Clarke's 3rd Law

“What a cool rock!” Petey’s father exclaimed. Petey beamed with pride. He was wearing his new jeans that had its many pockets. He had insisted on them so that they could hold the rocks he collected, including his newest one.

“It’s a magic rock,” Petey said excitedly.

His Dad held it in his hand and noted the variegated veins within it. Were they changing? he wondered. No, this was an optical illusion.

“No such thing as magic,” he told Petey. “Must be some kind of opal. On the inside the best ones can look like this.” He handed the fist-sized rock back to his son. “Where did you go to find this, Petey?”

“Just in our backyard,” the boy answered. “There’s a whole mound of them.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” Petey said, then went skipping off toward the kitchen to show Mom.

Petey’s father looked out of the windows facing the backyard. There was nothing different. Certainly no mounds of any kind.

The next time his parents saw Petey, he was 27 years old—as old as they were the day he had disappeared; the day that began the frantic months of searching, canvassing, and his likeness on milk cartons; the first day of the years to come of an emptiness and the pain of non-closure.

“My God!” his mother shouted after all those years. “Oh, my God! Petey! You’re back!”

“Where did you go?” his father asked once he was able to peel Mom from her Petey. .

“You just asked me that,” Petey said. “I told you, to the mound with the magic rocks.”

“Petey,” he said, holding his shoulders. Petey’s Mom collapsed on the couch, crying. “Petey, you’ve been gone for twenty years. You were home and then you were gone.”

“I wasn’t gone. I was here the whole time.”

His parents looked at each other. Now tears began to well in his Dad’s eyes.

“It’s just that ol’ multiverse thing, really. We’ve been together the whole time. Just in alternate universes. You’ve both been the same to me, every day, day in and day out. Grade school, high school, and now college. Don’t cry, Mom, ‘cause you were the best Mom in the world.”

“Was it what you called your magic rock, Petey?” Dad asked.

“Maybe, Dad.”

“There’s no such thing as magic, son.”

“No, not everywhere. But here in this universe is where I found mine.”

“Oh, Petey,” his Mom sobbed.

“It’s Pete now, Mom. I’m a grown-up.”

“Not to me,” she said sternly.

“Son—er, Pete,” Dad explained, “it’s just that we’ve been without you all this time. You’re our son. We love you. We’ve missed you. So much taken from us.”

“Like I said, it’s that multiverse thing.”

“Son, that’s nonsense. Mother, let’s call Dr. Straub to come over. This whole thing is—”

“Mom, Dad, the multiverse is real. It’s been proven. Mathematically and even existentially.”

“What’s that even mean, Petey?”

“Well, maybe not here,” their son realized.

“We’re never going to get back the time with you we’ve lost,” his Dad said. Mom began sobbing anew.

“Sure you can,” Petey assure them.

“Now I know this is all crazy talk,” his Dad said. “Maybe I’m the crazy one.”

“All you have to do is go in the backyard and get a rock for yourself. There’s plenty of ‘em. Hang out with me in all those places and all those times.”

They did, of course. They did it extensively. They got back all the time with Petey they had lost.

They never returned to their original, cruel Universe again, because it was magic; they preferred Universes where the things magically rendered were real—proven mathematically and even existentially.