Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Fated (5 page)
“So what’s up with you, Fabio?” asks Sloth, slouching down further in his chair.
“Same old, same old,” I say. “Just watching humans make bad choices based on what you guys throw at them and reassigning them to their less-than-optimal fates.”
The woman at the table next to us gives me a dubious glance, as if she thinks I might not be completely sane. Like she can talk. Nine years from now, she’ll be chopping up her ex-husband and feeding him to her three cats.
“I wouldn’t want your job, man,” says Sloth. “Too much work.”
Gluttony laughs, spraying us with food as he finishes off the last of his sandwich. “Imagine that. You not wanting to work.”
“Like you’re any better, fatso.”
“At least I’m not a slacker.”
“Eat me.”
“Don’t tempt me,” says Gluttony. “I’m still hungry.”
Two young, slender women wearing NYU sweatshirts come into the deli and glance our way. The leggy blonde whispers to the buxom redhead and they both laugh.
The blonde is going to pose for
Playboy
and spend most of the next ten years pursuing a modeling and acting career, taking walks on the beach at sunset, and getting turned off by mean people. The redhead is going to end up married with three children and wishing she’d killed her college roommate when she’d had the chance.
Playboy
and spend most of the next ten years pursuing a modeling and acting career, taking walks on the beach at sunset, and getting turned off by mean people. The redhead is going to end up married with three children and wishing she’d killed her college roommate when she’d had the chance.
“Do you guys ever wish you could do something different?” I ask.
“Like what?” asks Sloth.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Like Pride or Justice or Honesty.”
“No way,” says Sloth. “Those jobs are, like, really boring. Though Pride is totally hot.”
“Pride’s a dude, dude,” says Gluttony.
“No way,” says Sloth.
Gluttony sucks down the last of his root beer, then belches. “And he’s gay.”
“No way,” says Sloth. “Really?”
“How can you not know this?” asks Gluttony. “You’ve known him since the Bronze Age.”
“Yeah, but I thought he was a chick with short hair who liked to wear men’s clothes,” says Sloth. “And he looked really good in a toga.”
“How about you?” I ask Gluttony. “Ever thought about being Ambition or Courage or Valor?”
“With this body?” he says, shoveling down the last of his potato salad. “Are you kidding?”
As the two NYU students walk past us to sit down, the blonde makes a pig noise that’s obviously directed at Gluttony. She and the redhead are still giggling when they reach their table.
Gluttony grabs my Coke, sucks the rest of it down, then belches and blows in the direction of the NYU students. Seconds later, they’ve both stopped giggling and are shoveling as much food as they can fit into their mouths.
“Beautiful, man,” says Sloth. “Just beautiful.”
Although their fates haven’t changed, both women are going to struggle with mild cases of bulimia for the next couple of months.
“So what is all this about, anyway?” asks Gluttony. “You angling for one of our jobs?”
I shake my head. As much as I enjoy their company, Sloth and Gluttony aren’t exactly inspiring.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I’m just looking for something more.”
“I know what you mean,” says Gluttony, eyeing the other half of my egg-salad sandwich. “You gonna finish that?”
I leave Gluttony and Sloth at the deli—Gluttony because he’s still hungry and Sloth because he’s fallen asleep in his chair—then find a secluded alley to go invisible in before I head toward Union Square, my radar picking up men and women and children fated for hardships and failures and addictions.
Although I can’t exactly turn off my Fate Radar, I can dial it down or tune out certain frequencies, so I dial everything down other than failures, since hardly any human ever manages to reach his or her full potential. That way, they all blend together into a kind of background static. White noise. Like an electric fan or highway traffic or the ocean surf. It can be very soothing. How else would I get to sleep at night?
Imagine trying to fall asleep or compose a letter or meditate while millions of conversations fly through the air around you. It’s hard enough to concentrate, let alone have an original thought. It took me a couple of millennia just to get used to it. And that was before humans stopped dying at a reasonable age.
Of course, not every human emits a signal I can pick up.
As I head uptown through Gramercy Park, invisible to everyone yet assaulted by their endless array of fates, I occasionally come across blank areas in the fabric of my universe. It’s kind of like swimming through a cold ocean or a lake and encountering a warm spot that makes you realize just how cold the water really is.
These warm places are destiny spots. The energy given off by those on the Path of Destiny.
Most of the time I ignore these pockets of nothing.
These warm embraces of air.
These reminders of my limitations.
But every now and then I stop and follow one around, trying to understand its structure, to figure out what it is about this person that makes him different. That makes him blessed. That makes him destined rather than fated.
Or, in this case, her.
A warm embrace of air in the shape of a woman is leaving an outdoor table at Pete’s Tavern. She looks familiar but at first I can’t place her. With over five and a half billion of my own humans to keep track of, it’s not surprising I can’t remember a woman who’s on the Path of Destiny. You’d think I would have broken down by now and bought a BlackBerry or something, but I’m old-school. Like to keep everything in my head. Still, every now and then I forget someone’s name. Like the time I called Napoleon “Short Stack.” Talk about an awkward moment.
While I’m trying to figure out where I know this woman from, she says something to the waiter as she leaves and I recognize her voice, and I realize she’s the new tenant at my apartment building, who was on the roof when Destiny and I were having noncontact sex.
I follow my new neighbor, drawn to her for a reason I can’t explain. It’s not just my curiosity, my wanting to know what makes her different from the humans on my path. There’s something else, the same something I felt on the roof when I first heard her voice, something I can’t quite put my finger on.
So I trail her for several blocks, studying the way she moves, the way she walks, trying to understand what it is about her that I find so compelling. Then I notice the way everyone else on the sidewalk smiles as she passes by. She’s not smiling at them and she’s not saying anything to elicit a reaction; she’s just talking on her cell phone. And it’s not just men who smile at her because she’s hot and they want to get into her pants—women notice her, too. I wonder if I’m just imagining things, if I’m just projecting the way she makes me feel onto them or if she’s actually the cause of their reactions, when she catches a cab and disappears into the sea of vehicles heading uptown on Park Avenue.
From what I can tell about the new tenant in my building, there’s nothing particularly unique about her that would cause strangers to smile at her on the street. But that’s not indicative of anything. I used to think humans who were on the Path of Destiny would all have a particular look or a similar demeanor or some other defining characteristic that would set them apart from the humans on my path. But I’ve seen immaculately groomed men and saintly women fated for mediocrity, while unkempt women and arrogant men have been destined for a path beyond the scope of what I’m used to dealing with.
Inventors. Artists. Scientists.
Healers. Leaders. Teachers.
Although this last category doesn’t include the likes of high school biology teacher Darren Stafford from Duluth, Minnesota. Who, at this moment, is discovering that his star pupil lied about being on the pill.
Whoops.
Throughout my existence, and more so over the past few thousand years, I’ve studied the humans on the Path of Destiny, looking for a glimpse into what makes them special, wanting to understand what makes them tick.
I’ve listened to the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.
I’ve stolen Albert Einstein’s lunch money.
I’ve watched van Gogh paint and Rodin sculpt.
I’ve flown kites with Benjamin Franklin, sailed with Leif Eriksson, presided over the birth of Julius Caesar, and been present at the crucifixion of Christ. I’ve even followed Moses around to see what made him tick.
By the way, the Burning Bush? That was Destiny. She is, after all, a redhead. And fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, nobody had ever heard of a Brazilian wax.
But after tens of thousands of years and hundreds of millions of humans, I’ve come close to giving up my fruitless search for discovering the makeup of these men and women who are destined for something I cannot give them. Still, I can’t help but think that if only I could grasp the essence of their unique nature, it would help me to understand my relationship with my humans and why most of them are such royal pains in the ass.
CHAPTER 6
On average,
a quarter of a million humans are born into existence every day and I’m responsible for assigning fates to nearly 210,000 of them. Doing the math, that comes to 8,750 assigned fates per hour, 146 per minute, or 2.4 per second.
a quarter of a million humans are born into existence every day and I’m responsible for assigning fates to nearly 210,000 of them. Doing the math, that comes to 8,750 assigned fates per hour, 146 per minute, or 2.4 per second.
Like I want to spend all day sitting at my computer.
But with the Automatic Fate Generator program that Innovation wrote to help me assign fates, I can take care of all 210,000 newborn humans on my laptop while drinking a double latte at Starbucks. I should probably do this at home on a broadband connection, but I can sign into the Kingdom Come network from anywhere on Earth. Jerry claims Kingdom Come is more secure than the NSA. Still, when you’re sending out fates over a wireless connection, you just hope some thirteen-year-old in Tokyo hasn’t found a way to hack into the network.
The Automatic Fate Generator program doesn’t do all of the work for me. I still have to enter in my quotas and set the success parameters not to exceed anything above mediocrity.
Career .250 hitters.
Single-term presidents.
One-hit wonders.
If I forget to set the parameters and end up assigning someone a future that involves an Oscar-filled career or multiple Wimbledon titles, then I’m treading dangerously close to Destiny’s domain. Which is a good way to get myself suspended. Or worse. So I spend a lot of time double-checking.
I also have to factor in past lives.
When humans are born, they’re set either on the Path of Fate or on the Path of Destiny. There’s no opportunity for advancement. No climbing the corporate ladder. No chance of moving into a higher tax bracket. And you can’t fall from the Path of Destiny. You’re in a spectrum, of sorts. An invisible force field of futures.
However, the Law of Reincarnation does provide a loophole, allowing humans to transcend their fates from one lifetime to the next. Make the right choices and live up to your expectations and you get to move on. Keep screwing up and repeating the same mistakes and you get held back a grade. Theoretically, if you manage to make a good enough impression, you could end up graduating to the Path of Destiny in your next lifetime.
Of course, you don’t get to take your memories with you, since past-life memories can be a bit of a burden. It’s hard enough for most humans to remember appointments and anniversaries without having to deal with the knowledge that you used to be someone like Adolf Hitler.
Once I have all of the information entered into the program, I hit the “execute” button and away we go. Still, it takes some time for 210,000 fates to upload into the cosmic mainframe, providing I have a strong Wi-Fi signal. But in less than ten minutes, the fates of all my newborn humans will be uploaded, disseminated, and assigned.
Granted, it’s not an exact science. Not like in the old days, when I could tailor each fate for each individual human. Kind of like making a suit that would fit just right. Or molding a future out of flesh. It was an art form, assigning fates. An acquired skill. A creative outlet for my inner Michelangelo.
Now it’s all just mass production.
Cookie-cutter fates.
An assembly line of futures.
Even with a computer-generated algorithm assigning fates for me, I can’t possibly keep up with the demand in a way that allows me to handcraft everyone’s future and take care of all the fates I have to reassign on a daily basis.
One way or the other, I’m sacrificing quality for quantity.
One way or the other, I’m just creating product.
As the program continues with the upload to the network, I get an e-mail from Jerry. Not a personal message, but a mass mailing sent out to the Immortal staff Yahoo! group list:
Important!!!
Most of the time, when Jerry sends out something with “Important” in the subject line, it’s usually one of those e-mails warning all of us about a new computer virus or asking us to forward his e-mail to help feed starving children in Africa or telling us that Applebee’s is giving away free gift certificates.
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