phone when you upgrade to a new version of your operating system. You will forget all about your earlier life and will never be able to locate the door to the kitchen of that Dim Sum place ever again. Or: you can choose to forego the parallel universe altogether, by remaining silently seated at the restaurant counter and solemnly slurping your soy sauce shrimp soup dumplings, knowing that nothing, in this universe or any other, could possibly taste this good. 

Matt Leibel lives in San Francisco. His short fiction has appeared in matchbook, Post Road, Electric Literature, Portland Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, Wigleaf, DIAGRAM, Socrates on the Beach. and Aquifer: The Florida Review Online. His stories have been included in the Best Small Fictions anthology in 2020 and 2024.  Find him on twitter/X/whatever at @matt_leibel.