Does anyone know this story? It's a short story about a guy who was born with the ability to see his parallel selves in the multiverse, provided their lives are not too different from his. In one part, he (it's told in the first person) relates seeing a cat in a tree. Some of his parallel selves climbed the tree to rescue the cat, but fell and broke their necks, thus being lost to him forever. In the main story, some of his selves see a woman tied up in the back of the truck, and he decides to use his gift to rescue her. It was quite short, and part of a larger collection. Does anyone know this story, the author, or the collection it was a part of?
1 Answer
"Ten Sigmas" by Paul Melko
I read this story recently in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction (Twenty-Second Annual Collection)
No, I did not use my tremendous power for the good of mankind. I used it to steal the intellectual property of a person who exists in one world and pass it off as my own in another. I used my incredible ability to steal songs and stories and publish them as my own in a million different worlds. I did not warn police about terrorist attacks or fires or earthquakes. I don’t even read the papers.
I lived in a house in a town that is sometimes called Delaware, sometimes Follett, sometimes Mingo, always in a house on the corner of Williams and Ripley. I lived there modestly, in my two bedroom house, sometimes with a pine in front, sometimes with a dogwood, writing down songs that I hear on the radio in other worlds, telling stories that I’ve read somewhere else.