Marginally reliable

I know I’m a little late to this party but, Dark Matter is a science fiction masterpiece. This story unpacks the Many Worlds Interpretation in quantum mechanics: what if every choice you make triggers a reality in which you chose the opposite, and those outcomes are physically realized in alternate realities? Jason, the protagonist in this story finds himself lost across these realities and has to bear witness to how simple turns have deeply and profoundly impacted the outcomes of his life.

I’m floored by how Crouch is able to take very complex plot ideas and use them as a vessel to convey meditations on the human experience. At it’s heart, Dark Matter is an incredible love story. Sometimes, the phenomena of love and connection is something that’s hard to put into words. Here’s a quote that nearly brought me to tears:

“I’ve always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We’re all made out of the same thing- the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead starts. I’ve just never felt that knowledge in my bones until that moment, there, with you.”

We follow Jason as he traverses through a maze of realities fighting to get back to his reality. A reality that he was taken from forcibly by a version of himself that chose differently and regretted it- a version of himself that took turns that estranged him from the love of his life.

Spoilers ahead

This novel pushes us to confront some big questions, and left me reflecting deeply on choice- the ones I’ve made, the directions I’ve travelled, the choices I’ve witnessed.

In this story, the Jason from one reality (Jason 2) has chosen to live his life one way. He honored his ambition, only to look back and regret the sacrifice that came with it. He lost the woman he loved and missed out on the opportunity to create a family with her. While he chased one thing that he wanted, he lost another possibility- another version of himself that plagued him with regret and a deep sense of loss. Our Jason (Jason 1) sacrificed the very ambition that Jason 2 leaned into and what that lead to was marriage, family, love. But even this version lives with regret. He wonders what life would be like if he followed the path he abandoned. Neither decision was clean, and neither was simple.

Jason 2 becomes so consumed by regret that he commits the unthinkable: forcibly swapping lives with the other Jason. Devastated, he begins a desperate journey through countless alternate realities, each shaped by choices he never made. In some, he’s dead, in others, he never met his wife at all. It’s alarming as a reader to contemplate the sheer fragility of existence. How often do you come inches away from having an entirely different life?

Crouch really makes you think about the role that choices play in your life and how consequential, or not, they really are. No matter what choice you make, there are an infinite number of alternate possibilities that would result from a different one. The sad reality is that every choice is wrong and every choice is right- or rather, neither right nor wrong. No matter what you choose, there are infinite realities where you chose differently. And in those realities, you likely still wonder: did I ruin everything?

Overall I think a very beautiful observation that Crouch makes for us is that people are everything. Who do you love and what would life feel and look like without them? Ultimately, those feelings make life rich and worth living.

The possibilities for our reality are infinite, BUT we do have to pick one. And some decisions function as a one way door, and may result in abandoning one version of yourself completely.

So, choose wisely.

“Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse?”

As I’m wrapping up this post, I just finished the TV adaptation for this novel on Apple TV and feel compelled to add that the show is even BETTER than the book. I don’t think I’ve ever said that about anything before but the show actually adds another level of richness and even more plot lines and perspectives that didn’t exist in the book.

Absolutely check it out! After reading of course!