An unchanging future

The Angel smiled.
“Ask a favor, and if it be within my power it shall be yours.”
Garrett barely had to pause. He’d thought about this. You can have any superpower - what do you choose?
“I want to be able to see my future.”
“It is yours.”
With a roar, the sky opened up and the angel crinkled out of existence. A shockwave rippled from where it had stood knocking Garrett off his feet. He sat for a moment blinking at spots of black that began to grow until consciousness slipped into them - as if too long away.

---

He awoke in a hospital bed. Memory slowly returned. He’d helped someone. A strange dream. An angel. He couldn’t remember what it looked like now. He could see the future.

He knew that with certainty. How though? He closed his eyes and focussed. Nothing. Opened them. Nothing. A nurse came in, glad to see he was awake and began to take his pulse. As she chattered he tried to focus past her. He could feel something - like a glass wall just out of reach. he reached for it with his mind. Tapped it.

“Mr Reymond?”
“Yes?”

“As I was saying a doctor will be in soon, but everything looks good.”
“Thank you.”

He reached out for the wall again, touched, it, knocked at it, battered at it. He somehow knew that what he wanted was beyond this. He threw all his mental effort against it and it shattered.

Images cascaded across his consciousness, at first scattered images, like polaroids, fluttering around through the air, then coalescing, each image finding its place in a line. He could pull that line so that the images blurred, flipping together into a moving image, a video of his life.

There he was. Talking in front of a great audience of people, they were all clapping for him as another bestowed some award on him.

He took the image and pulled.

There he was. An old man, with grandchildren around him. He was telling a story, a little girl was laughing, a high delighted laugh.

He took the image and pulled.

He lay on a bed with people he didn’t recognize all around him. He was old, they were crying, but on his face there was a contented smile. He gazed lovingly at an old woman, then looked to his left at an ocean of stars, brighter than you could ever see from earth, and the image ended.

He pulled it back - faster, speeding towards where he was now. It bounced at this end and began slowly revealing his immediate future.

He would lay there for a moment, then jump up in a hurry. What was he doing? Why? He would dash out of the hospital despite cries from the personnel. Grab a taxi, and dash out without paying. Snatch a dollar out of a busker’s hat. He would rush off to - buy a lottery ticket? Barely in time to get the one he wanted.

He sped ahead a little. A month and he would win the lottery! A hundred million, given to him in lumps of twenty five thousand a year. The woman beside him as he read the posted number aloud - who was she? He had never seen anyone so beautiful in his life, and she had her arm around him - she would gasp in amazement, and he would smile a knowing smile.

Suddenly he sat up with a start. He had barely made that lottery ticket. He lept out of the hospital bed and fled downstairs.

“Wait! You’re not allowed to leave yet!” Cried the nurse. He kept running.  What had he done? Taxi. He hailed one, and got in. What was the street? He saw himself naming 1st ave then grimacing. He named it, then realized he didn’t have his wallet, nothing but the hospital gown. when they got there he opened the door and ran, the angry cries of the taxi driver following him.

He was running when it occurred to him he didn’t have money to buy the lottery ticket either. He snatched a dollar out of a banjo player’s hat. “Sorry!” he muttered back as the musician cursed at his back.

He got into the store, and blurted out the number.
“Damn!” said the man behind him. “That’s my birthday.” He paused. “You run to get here? I would have bought that one.”
“My birthday too.” Garrett lied.

---

He walked outside and looked at his future. He would walk back to the hospital and retrieve his things. Then to the bank to take out the largest loan he could. Then he would go to the airport and jump on a flight to Norway.

What was there? He rented a car, and drove out to the country, stopped to help a old man get his cows back in the pasture till it was getting dark. Was invited back to their house for the night, and locked eyes with that woman, the most beautiful one he had ever seen. Three weeks of courting in that farmhouse, and they were coming back to America together. Watching himself he felt a little like a voyeur in the intimacy he and this woman shared in each intriguing moment. He watched himself asleep, her awake, gazing at his face with a look of utter adoration. Total contentment. How could anyone love him so much?

He scanned ahead. The wedding, children. She was with him at the very end.

He knew he had to have her.

He walked back to the hospital to retrieve his things. Declined the checkup. Got his wallet back. Left for the nearest bank. The largest loan he could take out wasn’t huge, but it was enough. He didn’t have a job to put on the paperwork - and he didn’t imagine “about to win the lottery” counted.

Then the airport. He was just in time to pick up a cancelled seat in first class. When he landed he knew just where to go.

“This car.” he told the dealer.
“Don’t you want to see the others?”
“No, this is the one.”
He had to do everything exactly as he had seen it. That timing with the woman’s father was crucial. He watched his near future as he drove. Here he would pause for a moment to look at birds. There he would fix flat tire. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the cows wandering through a break in the fence and across the road.

Just in time.

He recited the lines he saw - they seemed a little unnatural when he watched them, but he didn’t have to fake that, since he was speaking from memory. The old man liked him though. Brought him home. His first sight of Serra in real life was breathtaking. He had wondered what that pause was as he entered the door. It was him trying to remember to breathe.

He couldn’t mess this up. He kept checking the future. Everything had to be perfect. If he did one thing wrong it could change everything. He kept asking interesting questions, each one bringing an intriguing answer, or a fascinating story. She asked him to stay and he did. Gradually he began consulting the future less and less often, but the endless dejavu told him he had said everything before.

When he left she came with him, with talk of marriage mentioned to parents who were both concerned that she was leaving them for a man she’d met weeks prior, and delighted that it was this man.

“What do we do now?” She asked him on the plane ride back.
He had to decide. Money and love had both lept unexpectedly into his lap - but now he had to figure out what he wanted next.

He looked into his future. He would get a room in a hotel for the night. That’s when he’d win the lottery. Then he’d get loans based on the promised money - and buy a house.

He couldn’t imagine a better looking house. He saw himself calling and telling the owner he didn’t even need a tour.

Then he would invest the rest in stocks. Risky stocks. When he looked ahead, he saw they would skyrocket.

All that made sense. He couldn’t think of a better plan. But what after that?

He would track down the taxi driver and the banjo player and give them each a thousand dollars. The looks on their faces made him decide to do it in truth.

He would have a workshop built, he would spend hours there, painstakingly building a device, it’s complexity baffled him.

Then he was drawing up plans, sketching out schematics for the thing he had built, he was patenting it, founding a company around it. A device that - against all knowledge of physics, gave infinite free energy, enough for a city from each one.

He knew he didn’t have a choice.

“The first thing is to rent a hotel room.” He told Serra, “Then I’m going to win the lottery.”

She didn’t believe him.

---

Working from his vision, he tried to recreate the device. He saw himself taking breaks to write down observations, he copied them down, and found a new system of physics outlined.

After some initial tinkering, he saw himself going to workshops to get the actual technical skills to construct his device, after some tinkering he found that it was a step he couldn’t skip.

Loans bought him the supplies, rare metals, custom made apparatuses, a few pieces needed to be made on a massive scale, and he built companies to do it.

He saw himself releasing his new physics - a wash of amazing inventions would flood the market, he considered making some of them himself, but he would be busy for years making this one, and he wasn’t, and would not, be lacking for money. Why take it away from the bright minds?

Years later he was patenting his device.  Looking at the future, he saw that he would name the device a Zeisper, and when the time came to patent it, he couldn’t think of a better name.

“What does it mean?” someone asked him.
“It just sounds right - futuristic.”

“How did you figure all this out?”
“It just came to me.” he told a reporter.

“Will you have more technology to release in the future?”
He checked. Space bending, that could fit an apartment in the size of a pin. Time bending that could speed up or slow down a room in comparison to the outside world. A unified computer system, that would turn the earth into an AI, capable of modifying its temperatures, and deflecting asteroids.

“Yes.”

Then he was back in his workshop. It was larger now, state of the art equipment, and incredibly well trained aids. They were shocked when he didn’t test anything. No trial runs, or failures. Just - this is what we need to do - and then did it.

His first child was born, a frenetic time, yet future him seemed to anticipate challenges, and he too was ready when they arose. Serra blessed his foresight when he brought itch cream on the day their child would get bug bitten, an extra diaper besides those she carried with her, the day diarrhea hit. he saw himself telling her things that didn’t make sense. That the child shouldn’t play in that area of grass. To cook the baby formula. It seemed safer to follow future him’s lead. Serra knew he could see the future and didn’t question him.

He spent time between the workshop and home, just enough time. He would look ahead, and just as he imagined he might have gotten frustrated with one, he would go to the other. It made sense, so he followed it.

By this time he was also the richest man on earth. Every government on earth had purchased Zeispers. The first world countries had one for every town, and more for their militaries. The third world countries had purchased ones for their cities, and as the technological level rose with free energy, they continued to buy more.

When he released space bending, he was also the most beloved man on earth.  He saw himself refusing tours, but accepting awards,  and though he thought about doing otherwise, he finally decided that he would be happiest working on his technologies at home.

As he sat trying to craft his speech he looked the his future for inspiration, and found the best speech he had ever read. He copied it word for word, memorized every inflection. He saw himself practicing, so he did, and when the time came, it went off perfectly.

On his inspiration, a more unified world alliance formed. With free energy and the capacity to make as much space as they wanted, no one really had anything to fight over. Militaries were reduced, and warheads taken apart. He facilitated international trade agreements, that brought an influx of wealth to every nation, and soon every part of the world was one interconnected, yet distinctly diverse, entity. None really more wealthy than any other.

Time bending took the world by storm. Half of that newly built wealth slammed into him, as every nation wanted rooms to deliberate on instantaneous decisions. He wasn’t overwhelmed though. He had anticipated the exact demand. The price slowly came down as he flooded the market, until every student had extra time to study, and every couple had as much alone time as they wished.

He used this money to build his AI earth.

The entire world cheered him on.

---

Garrett sat in his living room alone. He had seen this scene and he didn’t understand it. He just sat here unmoving.. He twitched a finger, sat for a while longer, as if paralyzed, and finally got up.

Then the  question hit him, a question that had been quietly building for the last 30 years. A question that he had been ignoring.

What about free will?

He had never seen himself do anything that he himself had not gone on to do. He had never differed an inch from what he saw. Rightly so. It had brought him riches, love, and he liked to think, a utopia on Earth.

But what about free will?

He still wasn’t sure if that scene, that angelic dream, half baked in his mind was real, but he knew that he had imagined seeing the future differently. He would see things, and with that knowledge change his actions into a better course. He would win the lottery by seeing the winning number. He would find true love, by testing futures with different women until he found the right one. He would invent things by seeing future technologies other people invented and replicating them.

Not this.

Perhaps he had done all those things. Serra was the result of an invisible him, trying every woman on earth, and settling on the best. Maybe the technologies might have alternately been invented by someone else. He could imagine bringing technologies from his furthest future, releasing them, watching the technological leap forward and bringing the new furthest thing back, until he hit what he had now. The Zeisper might have been thousands, millions, of years ahead.

That was how it should have been. It should have taken effort, foresight - decision. He shouldn’t feel so helpless and blind despite seeing what lay ahead. He shouldn’t feel so fake - everything he had accomplished copied from a real him who had done that hard work.

But what if it wasn’t even that? What if it were a short loop? He copied himself copying himself and that was all? He was sitting here, because he had seen himself sitting here. Maybe some alternate him had designed this, but he couldn’t really see it. This was him stuck in a loop.

So it was simple then. To get rid of this discomfort he would break the loop. His life ahead was good, perfect even, but he couldn’t live like this, feeling like a fraud, it was time to take possession of his life again! He would stand up, go in to Serra and kiss her, not because he had seen it, but because he wanted to.

But what if that destroyed everything? What if that was the triggering moment that made her think he was clinging to her too hard? He suddenly realized he didn’t trust her. He had never tested their relationship and it felt like porcelain in a vicegrip. She loved him, yes, but she loved the perfect husband, who did everything right. The one who had won her not by himself, but with a script. The one who turned to his script whenever he felt in any way endangered.

It was not as if his sight of the future would shatter, he didn’t think so. He would just see a new future. He could return to his script. he could fix anything he broke. Surely. He was willing to risk that to prove he had free will.

But no. She was the best thing in his life. Without her, he would be nothing. He would not risk her.

Then why not do something small? He would twitch a finger! He twitched it without thinking. Exaltation seized him. Proof! Then remembered that he had seen that. Not free will at all.

And what a risk he had taken! It frightened him. What if that single finger twitch had changed everything. What if he lost his sight of the new future. He would see the old one, ever so slightly altered - molecules of air disturbed - but more pressingly he might act differently, proof of free will might make him do something in an unscripted moment with Sarah - he could say something just ever so slightly off, altering what she said - and suddenly he would be blind. Not knowing how to keep the woman he had married for 30 years.

She was not worth risking.

This dis- ease was worth holding as long as he had her.

He felt better having made a choice. Having decided to relinquish his free will it felt like he had done that out of free will. But no, he was always going to make this decision. He had seen it. His sight was perfect, unaltered and unalterable.

He got up.

---

He released more technology, and funded vast enterprises. The moon became a space station, connected to the earth by a vast elevator. You flew to the lower station by plane, zipped up along a wire, and all space flight went out from there. He sent out ships that would take ages to reach far off stars, but to the occupants just days with timeshifting.

They colonized every planet in the solar system. They didn’t have to, but it seemed like a good idea to diversify, and while space and energy were infinite, and no one would starve, they found the best food still grew out in the sun.

Redundancy became an obsession with him. He had shaped this future, but it occurred to him that he had no way besides the normal to shape what came after he died. It made sense to prepare for the worse.

They stockpiled food in expanded spaces, with such slowed down time, that a million years here would be a second there. Canned food.

He built seed and genome banks, buried some deep underground, shot others off into space. He built redundancy into everything he had done. Building duplicate factories for all his products on every planet.

Billions of people left for billions of habitable planets some in this galaxy, others in far away ones.

In and among this he got grandchildren. His children had all grown up perfect, well adjusted, individuals who made him proud. He liked all of their choices of partners, and when the grandchildren came they were exactly what he would have chosen. He spent a lot of time with them, telling stories and watching them laugh.

He alternated wildly in his moods. Contentment was common, but then he would find himself growing upset at his own contentment. He would see himself acting upset, and get upset over that too, wondering why whatever or whoever had designed this future he never deviated from, had allowed him to grow upset. Perhaps it was necessary to feel something besides joy, some rational part of his mind told him, and that made him upset too. He never deviated from what he saw.

He eventually moved offworld into a vast space yacht, the size of a small moon that orbited the sun like its own planet. Inside it was even larger, a massive bastion of state of the art technology.

He saw himself arming it with weaponry that would keep it safe from attacks from space, and so, though with some doubts, he did so. He didn’t want to leave weapons - but the possibility of aliens was there, so it made sense he supposed.

His room was at the top, with big windows looking out into the endless array of stars. He had holographs installed so he could see the location of every space ship he’d sent out.

And he continued to turn out new technologies. Things only people at this level of technology could appreciate. Things that worked humanities knowledge of the universe beyond what it already had.

He had eaten well, lived well, exercised regularly, and had state of the art medical attention. He was ninety when he told his doctors to leave off. A few years later he began the process of dying in earnest - all as he had seen. He would lay in his bed in his chamber, gazing out at the stars.

---

He was lying in his bed with his family around him. He knew how this went - and now . . . now was the moment he had been waiting for. He could not have planned this. There was nothing to lose. The question of Free Will that had plagued him for so long - he could die at peace.

How did it go? He looked at the stars as his last act. It made sense. He couldn’t imagine any better ending, but he would fix his eyes on his wife until the last moment. He would tell her he loved her. He wouldn’t do anything other than that.

He locked his eyes on her. She was crying, just as he had seen. He was at peace. Just as he had seen. He felt happy. He had finally decided to take a stand against the future. He continued to look at her. Behind her the vast glass ceiling glittered with stars.

A shooting star arced across the sky and he followed with his eyes as it fell outside his window. His head followed it too as he looked to his left.