I swore to write more this year to relieve years of pent of pressure (from NOT writing). Here’s a quick short story or novelette that came to me last month:
“Matt1” had started to think of his ability as a kind of mental computer processing super power even though it clearly was not. There was a certain elegance to this formulation as far as “Matt2” was concerned, because his clairvoyance also came with a certain kind of knowledge about the possibilities of the post-event fallout. Like that time he not only knew that the north east bound train on the old Mounthouse railway would hit a school bus; but that only two children would die and one would not be able to walk again, while the rest would survive with a few scrapes.
The knowledge of the event itself always exploded into Matt’s consciousness suddenly and registered itself indelibly in lush detail. And then his higher consciousness, his narrator and analyzer, a part of himself he referred to as “Matt1”, would immediately fight to grapple with the implications. Matt himself (he referred to the part of him that put one foot in front of the other as “Matt2”) was always resigned to the inevitability of what he knew was going to happen. He’d tried too many times before, unsuccessfully, to change the stuff he saw; Matt1 however was just not as fatalistic as he had become, always writhing horribly. After the initial vision, and if he could get Matt1 to quiet down, something remarkable always happened: he could ‘see’ beyond the event and know what would happen as a result. This knowledge would always come as numbers and probabilities – two people would die with 90 percent probability; ten people would live with a 100% chance…and so on.
When Matt had been still grappling with the emergence of his gift, he had been frustrated by his inability to change what he saw. Anonymous tips to relevant authorities never seemed to work. What he saw still happened. And after a near run in with the San Francisco PD from back tracing his tip call (Matt1 now basically made him use a burner cell or remote call boxes, never repeating any pattern), Matt had given up trying to avert the events he saw in his head. What he had quickly realized was that he could change the odds of what happened AFTER. With the balloon incident, Matt had known that the instructor would die when it exploded; but he saw that the couple had a fifty percent chance of surviving their fall. Matt1 had persuaded him to sneak over to the balloon launch pad and switch out the flight plan so the instructor would fly it at 75 feet instead of 150. The couple lived.
#
Matt thought about all this as he shifted nervously in his cramped seat in 1A. He was right up front by the small plane’s exit row, but it was cramped and there wasn’t a lot of space between him and the bulkhead anyway. He had never been part of the events of the disasters he saw before but, “there’s always a first time” he heard Matt1 mutter. He would have loved to have left the plane if he could (Matt1: “yeah, you’re no hero”), but he had got the vision only after the plane had taken off. Still he was unruffled. The plane would malfunction on landing in Reno, but he had quieted Matt1 down enough to know that everyone survived with a ninety percent probability, as long as they got off the plane quickly.
Matt sighed. He’d hurt his shoulder last week playing volleyball – a nasty dive to save a spike headed into the sand in the dead center of the court. He’d nodded glibly when the attendant had asked about helping with the exit row. Everyone who didn’t look obviously crippled did. He’s seen a 70 year old lady man the exit row before for Christ’s sake! He glanced at the seats around him and noticed a strong looking guy scrunched into the middle of the three seat row on the other side of the aisle, just behind him. He was wearing some fancy looking flame retardant ski pants. He looked really uncomfortable. Matt1 immediately said, “yeah, you’ll be even more uncomfortable than he looks given your condition, but you still have to do it.” Matt reached for his call button. When the attendant came, he said “I’ve changed my mind about the exit row. I don’t think I can hack it if something goes wrong. Can I change my seat with the guy over there?” The man lit up like a neon sign, his smile was as wide as Texas. Matt could feel his eyes thanking him even though he also looked slightly puzzled.
Matt got up and walked over to the new seat on his jean-covered, 1 million dollar prosthetic feet made of advanced synthetic materials, courtesy of the department of defense. He got it for losing his real limbs in Iraq, right before his visions started. He heard Matt1 say “imagine having to replace it AGAIN because your trouser caught fire from being first through the exit row. Not to mention tripping up everyone behind you trying to save your expensive feet. For that kind of money, these things really should be fireproof…”
END
