The Boy And The Multiverse
What are we supposed to make of the paths not taken? Brand new show Dark Matter forces us to ponder what might have been
The boy is five years old, sitting at a small kitchen table while his mother cooks dinner. It feels like she is in the background because he is enthralled by the newspaper - a full colour newspaper, no less - full of photos of the recently discovered wreck of the Titanic. It’s a core memory for him, this far off discovery that he doesn’t understand, and it kicks off a lifelong obsession with digging up the past.
After finishing high school, he leaves to study archaeology and history down the country somewhere. Girlfriends come and go, his focus on study making long-term relationships untenable. Practical archaeology work is hard to find after uni, so he turns to academia, working toward a masters degree and taking a position at a university in the capital. He meets a girl and they get married and they have kids. By his mid-30s, he has become disillusioned by research and the dollar isn’t stretching as far as it once did, so he does a secondary school teaching course and takes a position teaching history at a local high school.
He is happy. He is secure. He loves his family. What more could you want?
The boy is five years old, but the Titanic discovery doesn’t excite him. A few years later, his parents move him and his sister to Donegal, in the Republic Of Ireland, where he becomes obsessed with football. A fan of Arsenal and Celtic, suddenly his dream is to make it to the big leagues and represent his country. But football is competitive and, while he is pretty good, there are just too many players who are better.
A couple of years later, his parents move them to New Zealand. He quickly joins a local club and finds he is near unstoppable here, quickly rising up the ranks and establishing himself as a left wing. He represents his district at just 16, his province at 17. Scouts pay attention and he receives offers from a couple of pro clubs in Australia, choosing one in Melbourne and leading them to the final in his debut season. New Zealand’s national team comes calling and he starts playing in the side, becoming a regular fixture by age 21 - the same time that Aston Villa reach out to offer a short term contract. The dream is starting to come true.
The boy is 12; dalliances with archaeology and football didn’t stick but one day, during Year 7, a SOCO - a scene of crime officer from the NZ Police - visits the class and shows off what he can do, collecting and testing forensic evidence to help prove guilt in a serious crime. The boy is struck by the lightning of an epiphany and decides that is what he wants to do with his life, eventually doing a science degree and keeping fit to be able to meet the physical criteria of joining the country’s Police force.
A few years later, he is serving in his first year of active police work when a job opens up at the crime lab in central Auckland. He applies and gets it, starting six weeks later in his dream job. He quickly establishes himself as the most capable field scientist they have and spends most days out of the lab, analysing crime scenes. One day, he is working the scene of a double murder when he hears a noise in a wardrobe. He opens the door but as he does, a gunshot rings out; as he collapses to the floor, he watches a man run out of the building.
RIP Chris Philpott. 1981-2007.
The boy is 14; dalliances with archaeology and football and police work didn’t stick. One day, two of his friends suggest they start a band - one sings, one plays guitar, so he takes up the bass guitar and they practice every lunchtime at school, eventually forming a band and performing a handful of Metallica covers and a pair of original songs at a local A&P show.
They stick at it, working as a covers band to make a bit of money, while continuing to write music of their own. It takes years to get anywhere, especially since they’re in Whangarei, but regular visits to Auckland for shows and a self-produced EP get the attention of a local label; they work together to create an album, and the label gets their first single in high rotate on The Rock. They pick up an opening slot ahead of the Foo Fighters in 2008. Their album comes out a week later and manages to debut at 3 on the album charts; a week later it’s at 2. Every show back home is a sell out and they’re travelling around the world to play small slots that lead to bigger slots at festivals. Their second album debuts at #1 in NZ, and charts inside the Top 20 in Australia, the USA and the UK. Suddenly they’re discussing international tours, festival headline slots at home, plans for a third album. They made it.
The boy is 17 and finishing high school. He decided not to pursue archaeology or police work, and his football and music careers didn’t pan out. But he has a girlfriend. His first real girlfriend. And he is now confronting a choice: does he leave her behind and go to university, or does he put her ahead of his own future and attend a local polytechnic and study something he’s not really interested in?
It’s hard, but he decides to go to university. He studies physics, takes a few papers in advanced mathematics. He tries the long distance thing with his girlfriend, but it doesn’t work out. He presses on and gets a masters degree; by this time he has started to learn coding and gets in on the ground floor of a fledgling data company, programming and providing insights to clients.
He finds a flat and gets into gaming. Work is all encompassing. But he is happy. He feels fulfilled, if a little lonely. He thinks of his ex-girlfriend often but he never takes the step of reaching out. Someone will come along.
The new/ongoing Apple TV+ series Dark Matter - based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Blake Crouch, who serves as show-runner here - is based around this exact conceit: what if you could see how different life would have been if you changed just one decision. And then, like any good series, ramps the premise up to eleven and asks: what if you could replace that version of yourself.
Joel Edgerton stars as the same character in multiple realities, but we’re primarily focused on two. The first is Jason Dessen, who exists in a universe where he chooses family over career, a dissatisfied academic who is married to the love of his life Daniela (played by Jennifer Connolly) and has a teenage son. The marriage is growing stale and Dessen is shown as somewhat regretful, but he is loyal, he is a good and honourable man.
The second is Jason Dessen, referred to in write-ups as Jason 2, a traveller from a universe in which he abandoned Daniela when she got pregnant and threw himself into his scientific career, eventually inventing and creating a machine that allows him to travel between different versions of reality thanks to quantum superposition and a drug that inhibits the brain function that stops us perceiving the multiverse at all.
You can probably guess where this is going.
Jason 2 visits Jason’s reality in order to see what might have happened if he made the other choice and put family first. At first he watches, but eventually he makes a plan to replace Jason permanently, effectively stealing his life and family. The series deals with the repercussions of that theft, alongside Jason’s attempts to get home and reclaim his family with the help of Jason 2’s co-worker and booty call Amanda (brilliantly played by Alice Braga).
The series has been pretty good; I’m an avowed fan of the book, and of Blake Crouch, so I was always going to like this one. And like the book, it doesn’t get too deep into the philosophical ramifications of what we’re seeing - I assume because there is no possible philosophical outlook that would make what Jason 2 is doing make any sense. For example, in the latest episode, Jason 2 forgets a key detail about his son to near-devastating effect. Hypothetically, there would be a million details that would give the game away.
At a loss for what to do next, Jason 2 visits a therapist who asks him how long he has been married (Jason 2 answers 15 years) and says “you don’t talk like somebody who has been married for that long”. It feels like the attempt would be full of moments like this.
In the same episode, Jason - who is clearly going through a re-evaluation of his own life - admits to understanding what Jason 2 has done because he has been spying on versions of himself and imagining how he could take over the life he has been observing from a distance.
For the purpose of the story, we only see Jason 2 replace himself based on one choice - career or family. But the ramifications of that change are plethora: he has trouble fitting into work, his relationship with Daniela changes overnight, he doesn’t know key details about their son and their friends.
The tension, of course, is that people are starting to catch on. And we’ve got two episodes left to see what happens.
Dark Matter has come along at the right time, as I’ve found myself asking ‘what if’ with some frequency over the past few weeks.
My wife and I separated three weeks ago.
I’m okay. So is she. It’s a very amicable split and we’re doing our best to keep our friendship alive for the sake of our three kids together. And really, that isn’t so different. We had drifted apart over the years, we’d grown in different ways. It makes sense for our relationship to change to suit who we are now.
A very good friend of mine sent a message through and said something I liked in reference to the end of their long-term relationship: “Having a shared intention of being the best person you can be during the process, acting always with kindness, respecting the years together, framing it as a marriage completed rather than failed, is something [we] found very uplifting. It has been the key to our continued friendship.” It’s an aspirational thought.
But like Jason 2, its hard not to look back and wonder ‘what if’.
You wonder if there was a single identifiable moment that changed everything. When did we start to drift apart? Could we have done something differently? Is there a point at which things could have been saved?
It’s futile of course. You can’t go back and do things differently. You can’t change the past. And even if you could, you have no way of knowing that it would help in the long run. All you can do is accept where you are right now, and do your best to manage your feelings and your responsibilities.
And watch Dark Matter to vicariously imagine an alternative.
Kia ora e te whanau. Thanks for reading - see you Friday!
Mā te wā,
Chris