What if I could tell you which horse will win The Derby next week. Would you want to know? Of course you would. You’d assume I was talking nonsense, but when Bedazzled comes in at 35-1 you’d be back, wanting to know more. Maybe you’d plan to come with others, abscond me as your own private prophet. But then, of course, you’d be missing the point.
However, what if I could tell you when you’re going to die? Would you want to know that? Yes. Mmm…really? What, because you’ll avoid it. Come now, do you really think that it works like that. When I see the future, it is the future. There is only a single future, and it is future-proofed. Bedazzled. Think of Bedazzled.
So, you’d still want to know. OK, but what if your future is a car crash, for example, mangled in metal for hours until the emergency services arrive. Searing agony until you can see them racing down the road to save you. But alas, all for nought, you expire your last, just as they say — ‘try to relax’. Would you still want to know?
Ignorance really is bliss, don’t you think.
You see, my friends, this is not a hypothetical question. For years I had resisted the temptation to look into my own destiny. For years I had been content at playing the bumbling amateur in this circus — in every sense of the word — turning cards and informing needy people that they will marry a beautiful brunette, or that they will be successful in business. And do you know, some people have even returned to shake my hand, as if I had somehow brought their happiness into being. I wonder, would that same person shake my hand if I had told them that they will live a short, painful, lonely life with much strife and suffering? Indeed, some people may even become violent, as if I had somehow brought their unhappiness into being.
Yes, yes, I can read it on your faces; you think me cruel and heartless, a monster who revels in pain and misery. Of course, a few will find happiness, or better still, meaning. If that is the case I tell the truth; if not I lie. So please, lay down your scythes and pitchforks, I am merely making the point that the future should remain a journey of discovery, not a documentary. After all, we all have but a single journey to make. However for those of us, and there are more than you think, who have this curse… well it’s enough to turn a man mad. Is it not?
Ah, some of you are nodding. I can see sympathy in your eyes. But I’m not finished yet, the worst is yet to come, for I have succumbed to morbid curiosity. I have been the foolest of fools, the maddest of maniacs. What possessed me I cannot explain, but alas, knowledge cannot be unlearnt.
I am to be faced with an impossible choice. For if to be able to see into the depths of time is a curse, then perhaps to love is greater.
We are driving. I know not when, glimpses of the future come to me, but they do not come with a timetable. However my hair is completely white and I appear a broken man. It is winter. It is snowing. Not heavily, but enough for a gossamer blanket to have settled upon the winding road. We are in Scotland, near the Kylesku Bridge that crosses Loch Gleann Dubh. I know it well, my in-laws reside nearby. My wife is dozing fitfully in the passenger seat, her head leaning to one side. I watch her out of the corner of my eye; she is beautiful beyond words, calm and serene, like a porcelain figurine. My daughter is sound asleep in her car-seat, I can hear the gentle snuffles that she makes, the little murmurs of dreams being realised, themselves quite often portents. I glance at her in the rear-view mirror. So much like my wife; pale, with an oval face and little blushes to her cheeks, her blonde hair rolling in waves of sunshine down the side of her face. So small and innocent and helpless.
To save one. And only one.
Oh, the despair of it! Every day I go home from here. Every day I stare at them across the table at dinner. Every day I place my daughter in her crib and kiss her goodnight. Everyday I lay with my Miranda.
To save one. And only one.
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