Parallel Selves, Part I

Like the author my name is David Welch, I write this poem as a warning to you from a universe that was like your own, so identical that it would confuse. An infinite number of realities, yes, the multiverse really does exist, I see you are going down our same path, and I am begging you, do not persist. You see my own Earth has built up the tech to look at parallel worlds not our own, even pushed it to the point that people could have this technology in their home. We couldn’t move between realities, but we could take a peek, see what’s going on, endless universes that we could watch, of course, very quick, it started going wrong. One of the first things that the people did was look in upon their parallel selves, and when they saw versions more successful it unleashed on our world a new hell. See, with infinite versions of yourself it’s inevitable you will find some where you’re a movie-star or sports hero, and adored by nearly everyone. Universes where you’re a billionaire, where you’re happy, with a smoking-hot spouse, universes where you've three such partners if that is what the laws there will allow. Universes where you are a true genius and you inventions have saved all mankind, universes where your daughter didn’t die… where you had the good sense to make time. At first it was just described as depression, but then more troubling symptoms emerged, more and more stories of people ending it, suicides that first occurred in small spurts. They started reporting spikes in the stats, and very soon the truth became quite clear, more and more people were killing themselves, something terrible was happening here. It had something to do with the multiverse, that was what all the scientists thought, some after-effect they had not predicted, and they all talked this theory up a lot. I guess, in a way, the egg-heads were right, though it was no monster or virus mean, no scifi monster was needed, sadly, folks were reacting to what they had seen. The people had seen what they could have been, saw the potential that lurked inside, then looked sadly upon their current state, and were finally forced to realize That there short-comings, all their failures, were not something that had been done to them, they’d seen their own selves work hard and succeed, they had watched it all, again and again... CONCLUDES IN PART II.