I started reading Dark Matter Wednesday June 26, 2019 and finished reading it on July 17, 2019. It has 340 pages. It was by Blake Crouch. He is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the co-creator of Good Behavior on TNT based on his Letty Dobesh novels. His novels have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold over a million copies. Blake lives in Colorado with his family.
"What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened"
T.S. Elliot "Burnt Norton"
"One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks at you for wisdom."
Dark Matter Blake Crouch p. 3
In saying that I realize that we all have our own gifts to share and should be respected for that. We all are a mixture of our different facets we take on in life.
After talking with Ryan about the future he could've had Jason got hit by a car but survived. Which brings into question is this whole story of a comatose victim or did it actually occur?
"It's a beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damming choices have been made, no path committed to and the road forking out is pure unlimited potential." Dark Matter Blake Crouch p. 10
A childlike wonder which possesses the youthful children who are forever in their youth and refuse to grow up. These are the new aged youth which are most alive at night and sleep in the day.
Jason is taking hostage and forced to drive somewhere by a masked man. He tries to text his wife for help but the abductor catches him. The abductor forces Jason to strip when he vacates his car.
"The dead don't feel fear or pain." Blake Crouch Dark Matter p. 24
There is no proof for this either way. When you die, your body loses all feeling, however you may still feel in thought essence.
Jason escapes, and runs, but has no clue where he is running. He arrives at a beach of Lake Michigan. He gets in a cab and finally goes home. Jason is dropped off at a house very similar to his house but not his own. Jason calls Daniala's cellphone number, a man answers and tells him not to call anymore. Lighton catches up with Jason.
"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be right." Dark Matter Blake Crouch p. 58
This is usually the case, but it defies all logic. Logic is not always truth, however truth is logically sound.
Jason goes to the ER a few blocks away. He feels like he's being hollowed out the morning after. The doctor calls Jason's brother Michael.
"Experimental physics -- hell all of science--is about solving problems. However, you can't solve them all at once. There's always a larger, overarching question--the big target. But if you obsess on the sheer enormity of it you lose focus."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch pp. 79-80
You have to focus on a single aspect if not you will be overwhelmed with your lifes experience. You can't achieve any of the miraculous outcomes if you are overwhelmed.
"The key is to start small. Focus on solving problems you can answer. Build some dry ground to stand on. And after you've put in the work, and if you're lucky, the mystery of the overarching question becomes knowable. Like stepping slowly back from a photo montage to witness the ultimate image revealing itself."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 80
In life it is good to be driven, but not to the point of insanity. Everyone has to balance themselves through art or some creative means, and when you do this, your masterpiece begins to unfold in front of you.
"We're all just wandering through the tundra of our existence assigning values to worth lessness, when all that we love and hate, all we believe in fight for and kill for and die for is as meaningless as images projected in Plexiglas."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 85
"Nothing exists. All is a dream. God-man-the world-the sun-the moon the wilderness of stars-a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space-and you....And you are not you --you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but thought." Mark Twain
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 85
"We all live day to day, completely oblivious to the fact that we're part of a much larger and stranger version of reality than we can imagine."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 96
Someone kills this version of Daniella
"It's terrifying when you consider every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make branches off into a new world. Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 112
"It's a mystery. But there are clues. Most astrophysicists believe that the force holding stars and galaxies together--the thing that makes our whole universe work--comes from a theoretical substance we can't measure or observe directly. Some thing they call dark matter. And this dark matter makes up most of the known universe."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 112
"Some string theorists think dark matter might be a clue to the existence of a multiverse."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 112
"Imagine you're a fish, swimming in a pond. You can move forward and back, side to side, but never up out of the water. If someone we're standing beside the pond, watching you you'd have no idea they were there. To you that little pond is an entire universe. Now imagine if someone reaches down and lifts you out of the pond. You see that what you thought was your entire world is only a small pool. You see other ponds. Trees. The sky above. You realize you're a part of a larger and more mysterious reality than you had ever dreamed of."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 113
"So if the world really splits whenever something is observed, that means there's an unimaginable, massive, infinite number of universes--a multiverse--where everything that can happen will happen."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 123
"I don't get it. If you wanted to put a particle in a quantum state, you'd create a deprivation chamber. Remove all the light, suck out the air, turn the temperature to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. It would kill a human being. And the larger you go, the more fragile it all becomes. Even though we're underground, there are all sorts of particles--neutrinos, cosmic rays--passing through that cube that could disturb a quantum state. The challenge seems insurmountable."
Blake Crouch
Dark Matter p. 124
"We perceive our environment in three-dimensions, but we don't actually live in a 3-D world. 3-D is static. A snapshot. We have to add a fourth dimension to begin to describe the nature of our existence. The 4-D tesseract doesn't add a spatial dimension. It adds a temporal one. It adds time, a stream of 3-D cubes, representing space as it moves along times arrow. This is best illustrated by looking up into the night sky at stars whose brilliance took fifty light-years to reach our eyes. Or five hundred.Or five billion. We,re not just looking into space, we're looking back through time. Our path through this 4-D reality is our worldline (reality) beginning with our birth and ending with our death.Four coordinates (x,y,z and t [time]) locate a point within the tesseract. And we think it stops there, but that's only true if every outcome is inevitable, if free will is an illusion, and our worldline is solitary. What if our worldline is just one in an infinite number of worldlines, some only slightly altered from the life we know,others drastically different? The Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that all possible realities exist. That everything that has a probability of happening is happening. Everything that might have occurred in our past did occur, only in another universe.What if that's true? What if we live in a fifth-dimensional probability space? What if we actually inhabit the multiverse, but our brains have evolved in such a way to equip us with a firewall that limits what we perceive to a single universe? Our worldline. The one we choose, moment to moment. It makes sense if you think about it. We couldn't possibly contend with simultaneously observing all possible realities at once. So how do we access this 5-D probability space? And if we could where would it take us."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
pp. 131-132
Lighton holds Ryan hostage to get Jason to confess the truth about what happened to him inside the box that transported him to this dimension. They drug Jason because he won't talk. Jason awoke with Ryan. After Ryan is dragged from the cell the other Jason appears from this universe. Amanda enters the room to inform Jason that they killed Ryan.
Amanda gets him out, but can't use her access cod to enter the room so they use Jason's. Amanda goes with Jason to his universe.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 151
Josh and Amanda find themselves in a blizzard of ash.
"It's a one in a billion chance, but we're dealing with the multiverse. With infinity. Maybe there are a million worlds like yours, where I never figured it out. But all it takes is one where I did."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 159
"Let's assume assume the multiverse began with a single event--the Big Bang. That's the starting point, the base of the trunk of the most immense, elaborate tree you could fathom. As time unfolded and matter began to organize into stars and planets in all possible permutations, this tree sprouted branches, and the branches sprouted branches, and on and on, until somewhere, fourteen billion years down the line, my birth triggered a new branch. And from that moment, every choice I made or didn't make, and the actions of others that affected me--those all gave rise to more branches, to an infinite number of Jason Dessens, living in parallel worlds, some very similar to the one I call home, some mind-bogglingly different."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 164
Jason and Amanda find doubles of themselves.
They kill Amanda in front of her. Jason and Amanda travel through a house. The people in the house didn't freeze to death, they starved.
"You can't hold on to this as you open a new door. You have to find a way to let it go."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 180
"When you write something, you focus your full attention on it. It's almost impossible to write one thing while thinking of another. The act of putting it on paper keeps your thoughts and intentions aligned."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 186
On the El train they took they were strapped in by mechanical arms which held their wrists and legs in place for safety. Jason and Amanda go to a skyscraper where they can see four states on a clear day Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. They meet this worlds version of Jason.
"I wonder, Is this what God feels like? The rush that comes from literally having spoken the world into existence? And yes this world already existed, but I connected us to it. Out of all the possible worlds, I found this one, and it's exactly, at least from the doorway of the box, what I wanted."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 193
They just stole a car. Their the only car on the interstate. Amanda and Jason get to Jason's house. Daniella says that their son is dead and this version of Jason is dead.
Their followed in a high speed chase after leaving Daniella dead. They go to another world. Jason starts sobbing uncontrollably. Amanda tries to help him
"The subconscious marches to it's own beat."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 214
"What a strange thing to consider imagining a world into being with nothing but words, intentions, and desires."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 214
"If you strip away all the personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make you you?"
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 218
"You know how a dream feels the further you get from it? It loses its color and intensity and logic. Your emotional connection to it fades." Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 221
Jason talks to Daniala in an art gallery and asks her to get coffee, but then rescinds the offer.
"Identity isn't binary. It's multi-faceted."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 227
Jason calls Daniala and finds out Charlie is going to be a big brother.
"Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how previously and perfectly it all hangs together."
Blake Crouch
Dark Matter p. 230
Amanda leaves. Jason gets beat up by teens as he walks home. They take his backpack and rip his clothes. They leave only 3 ampoules, which are the pills to help find his dimension. He sees this world's copy of himself.
That Jason gives him $15 on his eighth day there.
"We associate reality with the tangible--everything we can experience with our senses."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 240
"Separation and isolation are an illusion."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 245
Jason plans on killing the version of him within this world and taking his place.
Jason goes to buy a gun, but can't because his double told the dealer not to sell him one.
"The infinite nature of the corridor precluded me from running into more versions of myself, but I did see one the Jason with his back flayed open."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 261
"Is it possible to outthink yourself?" Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 262
Jason's clone tries to shoot Jason.
Jason realized their were murders being committed by different versions of himself. He almost got caught but lost himself in a bar.
"All you can do is live with the best version of yourself, right?"
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 271
Jason decides the only way to beat the other versions of himself is to do something random.
Jason goes to a diner and starts smoking and is asked to leave. Jason goes to jail because of that.
Daniala comes to bail him out. She doesn't know what to do. Jason calls that worlds Jason at the University to prove she isn't going crazy. They pick up Charlie at school. Daniala just received a text saying she was in danger and to call the number she was texted on.
"The multiverse exists because every choice we make creates a fork in the road, which leads into a parallel world. Every choice we make unfolds into a multitude of permutations."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 293
"All your life your told your unique. An individual. That no one else on the planet is like you."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 299
Charlie is 15 now. Jason can't sleep, he sees versions of himself trying to murder himself. Jason has a chat with all the other Jason's on this plane of existence and agrees to discuss the issues of his family with all his clones.
"I've seen so many versions of you. But it's all, in the end, just life. We see it macro, like one big story, but when your in it, it's all just day to day. And isn't that what you have to make your peace with?"
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch p. 314
Jason finds himself dying in the snow, he's told one of his duplicates did this. Jason and his copy are in a fight, he's forced to strip. He is saved by another Jason.
"Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse?"
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 326
"Life doesn't work that way, you live with your choices and learn, you don't cheat the system."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 326
"We're so clearly at the end. Everything we've built-our house, our job, our friends, our collective life-it's all gone. We have nothing left but eachother, and yet in this moment I'm happier than I've ever been."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 332
"If you go in with fear, fear is what you'd find."
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch
p. 339
