My name is Allen Fersch. My story begins on the last day of my life.

There’s a distinct possibility that every living being has a kind of “quantum immortality” that prevents it from experiencing its own death. At the instant when your body in one parallel universe dies, your consciousness jumps ship to the most similar parallel available where you did not die.

The truck swerved at the last second. The power went out. The gun jammed. You were thrown clear and you thank God the Almighty and all the saints and seraphim that you’re okay.

If you’ve ever been in a near-death situation where your life flashed before your eyes, there’s a good chance you’re not in your original body. That experience of “flashing before your eyes” is the download mechanism kicking in. In some lonely universe somewhere, all your friends and loved ones think you’re dead and your parents keep a picture of you on their mantelpiece, which depresses everyone when they come to visit for the holidays.

So what happens if the mechanism goes wrong? Like any natural process, there are quirks in the system. Some people are born with six toes. Some people have a defective downloader. If somebody you know ever had a near death experience and came out a completely different person, you’re seeing what happens when the escaping soul can’t match the parameters of their original universe closely enough. I shudder to think how many perfectly sane people are locked up in mental asylums because their soul skipped a track or two and now they’re living a timeline meant for someone else.

Sometimes you escape death and you never even realize how close you came, sometimes you escape it and the world around you is different in ways you can’t quite place.

And sometimes… you end up like me: completely off the grid.