The Fates Regret

ONE

 

"Oh, dearie. There's no shame in wanting to be thin. I for one despise the sweaty and the fatty. But are you doing it for yourself or for some other person?"

Veronika said, "I do everything for myself."

The corpulent crone cackled, revealing her hair-packed nostrils like swallow nests high in a barn-loft. "Yes, right you are. You have given the proper answer. I have with me, as if I'd known what your request would be, a salve to make a soul thin--thin to the bone. And it can be yours for just one gold piece."

Veronika weighed the one gold piece in her pocket against the scale of the looks she got from the other travel writers in her office when they got phone calls from their loud-speaking stocky broker boyfriends, looks that said You don't have a boyfriend because you're fat, looks that said Fat, fat, fat, and Veronika found the gold under-scaled the looks. "I'll take it," she said.

The crone shoved her warty fingers into one of her many folds of fat and brought forth a vial two inches in length, saying "This must be diluted not once by the hundred, but twice by the hundred. Remember that. It must be applied all over, once a fortnight, for ten fortnights. By the end, you will appear to be nothing but bones."

Veronika handed her cool coin to take the warm vial. "And yet it will all be illusion, correct? My organs and vitals will operate normally, though invisibly?"

"That, my dear, is the theory. Remember: once by the hundred, then again once by the hundred."

"Is that how it 'knows' to stop at bone?"

The crone, hastening business' end, spoke rapidly, "This is Merlin-work, dearie, I am no infernal botanist. So long as your friends are jealous, what's-the-do? Now go, and may the powers tread mercifully upon your heart."

Veronika hastened home, imagining a bath, and an initial application.

 

 

TWO

 

Bobby walking home from school quick thought maybe it's come today! He saw his house looking regular and square as he walked right-arm book-bundled to the door.

He went inside breathlessly. They'd said four to six weeks delivery: he was on week five.

His mother in the kitchen said, surprised almost, "There's a parcel in the mail for you. What is it?"

Bobby dropped his books noisily--no, he'd never sent off a dollar to a comic book before so--he quietly set his books down on the hall table. He said, "I ordered a science book."

"It's on the stairs. Show me it, okay? After you open it?"

"Yes, mom."

Bobby took up the package. It had come all the way from Taiwan, how could anyone believe that? He felt he'd travelled to there just by getting a thing from there. A brownish bundle, dirty on the edges, with something inside. This'll make me know more than anyone, he thought.

Up in his room he opened the package and pulled out the four-page manual. His heart was going like mad. Invisibility, from a ring, with instructions. THIS IS NOT A TOY.

Deeper in the package was a smaller wrapped thing in which Bobby found a ring box. He opened the ring box. There was a simple plastic ring in the ring box. The ring looked really small. It weighed nothing.

Invisibility, when I want it. I can see naked girls. Naked girls. Naked girls. Naked Helen first because I can see her and tell Mike I saw her naked and show him the ring and say I saw her naked.

Bobby pinched the plastic ring. He exhaled. He wanted to know every girl. They would shower, and he would see them showering. Because girls go into showers, naked, and run their hands over their bodies.

He put on the ring.

 

 

THREE

 

Veronika diluted by the hundred then again by the hundred precisely one millilitre of the potion and wound up with an astonishing ten litres of the stuff. She poured some into her hand and rubbed it all over herself.

The phone rang. Office Manager Derek told her she had an assignment. She had to check out a new resort in Tahiti, pronto. The tickets were ready and everything. The report was expected to be completed in three days.

Veronika found herself one evening later at a resort in Tahiti called the Tiki-Tiki. Her suite was luxurious and nicely accommodated, quite Polynesian but with Western touches. She went out to the pool in her swimsuit and she noticed that all the Polynesian guys were checking her out. Hmm, she thought.

On the second night, as she was writing up her incognito report, the manager checked up. The manager let slip, "The men are liking you."

Veronika said, "So I wasn't imagining it. What's up?"

"They like how you look. They want to get close to you, to smell you. You have good shape."

Veronika next day talked to one of the men. "Yes," he said, "You are very desirable to us. Beautiful you are. If you stay, you will have everything you really want. I would like to be your boyfriend."

She tried to justify leaving, going back to North America, but she came up short in the justifications department. Tahiti looked to her like a very nice place to be. She called up her employer and explained almost it all. And so she stayed there in Tahiti for the rest of her life, and the potion diluted and undiluted was tossed in the trash when her old apartment was indifferently liquidated.

 

 

FOUR

 

"A one way ticket."

"Yes, one way."

"When will you be coming back?"

"I'm not sure at all."

There was no way for Paul to explain to the travel agent. Why Tahiti? Who one way? He wasn't too clear about it either because he'd never put it into words. Something like: I want to get away from the people I know, and I want to get away from newspapers, magazines, the Internet. They all tell me--everything tells me--everything I see, seeing someone accomplish something, I get jealous of it, and I'm getting more jealous all the time. I have to be on my own, maybe forever, so I can be free of this jealousy I feel every single day. This is my magic ticket to sanity: something like.

"You're the customer."

"Yes, that's what I am."

The travel agent went to her printer to retrieve the booking. She handed it over to him. "There. That's all you need. Get to the airport and show it there. Then you're off."

"Great, thanks."

"Have a nice day."

"Thanks, maybe I will."

Paul left the building and got into his car. He got into traffic and drove to the airport. Along the way he left a voice message for Angela. I'm leaving now and I don't know when I'll be back, if ever. You can sell all my stuff or as much as you want to. I can't live like this any more. I wish you all the best, really I do. It's not about you. You remind me of too much. This is my last chance. Goodbye.

He parked the car not in the long-term lot. The receipt he threw away as quickly as possible.

 

 

FIVE

 

Bobby walking home from school quick thought maybe it's come today! with the odd feeling he'd said exactly the same thing the day before. He precociously thought this is that deja vu stuff. He house looked regular and square; he thought he'd thoughen that yesterday too.

His mother said, "There's a parcel in the mail for you. What is it?"

"I already.... It's a science book."

"It's on the stairs, show it to me okay, after you open it."

Bobby couldn't shake the feeling. It stuck with him all the way upstairs. He opened the package that looked exactly like what he thought it would look like, right down to the shape of his name on the outside. Inside he found the manual, yes, four pages long, THIS IS NOT A TOY, of course. Then there was the ring box, and the ring inside that weighed nothing.

Somehow his whole desire for it was vaguer now. He felt that through all the times wanting to see Helen naked he'd become satisfied or something.

But anyway he took it in hand and slipped it on his finger.

Bobby walking home from school quick thought maybe it's here today! and stopped because that thought was a repeat thought, from yesterday or something, he was sure of it.

"There's a parcel in the mail for you. What is it?"

Bobby said, "It's a book. I'll show it to you later."

"Show it to me after you ... yes."

He took the uncannily familiar weight up to his room. How did he know it would weigh, like, nothing? here it lay in the palm of his hand. It was for naked girls. He put on the ring.

 

 

SIX

 

In 19--, Debrah Jake, aged seventeen, received a Christmastide visit from one of her classroom peers, Henry L--. He was pretty much mostly a nice guy. Debrah was looking for some kind of a sign: Yes, No? In any case, Debrah's slightly older sister Peg was also home; their parents were not. They all three together played a game, The Game of Life, in the living-room; then Debrah decided it would be nice to make an enticing batch of Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies. Twenty minutes later she returned to the living room to find Peg and Henry not quite completely naked. Debrah retreated quickly, dumped the cookies in the garbage, and went for a long sad walk.

She had lost, in the main because of Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies. Never again would she bake, or eat, a chocolate chip cookie. But that's not all she did....

In 20--, Dr. Debrah Jake, monomaniacal physical engineer emeritus, aged 61, perfected her machine. She had realized much earlier that actual honest-to-goodness time travel was impossible, mainly due to the grandfather paradox. Believe it or not, this solved her first problem: she no longer had to peddle in the possible. What's impossible will always be impossible, so why not explore impossible machines? She first built a machine that would destroy itself while it simultaneously built itself. She built a flashlight that projected darkness in a clean beam. Finally she built her impossible time machine. Why had no-one ever thought to explore the construction of impossible things? She didn't know and she knew simultaneously. People in general are afraid of experimentation. They would prefer the tried-and-true of, say, James Joyce, compared to the primitive oddness of, say, John Skaife. The machine constructed, she got into it and connected the wires that would throw her back in time.

 

 

SEVEN

 

Paul entered the airport resolutely, looking neither left nor right, heading straight for Transpacific Airways, certain of his choice, picturing Tahiti as it is on postcards.

He stood in line behind a woman with blonde hair. He noticed she was about the height of his wife. As she picked up her bag Paul caught a glimpse of most of her profile. She looked so much like his wife he said, "Angela?"

 The woman turned and said vaguely, "Hello."

"What are you doing here?"

"What? I'm going on a holiday."

Paul noticed she had somehow lost years. This was some kind of a younger version of Angela, by some twenty years. He said, "I'm sorry; you look so much like me wife it's uncanny."

"Her name is Angela too?"

"Yes, Angela. Angela. Since I know your name."

She was looking into his eyes uncannily. and said, "The coincidence has to end somewhere. My last name is Topperton."

Paul almost fell over. "That's my wife's last name!"

"I don't believe you."

"It is! I can't prove it to you here, but it's true."

"Well, well, well."

She was called up to the counter then. Paul checked his bags and got on the plane. She was on the plane. She got off the plane in Tahiti. He saw her in the hotel lobby in Papeetē. He went up to his room and started unpacking. While he was unpacking, he heard a key in the door. The door opened, and it was this second Angela Topperton.

She said, "Oh, sorry, I guess I'm in the wrong room. No I'm not."

"Neither am I," said Paul. He held up his key. "221."

She held hers up. "221."

Together they went down to the lobby to sort things out. Paul noticed something. He noticed how she smelled like his wife. Is this a change in my life? he wondered.

 

 

 

EIGHT

 

Cyrene marked the ticket as patiently as ever, crossing thick black vertical pencil lines over 11, 18, 23, 32, 33, and 41. She took the ticket up to her familiar merchant and handed it over. He looked at it, saying, "You know that since you use the same numbers all the time you could buy a whole year's worth of tickets at once and save yourself the trouble of coming in here every Tuesday?" which was in fact the way this particular merchant often spoke.

Cyrene said, "But what if I win the first week? Then I'd have fifty-one useless tickets I didn't give a shit about." And that was in fact the way Cyrene often spoke.

I'm not making this up.

Cyrene went back to the apartment she affectionately called, "The Hovel," and turned on her TV. Everyone on TV, so it seemed, had bags and bags of money. People won brand new cars every half hour. She thought about calling her mother--and decided against it. The people on TV looked so pretty, too. She fell asleep and dreamed about being rich, being famous, being pretty.

Three days later, at eleven o'clock pm, she watched the lottery show just like she did every other Friday night. First they had some singers and dancers, all unknown, building up the drama of the draw, and plenty of announcers telling everyone to stay tuned because the draw was going to be taking place right after commercial messages. Finally it was eleven-twenty, and Cyrene was wide awake. The numbers started popping out of the ball popper. First there was a 23, then an 11. Cyrene's eyes tennis-balled from the TV to her ticket and back. "Next number: 33." That was a free ticket right there. "Next number: 18.

"Next number: 41.

"Next number: 32."

 

 

NINE

 

Debra sat in her machine waiting for something to happen--but nothing happened. She had constructed it to the most illogical manner, and yet it refused to work. Something in her plans wasn't right. Something logical had crept in and she expected to be working for some time to remove it. She got out of her machine, walked around it three times believing the logic should be easy to spot, but she could see nothing outstandingly reasonable to it. She sighed, went to her drawings, and studied them for two hours without finding anything reasonable there either. Maybe on the morrow she could do more examinations; but it was late and she figured maybe the basic illogic of dreams would help her out.

She slept, and she dreamed, naturally enough, about being seventeen again. This time she was being shown Henry's model of the human body in his bedroom. It was a standard plastic model popular at the time. The exterior of the body was made of clear plastic so one could see the innards. Henry opened it up and dumped all the plastic muscles and plastic organs out. He said, "You have to get them in, Debrah." One by one, slowly (it seemed a very long dream), Debrah got all the pieces back in without a single piece left over. She snapped the clear exterior back onto the body and stood him up. He looked funnily at her and said, "Mirror, mirror."

Debrah awoke, wondering what it had to do with time travel. "Mirror, mirror." She got out of bed, switched on the light, and opened her closet door wherein on the door was a full-length mirror. With the light behind her she saw what she looked like: she looked like the female version of the plastic model. Her muscles were plain to see, like she'd been stripped of all her skin. Naturally she screamed.

 

 

TEN

 

"O, dearie. 'Tis no shame where ye be, wantin' a woman an' all. I myself despise the single man, widderer tho' he may be. But ye must know that many of me spells gang oft aree. Are ye willin' te risk it?"

The herbalist was glaring at Herbert over her pestle and mortar like a stuck record waiting for a milligram's nudge. Herbert said, "Yes. I'm certain of it. I'll take the risk."

The herbalist asked him, "Are ye bein' desirin' a woman like your dead wife, or somethin' completely different?"

Herbert had been so much thinking about what to say, so much so that he nearly recited, "I loved her more than anything. I want a woman so exactly like her that I, nor anyone else, cannot tell the difference."

"Hmm! Hmm! Hmm!" Was she laughing condescendingly, or were oysters caught in her throat? "If ye dare, I can give yer wife to ye once agin."

Herbert didn't expect that. "But she's dead and buried. How could you--"

"I can make her as she once was. Like she nivver died."

Herbert felt like he had to answer immediately. "Of course I would. Is that possible? You're just a store-front herbalist. I found you on Craigslist. Okay, okay. This is ridiculous. Of course if you can bring her back, then bring her back. In the meantime, can I have a potion?"

The herbalist nodded slowly, mentally ill. She reached into her bosom and pulled forth a hot vial and handed it disgustingly to Herbert. "If ye still be wantin' arter three days, glisten yer pecker wit' this."

Herbert fled, vial in hand. That night he sat down, vial nearby, to think about the possibility of getting his wife back again, and to continue working on his manuscript Thoughts on Erotic Vision.

Someone knocked at the door....

 

 

ELEVEN

 

Fifteen minutes to nine on Saturday morning, Cyrene was waiting for her familiar merchant's shop to open. She hopped from foot to foot in anticipation. So much money! But how exactly to claim it? She trusted her merchant; he would never steer her wrong.

She saw him coming down the street. She called, "I won the lottery!"

The merchant quickly looked around. He looked up at the apartments above the shops; he looked into the shops themselves. He fumbled for his keys.

Cyrene said, "It's me! I finally won! I'm rich!"

She stepped out of his way as he was rattling his head. "Too much lager," he said. He went into his shop and locked the door behind him. Cyrene waited politely, tapping her foot. What was wrong with him?

After the lights were on, after the back room was looked to, he unlocked the door again. Cyrene pushed at it and the merchant jumped out of the way; he looked rapidly all over. Cyrene said,  again, "I won the lottery!"

The merchant ran away. Cyrene looked at her winning ticket--but it wasn't in her hand any more. Had she left it at home? Maybe in the excitement....

Cyrene went down the shop to the back. The merchant was in a corner in the back, trembling. Cyrene said, "What's the matter with you?"

The merchant cried, "Get away from me, whatever you are! Show yourself! This is a trick or it's the devil's work!"

Cyrene said, "I'm right here."

"No you're not! What are you? Why are you bothering me, spirit?"

"Why are you treating me like this?"

"What kind of a trick is this? Show yourself!"

Cyrene looked at carefully. What was wrong with him?

 

 

TWELVE

 

Herbert got up from his chair. Was this like in The Monkey's Paw? Would he find his wife's corpse at the door? Slowly he crept to the door. He put his hand on the knob. He turned it, and opened the door.

A man was standing there, smiling broadly, like Burl Ives in one of the rare moments when he wasn't trying to destroy modernity. He said, "Herbert Jones?"

Herbert said, "Yes, that's me."

The Ives-like man shoved out his hand. "I represent the Lottery Corporation! And I am here to tell you you've won 528,547,283 dollars!"

"I don't recall entering any lottery."

"An unknown party bought you a ticket!"

"What unknown party?"

"We don't know! Here!" The man handed Herbert a cheque. "Don't spend it all in one place!" and then he was gone.

Herbert closed the door and checked out the cheque. It certainly looked legitimate. 528,547,283 dollars and zero cents.

Next day he cashed the cheque.

First he hired historians and cyberneticists. They provided a current account of his wife's times and a skeletal mainframe of the right build and power.

Second he hired computer scientists and biologists. They managed to encode a good-enough set of memories and create an artificial living flesh that could deceive anyone.

Third he hired ethicists and electricians. They programmed Asimov's laws into the robot's brain and built an AC/DC system that would keep itself powered forever provided it could find an AC outlet.

All the work completed with no money left, Herbert turned on his robot wife. It recognized him. It was happy to be with him. It loved him. Everything had worked out more or less how he had wanted it to work out.

After, as they smoked cigarettes, Herbert thought about how wonderful fate can make things work out in the end, because that's what had happened: everything had worked out in the end.