The Year We Remember

I am a quantum engineer at the Zurich–Kyoto Institute for Temporal Optimisation. Which sounds grand, though most of my days are spent cajoling fragile qubits not to decohere when a postdoc sneezes or a technician slams a door.

Still, on Boxing Day, the world turns its eyes to us.

Public Information Pamphlet, 2124
The Oracle simulates billions of possible years in parallel. On Boxing Day, every citizen reports their happiness (1–10). The run with the highest total collapses into history. All other runs are discarded. If you remember it, it was optimal. If not, it never happened. Thank you for your participation in collective felicity.

That is how history is written.

It is also why I am living with Evelyn this year.

We met, as all pairings do, in the provisional flats. The furniture was redistributed, the walls freshly painted, the kitchen stocked with standard rations of lentils, tomatoes and a pot of instant coffee. She laughed when she saw my wardrobe: three identical Institute shirts, two pairs of trousers, an old chess set.

“You’re a cliché,” she said. “The quantum engineer with no life.”

I wanted to protest, but she was already unpacking her books, hair falling into her eyes. Later, when we ate pasta off mismatched plates, she raised a glass and declared, “To the Oracle. May it forget to collapse us.”

Her toast was half a joke. I didn’t laugh.

We were washing the plates afterwards, steam curling in the cold kitchen air. Evelyn dried hers, set it down, and said, “So tell me. What do you actually do in there? At the Institute?”

I hesitated. Most people didn’t really want to know.

“No, really,” she pressed. “Everyone jokes about the Oracle, but how does it actually work?”

“Alright,” I said. “Think of the world as a game of chess. Every move we make opens thousands of possible futures. Left unchecked, that tree of possibilities grows until it’s unmanageable. Billions of universes, each a little different. One where you burnt the pasta tonight, one where you didn’t. One where we never even met.”

She leaned against the counter, arms folded. “And the Oracle…?”

“The Oracle runs all those games at once. It plays out the year in every branch. Then, on Boxing Day, we all give it a number — one to ten — for how that year felt. The Oracle adds everything up. The branch with the highest total is kept. All the others are discarded.”

She frowned. “So… what happens to those other branches?”

“That depends who you ask,” I said. “The Copenhagenists say they were never real at all, just shadows of probability. The Everettians say they were all equally real — whole universes with people like you and me — and that the Oracle murders them every year. And the Institute line, the one we’re supposed to stick to, is that they’re just simulations. Computations. Useful, but not alive.”

“And you?”

I dried my hands slowly. “I don’t know. I think about it too much.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So this — us — is just a test run?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Until Boxing Day, we’re provisional. If our year scores high enough, it’ll collapse into history. If not…”

“Then we never happened?”

“Exactly. No one will remember. Not even us.”

She was quiet for a moment, then laughed sharply. “That’s the most depressing love story I’ve ever heard.”

I didn’t laugh.

March: she accused me of shrinking her sweaters in the dryer. I denied it. We didn’t speak for three days, then reconciled over pancakes that came out rubbery but edible.

April: she dragged me to a concert, said I worked too much. I pretended to enjoy the noise. Later I admitted I preferred silence and she only smiled.

May: we bought a basil plant for the windowsill. It died within a week. Evelyn painted it a grave marker on cardboard and propped it in the pot.

June: a week by the lake, where she made me swim at dawn though I hate the cold. She said my shivering made her laugh, and I began to shiver more just to hear it.

July: a heatwave, nights spent sprawled on the floorboards, Maxwell the cat stretched out like a rug.

August: her cousin’s wedding, where she danced until her feet blistered, and I thought: if happiness could be measured, this must be a ten.

September: the cat argument — she wanted one, I refused, she bought one anyway. We named him Maxwell. I swore I wouldn’t grow attached. Within a week I was scratching him behind the ears and calling him “Professor.”

October: Evelyn took up painting. Furious swirls of colour, half joy and half rage. She lined them along the hallway until we had to shuffle sideways to reach the bedroom.

November: my birthday. She cooked a stew that stuck to the pan, and I told her it was perfect. She smiled and I knew she didn’t believe me, but she wanted to.

Every month etched into memory, every quarrel and tenderness. And always, December creeping closer.

Excerpt from Colloquium Minutes
Item 4: Staff attrition. Four Everettians resigned this quarter, citing “ethical objections.” HR recommends additional training in interpretation neutrality. Staff are reminded that “discarded runs” are non-events and not to be anthropomorphised.

One evening Evelyn found me at the kitchen table, staring at the survey form on my tablet.

“You’re filling it out already?” she asked.

“I was thinking of giving it a nine,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “Why not ten?”

“Because if I always give ten, the system will discount it. The algorithm looks for variation. Maybe if I rate it down, it’ll weight us higher.”

“You’re trying to game the Oracle?” She laughed, but her voice cracked. “If you love me, you’ll give it ten. Don’t you dare risk us.”

I swore I would. But later that night, lying awake, I imagined the Oracle sifting through my dishonest nine, discarding Evelyn as sub-optimal, and the thought hollowed me out.

Internal Memo: The Cogito Error (CC-17/Ω)
It has been observed that some staff entertain the syllogism: “I think, therefore this run cannot be discarded.” This is incorrect. Conscious processing occurs in every simulated branch. Selection is retrospective. Your present awareness is not evidence of survival, merely evidence that awareness is possible. Please discourage magical thinking among colleagues and students.

In the last week of Advent I caught myself rehearsing the forbidden thought. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore this branch must be real. I love her, therefore the Oracle cannot prune us. It felt airtight, like a proof scribbled on a whiteboard at midnight.

I knew the memo by heart. Awareness is cheap. The machine breeds it by the billion. Collapse is what makes it expensive.

I turned on the light and watched Evelyn sleep, her hair a black spill over the pillow. If thought could save a world, this one would have been safe already.

Poster in Staff Canteen
REMEMBER: You cannot lose what you cannot recall. Spectral grief is a delusion. Report persistent symptoms to your supervisor.

At work, the Copenhagenists teased us Everettians — or the few of us leaning that way. “Still murdering infinities?” they’d say, chuckling over coffee. But the Everettians couldn’t last. They resigned every year, unable to stomach the thought that whole universes full of lovers and children winked out because the scores didn’t add up.

I told myself I was neutral. That the runs were only scaffolds, not lives. That Evelyn was enough.

And yet the fear grew. December evenings felt heavy. We sat on the sofa with Maxwell between us, pretending to watch dramas, pretending not to think of Boxing Day.

Citizen Advisory Notice
Every year global happiness rises by 2–4%. This is evidence of the Oracle’s optimality. You cannot “cheat” the Oracle by over- or under-reporting. Dishonest scoring may in fact reduce the probability of your run’s survival. For your own sake and for society’s, score accurately.

Boxing Day.

I tapped 10. Evelyn did too, her jaw clenched as though her number alone could sway the Oracle. Maxwell sprawled across our legs, purring.

Then we waited.

Hogmanay.

The crowd, the countdown, the great surge of anticipation.

I held Evelyn tight, squeezed her hard. For an instant I thought I might be sick. A pressure behind my eyes, a shudder in my bones. Cogito ergo sum, I thought helplessly, knowing it was a child’s charm against thunder.

Then stillness.

And what a relief.

Tanya was still there.

Her hand was in mine, steady, certain. Our year together unfolded in memory, seamless: the trip to Naples, the towel-folding quarrel, the chess games that always ended in laughter.

The Oracle had spoken, and we were safe.

Citizen Advisory, 2125
Global happiness up 3.7%. Reports of nausea during collapse remain within acceptable margins. Citizens experiencing “phantom attachments” are reminded these are psychosomatic artefacts and not evidence of discarded lives.

I kissed Tanya’s forehead, and she smiled. The unease ebbed.

Of course it made sense. The Oracle had not erred in all the years since its first collapse. By definition, this was the best of all possible years: the sum of happiness higher than any alternative, the optimum drawn clean from the tangle of maybes. I could understand that. I could even take comfort in it.

What a relief. Tanya was still there.

And the others — whatever they might have been — were gone.