A traditional story or novel is made up of crises or decision points where one or more characters determine the eventual outcome.
In Jose Luis Borges’ 1941 story “The Garden of Forking Paths” the main character travels to a small village with winding streets which promise to take him to a labyrinth. This labyrinth is a garden with trails that diverge, sometimes leading back to the point of origin, other times connecting with the original direction.
By the end of the story we learn that this garden is a metaphor for a text in which every decision point leads to multiple outcomes, an infinite pattern of branches that lead to all possible outcomes.
The main character achieves his outcome, murdering a professor and setting off the Battle of the Somme. But two missing pages at the start of the story, and a puzzling footnote at the end, suggests the potential for other outcomes.