Nothing matters in our private universe...

John took solace in the knowledge that somewhere out there an alternate universe had been created in which he hadn't just said what he had, in fact, just said. He was the science equivalent of a chardonnay socialist, just taking the bits he liked when it suited him- and Tegmark's theory of alternate universes suited him now as he sat at the silent dinner table like a man who had just soiled himself on the train long before he was due to get off. He imagined the informed, impassioned but unmistakably jovial conversation continuing in this parallel world, unhindered by the sheer, blunt stupidity of what he had just blurted out in the heat of the moment. He imagined the evening progressing, and the conversation performing wilder loops and even more thrilling twists as the wine flowed and people relaxed. He imagined the knowing looks his partner would send his way each time he made a brilliant point, or deftly summarised someone's argument in a way that satisfied both parties. His mind conjured up the intensely sensual sights, smells and sounds of the passionate lovemaking that would inevitably follow such a wonderful evening- an evening in which he would have forever won over his partner's friends, leaving them no option but to quietly encourage her to marry him.

The silence continued as John sat at the table, his eyes staring across countless light years at this alternate paradise. Only the tastefully subdued strains of John Mayer's latest offering penetrated the suffocatingly silent stillness that had enveloped the party. Slowly John's gaze drew back across the infinite ripples and swells of spacetime into the tastefully appointed semi-formal dining room. Aware that he had not only pulled the emergency brake on the night's conversation, but had followed it up with roughly two full minutes of starry-eyed silence, he felt it was time to act.

"I'm not saying that all gays are paedoph..."

Somewhere, billions of light years away, in a separate stream of space and time, an alternate version of John shivered as goosebumps ran from the base of his skull to the soles of his feet.