The Paradox Hole

The woman who knocked on number fourteen Cavendish Row had never existed. This was a fact she was aware of, which was what made her situation unusual. Most non-existent people are unaware of their non-existence — this is, in fact, the defining quality of their condition. To not exist is to not know that you don't. Clara Veyne had been informed of her non-existence by a man in a gray suit who appeared at the edge of her peripheral vision on a Tuesday morning and handed her a laminated card that read, in very small print: NOTICE OF NON-EXISTENCE Subject: Clara Veyne Status: Paradoxical Reason: Your birth was retroactively prevented on 03/14/1987 due to a cascading probability correction. We apologize for any inconvenience. She had read it three times. She had looked up. The man in the gray suit was gone. She had checked her bank account. Still there. She had looked at her driver's license. Still had her face. She had called her sister, who answered and said Hi Clara and talked for twenty minutes about a disagreement with her landlord. So she existed, clearly, in the practical sense. Just not in the official one. Number fourteen Cavendish Row was the address printed on the back of the laminated card in even smaller print, under the words APPEALS OFFICE. She knocked. The door was opened by a woman with the expression of someone who has worked in an appeals office for a very long time. "Clara Veyne?" the woman said. "I got a notice." "Come in." Inside was a waiting room. In the waiting room sat four other people, all with the slightly dazed quality of people who have recently been told something that upends the foundations of their self-understanding. They each held laminated cards. Clara sat down. The man next to her looked over. "Retroactive non-existence?" "Paradoxical status," she said. "You?" "Probability error. I was supposed to get hit by a bus in 2003, and I didn't, and apparently they didn't account for the downstream effects, so now I'm —" he waved the card — "a bureaucratic anomaly." Clara nodded. "What happens in the appeals?" "No idea," he said. "But I've been waiting forty minutes, and the woman at the desk hasn't moved, and I'm starting to think that the appeals process for non-existence might be —" "The next one in," said the woman at the desk. Five people looked up. On the door behind the desk, a sign read: YOUR REALITY IS UNDER REVIEW. Below it, in smaller letters: Thank you for your patience. This was the first of four stories in The Paradox Hole. All four would end this way — not with resolution, but with the precise moment before one, the instant when everything that seemed solid has just revealed its seams. The second story is about a man who remembers a life he never lived. The third is about a city that exists only when no one is looking at it. The fourth — the last — is about you. Collect all four. Or let one collect you. The waiting room door opens. You're next.