INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1 (4 page)

“That is just creepy and fucked up. Can you
please stop that?” He requests of her. She stops, blinking once and
returning her eyes to him. He thanks her for stopping whatever it
was that she was doing. She has no idea what he speaks of as it was
an involuntary action, occurring for reasons beyond the scope of
their entangled existences.

“I’ve delivered your message. You can go,” she
tells him flatly and with a bit of an attitude.

“Come on, sweetie, don’t be like
that.”

“Twice you called me a bitch. Even after I
asked you not too.”

“What? That? Come on, that was a term of
endearment like sweetie or baby,” he pleads.

“Shut up,” she tells him.

“You can’t just get rid of me like that, I’m
still lost. I need your help, please,” he begs. “I need
you.”

“I warned you,” she says.

“I’m sorry, I really am. Please don’t leave me
alone.”

She stares at him in silence, enjoying his
hopelessness for a moment.

“Humble is a good look on you,” she replies.
“Try it on more often. Now, do you want to know your
future?”

“Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
She smiles at his newfound politeness, mostly because there’s a
slight sarcasm to it that she can’t exactly pinpoint.

She begins her revelations with a small
lecture on physics, quantum mechanics to be exact. Stating firstly
that the future has already been written, but the events of
tomorrow are still being affected by the actions taken today and
those already taken yesterday. She goes on, adding that the path is
still uncertain. She uses the physics of an electron to further
elaborate her point. An electron’s location or its speed can both
be known, but never at the same time. She continues her lecture,
pointing out that an electron is a particle, but it behaves as a
wave. This causes uncertainty. While the goal is to help him make
sense of his situation, her explanation makes very little sense to
the man, and she can see the bewilderment evident in his facial
expressions. Not that she even needs to look at his face to know
what’s on his mind.

Generally, when a psychic states that the
future is uncertain, one begins to doubt their abilities. This is
not so for the young man. He knows, beyond any doubt, that the
woman has an undeniable gift, whatever that gift might be; thusly
he listens to her quite vehemently, giving her his unfaltering
attention, despite not understanding her point.

“How is something written and yet uncertain?”
He questions her.

Apparently, this uncertainty is cause by the
future existing as a potential possibility, one out of an infinite
number of outcomes. The path which one travels, the choices one
makes, these become factors in the formation of the
future.”

“Then explain this, how do you know the
future?”

“Educated guesses based on the book I’ve
already read.” She tells him before correcting herself, “books,
actually.” What she does not tell him, because she feels no need
to, is that she knows the future now because her source of
information is not from an actual point in linear time, as it
exists to the man without a name. Her gift exists outside of his
time. As such it would seem that her past, present, and future in
his “here” are as a singular point, always occurring at once.
However, this is not exactly so. From where she exists, there is no
uncertainty, only variations and, for the most part, she is quite
aware of most of them, thus far anyway.

“I don’t understand that,” he tells her. She
assures him that in due time he will. “What about my future? Are
you going to tell me?”

She continues her prophesy, revealing to him
that what happens next depends the course set earlier.

“What about the blond?” He asks.

“What blond?” She asks back.

“Laura Cohen,” he says recalling the business
card in him mind.

“Wait. Did the old lady not get burned by the
coffee?”

“No. She slipped on my sandwich. A fat man got
burned,” he clarifies. “I thought you knew that though.”

“God, it’s like freaking ‘Groundhog’s
Day.’”

“The Bill Murray flick?” He asks.

“Oh, by the way, you’re going to jail,” she
informs him.

“What? Wait. Why exactly am I going to
jail?”

“You mean besides the manslaughter which
you’re responsible for? That old lady is going to die, and Laura
Cohen is going to prosecute you down the line.” Her words seem to
form prophesy of sorts, but there are details missing and she knows
exactly what she leaves out.

“There’s no way that I’m going down for that.
No jury in their right mind will convict me of that. That’s
ludicrous,” he replies.

“I didn’t say that you would go to jail for
manslaughter, I said Cohen will prosecute.”

“That’s the same shit. How is that any
different?”

“You’ll see, eventually. Manslaughter,
robbery, when it’s always the same ol’ ending, you have to wonder:
what’s the difference?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He
says as he remembers the business card which Laura Cohen had given
him. He retrieves the card from his suit jacket pocket and turns it
over. There’s a square, holographic image in the middle of the
card.

“Peel it off,” she says referring to the
hologram sticker. He does so. Under the sticker there’s a small
microchip.

“What a fucking bitch,” he says referring to
Laura Cohen. “Am I being traced?”

“You can most definitely count on her tracking
you. She got off on the stop after you walked in. Then she took the
opposite train back to the scene of the accident,” she reveals.
Although what she tells him is the truth, what she omits is that
this is only the most likely outcome, one of many which might have
come to fruition. A certain set of choices can help the young man
completely avoid such a fate. Of course, she does not tell him
this, because she does not believe him capable of making those
choices. In actuality, she knows him to be very incapable of making
them. No, instead she feeds him the truth which best suits her own
agenda. Because the actions of every man affect those around him,
her deepest desire is that the young man will act accordingly,
possibly in the best interest of all. However, there is a problem
with acting in everyone’s best interest and that is the fact that
it is so often at odds with the best interests of one’s self. The
gypsy, while not a malicious person, does have an agenda which is
intimately interwoven into the fabric of the man’s identity.
Despite him not knowing that, and she indeed wants what’s best for
him. The problem is: not even she knows what that is.

An ominous air surrounds the man. The gypsy’s
sigh tells him that she is aware of the change as well. It affects
her to a much lesser degree than it does him.

“In about a forty-five minutes or so,” she
begins before pausing to look around. “Cohen will track you down.
Depending on how you play your cards, you will be either discharged
into your own custody or formally charged with a crime.”

Scare tactics; don’t worry about
Cohen. This time will be different.

“This time?” Will mumbles.

The voice calms him, but he does not give too
much thought to what it tells him.

“Should I destroy the card and run?” He asks
Heather, as if it could really be that easy.

“If that card stops moving for too long, or if
the signal dies, they will lock down the last recorded area the
signal was active at. There’s cameras everywhere. They will track
you down. Especially when all the fact are considered. But that’s
later on.” Her answer defeats him.

“What can I do?”

“A do-over. You should start anew,” she
replies. “When you are ready, say the words: initium novum. It will
take you back to your beginning, undoing all progress you’ve made
in your life. You will awaken at your bathroom mirror and all that
you’ll retain are your age, thoughts, and karma. Any relationships
that came into being through your own actions will be
erased.”

“Wow…” His eyes widen as he processes the
words coming from the gypsy’s mouth.

“Wow what?” She probes.

“You sure I’m not high, right? Because this is
a little bit too much for the normal, rational mind to easily
accept.”

“You’ve never done a drug in your
life.”

“Okay. Oh, by the way, what about the
interview?”

She laughs.

“Uh, you’re going to jail. I thought we
established that. You fucked your interview up completely.” We
laugh after she says this. “If you do choose to restart, make your
way back here for a proper interview or ride it out and see where
this life takes you. Either way, the choice is yours, so hurry up
and make it.”

“And when will I know my name
again?”

“When it’s too late to do anything other than
live your life,” she responds.

“Thanks for your help.” He smirks as if
there’s more he wished to say.

“Don’t say it. Be mature,” she
advises.

“Crazy bitch…” Grinning as he walks away from
her and the slight insult he’s just laid upon her, it only takes
but a few steps before he remembers two things. First: he has to
return to her eventuality, if he’s understood her correctly.
Second: he still has a question for her. He turns back to her and
receives a pre-emptive reply, her middle finger pointed directly at
him.

“Come on, sweetie, I was just
playing.”

“Fuck yourself,” she tells him plainly, as if
it were no big deal to talk to relative strangers in such a manner.
In her defense, one might be able to argue that she is the stranger
to him, but not the other way around. According to her accounts,
she is very well acquainted with him, and thusly has earned the
privilege to be rude. Not that rudeness is an exact privilege, as
hardly anyone today has earned it and yet most people indulge
nonetheless. But should anyone need to know, and for all intents
and purposes, she has—through sheer familiarity—earned the right,
surpassing a privilege, to be rude to the as-of-yet unnamed man,
should a situation ever call for it.

Her eyes stare through him and while they are
intensely focused, they do not appear to be angry. The gypsy may
very well have found his immaturity endearing and slightly
humorous. More likely, however, she already knows everything he
might say before he himself knows. Also, the first two times he had
called her a bitch, he had done so absentmindedly and without
intent to offend; this last time, it was his very intent to provoke
a response from her. Like most women, she enjoys his attention,
although there are far better ways of charming a girl than
insulting her.

“Don’t you have a reset too?” He asks,
half-jokingly, but foolishly enough, half-seriously as
well.

She shakes her head, smiling, knowing
something esoteric in nature about the young man. This small detail
amuses her. The sudden lightness of her mood is
noticeable.

“I can see why she might like you.”

“Yeah, and why’s that?” He says, grinning
goofily, under the impression that she’s paying him a
compliment.

“She has bad taste in men,” she says to him,
much to his confusion.

“She has a hard-on for you now and she won’t
stop until she crushes you,” the gypsy says in a matter-of-fact
way.

“Then how does that equate to liking me?” He
inquires.

“She wants to chew you up and spit you out.
She wants to own you.”

“Still not getting how that means she likes
me.”

“Her fetish just happens to be men in cages,”
she responds, elaborating further despite her obvious disdain for
the topic.

“Dope,” he says in a tone which somehow
manages to both belie and embody sarcasm. If the gypsy did not
already know, she would be confused by his manner of speaking.
Instead, she grins. At this point, she’s so wrapped up in the now
that she’s forgotten about his last insult.

Truthfully, there was no reason for her to
become upset with him in the first place. She had prior knowledge
of his demeanor, knowing him before he had even come to be, knowing
what he can be, knowing him more than he knows himself, and even
knowing his name when he himself does not.

“I’m going to give you a piece of advice that
I know you won’t listen to, but maybe the wisdom will resonate with
you,” she starts. “Leave Cohen alone. Karma is accumulative. The
actions you take will stay with you. Just start over.”

No!
Ride
it out.

He doesn’t ask, but he does wonder what his
karma is supposed to transfer over to. To be frank, he wonders a
great many things, such as the state of his sanity, the gypsy’s
sanity, whether today is a figment of his imagination, what his
name might be, and the small possibility that he is hallucinating
due to some drug which was ingested relatively recently.

“If this is real, then what exactly am I?” He
asks, solemnly and, for the first time (in apparently, ever) his
voice carries the weight of his existential angst.