Fateless

There’s no such thing as fate. Trust me on this. If anyone would know, it’d be me. When I was ten, I stopped being ten. Minute to minute, I’m never sure how old I am anymore. I’m pretty sure all would be the correct answer. But that’s a time for another story. What happened and was never to come all started the first day I died. Which was not the last of my days, of course. As I will say, it is the beginning of this story. And time, it doesn’t really work like that.

I was seventeen. I was at some kind of concert. Perhaps a rally? It was hazy. I wasn’t in a proper state of mind. The date, however, was evident from the decor. Christmastime. A man with a gun shot me in the chest. The pain lingered, grew, for the several minutes it took me to drown in my own blood. Or bleed out. I’m no doctor, it was one or the other. And I felt every agonizing moment as I died.

I was seventeen. It’s nearing Christmastime. My friends are planning some kind of big trip. I got sick, instead. Mono, from sharing a water bottle with a whole lot of people at a football game. I spent the Christmas season in the hospital, in misery. But I made it through. I survived.

I was sixty three. I climbed out of a pile of rubble with the help of a few other survivors. I looked out over the city. The world was frozen over. For all I knew, we were the only ones left alive.

I was eleven. I was sweating in bed. I had a nightmare. I got up to get myself a drink of water. The glass was too hot. It must have been just out of the dishwasher. I dropped it. The glass shattered. My foot was cut horribly. I could tell, I wasn’t going to be able to keep it. Not for long.

I was eleven. I woke up from a nightmare. I was sweating heavily. Despite being thirsty, I decided I needed a shower first. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. After taking a shower, I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. The glass was still slightly warm from being washed earlier, but some ice fixed that problem. I enjoyed a nice cold glass of water and returned to bed for the night.

I was sixty three. Alone in a basement, I hunkered down. The people who once lived here were preppers. I’d be able to live out a reasonable rest of my life here. Better than risking going outside. The wasteland wouldn’t be inhabitable while I was still alive.

I was twenty four. I was working a boring job. Repetitive. My girlfriend of three years broke up with me. My roommate left to live on their own. I was about to become homeless. Staring at my computer, I began to contemplate what one should never have to think about. It started making sense.

I was twenty four. I sat at a desk. My boyfriend of two years broke up with me. My roommate decided to move out to live in a better part of the city. I was about to become homeless. Staring at my computer, I began to have thoughts. Thoughts that one should never have.

I was twenty four. I sat at a desk, doing a boring job. My girlfriend of one year just broke up with me. I decided I was going to move out, live in a cheaper part of the city. I was worried about my roommate, but I figured, of anyone, she was going to be okay. I hoped, at least.

I was sixty three. Sitting around a table in the bunker, I talked with a young woman, an ancient man, a doctor, the president, and a middle aged woman. About how we might fix the world outside. A world that was physically shattered by the war.

I was fifty one. My job laid me off. Didn’t need my aging butt anymore. My wife and I are separating. I was distant and cold. She found her comfort, her connection, elsewhere. The worst part was, I didn’t care. Not that much in any case. It didn’t matter anymore.

I was fifty one. I just got another promotion at work. More work, more responsibilities. In theory more pay, too. Though, not enough to matter. My husband saw what the job was doing to me. Driving me to. He wasn’t going to watch me kill myself over this. So he left. Separated, in theory, though I suspected the papers would be coming in time. I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t blame anyone else. So I ended up blaming myself.

I was fifty one. I’d been promoted several times over. I just got another. My life was my work. This job. Once a boring desk job, still a boring desk job. But now, after all the years and effort, an incredibly well paying boring desk job. I thought that would matter. But, going back to my massive house with no one around wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t sustainable. As days went by, I spent more and more time at the office. I was fairly certain I would end up dying at my desk.

I was fifty five. My prediction came true. I was in the office when it was the site of a fight. Someone came crashing through the window. And then everything in the room violently exploded. Me included.

I was thirty one. I was given a choice between my love and my success. I knew I could see a future with both. I loved him. I loved my work. If I could have both, I would have tried, but I knew that I couldn’t. I chose my job, and went into business with an old friend from business school. We were going to make billions.

I was forty seven. The business I built with my old friend thrived. We made hundreds of millions in the public option sales. Then even more in the buyout. With our newfound riches, we decided to pool our resources to start something new. Something great. He took all that money and bought an island for himself. I was left on the street. It would have been enough to get by, at least, except the feds arrested me. It seemed my partner had done some illegal dealings during both the option and the buyout. And since he was no longer extraditable, I was stuck paying for his sentence.

I was thirty one. I decided against going into a new start-up. He might have been an old friend, but the rumors about him from business school stuck in my head. About the cheating, the scandals that were swept under the rug. But I also couldn’t go forwards with my relationship. I moved cities, lost in life, to myself. I had just moved to a new city when the wars started. A man who could fire raw energy from her fingers started blowing up a street. Another who could cause earthquakes brought a building down on her head. Unfortunately, I was in that building. I was crushed under twelve separate floors worth of debris.

I was six. My toy was stolen by a bully. I decided to do something about it. I went up to the bully and bit him. The other kids were happy. The teacher was not. I was given a suspension. The bully got off scot-free. That would not do.

I was six. A bully stole the toy I was playing with. I decided to do nothing. I did not get to play with anything for more than a minute, until several years had passed.

I was six. A bully stole my toy while I was playing. I thought there were two choices, until I found a new path. I learned about the bully and her life. I helped her with her school work and listened to her problems. She stopped being a bully and became a friend.

I was eighteen. My school counselor was pushing for me to go to college. Said I had a mind for business. He was probably right, but I felt it might not be the best course of action. That I needed to figure out myself first.

I was twenty four. I was working a job at the Company, as many would call it. I’d been working here for years, quietly working my way up to an executive assistant. One evening, I was in my bosses lab, the public area of it, of course, when things started to get very warm. I only saw him for a moment, but a large man of fire went on a wild, unguided rampage, freezing us all, then burnt the whole place to the ground.

I was twenty four. I was working my job at the Company. After being approached by someone from the outside, I got a job in one of their field stations. I fed information to an outside source. It was a solid life. Then, one day, as I was walking to my apartment, a man jumped me on the side of the road. I was tazed, told I was key to a great future, and put in a tube. The last face I would see for years was a cold, middle-aged face with a thin beard staring at me with an intensity like I’d never seen.

I was fifty. The pod was broken by a monster. I left the building, rescuing a sleeping woman on the way out. The world was burning. Ninety-four percent of the planet had died in the war.

I was twenty four. I was working a job at the Company. Not trusting the mysterious offer, I worked my way up the old fashioned style, day by day. I was a minor assistant at a quiet lab in an odd city on the day the burning man broke free. I had left the building for a long lunch. When I returned, the building was on fire and a man was walking free, but aimless, away. I followed him. He began to speak to himself, surprised at first, then calmer. I continued to follow. He led me to a building, a safehouse, I assume. There he waited for two days. On the third day, a child came to visit him. The child spotted me. And, for a moment, I no longer was.

I was ten. I woke up from my fall in gym class. I had a sudden urge to write. And I knew what I would need to do. Or, at least, what I couldn’t do. Following the paths in my mind, I wrote thousands of books, lies hiding truths of the future, of all the futures. And in all those, one person never appeared. One that always was in my futures. The one I knew I would need to seek out, in the eventual tomorrow when things were to have started in earnest. The Girl and her Gods. It would have been the worst thing for the world. But, it was also the world’s best chance.

I was eleven. I woke up from a nightmare. I had been sweating. I was thirsty. I needed to be stronger. My mind needed to be impenetrable. I resisted the temptation of water, of a shower. I went back to sleep.

I was seventeen. It was Christmas time. My friends and I were heading to a celebration, of some sort. Things are somewhat hazy. But, we got sidetracked chasing a delicious taco truck. On the news that evening, we saw that the place we’d once been heading was attacked.

I was eighteen. My school counselor was pushing me to college. Business was what he saw in my future. I knew better. I went to college. A degree would likely be useful. Communication. That was what I would need to understand, after all. It was my words that had the only chance of saving the world.

I was twenty two. I left my job, home, and boyfriend after reviewing my true stories filled with lies. It was time to head over to the city. She was about to be getting out of jail. And if she was to succeed and do so without too much collateral damage, she would need my aid.