I'm done with the book now, but wanted to share this part from Chapter 71 because it fits right in with Seth... and quantum physics. There ended up being two children in the story that were what some would call Indigos, they had some natural abilities to sense more of the greater picture, to sense other probable worlds and lives, and all that encompasses. This quote (I've left out some irrelevant text) also uses the tree analogy for explaining probable lives, but Koontz feels it's based on moral decisions and not just decisions in general.
A character in the story, Detective Thomas Venadium, explained that from childhood he'd also had an ability to "feel a lot of the other possibilities inherent in any situation. To know they exist simultaneously with my reality, side by side, each world as real as mine. In my bones, in my blood, I feel 'all the way things are.' A depth to life. Layers beyond layers. Sometimes it's scary, sometimes it inspires. I can't see these other worlds, can't move between them, but with this quarter I can prove what I feel isn't my imagination." (He tosses a quarter into the air and it vanishes.) He uses swiss cheese as an analogy… "all of these many worlds are like a stack of slices of swiss cheese. Through some holes you can see only the next slice, through others you see through two or three or five slices before holes stop overlapping. There are little holes between stacked worlds too, but they're constantly shifting, changing, second by second, and I can't see them really but I have an uncanny feel for them."
First, on the subatomic level, effect sometimes comes before cause. In other words, an event can happen before the reason for it ever occurs. Equally odd, in an experiment with a human observer, subatomic particles behave differently from the way they behave when the experiment is unobserved while in progress and the results are examined after the fact which might suggest that human will, even subconsciously expressed, shapes reality.
And how about this, every point in the universe is directly connected to every other point regardless of distance. So any point on Mars is in some mysterious way as close to me as are any of you. Which means it's possible for any information and objects, even people, to move instantly between here and London without wires or microwave transmission. In fact, between here and a distant star, instantly. We just haven't figured out how to make it happen. Indeed, on a deep structural level, every point in the Universe is the same point. This interconnectedness is so complete that a great flock of birds taking flight in Tokyo, disturbing the air with their wings, contributes to weather changes in Chicago.
One of the fundamental things suggested by quantum mechanics is that an infinite number of realities exist. Other worlds parallel to ours which we can't see. For example, worlds in which, because of the specific decisions of certain people on both sides, Germany won the last great war. And other worlds in which the Union lost the civil war. And worlds in which a nuclear war has already been fought between the US and Soviets….
Now I'm going to add a human touch and spiritual spin to all of this. When each of us comes to a point where he has to make a significant moral decision affecting the development of his character and the lives of others, and each time he makes the less wise choice, that's where I myself believe a new world splits off. When I make an immoral or just a foolish choice, another world is created in which I did the right thing. And in that world I am redeemed for a while, given a chance to become a better version of the Tom Venadium who lives on in the other world of the wrong choice. There are so many worlds with imperfect Tom Venadiums that always someplace, someplace, I'm moving steadily toward a state of grace.
Bartie (age 3): Each life is like our oak tree in the back yard, but lots bigger. One trunk to start with, and then all the branches, millions of branches, and every branch is the same life going in a new direction.
This is what I found to be a new twist to the tree analogy:
Mother:
And maybe, when your life comes to an end in all those many branches, what you're finally judged on is the shape and the beauty of the tree.Grace:
Making too many wrong choices produces too many branches. A gnarled, twisted, ugly growth.Maria:
Too few might mean you made an admirably small number of moral mistakes. But also that you failed to take reasonable risk and didn't make full use of the gift of life.