GRGR(8)--parallel worlds

[Skip Wolfe]

>> 
>> Well, since the leitmotif of this section might arguably be: *which
>> do you want it to be?* What if TRP were playing here w/ an
>> *alternate* or *parallel universe* type of narrative thing?  You
>> know the device--doesn't Phillip K. Dick use it in one of his
>> novels--What if Germany had won the war?  What if Hitler had been
>> assassinated? . . .  Anyway, there's a coupla other suspicious
>> time warps (which I have to go back to my notes to properly
>> describe) that lead me to wonder if maybe *which do you want it to
>> be* might also apply to Roger and Jessica's fate.  Imagine another
>> world in which the war doesn't end in 1945, but continues, maybe
>> forever.  Dismal thought, but what if in this world Roger and
>> Jessica stay together, also maybe forever?  What if there werre a
>> little door to this world in this section of the narrative?  

Isn't it a part of quantum physics -- at least the "many worlds"
interpretation -- that alternate worlds come into existance whenever a
potential for multiple outcomes is actualized??  -- (or something like
that . . .  you scientists on the list, please help me out)    Could this
passage reflect the quantum notion that the observer affects the outcome
-- that we (the observers) can make the baby either be smiling or have
gas . . . or, in the many worlds interpretation, both?  In another world
maybe Roger & Jessica do stay together.  I wonder if there are other
points in the novel where alternate worlds could branch off, and if any
of it's puzzling passages could be seen as descriptions of these
alternate worlds.