Life and Death and the Quantum Wave Function

Summary

• In a conversation with his friend Nora, Hugo describes his between-life experience as a video store. This contrasts with Nora’s experience as a library.
• Hugo explains each life he chooses to Nora as an old VHS that he plays right in the store. The movie starts the moment he disappears.
• Hugo shares that his guide in his journey is his Uncle Philipe, who died years ago and never worked in a video store.
• Nora asks Hugo whether their guides are ghosts, guiding spirits or guardian angels, to which Hugo answers, they are an interpretation.
• Hugo shares that he's encountered a few other individuals experiencing the same phenomenon, referring to them as "sliders."
• Hugo explains that sliders exist in a state of quantum superposition, both alive and dead in a multitude of realities due to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.
• Hugo's learned a lot about this phenomenon from a quantum physicist he met in one of his lives, Professor Dominique Bisset.
• They discuss the average age group of sliders they've encountered, all of whom had regrets in life and desired a different path.
• Hugo shares that sliders often move between lives but rarely settle. He personally has lived nearly three hundred lives, but sees his constant state as a positive.
• Nora, however, is worried that her own time moving between lives is limited and wants to find a life she can permanently settle into.
• Despite this, Hugo advises Nora to dream big and take advantage of the infinite possibilities she has access to.
• Nora and Hugo discuss their past lives briefly, with Hugo revealing that they were married in one of his past lives. They shared a romantic moment at the end of the conversation.