Jamais Vu

Chapter 1

Nessa should have known that when dinner party conversation deteriorated into her calling Jesus Christ a zombie, the rest of the evening was sure to be weird on a problematically enormous scale.

It started off innocently enough; six young people with varying degrees of closeness, sitting around a large table in a small Italian restaurant. Someone mentioned monkeys, and before she knew it, Nessa had been embroiled in a fierce debate.

"I know it sounds insane, but it's theoretically possible." Nessa grinned; this was old territory for her, but for an average group of 20-somethings, these kind of questions were the stuff of mind-bending paradigms.

"Bull!" Her friend Lulu had brought a work buddy along for dinner, and the auburn-haired woman leaned forward over the table aggressively. "It's just one of those stupid things people say. You can't tell me that's science."

Nessa had already forgotten the other woman's name - Cammie? Carrie? – but she recognised her type. A lawyer same as Lulu, but not in the field for noble reasons like her friend. This woman was clearly an ambitious ladder climber with a black and white view of everything, the kind of person whose mind was closed off to the universe.

Still, Nessa tried to explain it pleasantly. "Look, with large enough numbers, almost every possibility becomes a probability. Maybe not a very big probability, infinitesimally small actually, but it's still a number bigger than zero. And that means that the Infinite Monkey Theorem is possible – you just have to think bigger, which is hard for our limited human brains to do."

"Babes," said Carrie (or was it Connie?) "I have no problems thinking big. Try me."

"Okay..." Nessa looked around the table, and everyone still seemed interested in the topic. Hesitantly, she continued, "Well, the original theorem proposes that a single monkey banging at a keyboard infinitely would almost certainly produce the works of Shakespeare eventually." Nessa leaned back in her chair, contemplating the concept at its deepest level for a moment as the sounds of the cheerful restaurant clattered around her. "And it's a sound theory, given that we're talking about an infinite length of time. When you're playing in the infinite, the possibilities are limitless."

"Infinity. So what? It's still just a stupid monkey."

Lulu leaned forward and poked her workmate. "Hey, play nice please. That's my best friend you're talking to there."

Nessa flashed her a grateful glance. "Infinity is a bigger concept that we can really fathom. Think of forever and multiply it by forever - it literally never has an end. Just contemplate that for a second."

The others stared off into the distance for a moment, and not for the first time, Nessa marvelled at the solemnity that the idea of infinity could bring to any given discussion. She continued, "So, with a single monkey, it's possible - just really, really unlikely. But what if there were more monkeys?"

"What, like a million monkeys?" asked James' date. Her housemate had brought along one of his typical single-use hook-up girls, a very pretty brunette who Nessa doubted would last longer than the next morning.

Nessa smiled at the girl. "Well, some people believe that there are an infinite number of universes out there. What if there was a universe where every atom was a monkey with a typewriter, and they'd been typing since before time was created? The probability would be much greater then."

The lawyer tossed her shiny bob around. "Uh, that's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard in my life. People actually believe in this crap? A universe made up of monkeys?"

"You think that's the most idiotic thing people believe in?" Nessa laughed in good spirit. "Did you know there's still a Flat Earth Society? Or what about the people who believe that global warming isn't a real thing? And don't even get me started on organized religion."