Confessions of a Forward Thinker

From: Issue 4

— 14 —

I will die on a rainy Thursday afternoon, at the terminal end of Cape Cod, alone. Purported cause of death: ischemic stroke, though the capsule crushed between my molars will tell a longer story. Long Point is an hour’s drive from the nearest hospital. Too far, by design. The Feds will be en route from Hyannis, speeding toward the cape’s clenched fist. I won’t remember why they’re hunting me, only that I can’t let them take me alive.

At this, I will succeed.

The autumn mist will whorl eddies across a disturbed surf. I’ll stare at my palms, deep spider webbing lines that would give a fortune teller fits. Unladylike calluses. Mottled black and red fingertips: dried ink, wet blood. A wry laugh will escape my lips.

I’ll be the last of the Forward Thinkers, thank fucking god. For the deaths that came before me, I have you to blame. But these pages are no reproach—they’re breadcrumbs. They’re all that’s left for me to follow.

I have to find out what went wrong.

But how? As the sand bleeds through my fingers, I’ll hardly know what landed me in this mess. I’ll grasp at the past, find only vague images, omens played in reverse. The fierce heat of a burning house. The cold tile of the Bergenstein Laboratories against my bare feet, the night of the last trial. The East Greenwich cemetery, meager remains of our tribe staggering about, waiting for the present to catch up with this godforsaken future. Your lifeless body on the kitchen floor.

You know. The good parts.

And me: the perpetual passenger, lashed to this future by three doses of chronox and a boatload of knowing. It wasn’t always like this—the helplessness, the certainty. How did this happen?

My only hope is to work backward. Follow the breadcrumbs. Find out when everything went so terribly wrong.

As I suck down my last breath of salt air, I’ll spot him in the surf: a tattoo-embossed man clutching bloody rebar. Eyes of molten lead. I’ll scour my pockets, come up empty. I won’t even remember what I lost. When I look back, he’ll be gone. I’ll know that his presence is—has always been—significant. I’ll also know that it’s too late to matter.

Then, without any of the deathbed recompense promised by dramatic fiction, I will die.

But that, my dear Dominic, is only the beginning.

— 13 —

One week prior. I’ll get the call from Dizzy before dawn. A slash of light beneath the door will pierce the darkness, and I’ll think I’m back in the friendly confines of the chophouse.

The stench of day-old pad thai will prove me wrong.

The chophouse will already be compromised. The last of my cash will cover seven days at this Plymouth motor inn with its by-the-hour sex reverberating through the walls. There are no friendly confines left: just ask Dizzy.

It won’t really be her on my prepaid cell—only a recording. The tremble in her voice will still force me to my knees when she says: By the time you’re hearing this, I’m dead. I’ll listen to the dead line for a solid minute, until I hear crows cawing past the crumbling tombstones of East Greenwich. I’ll focus on her big fuck-off smile, curse myself when I can’t remember the angle of her lips. It won’t occur to me at the time, but I suppose she was my best friend.

I’ll check the news on my laptop.

Single white female, strangled by her IV drip in the neurology wing of Old Memorial. Suicide. Doubtless the Feds will have already claimed her body.

God knows what she suffered through to steal a moment alone. God knows how many others they’ve been dosing with chronox—how many brain-slaved diviners are already under the employ of Doc Ross and the US Government. God knows if there’s an afterlife for people like us, or where it sits on the timeline. So consumed by the future, we’ve no control over the actions that’ll get us there.

Focus. Work backward, for Dizzy’s sake. Find out what went wrong.

After cleaning my nosebleed I’ll step outside for some air, watch the meth slingers scatter. Something cold and hard—a necklace?—will fall from my pocket. I’ll be too pissed-off to care.

You’ll be dead a day and a night already, and I won’t regret a thing. You did this.

You murdered us all.

— 12 —

You’ll come to me at the chophouse under a grease-stain of clouds. You’ll knock, which is as good as broadcasting your ill intentions over the public airwaves.

It will be the last time I see you.

“It’s open,” I’ll say.

The first thing I’ll notice is the slouch of your shoulders. A full three inches lower than the night I took you in the utility closet at the labs. Fatigue, perhaps.

Or guilt.

“You should lock the door,” you’ll say.

My eyebrow will elevate. You’ll look away, a plea for me to not say I knew it would be you.

We’ll have coffee. Mine black, yours with a shot of flavor. We’ll stand on opposite ends of the industrial kitchen that once saw blood run in rivulets. We’ll be terrified of getting too close, catching one another’s scent, shredding each other’s clothes. Terrified of what we’ll find underneath.

“Come back, Chloe,” you’ll say, but your heart won’t be in it this time. “Let me help you.”

“Try believing me.” I’ll slurp down coffee like there’s an embargo. “The chronox worked.”

You’ll sigh, because we’ll have been through all this already and there’ll be nothing left to say except: “Got anything stronger?”

I’ll offer a smile as bitter as the joe. “Already took the liberty.”

“Oh.”

You’ll excuse yourself to the bathroom, to make the call. I won’t hear it, but you’ve always been an easy one to read.

Guess that puts the onus on me.

When you return, you’ll be holding a softball in your throwing hand and a metric ton of regret in your tired eyes. I’ll know what you’re up to: this is the part where you prove me wrong. There’s no way I’ll know exactly where that ball will land. I’m a glorified probability engine, and I can’t account for every variable.

I’ll be in no mood to play along, but a promise is a promise. I’ll step in front of the meat locker. You’ll heft your seven ounces of unfinished business, aim at the corner opposite me—where Dizzy’s family used to stuff pig intestines before serving them up to a roomful of highbrows for thirty bucks a plate.

Wind up.

Throw.

Part of me wishes you could’ve lived long enough to know I’m right. But by the time the ball apexes you’ll be cheek-to-tile, convulsing. The seizure will hit as you release the ball, with just enough twitch to reroute its path.

Straight into my hands. What do you know?

That shot of flavor is illegal in all fifty states, but hey—you asked for something stronger.

I’ll stand above you with dry eyes and say, “Proved it.”

I know what you’re thinking. If I’m searching for what went wrong, look no further than murder in the chophouse. But you’re wrong again. You’re just another domino on its way down.

You were never going to tell me the truth. How this started. Why I went through with it.

I’m going to have to find out for myself. Even if it means clawing all the way back to the beginning.

The Feds will already be creeping across the lawn with guns drawn, thanks to you. Good thing I took Dizzy’s advice and never told you about the root cellar with the coastal access tunnel.

Enough pigs have died in this chophouse for one day.

— 11 —

The Feds will nab twelve Forward Thinkers in the two weeks prior. White vans and plain clothes and tasers in the back, because for god’s sake they’ve gotta keep this thing under wraps. The public doesn’t need to know about manhunts for chemically-induced prophets. Feds should be spending those tax dollars on national security, and by the way, where did those chemicals come from anyhow?

Of course the victims will see it coming, which means twelve suicides for the Feds to clean up.

Jermaine will stain my shoulder with tears in the cemetery’s muggy heat. Dizzy will hug herself, draped in shadow. Gravestones will jut from the peat like rotting teeth. I’ll imagine one for each Forward Thinker lost, and I’ll run out of stones. Of the original sixteen escapees, only the three of us will remain.

“He wouldn’t let me go with him,” Jermaine will say into my shirt. “‘Destiny,’ he said, but in that creole way, you know. ‘Destiny, baby’.”

His bodybuilder shoulders will heave, pulverizing my heart. Earlier that day, the Feds will have dragged his lover from a taxi in downtown Providence.

“Marc and I were counting down.” He’ll be wearing a threadbare Superman shirt, two sizes too small. “Counting the days we had left together, you know.”

“I know,” I’ll say, too quickly.

One more day, baby. Let’s make it count.

Dizzy’s stare will go right through me. I’ll wish for a smile to warm me up—selfish, I know—but I’ll have already seen her last grin by then. The crows with their judging eyes will fall silent.

I’ll force my gaze away, and that’s when I’ll see him. Dark skin, molten eyes. A labyrinth of tattoos. Holding a spike of bloody rebar, leering.

My hand will retreat into my pocket, find the cold ridges of a bottle cap necklace. My eyes will roll back, and for a fleeting moment I’ll know with absolute certainty that this man has the answers I need. Somehow, he’s responsible for this hardwired future.

But who is he? One of Doc Ross’s engineers?

Think, dammit. Work backward. Do it for Marc.

There.

A fire. A stinging smoke. A heavy cough—

Dizzy’s deadpan will drag me back. “Getting worse for me, too.”

Does she see the same visions? Are they getting worse as time passes—or as it regresses?

The answers will frighten me more than the questions, so I’ll shelve the thoughts and wipe the blood from my nose and stroke poor Jermaine’s bald head. It will be the last time I see him, after all.

The next morning, Jermaine will jump from the northwest terrace of 111 Westminster. Locals call it the Superman Building. The past will already be slipping away from us. I hope he still remembers Marc on his way down.

— 10 —

Jermaine will still be alive on the first of September, I’m sure of it, and when he ducks into the chophouse from the rain he’ll spot Marc across the room and say, “Twelve days.” Marc’s lips will twitch. “Twelve days, baby.” There’ll be a hunger in their eyes that I’ll envy as they retreat upstairs. Your sweat and your doubt will be fresh in my mind.

An hour later we’ll convene in the kitchen, a collective for the last time.

“We must not falter,” Dizzy will say with that warm, confident smile, as if the world outside isn’t barreling headlong toward a terrifyingly certain future. We’ll buy it wholesale—her smile is that good, and we’re desperate for a little hope.

“We must remember those left behind.”

Those too old or too terrified to flee the clinic. The quarantined, the interrogated, the living experiments.

Drinks all around. The bourbon will warm my throat. I’ll think of you—the smoky taste of your tongue, the soft sigh of your orgasm—and I’ll misplace the event along the timeline. Have I already felt your body against mine? How many times? You’re not dead yet, I’ll assure myself, and remain unconvinced.

“We must stay focused,” Dizzy will say with an encouraging smile.

I won’t smile back. “Doc Ross sold our files to the Feds. They’re coming for us.”

Glass will shatter.

“Bloody capitalist.”

“So much for HIPAA.”

“Anyone read the waiver? Anything in there about runaways?”

As if. No way in hell did anyone expect this outcome. Not you, not Doc Ross’s lawyers, not us. Hell, we won’t even remember why we signed up for the drug trial.

A burning building. A familiar rasp. An oppressive heat—

Dizzy will pour another round.

My nails will dig at my palms, but it’s no use. The memory—the truth—will already be gone.

“After New York—” Dizzy’s voice will hitch. Eduardo and Dizzy were both diehard Sox fans from Southie, which made them practically related (not to mention unintelligible after their third shot of Jameson). “It’s no surprise.”

“We’re not terrorists.”

“Haven’t done a thing wrong.”

“Except run off with their drugs, baby.”

“And sink a Manhattan ferry—”

I’ll clear my throat, for Dizzy’s sake. “This isn’t about criminal charges.” I’ll tap my temple. “They want the future.”

Nobody will ask how I know. They’ll have warned me about you a dozen times, but they know you’re good for intel.

Dizzy will pass around the capsules. “They won’t take us alive.”

Nods all around as we stash the drugs in wallets, pockets, bras. It would be gauche for any of us to say I hope it doesn’t come to that. So instead I’ll down my drink and wipe the blood from my nose and say: “Things are starting to come together.”

Through the slats in the blinds, a tattooed man will watch. Biding his time. His haunting face, painted in soot—distorted by time, heat, trauma.

Is he you?

— 9 —

The night before. Your apartment in Providence: the last place I should be.

Your collar will be unbuttoned, your tie askew. Shadows will underscore your concern. Your fear.

My own eyes will be damp—maybe because I know what you’re going to say. Maybe because I know how it’ll end for you.

You’ll clear your throat. “I don’t believe you.”

“I know.” I’ll be wearing red. Someone once told me it’s a power color. “You never will.”

You’ll wince. “I’m not saying the chronox didn’t do something.”

“Made us good guessers?”

“Precisely!” I’ll pretend like it isn’t a turn-on when you use words like precisely. “It’s steroids for your midbrain dopamine system, lets you anticipate things with impressive accuracy. But a beefed up MDS doesn’t give you superpowers.”

I’ll wait. This is the part of the conversation where nothing I say will make a damn bit of difference. Unlike, you know, all the other parts.

“Did you know, many amnesiacs have trouble imagining future events?”

I’ll raise an obliging eyebrow.

“The MDS taps into past experiences to generate realistic future scenarios.” You’ll lean against the counter, sleeves rolled, a conduit of misdirected intensity. “Yours just does it better now. It must be pumping your subconscious with hundreds of scenarios every second.”

“We call it déjà vu.”

“I wasn’t there yet. But yes! With that many scenarios running through your brain, a handful are bound to seem accurate. So when things happen, you think you saw it coming. For ordinary people—” You’ll wince at your choice of words and in the process completely miss the irony to come. “We call it déjà vu.”

“All over again.” I’ll roll my eyes. “Except we’ve proved it.”

“In vague simulations.”

“Parlor tricks?”

“I didn’t say that.” You’ll motion toward the window, the flickering cityscape. “If you can see the future, why is all this shit going wrong? Can’t you do something about it?”

My eyes will mist over, for the lives yet to be lost. “I’m trying.”

But seeing is the easy part.

“It’s…” My words will feel feckless. “It’s like it already happened.”

“The future isn’t predetermined.”

“Mine is.” I’ll think about your body twitching on the chophouse floor. So is yours.

“Say you’re right. Have you tried…not looking?”

My gaze will slide to the couch, where we’ll lie tangled in twenty minutes. “Anyone can resist flipping to the end of a book to find out whether she survives—unless that she is you.”

You’ll hesitate, fighting the urge to flip to the end yourself. As if I’d ever fess up.

“Besides,” I’ll say. “Nowadays looking forward comes more natural than looking back.”

That’ll hit you hard. I could press—why the hell did I agree to this?—but it would be pointless. For you, the past is off limits.

“Come back.” The lines around your eyes will deepen. “It’s time to end this.”

“Too late.”

“Fifteen people are dead!”

“The LSD was a bad idea.”

“They think you’re dangerous. They’re going to come for you. With guns.”

If you only knew what part you’ll play in that.

But that isn’t you, yet, and you’ll prove it by running your fingers through your matted hair and say, “I hope there’s room for me in this future of yours.”

I’ll taste my tears, mutter a string of profanity, grab your tie, drag you close.

You’ll taste like a campfire, and you’ll only resist for a second.

I’ll ruin the buttons on your shirt. You’ll shove the mail off the counter. The granite will chill my bare back. I’ll pin your buttocks with my legs, pull you inside.

We’ll fuck, urgently, for the last time.

Afterward we’ll lay entwined on the couch. You’ll look at me with a perfect deadpan and say, “I knew you were going to do that.”

We’ll laugh, and it’ll feel good. It’s how the night should end.

But you can’t leave it alone.

“You’re a ball in flight, anticipating where you’ll land. But what happens when an errant breeze drags you off course?”

I’ll get up, get dressed. “I’ll feel it coming.”

“You can’t account for everything. You’re going to be wrong sometimes.”

“Hasn’t happened yet.” I’ll hustle to the door, like I stand a chance at escaping your next words.

“Prove it.”

Tears will sting my eyes. I won’t turn to see if you’re holding a softball.

“Later,” I’ll say.

— 8 —

Eduardo will kill himself on a Sunday, cirrus stretched like gauze over a wounded twilight sky.

Leg chained to the gas pedal, vintage ‘Yankees Suck’ decal peeling from his jeep’s bumper, he’ll target a clear patch of water off Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan. Word has it, death by drowning is euphoric.

Just one problem. Eduardo won’t have recovered from our little experiment the night before. The LSD won’t have fully sweated from his system. He’ll swerve at the last second, hop the curb cockeyed, land on a disembarking water taxi.

Fourteen passengers will die.

Why will poor Eduardo swerve? We’ll call it probabilistic contortion, because visions of alternate futures doesn’t ring well. He’ll know what’s going to happen, but thanks to the acid, peripheral outcomes will impede his judgement. Perhaps he’ll be trying to avoid the lone pedestrian—a twelve-year-old boy, face smeared with chocolate—that won’t walk down the street for another week. Maybe it’ll be the gaggle of selfie-snapping tourists that aren’t due to land in NYC until next year.

Maybe he’ll be blinded by tomorrow’s sunrise.

We’ll watch footage in the chophouse, squeezing each other’s hands. Shocked into sobriety. Dizzy will hug herself, alone. Everyone will know that this is the beginning of the end.

And don’t even start about how we should’ve seen it coming. Tell a smoker those cigarettes will kill them someday, see if it makes a quitter out of them.

We’re all hooked on the future.

All but Eduardo.

— 7 —

Like any addiction that’s worth a damn, future sight has side effects.

Derealization. Depersonalization. Difficulty recalling the past, thanatophobia, bloody noses. But mostly a persistent sense of helplessness in the wake of our unavoidable fates.

Naturally, we’ll seek relief.

Marc will arrive at the chophouse with a grab bag of narcotic delights. Cannabis gummies, pink LSD sheets, mold-brown psilocybin flakes. We’re not after a good time—just a reprieve from the crushing weight of the inevitable.

We’ll lie on our backs in a circle and watch the ramrod future splinter across the ceiling toward a billion discrete Judgement Days. We’ll breathe deeply, giggle, and wish there was time to traverse them all.

We’ll pluck the most bizarre pathways—the neo-Roman orgies at the Fulton Center subway station, the lunar outposts chock-full of free-roaming mice colonies, the bondage rituals of the Church of California—and we’ll ask, with toothy grins, what if that were—?

We’ll spot ourselves leading normal lives. Coffee at the High Line, cocktails at the Met. Marc and Jermaine’s fingers locked under the table, Eduardo cracking jokes about Brooklyn hipsters, Dizzy’s laughter echoing across the mezzanine. Growing old together. Dying happy. Again we’ll ask, in hesitant whispers, what if that were—?

Dizzy will call it Choose Your Own Adventure, which I guess is what normal people call life.

We’ll imagine we’re bicycles on an open field, rather than runaway trains on a fixed track.

We’ll find relief in one another.

Sometime after the gray dawn sends us retreating into shadow, Eduardo will slip out the back.

We’ll all be too loaded to notice.

— 6 —

The first dose of chronox will last one night. We’ll see all the way to the end, but the future will quickly erode, leaving us grasping at memories we’ve yet to experience in the darkness of the Bergenstein dormitories.

The second dose will last a week. By the time it ebbs, we’ll have long since made up our minds. Transcribe all you want while the premonitions are fresh, the need to know is too compelling to resist. It’s what makes us human.

Eduardo will bring the third dose to the cemetery, three days after the jailbreak. Our first dose as escapees, and the last we’ll ever need.

Dizzy will flash a grin. “Can’t believe you walked out with the whole batch.”

Eduardo will jab at her ribs. “Thinking ahead.”

Beyond the trees, the tattooed man will lurk amidst a torrent of flames. His features will be sharper, now: sweat clinging to a defined brow, blood-crusted knuckles, bitter sneer.

No, he isn’t you at all. But you know what he’s doing. You’re his conspirator.

The tattooed man will mouth a word—suffer—and I’ll stop breathing altogether. I’ll try to ask who are you? and what have you done to my future? but my tongue will be locked in place. I need to know what happened, how to break the chain—

Dizzy’s laughter will lure me back. I’ll blink, and he’ll be gone. Just us, the clinging mist, the cawing crows and their judging eyes. The anticipation for an already fading future.

Blood will tickle my nostrils. The gravestones will trigger visions of rotting teeth and dead friends. I’ll shrug off the sadness for another day.

Around will go the chronox, and tenuous smiles, and the promise to see this through to the end. Together.

“Drink up, me hearties.”

We’ll toast to the future.

There’s so much to look forward to.

— 5 —

We’ll be vagabonds. America’s most wanted clinical trial escapees.

Dizzy will know a place, an old restaurant, in her family for decades until her folks had to close up shop. Been empty for years.

We’ll move in.

The sign above the door will say, ‘The Chophouse’, and it’ll be love at first sight. Scratch that: love at foresight. It’ll already feel like home. Lugging groceries inside, Dizzy will cock a grin and say why the hell not, we stand as much chance as pigs in a chophouse.

You’ll call me on the prepaid number I slipped into your pocket.

“Doc Ross is losing her mind.” I’ll imagine you pacing the length of your kitchen. I’ll think about the cold granite on my bare back. The desperation in your eyes. “The trial’s been suspended, but the investors want answers.”

“Doc Ross is a money-grubbing goon. She gets her way, we’ll be hooked to machines spitting fortunes for a buck a pop.”

“Try a million bucks. The latest lottery—”

“Doesn’t work like that. All we know is what’s gonna happen to us. And I can tell you right now, not a single one of us dies rich.”

You’ll chuckle nervously. Already, you won’t believe me.

My mood will sour. “If you were half as up front about the past as I am about the future—”

“I’ll try and keep the doc at bay. She’s threatening to call in the law.”

“For what? It’s a free country.”

“If she shows the Feds the trial results, they’ll find a reason. Just—” Your voice will hitch. “Lay low for a while. And for god’s sake, if you snuck out with any chronox, don’t take it.”

I’ll mutter something noncommittal and hang up.

The future’s already clouding over. The past is getting sharper. The tattooed man looms like a wraith, needling me with unknowing—and something worse. I’ll feel it in my bones, sitting on the counter of the chophouse with the stench of stale blood in the air: the beginning is near.

And it scares me to death.

— 4 —

We’ll break out of the Bergenstein Laboratories at half past two, under a sickle moon. A summer storm will have just pushed through, and the parking lot will be shedding steam like scared angels.

We’re not cat burglars. Most of us haven’t seen the inside of a gym in years. The armed guards that showed up at every exit twenty-four hours prior can’t legally detain us, but they’re working for Doc Ross so all bets are off.

So we’ll blow a pair of fuses in the dorm wing. The air will turn tepid in minutes without the HVAC. The game room will look like an abandoned theme park, machines brooding in the dark. You’ll have requested night shift, our man on the inside. The coast should be clear.

It won’t be.

Hard soles will clack against linoleum.

There will be sixteen of us, a tall order to hide in a game room. We’ll huddle under pool tables, wedged between Funhouse Pinball and a Neo Geo two-in-one. The pinball clown will creep me the fuck out—his mouth agape, sunken sockets for eyes.

A flashlight will slash the shadows—down the hall, into the game room. We’ll hold our collective breaths as the light freezes on the creepy clown. Sweat will drip into my eye, burn like hell. The light will sweep closer. Around the corner, someone will fumble with a box of fuses. If the lights go on, we’ll be hosed.

The air conditioner will hum to life.

Jermaine will gasp. I’ll jab him in the ribs.

Still dark: the lights must be on the other circuit.

More fumbling from the fuse box. The flashlight will sweep toward the pool table, hesitate, and—

You’re wondering if we’ll get caught. Don’t make me point out how ridiculous that is.

—the beam will shift away. The soles will clack down the hall. We’ll slip out a first-floor window.

Free.

We’ll converge on an old cemetery in East Greenwich. The crows will bob their black beaks and caw, and Dizzy will laugh.

“Straight outta Frankenstein.”

We’ll share a conspiratorial smile, neither our first nor our last. Marc will produce a pilfered fifth of Jameson, and we’ll drink to freedom.

— 3 —

There are things about extended-stay clinical trials you won’t find in the pamphlets. The offensive food. The cell phone restrictions. The sheer boredom of waiting, testing, waiting some more.

The sex.

By day five, a solid twenty percent will be fucking at least one other patient. I’ll opt for the staff.

I’ll corner you in the utility closet between shifts, like a 90’s hospital drama. Never mind that this is a mid-grade clinic in the boonies and I’m here because I can see the fucking future.

You’ll ramble on about propriety, but your eyes will burn with hunger and your hands will hover above my hips, creating static. You’ll shrug off your nurse-patient ethical issues faster than I can shrug off my medical gown. I’ll want to say I love you, but I’ll know it’s too soon—will always be too soon. I’ll want to tell you how I’m going to kill you next month. A bit soon for that, too. And besides, looking ahead makes this feel like entrapment. So instead I’ll bite my lip and touch your chest and—

Something will happen. Your skin will flay, revealing someone else’s beneath. Same broad shoulders and toned pecs, but writhing with tattoos from collar to cuffs. Knots of serpents and tribal angels and ticking clocks. Behind you, flames will grow.

I know those tattoos. I know that skin: the ghost of a past life. My life. And I fear it more than anything else.

This man is the reason I’m here. But he’s not responsible.

I am.

Then your hands will be on my bare hips, sliding south, and the tattoos will be gone.

I’ll push the whole thing from my mind, a familiar process. Then I’ll kiss you hard, press your body against mine, seal the twisted pact of our future.

— 2 —

From the moment we stumble into the common room the morning after the first dose, we’ll know this is the beginning of something big. Our eyes will be absolutely alight. We’ll chatter incessantly until Doc Ross arrives—walking contradiction with her over-starched lab coat and unkempt hair. Her warm smile and frigid eyes.

She’ll ask us how we feel.

When she hears what we have to say, to her credit, she’ll believe us.

Then, the tests. Segregation from the other patients. Twenty-four-hour monitoring. Extra security. Blood draws. EKGs. Surveys. Brain games.

After the second dose, Doc Ross will cut the Wi-Fi. The investors will be on the phone day and night. Two days in, Kenneth will die of a stroke. Health conditions unrelated to the trial, they’ll say. His body will be removed from the premises.

The trial will proceed.

You’ll call us Forward Thinkers, which sounds like something out of Forbes. It’ll stick. Time will whorl like an unquenchable fire toward the future, and we’ll all tag along for the ride. None of us will quite remember why we signed up for the trial in the first place, what they were trying to cure. All we’ll know is, it’s bloody working.

On the third afternoon, over a feisty game of pool that I’ll have just informed you precisely how I’m going to win (parlor tricks, I know), you’ll shoot me a guilty look.

Clear your throat. “You don’t remember.”

“Remember what?”

The guilt will deepen. “Never mind.”

— 1 —

There was a fire.

It was everywhere—writhing across the floor, crackling and consuming. The house would not outlast the hour.

There was a woman. She wore a wet bandana over her face as she plunged inside. The ceiling rained sparks. Upstairs, someone coughed.

She followed the sound.

The banister bowed inward, handrail burnt, twisted rebar exposed. A man sat clutching his leg, metal jutting from an open wound. Blood ran thick. He had no strength to lift his leg free. Across his shirtless torso, tattoos writhed against the fire.

She couldn’t lift him. He pleaded with his eyes, toward the closed door. Through the door’s window, a child lay sprawled beneath a blanket of smoke. Her eyes were closed, but her chest heaved.

Still alive.

The woman hesitated. Smoke curled under the door, into the room. A fire lay in wait, hungering for air. The man, trapped directly in its path.

The man’s lips formed silent words. Tears streaked through soot.

The woman tore off her bandana, wrapped it around the doorknob, stood to the side. Pulled.

The flames consumed the man.

The woman watched, cowering, until the fire subsided enough to crawl into the bedroom.

Through the sting of smoke, the girl’s bottle cap necklace did not rise or fall. She was long dead. Her heaving chest, a trick of the heat.

Already in the woman’s memory, as she fled the crumbling house with the child’s body in tow, she could not decipher the man’s silent words.

Save her.

Suffer.

— # —

Present day. The moment I’ve been fearing, ever since my death.

I’m up before dawn.

These twenty pages of handwritten prophecy sit before me, from Cape Cod to cue ball. My confession to you for sins we’ve both yet to commit.

The chronox is wearing off. The future has already begun to fade, making room for the past. For a tenuous moment, I can see time stretching out before and behind me—a single taut line, fully exposed.

I remember things.

In my pocket, a bottle cap necklace. Chintzy souvenir from Coney Island.

Tears spatter my confession.

I remember the fire. The husband I killed. The daughter I couldn’t save.

The last decision I ever trusted myself to make. Even the slightest movement carries consequences. Who would die next as a result of my actions? The only remedy was to do nothing.

Ten months later, dust and collection notices settling in thick around me, my aunt took me to a shrink. The medical term is aboulia: without will. Treatment varied, as did results. Another hopeless decision with potentially catastrophic consequences—just what I needed.

Not so fast, said the shrink. There’s a drug trial in Providence. Something experimental that might help my midbrain dopamine system, whatever the fuck that is. My aunt signed me up.

Here I am. The morning after my first dose. Staring at my palms, stained with ink as thick as blood. Caught between two tragedies—one in the past, one yet to come. Stuck at the exact moment where everything went wrong—where everything always goes wrong. The present.

I’m the first to the common room, but I already hear signs of life from the dorms. Soon they begin to stagger in.

The first is a woman with a name tag that says Abagail ‘Dizzy’ Lewis. Strangled to death by an IV drip. Her lips twitch into a smile so familiar something tears inside of me.

Next comes Eduardo, World Series cap pulled low, drowned in the East River and a deluge of probabilistic contortion. Then Marc, then Jermaine—lovers yet to kiss. Dead by self-administered cyanide and a three-hundred-foot plunge. Then Kenneth and the others. All dead.

The dead sit.

This is the part where we’re supposed to start talking all at once, jabbering like we’re already the closest of friends. This is the part where the present succumbs to the future. Where the past slips away.

But something’s different. Something’s changed. Not the clinic: every tile, every flickering florescent, every creepy clown pinball machine is exactly as it was, is, and will be.

What’s changed is me.

Or rather, us.

I don’t know what ghosts they’re running from. What nightmares they wake from in a sweat. What secrets they keep in their pockets. But when I look at them now, I know things are different. The future changed us.

You stride in with your clipboard under your arm. You scan the room, and your gaze hangs on me for an extra breath. I fold the papers, put them in my pocket, and look away.

Doc Ross enters next. The fateful moment has arrived. Look forward and back all you want—the only thing that really matters is right now.

This is what the chronox gave us. It showed us a future enforced solely by our own concession to inevitability. A chain of events that will unfold inexorably from the moment we admit that the drugs worked. That our future is predetermined. That our past mistakes are lessons for inaction. That our present is irrelevant. That we are all without will.

Unless we don’t.

“Good morning!” Doc Ross smiles warmly. “How’s everyone feeling?”

We all exchange a long, awkward glance. For a moment we’re back in the chophouse, lying in a circle. The future is infinite. Terrifying. Beautiful. It’s Choose Your Own Adventure now, baby, and we know exactly what we have to do. We’ve finally reached the singularly most important moment of our lives.

The present.

© 2021 Derrick Boden

From: Issue 4

About the Author

Derrick Boden’s fiction has appeared in numerous venues including Escape Pod, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Daily Science Fiction. He is a writer, a software developer, an adventurer, and a graduate of the Clarion West class of 2019. He currently calls Boston his home, although he’s lived in fourteen cities spanning four continents. He is owned by two cats and one iron-willed daughter. Find him at derrickboden.com and on Twitter as @derrickboden.