Read The Narrator in sequence

The first thing I noticed about Jerry’s print shop is that he had zero customers. Not that it surprised me.

Actually the first thing I noticed was Jerry’s sense of humor. I just didn’t read it as humor at first.

He sounded like a grumpy asshole.

But once I learned how to make him laugh, or how to get him excited about anything besides that damn fax machine, I realized we had the same sense of humor. Our favorite jokes are the ones that make everyone else confused, or uncomfortable, but make us laugh later when we replay them in our heads like a private little crime.

Unless you got him drunk, which was rare, but insanely fun.

Well, unless you were in the strand of timeline E.SOL.STR-72537. The night we attempted a last-minute timeline adjustment. But if that were the case you wouldn’t be reading this.

Forget I said anything.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering about that hand at Oaks.

The First…God Damn it. I need to stop “first.”

The more you learn about time, and time as a… let’s call it a dimension, spoiler alert, it’s not, the less you think in beginnings, middles and endings. The worst part is realizing how boring linear storytelling gets once you know it’s mostly a convenience for human brains.

So let’s try this.

In short, modern card tables have computers. Computers can be hacked. Most dealers have routines. Those card readers have a lot of information, and not a lot of people servicing them who are genius-level computer scientists, engineers, and physicists.

There are also people who have been in the game so long every piece of software is a descendant of something they touched, created, or worked with someone who touched and created it intimately. Jerry was one of those people.

So in short, it wasn’t time travel.

Just good old-fashioned hacking.

At the time, Jerry played it off like a coincidence and quoted some philosophy we’ve proven to be incorrect.

You know the one about monkeys typing Shakespeare.

The only way a monkey ever gets the exact words of all the works of Shakespeare is if you cheat a little and train generations of a bloodline of monkeys in multiple universes…Lets just say It takes a Planet of the Apes-style intervention.

Anyway…

It sounded more believable than the truth.

And it used way fewer words.

I arrived at the shop at 8:59 on January 3rd 2026

The first thing Jerry had me do was fill out employment forms. You know, to distract me with bureaucracy while he worked out how he was going to reveal the true nature of our work without actually revealing anything.

He didn’t greet me. The clock struck 9:00 and he slid a stack of forms across the counter like a bartender sliding a whiskey. “Fill those out.”

I hesitated a beat. Not out of caution or suspicion. I think that was when I first realized I should let go of any preconceived notions of who Jerry was. The papers weren’t out of the ordinary, I-9, W-4, all textbook stuff. It just didn’t seem like he had an employee since that phone book was printed, so the official onboarding packet that would please a modern HR manager, ready to go at 9:00 on the dot, surprised me.

There was one thing I should have clocked as strange, and I might have had it not been for the last 24 hours. The bottom of the otherwise standard employee agreement looked something like this:

⟐ ◇ ▢ ▣ ▤ ▥ ⌇ ⌗ ⌂ ⌘ ∴ ∷ ∵ ⊢ ⊣ ⊥ ⊤ ϟ ⧖ ⧗ ⧜ ⧝ ⧞ ⊶ ⊷ ⊸ ⊹ ⊺ ⋄ ⋆ ⋇ ⋈ ⟁ ⟁ ⧉ ⧊ ⧋ ≀ ≁ ≂ ≃ ≄ ϟ ⧖ ⧗ ⧜ ⧝ ⧞ ⊶ ⊷ ⊸ ⊹ ⊺ ⋄ ⋆ ⋇ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕ ⊖ ⟡ ⟢ ⟣ ⟤ ⟥ ⌁ ⌙ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░ █ ▌ ▐ ↟ ↯ ↡ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕ ⊖ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕ ⊖ ⟡ ⟢ ⟣ ⟤ ⟥ ⌁ ⌙ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░ █ ▌ ▐ ↟ ↯ ↡ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕⌙ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░⟁ ⟁ ⧉ ⧊ ⧋ ≀ ≁ ≂ ≃ ≄ ⊗ ⊕ ⊖ ⟡ ⟢ ⟣ ⟤ ⟥ ⌁ ⌙ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░ █ ▌ ▐ ↟ ↯ ↡ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕ ⊖ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕ ⊖ ⟡ ⟢ ⟣ ⟤ ⟥ ⌁ ⌙ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░ █ ▌ ▐ ↟ ↯ ↡ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ⋈ ⊗ ⊕⌙ ⌬ ⌭ ☍ ☌ ☋ ☊ ▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░⟁ ⟁ ⧉ ⧊ ⧋ ≀▒ ▓ ░ ▒ ▓ ░ █ ▌ ▐ ↟ ↯

Employee Signature:________________________________________ Date:____/____/______

“Whats all this?” I show Jerry the page like I discovered something.

“Ignore it. Printer error. That’s the test pattern. Got confused.”

Even after I realized Jerry was the best and most prolific liar of all time (I say with the utmost respect and admiration as a fellow master of the art), he’d still managed to get me at least twice a day. Which reminds me of a couple more rules:

NO clock jokes, dead, broken, or otherwise

NO time puns or cute jokes about time

I said I’ll see ya yesterday before one of my early official assignments, and Jerry locked me out of the print shop for a very real two weeks. Shouldn’t have done the wink. The finger guns were too much already.

and never say “in theory”

Especially when you mean hypothetically, and most especially when what you really mean is what most bookstore intellectuals and keyboard engineers mean when they say it…

“I don’t know if this will work, but I want to sound smart.”

That’s my rule. Has nothing to do with time travel. It bothers me presently, in all past universes, and will in all to come.

I start to flip back through the onboarding papers, and Jerry looks at me for the first time that day.

Jerry looked up slowly and made eye contact with me for the first time since he repeated, “for 20 bucks an hour.” This time he says, “You want a job,” again, not a question.

I hear that look again. I picked up the pen.

When I finished, I tried to hand them back. Jerry didn’t even look. He pointed with the pen toward the back of the shop.

Then he gave me my first task.

“Ok,” he said, pointing to the back. “See that rack of cubbies.” “Yeah.” “See all that paper over there.”

I turned.

There was paper everywhere. Stacks. Piles. Rolls. Boxes. Ancient receipts. Mystery folders. It looked like a blizzard had gotten a college degree and tenure.

“That huge pile on the floor,” I said, “or the desk, or—” “All the paper,” Jerry said. “Yeah,” I said. “I see paper everywhere.” “Exactly,” he said. “I need you to make it so paper is only in those cubbies.”

Nothing like living in linear time with a task that almost makes time stand still. Which, I mean, it doesn’t move. Never mind.

I started sorting.

Twenty minutes in, I discovered three things. One, Jerry owned every type of paper ever invented. Two, the cubbies were labeled, but only in Jerry’s brain. Three, Jerry does nothing but read through old faxes, wielding a highlighter and laser focus.

Time eventually passed, and at some point I miraculously ran out of paper to sort. Almost.

There was one last pile next to some old binders, print machine manuals, and other retro tech relics. I did an endzone victory dance toward the end of my first and longest task of all time.

Under the last stack of paper there was a book. Not a phone book. Not a manual. Not a novel.

I didn’t find the book at first. I found dust. I found paper cuts. I found an entire generation of expired coupons. I found a stapler that looked like it had survived the Cold War. I found a Polaroid of Jerry from the nineties standing next to a copy machine, smiling like someone had just been told dial-up was the future.

Then, under the last sheet, sat Max Tegmark’s Our Mathematical Universe.

I looked at it for a second, flipped it over, and either Jerry started hearing me in his head or the mind-numbing task made me lose track of my brain-to-mouth connection.

“Huh.”

“What’s that?” Jerry asked. “Found a book.” “What book?” “Our Mathematical Universe. Isn’t it yours?” “No. People leave junk.” “Junk?” I made a face that said sounds rad but not enough to argue for it. “You know it?” “I know of the author,” which meant I’d heard him on a podcast and he was interesting enough for me to finish it, but not interesting enough to buy a book he wrote. The guy has the personality of a command line.

Jerry stared at me in complete silence. The kind of silence that makes you hear your own heartbeat and realize it’s doing too much.

Then he nodded at the book.

“Tell me what it means,” he said. “What.” He tapped the cover with one finger like it was a stain. “What’s it saying. In one sentence.”

I opened my mouth, and my brain did that thing where it tries to remember an hour-long podcast as if it were a degree.

But I managed. Barely.

“It’s saying,” I said slowly, “that reality doesn’t have to be one track. That there are multiple possible outcomes happening in parallel, and consciousness is the thing that experiences one of them as ‘the one.’ Like… we’re not special because we’re the only version. We’re special because we’re the version that’s aware.”

Jerry’s face didn’t change. Which is never a good sign.

I added, because my mouth is a self-sabotage machine, “And also, if there are infinite me’s, statistically one of them has their life together.”

Jerry stared at me for one long second, then looked back down at the fax printouts.

“Cute,” he said. “Not accurate,” he added, like he was correcting a child who called a screwdriver a hammer.

I felt my cheeks heat up. “Oh. You asked for one sentence. Well..”

“I don’t know.”

Jerry finally looked at me again, and this time I saw it, the little glint. Not anger. Not annoyance.

Interest.

He nodded at the book.

“If there are infinite versions of you,” he said calmly, “why are you* the one standing here holding that book.”