During the test, I threw my water bottle off my desk.

Then pick it up and throw it down.

As the professor frowned at me, I suddenly raised my hand, “Professor, can you come here for a second?”

Because I realized that no matter what angle I threw the water bottle, it would always fall to the ground standing up.

I seem to have the ability to take some probabilistic event and make it a given occurrence.

01

I flipped a coin 100 times, every time is positive, I broke down, originally wanted to rely on throwing coins to see positive and negative to blind judgment questions. I glanced at the professor on the podium, he is still buried in writing a lesson plan at the moment.

I had no choice but to skip the judgment questions and flip to the multiple choice side, and pull another dice made of erasers out of my stationery box.

“God bless me” I rolled the dice.

“Option A.”

Okay, next question.

“Option A.” Next question.

“Option A …..?” Next question.

“Option A!

Choose A for all twenty multiple choice questions!

No! This can’t be! Something’s wrong with the dice!

I cut open the eraser dice with a ruler, revealing its innocent white solid interior.

I picked up the small piece that only said A and shook it up again, only to have the side that said A face up forever. It seemed the problem was with me.

02

If my ability to pick out the right answer 100% of the time was any indication, people should probably believe in me as a god.

But obviously, as things stand, my ability is to turn some probabilistic event into a given occurrence.

It’s as if I’m now repeatedly throwing water bottles off of my desk that will forever fall to the ground standing up.

“LEO, what are you doing?” The professor snapped from the podium, “I’ve been staring at you for a long time, do you have thorns in your hands? To repeatedly throw the water bottle off the desk. If you don’t want to take the test, please don’t disturb the other students.”

“Professor, can you come and look at this?” I raised my hand in urgency.

The professor suspiciously stepped down from the podium to me while I held up my water bottle to signal the professor to pay attention to it, and the students taking the test around me looked at me, all of them like they were waiting for me to do something amazing.

I threw the water bottle off the desk, and after a few rolls, it landed upright on the ground.

But it was obvious that the professor thought I was insulting him, and just as he was about to get angry, I hastily picked up the water bottle again and threw it off the desk again.

As the water bottle remained standing on the ground, the professor first looked startled, then said, “Is this some kind of joke?”

I nodded and then immediately shook my head, the only way to prove it was with action, so I completed four more water bottle uprights on the ground to the sound of the professor’s preaching and the uproar of my classmates.

As the lecturing and teasing gradually ceased, I knew they had realized the seriousness of the situation. The professor asked, “Dare you try it again?”

I threw several more times in succession, and it seemed like the water bottle was under some sort of influence, always landing upright. The silence at that moment was like a lump of glue, sealing the mouths of everyone in the classroom.

Until a group of people in white coats appeared outside the door of the classroom. Without hesitation, they entered the classroom, and as they saw the bewildered expressions around and the occasional glances directed at me, they must have guessed what had happened.guessed what had happened.

Several of them walked straight toward me and said, “Young man, don’t be afraid. We know what’s happening to you. Come with us, and we’ll find a way to deal with it.”

The unknowing professor was still on the sidelines trying to stop them, but then the principal appeared at the door. “Let them go.” The principal said seriously.

“But…Principal, LEO, he…”

Before the professor could finish his words, the principal came over and patted me on the shoulder and said, “Your name is LEO right? Don’t be afraid, these people won’t hurt you.”

I was then taken away by the group of white coats.

I looked back only to see the principal’s look of regret and faintly heard him say, “The probability of this young man’s life is locked up.”

03

The place where the white coats took me to is a research institute, although in the suburbs, but not far from the city, as a research institute that had been used as a national key project research center, as long as it is the city are no strangers to it, even I have taken part in the research institute visits organized by the school.

Could it be that what’s happening to me has something to do with this institute? “Here it is, young man.”

I followed the group into the institute, where I saw a bunch of equally puzzled faces, both male and female, besides mine.

A group of us were arranged to sit in a place that resembled a conference hall, and in a short while a middle-aged man with a sad face walked in, looking like he should be a very powerful scientist.

“Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. William, the head of all research projects at the institute. First of all, I must apologize to all of you for the mistakes made by our institute.”

Dr. William’s comment added to the already puzzled crowd.

“Because of our error, some strange phenomena occurred to all of you a few hours ago,” said Dr. Williams. Dr. Williams said, “and these phenomena are more or less related to probability.”

“Yes, I hit a hundred shots in basketball today, and I could score with my eyes closed.” A man in a tracksuit exclaimed excitedly.

“Not me.” A corporate white collar worker in a white shirt clasped his hands in displeasure, “I throw paper balls around the office, and no matter how close I get I can’t get them in the trash.”

As I listened to their conversation, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who was experiencing abnormalities.

“That’s because the probabilities of your lives are locked up.” Dr. William said gravely, the same thing I had heard from the principal not too long ago.

Seeing the serious expression of the crowd, Dr. William continued, “Five hours ago, we opened a research experiment on parallel time and space, and at the same time, we also proved that parallel time and space does exist in our world, and the number of them is huge, basically, every person, every second to make every different decision will produce a parallel time and space. However, due to some mistakes during the experiment, our experimental behavior has caused a disturbance to the stability of the parallel universe, resulting in some citizens within the city ….. that is, you, can no longer generate parallel universe branches, and every decision you make has become fated, and every behavior that was originally full of probability will manifest as one of the outcomes 100% of the time.”

After hearing Dr. William’s words, the crowd was in an uproar and the originally quiet room became noisy. Dr. William should have foreseen such a scene.

“Meaning that what we do, when we do it, and the consequences are already predetermined?”

“It can be interpreted that way.”

“Is there any downside to it?”

“In the case of probability being locked down, as someone mentioned earlier, there will be situations like making every shot in basketball or never getting the trash into the bin. These might not be harmful, but the real downside occurs in some probability events crucial for survival, like choking on water every time you drink, choking on food every time you eat, or getting into an accident every time you cross the road,” Dr. William explained. “Of course, once your life probabilities are locked down, your life trajectory is also fixed, including the fact that all of you are gathered here at this moment, and the time of your future deaths is predetermined somewhere in the river of time.”

“So, do we have any chance to get back to normal?”

“We’re trying to correct this mistake, but it will take time. So, we hope that during this period, you all can cooperate with our work,” Dr. William’s tone revealed a hint of pleading. “To ensure your safety as much as possible, we hope you can stay here.”

But it was evident that the people present were not buying it. A voice of dissent arose, and soon everyone was echoing it. “This is your mistake. Why should we be restricted in our actions?”

“If you have the opportunity, you should definitely use it wisely, like buying a lottery ticket.”

“I’m not staying here either. What personal safety is there to speak of when life and death are already decided?”

Dr. Williams and a host of other researchers, as the party at fault, knew that they could not demand what the people should do, so they had to send out recorders to record the results of the people’s actions on probabilistic events as a way to project a model of their fated life trajectories, so as to keep the people as safe as possible.

Even though they knew that such actions were futile in the face of locked-down life probabilities.

04

As those who didn’t want to stay at the Institute left, the conference hall gradually quieted down, to the point where I was the only one left in place.

I honestly want to get out of here like they do and do something great with my life while I’m locked up, but I’m also afraid that I’ll just go out and have an accident.

Dr. William walked up to me and asked, “What strange things did you experience before you came here?”

I told Dr. William about my coin tosses for judgment questions as well as my dice tosses for multiple choice questions, along with a live demonstration of a water bottle always standing upright on the ground.

“Although I knew that the probabilistic events had changed in you, it did come as a bit of a surprise to see it with my own eyes.”

“Dr. Williams, you said you discovered parallel worlds, right?”

Dr. William froze at first, he seemed surprised that I would take the initiative to change the topic to this, after all, in this kind of situation normally people would only be concerned about their own safety or future, but he then smiled, “Yes, countless parallel worlds, you seem to be very interested in them?”

“Yes, I am interested in all this marvelous and mysterious knowledge.”

“Why don’t I show you?”

“What are you looking at?”

“The machine we use to peer into parallel worlds.” Dr. Williams said, “although we’re no longer afraid to turn it on.”

05

I followed Dr. William into the elevator inside the institute, and looking at the long row of floor buttons with negative signs, I was really surprised – the ordinary-looking institute actually had so many floors underground.

Only Dr. William pressed the bottom button of the elevator – negative twenty-fourth floor. With a feeling of weightlessness coming from his body, the elevator descended downwards at a very fast speed.

“Have you seen it with your own eyes?” I asked, “what a parallel world looks like.”

Dr. Williams rubbed his chin in recollection, “More precisely, it should be felt.”

“Feelings?”

“Yes, take my own feelings for example, the moment the machine was turned on, I just felt that I became a collection of countless me, countless me after making different choices at different times, I could recall the different lives that I had experienced as a collection before that moment, even if they were not what I should be experiencing at this moment,” said Dr. Williams, closing his eyes as if recalling that feeling in his brain, “It was a wonderful feeling, as if you were eating a candy that contained all the flavors, even if the flavors were already blended together. Dr. William closed his eyes, seemingly recalling the feeling in his brain, “It’s a wonderful, incredible feeling, as if you’re eating a piece of sugar that contains all the flavors, even though the flavors are already mixed together, you can still distinguish any of them when you taste it.”

“That sounds really good, I’d like to try some of that candy.” I said as I watched the rapidly changing number of floors in the elevator.

Dr. Williams was silent.

I realized in the next second that my answer seemed to make Dr. William think he had said too much, especially in front of me, a man with only one life left to live, and it was obvious that as an academic he was a bit overwhelmed by the handling of this kind of scene, just as he had just done with a group of citizens in the conference hall.

And I couldn’t think of a way to break the silence. It was only when the elevator made a ‘ding’ sound that Dr. William spoke up, “We’re here.”

The elevator door opened slowly and a large laboratory apparatus appeared before my eyes.

“It’s not what I expected, I thought it would be very advanced and beautiful.” I looked up and down at the instrument in front of me, I thought it would be a shocking machine like the ring portal in the movie, but in fact what was in front of me was just a generator-like object with no symmetry between the top, bottom, left, and right sides, and the only thing that could prove its function was the wires that spread out in all directions and the densely-packed fellows around it.

“Many products of science do not have the glamorous appearance of a movie, after all, the attribute of beauty is far less practical. Dr. Williams laughed, “Like the long series of equations we use to describe parallel worlds, just by looking at its solution, its composition is very messy, but every letter and constant has its own function.”

“I once read some scientific magazines and many scientists predicted the existence of parallel worlds.”

Dr. Williams nodded and asked, “Then you should have known about Schrödinger’s cat, right?”

“It’s ….. The cat in the superimposed state of life and death.”
“That’s right, so now let’s zoom out and think of the cat as ourselves, and the universe as the box that covers us all, and at this moment the superposition of states is no longer limited to life and death, but to an infinite number of variations per Planck time ….. That is, an infinite number of variations of an infinite number of quanta in the smallest interval of a time quantum.”

I was deep in thought and then posed the question, “Now that the box is there, the cat is there, and the superposition condition is there, so ….. who is the observer?”

That’s the crux of the problem, and that’s the focus of our research,” said Dr. William.

I followed Dr. Williams over to the machine, so close to this product of science that I ran my hand over its smooth metal surface.

“And what is the purpose of this machine?” I asked.

“In layman’s terms, it is used to pull the various parallel worlds so that we can feel their existence.” Dr. Williams explains, “The only certainty about Schrodinger’s cat is that the cat itself knows its own state of being dead or alive, much like we know our current state. With the help of this machine, however, we experience our selves in other states, just as the cat experiences the state of being both dead and alive, but ….. this seems to have attracted the attention of the observer.”

“Let’s see. ….. From an observer’s point of view, it looks like a hole in the box?”

“Who knows? Maybe it almost burned the box, maybe, or how else would the observers have been allowed to open the box and start observing you?” Dr. William sighed.

“Observe us?”

“Yes, the fact that your current life probabilities are locked is the result of observations made by observers and ….. has been observing until now.”

I don’t know if it’s an illusion or not, but I subconsciously raised my head, and through the ceiling above my head I seemed to feel a feeling of being watched, just like when I was in the exam room when the professor supervising the exams kept looking at me, it was uncomfortable.

“So what do we do now? Figure out how to cover the box? Or should we ….. poke the observer blind?” I asked.
“I don’t know ….. Dr. William spread his hands and said bluntly, “We can only think of something to do to divert the attention of the observers, of course ….. This machine can not be used again, this will only allow the observer to observe more people, can only say that we have not thought of what kind of phenomenon can attract the attention of the observer.”

I rubbed my chin in thought and said, “Actually, ever since my probability was locked up, there’s been an idea in my mind to try it out.”

“What do you think?”

“Got any coins?”

Dr. Williams felt in his pocket and pulled it out and said, “There are two.”

“Just right. Is there any tape?”

“Yes.”

I took the coins and started making separate tosses, and after making sure that both coins would land only heads, I wrapped the two coins together with duct tape and both heads facing out.

Dr. William immediately understood what I was trying to do and hurriedly covered my hand and said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”