Illusion of choice

We know the term "multiverse" all too well these days (thanks to Marvel's and what started in comic books and recently expanded to movies, TV series, video games and pretty much any piece of entertainment you could put a super hero on). But the quantum multiverse is a very real and widely-debated theory that states that whenever a diversion event occurs all the outcomes exist in different versions of the universe. Simply putting, that means that there is no picking between this or that - there is always this and that, happening in many versions of reality. Our choices define who we are, where life leads us, the people we meet and relationships we build. And at the same time, they are an illusion. What you choose might change this universe, but all the other possibilities are still happening to millions of different versions of ourselves in other universes.One of my favorite comfort movies is About Time. It's a light rom-com about time travel but also about going back in your choices and getting a do-over. And the moral of the story (spoilers, I guess?) is that there is no do-over. One choice, big or small, and you changed your entire existence by connecting this choice to a thread of billions of other choices you and other people will make through your lifetime. Changing one bad event wouldn't simply put you in another branch where everything went fine. That branch would also have a whole different "reality" - it's nearly impossible to cherry-pick one little thing we would like to change and still end up in the same place and situation we are right now, right at this moment while you read this.Choices are power, but the heaviest of powers, even though we make them every day of our lives, all of the time. Some are bigger and more evident on how they fork the path in front of you - the very unique moment in each of our lives when we realize the weight of choosing, and ultimately the weight of taking up the consequences, no matter what they are. Of closing doors and choosing to open another. Maybe that is why we obsess with multiverses, do-overs and second chances; we wish to have the illusion of control by knowing what's behind each door.There is a moment I remember clearly seeing my multiverse branch right in front of me. Back then I had a temp job as assistant editor in a film studio and had almost given up on working with games. It had been over a year that I was looking for some opportunity and nothing came up. My boss at the time offered me to take a permanent job at the studio as an editor. She gave me some time to sit on it.Now, I'm not sure the timeline I recall is right or if I'm romanticizing it, but as I remember, the very next day I received a message from an acquaintance saying a game studio he used to work for was looking for a writer and he gave them my name. That same week I had an interview and received the news I got the job. The moment I was sitting in front of my then boss, building up the courage to tell her I would take the other quirky, uncertain, video game job, it happened. I know for a fact (don't ask me how) that if I took the editor job I would have given up on games. I would be living in a different place, having had different experiences and never would have crossed paths with some of my now best friends.Every time I think of that, it leaves me in awe and also terrified. All of the time, we are making unconscious choices that can alter our reality as we know it right now. We are living in a branch where door number 2 was open, but how not wonder what does the world behind door number 1 looks like? That is the strength choices hold in video game stories. Great power, low stakes - after all, those will not change your reality, but the reality of fictional characters. And yet they can be hard to make in the heat of the moment. There is always something to miss, some possibility to discard. Video game choices make us realize that choosing does not come cheap.But we keep on choosing, every day, every minute. -Maíra