Written in 2025, “Push the Button: Reality is as Limitless as a Dream” is a short story by BW Derge about a couple traversing across multiple universes, grappling with the fragility of their existence and the seeming futility of life. Would you push the button, knowing reality is as limitless as a dream?
Push the Button: Reality is as Limitless as a Dream
Whenever we pushed the button on the orange contraption, the two of us found ourselves in another world, similar yet noticeably different. The first time we pressed it, our room got rearranged and several boxed toy collectibles appeared. Apparently in that world at least, we had become big fans of bartering and collecting a certain type of toy. We soon learned that so long as we operated the machine in tandem, the only worlds we could end up in were the ones where the two of us still remained in the same room.
Whenever the two of us went to a parallel universe, it became apparent that we swapped places with the versions of ourselves that had once occupied whatever alternate reality we now found ourselves in. There was myself, call me Paul, and then my wife, Sally. In our universe of origin, we stumbled upon the magical transportation device - the bright orange plastic rectangle that contained a singular large red button.
Whenever we suddenly stumbled into a new portrayal of the cosmos that we found preferrable, meaning we tried to stay, there would eventually be an inevitable push from another version of ourselves that had also located the contraption. Without pushing our own button, we would still be shoved from that world, thrust into another universe where we may not have wanted to stay, but at least we had the device still.
When switching with iterations of our identities, we would know where to locate the magical transposer if we had not found it yet in that world in which arrived. It gets confusing quickly, difficult to keep track, and the pair of us had now traversed hundreds if not thousands of universes, not always by our own volition.
But now we could not separate from the same room at any point out of fear that we would randomly be transposed by another version of us. Being in a separate room could have costly consequences…
“I fear if we push this button once, for the wrong reasons, or with ill intentions, we might find ourselves in a world where our death is imminent,” Sally said.
“At this point I might welcome death,” I lamented. “Either way, my body is to be swallowed by the Earth, which will be swallowed by the sun in due time. What’s the difference which parallel universe in which that specific Sun resides?”
“Do you ever think we’ll end back up in the reality where we came from?” she wondered.
“If we do, it might still be temporary. Another alternate of us might push their button and doom us back on track of this endless shifting…”
“We need God or I fear I’ll just end it all for both us. Put us out of our misery.”
“Don’t talk like that, Sally.” I poured us each a shot of whiskey. In this current world, we were wealthy alcoholics in some mansion out west, in the snowy mountains. “How do you know what God is at this point? Every world has had some wildly different interpretation of the divine.”
“I’ll stick with my own interpretation, thank you,” Sally answered.
“Cheers.” I took my shot. “And what’s that?”
“God is whatever someone uses to sustain their own survival…” She then downed her drink. “Let’s go to bed.”
Compared to many other versions of the Earth that we visited, this one was acceptable. Our jobs paid well for little actual work, and we hardly ever had to leave the large house. The worst worlds to deal with were ones where we had apparently had children, and we were suddenly responsible for a random kid that looked like us. And it was so hard to become attached to them, knowing we could be gone from them at any instance, lifted away to a completely different alternate reality. When we arrived in such a world, we would quickly locate the orange contraption if we didn’t already have it in our possession.
It’s hard to start at the beginning, let’s get the simple shit out of the way first. The device was to be found in a bag that Sally’s mother obtained the very day Sally was conceived.
You see, because we were only ever transported to versions of Earth where we had already been born, the Earth was practically the same up to the point of both of her conception as a human. Because Sally was younger than me, the previous two years I existed before her birth were always identical. Beyond that point, though, it was anything goes.
If we hadn’t already found the orange device, it simply meant tracking down Sally’s mother and that blasted bag, which miraculously she always had. In our current reality, we had to track her down to a nursing home in New Jersey, where the bag was buried in her mounds of storage. That was several months ago. After that, the pair of us quickly retreated back to this castle in the Rockies that we apparently owned, not wanting to mess with the button for at least a while. It was weird how we could feel the increased dependence on booze as soon as we went a few hours without drinking. Neither of us wanted to stay like this for long, but momentarily, it was a peaceful escape to be to be succumbed by liquor’s deadening effect on the human soul…
We went to bed that night rather early, knowing that wondering about our predicament was ultimately futile. As soon as you get one question answered, it just leads to another, deeper series of questions. Despite how much or little we comprehend, whatever is, was, or will be... is, was, or will be… the thought patterns just begin to attack each other, but it’s all the same. Whatever world I occupy, I have kept the same mind, believing that it is me who makes myself… What makes something into something else is itself.
After we both slipped into sleep, we were suddenly awake, transposed to a smoky bar in a completely different juxtaposition of reality. This is was one of those rare instances where both Sally and I were in the same room in a world in which we not lovers. I found myself lounging in a restaurant booth, surrounded by strangers, in mid-sentence, “Nothing is the reality of nothingness and the only thing in this universe that is not actively thinking, it exists solely as an object to thinkers.”
Some intoxicated girl sitting next to me remarked, “How abstract.” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. The other two people across the table seemed rather uninterested in what I had been blabbering about. One of them, a man covered in tattoos, finally spoke, “All the definitions, all the separations, the emotions, the confusion… the revelation… you’re saying that’s like, an illusion?”
The woman next to him groaned. “You forgot what they were getting at. Emily wanted to know if existence was unintentional, an accident.”
“Right. It is what it is, babe,” he replied. “The universe is in an isolated vacuum of space, randomly occurring within some greater dimension.”
“That doesn’t address the original question of intentionality,” the woman snapped back.
The girl who I now assumed was named Emily hugged my arm. “I like thinking this is all just nothing. As important as the black in a night’s sky…”
“Did you forget?” I asked. “Did you think you were somewhere else?”
The couple opposite of us were now bickering about something. The young woman in a short dress next to me replied, “I can’t anymore. The world is so weird, everything seems so strange these days… like reality is as limitless as a dream…”
I won’t lie and admit it felt nice to briefly talk to strangers without Sally in my immediate vicinity. It did not appear that I was in a hurry to find where she was in this dimly lit tavern. “Dreams are beyond the clouds,” I said. “My imagination doesn’t know how to get rid of them…”
Sally popped up seemingly out of nowhere, is a cop’s uniform, scolding down at me. “Paul Jones, is that you?”
It took so much of my willpower to hold back a grin and say seriously, “Is there a problem, officer?”
“Mind if we have a word alone, please?”
I tapped Emily on the arm so she’d release me and told her, “I won’t be long.” Then I stood up and followed Sally out of the establishment, when she quickly picked up her pace.
“We have to go,” she said. “We’re in trouble.”
Approaching a police car, I wondered, “What?”
“Check your pockets. Make sure you don’t have any drugs.”
“What are you talking about?” I obliged, scrummaging through this weird outfit’s pockets. “What’s going on?”
“We never met in this world. I’m a cop, obviously, and we are minutes away from busting you and your…” She made a certain face. “…friends in there… for operating a drug ring in whatever bumfuck town we’re in now.”
I pulled out a small baggy of cocaine. “Oh shit, look what I found.”
“Ditch it,” she ordered. “We’ve got to figure out where the hell we are and where my mom ended up, and we don’t have much time.”
The two of us hopped in the vehicle and sped away. “You look good as a cop,” I laughed.
“Shut up,” she said. “Lord know how long it’ll take those pigs to figure out I’ve bailed, with the targeted drug dealer, no less.”
Suddenly, I shot out of bed in an icy sweat. “Oh fuck, I hate when that happens.”
Looking over at Sally asleep beside me in bed, I realized we were still in the Rockies, in the mansion. Dehydrated, I need water, hungover again. “Still in this world,” I said aloud, knowing she wouldn’t hear me as she slept. I gulped down some water I left by the bed and collapsed back down on my pillow, trying to not to think about the fragile nature of my existence, always in trepidation of getting flung across the oblivion of spacetime to an unknown reality.
As I lay there, I suddenly felt overwhelmed with guilt, like a two-ton sack of bricks had been chucked onto my cold heart. Why did I keep indulging myself in this infinite distraction called life? The most incomprehensible thing about this reality is how at times it can feel so comprehensible…
After a full year had passed, we started to believe this might be the iteration of the cosmos where would choose to stay for good, and also not be pushed out by some alternate versions of ourselves. We decided to stop drinking, refocused our wealth and ambitions, and decided to try and build a life. Kids were not an option, because we didn’t want to have children only to be torn away from them by another us carelessly pressing some red circle on an orange rectangle in a parallel universe.
And then, after several more months, as we should have expected, that’s exactly what happened. Maybe I will tell the tale another day of what distant world we arrived upon, but for now, what’s the difference?
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2025
© USA
This was a short story composed in 2025 called "Push the Button: Reality is as Limitless as a Dream"
Here's another story about parallel universes.
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