My friend, Mishka, works as a psychiatrist in a regional hospital. And, like any psychiatrist, he has interesting patients and cases from practice. There are not as many of them as it seems, but there are straight characters from the stunt camera. And not all of them are so funny, people are not deprived of good life, and not by their own will. For example, he talked about a woman. You will meet her on the street and you will not realize that something is wrong. He takes his wheelchair and smiles. Sometimes he snoops the baby, kicking him on the pen. And if you get closer, it is not a child at all, but a doll in a bowl. He was saddened by the tragic death of his daughter. After healing, the woman became unhappy and looked worse than before. Think after that, what’s better? Living in illusion or reality?

At seven o’clock in the evening, as scheduled, Miha fell into my single barbecue, branding bottles in a package. The table for homework was already covered. As usual, sandwiches and beer.

I’ll ask you a question, he thought deeply. Do you know the theory of multi-world interpretation?

A multi-world... what is it? I asked.

This is one of many theories of quantum physics. It suggests that there may be an infinite number of worlds similar to ours. The differences can be quite insignificant – for example, in one of the worlds you ate sausages for dinner, and in another fish. So global so that not only our world can be different, but the entire galaxy or the universe.

I knew you would go crazy on your job. There is a saying: “In a psychiatric hospital, the first person to wear a dress is a psychiatrist.”

Well of you. You try to enlighten ignorance, and it also calls you a psychic. In any case, this is the question the patient I want to tell you about started with.

* * * *

I know about that theory. But I’d like to talk about what you actually came for? I asked a young, well-dressed guy who came to me for a meeting.

Running through his eyes on his medical card: 25 years, previously not registered in the psychiatric dispenser. At the age of 19, there was a traumatic amputation of the little right hand at work. Standard ARVI and flu followed.

“You know, there are two variants of events that happen to me. Either this theory is true, except that these worlds actually intersect. Or I went crazy and I needed your help, he spoke calmly, without showing signs of anxiety or fear. It became clear that his trip to me was carefully thought out.

“Let’s tell me about everything that troubles you or worries you, and then I’ll try to think about how and how to help you,” honestly, he was the last patient that day. So I wanted to finish quickly and go home.

“I’ll start with the moments when it started, but I haven’t noticed or given any importance to it yet.

How you will be comfortable. The more I know, the better, my hope of leaving sooner instantly vanished. I have to listen to them, that’s my job.

* * * *

It started three years ago. One day I went out of the house and noticed that something was wrong. This feeling happens when you come to a familiar apartment, and there cleaned up or changed something. You can’t even say exactly what changed, but the feeling doesn’t disappear. When I began to analyze that moment two years later, I remembered that there was always an oak in the yard of the house. Strong, with thick branches and strong roots. I still remember how as a child I collected the stomachs under him. And now there has grown a caterpillar! The same size, and even look similar, but the trees are completely different!

People are very afraid to change their usual world. It is easier for them to believe the lie that sustains their existence than the truth that will destroy them. I also did so, convincing myself that there was no oak, as if there had always been a larva. When I recall all the moments afterwards, I realize how stupid I was. Constantly persuading myself not to notice the truth, not believing my eyes and memories, I was getting closer to disaster.

There were many more such moments after that. Many were so small that I don’t even remember them. Let me tell you about a few remembered ones. Once, going with a friend, I remembered the "Tarkle" gum, which he and I often bought for a ruble in a barrel. There were also translation tattoos inside. A friend was surprised and said they were called Malabar. And I was just sure that he was crawling over me. He went home, and indeed, Malabar!

Then there was a friend from a rock concert who didn’t recognize me and everyone wondered where I got his phone number and name. Such events occurred more and more often, and the changes became more and more intense. I could no longer constantly justify them with my forgetfulness or my variable memory. But I tried just not to think about it. I kept my little world until the last. Even when he was all in cries and cracked on the seams.

The last event was not unexpected, but rather quite predictable, had I not been such a stubborn donkey. When I came home, I was struck by an unusual silence and darkness. There were no eternal dialogues of the heroes of the series from the TV, nor the squirting or bullshit of cooking dishes from the kitchen. Not the most important, the greetings of my beloved wife, Lights. If she went out for a walk with her friends, she would definitely leave a note, send a text message or call. Calling her at once did not make me realize that it was not all right at home. There was no wall she liked so much that I bought it right away. Instead there was my old carpet. Moreover, there was nothing at all of her stuff or what we bought together. I was shocked by a phone call:

Where did you go from work? - by the voice I recognized my boss from the past job, where I left a couple of years ago and arranged for another, on the recommendation of the father-in-law.

I’ve retired a long time ago, what are you talking about? I was confused.

Did you hit your head? For today, I’m sorry, but next time, you’ll actually be fired.

All that happened just didn’t fit in my head. I don’t remember how long it took before I calmed down and my head started working again. First of all, I called to my work, friends, friends, Light. They knew nothing about me at work. My friends and acquaintances didn’t even know that I was married, although they all attended my wedding. And the Light... the Light just didn’t recognize me, or pretended not to know. Her understanding of what I knew about her terrified her very much. After that, her phone number was unavailable.

When I calmed down, I started analyzing what had happened to me before. And two ideas came to my mind: either I went crazy, which is most likely, or I somehow travel between worlds, passing unnoticed from one to the other. These worlds are little different, just in one there was an oak, and in the other a mud, in one there was a rubber "Tarl" and in the other "Malabar". And finally, in one of them, I was late on the bus, which closed the doors in front of my nose, and met at the stop with a beautiful girl of Light. And in the other world, I probably had time to get on that trunky bus and watched her. I could find her again, start dating and marry her again. But what does it mean if I am a madman or a traveler between the worlds?

* * * *

I’ve heard a lot of sad stories, I’ve seen mothers killing their children, counting them as demons during the exacerbation and then weeping relentlessly, I’ve seen a lot. But I heard about that for the first time. At first glance, he himself invented these “other” memories, trying to escape the lonely reality. But a lot did not go. Suppose he learned the phones and names in some way, but then why does he know so much about his “wife” if she doesn’t know him? A dull story.

I advised him to talk more with his friends, to find out if he had any traumatic memories and how he could learn so much about the Light. Per he knew her husband or relative, learned everything about her and made himself believe that she was his wife. I held his hand and said goodbye. He did not come to the reception anymore.

His ticket was still unlocked, so I called on the phone number he had left. When he found out who I was and what I was talking about, he was very surprised. As he began to claim, he did not go to any psychiatrist, he did not know of any wife and considered that he was played by friends. But I persuaded him to come to the reception.

When Sidov came and stretched out my hand, I suddenly remembered the detail that was hiding from me. This Sidorov had no finger, as was written on his map. But in that first reception, fascinated by the patient’s story, I didn’t give any importance to the fact that all his fingers were whole.

* * * *

After this story, Mishka silenced, and we drank beer for a long time in silence. We both thought of one thing. Are there other worlds besides ours? If they are, what? What decisions have we made there?

Do you remember when I broke my leg? Did you drag me on the hill of good two kilometers? Imagine, my parents do not remember this, I decided to relieve the tension. Or a collective amnesia?

“No, it wasn’t so,” Mishka was surprised.

We looked at each other, but said nothing. None of us wanted to destroy our worlds.