Shifting Universes.

I was talking to Mel on Skype two nights ago and she was telling me about a book she’s currently reading and enjoying. She said it’s called The Thirteenth Tale by a woman called Diane Setterfield, and she read a few sentences to demonstrate the style. It sounded like a style I would like and so, being lamentably short of reading matter at the moment, I ordered a copy online and am now awaiting delivery. But there’s a mystery attached to it.

Mel told me that Diane Setterfield is an American now living in Harrogate, UK, and that the book is an autobiography. I Googled the name to learn more about her. According to Wiki, Diane Setterfield is British, not American, and she lives in Oxford, not Harrogate. It also said that the book is a novel categorised as gothic.

This is a bit odd. Mel has a Masters in English Literature and so is familiar with its forms. She’s also usually perfectly sound with facts, so how did she get these three bits of information completely wrong?

As ridiculous as it sounds, my immediate thought was to question whether we might have gone through a universal shift, a possibility which seems to be gaining a surprising amount of credibility these days in light of the multiverse theory. Could I have been talking to another Mel in a parallel universe, one in which Diane Setterfield and her family were born in America, and in which she moved to Harrogate after writing a gothic novel rather than an autobiography?

Sounds pretty outlandish, doesn’t it? I can’t help but agree, and maybe I’ll get the explanation when we speak again next Sunday. But if she tells me that she never said those things, and maybe has never even heard of Diane Setterfield, I think we might have a mystery on our hands.

(Incidentally, just so you know I’m not completely barking, YouTube is full of moderately credible stories of people finding themselves suddenly shifted to the same space and time in a parallel universe. As with all reports of happenings purportedly outside the confines of normally perceived reality, I keep an open mind.)