I turned 38 two months back and leading up to my birthday I intended to write about one of my earliest TNG memories, and how the idea of alternate universes splintering off each other based on the choices we make, introduced to my young, already-depressed head by Brannon Braga’s “Parallels,” brought me a deep sense of comfort.

Today I’m 100% confident that we are, all of us, living in hell. But as a kid I was convinced my unhappy childhood and the horrors on the news meant we were living in, statistically speaking, one of the least good universes, if not one of the worst. It made my days lighter, believing that somewhere out there infinite Sam’s were having a much better time than This Sam was.