Skipping, Battlemechs, and the Nature and Importance of Luck as a Universal Force- Part II
Smoke followed me in great swirling trails from my cigarette as I walked into the station that would take me to Learyville. It had taken one hell of a lot to get me there. There had been a lost bet, a broken deal, a funny hat, bold and colorful misconceptions about the meaning of the word “circumvent”, and over $5000 worth of stolen leather. But all that is long past, and that’s a different story for a different time.
It’s funny, I think as I have a seat on a broken-down old bench, how circumstances conspire to get you where you need to go. Or, alternately, to keep you from it. Each and every step and action I took cumulated up to this point, and delivered me here, to this old run-down train station waiting on a bench for a one-way ticket out of this hole. It’s almost as though destiny reaches down from day to day and nudges us this way or that, guiding us all along through our crazy lives, our laughs and cries and everything in between.
Even this thought. It’s as though the word “destiny” triggers a whole new chain of logic in my head. If I had thought a different word, maybe “fate” or “fortune”, would I have carried through the line of thinking I’m on right now, that brings me to my very next point? Sometimes I don’t know, I think, as I light another cigarette.
Are there certain people for whom destiny cares more? Does the great tapestry bunch up in certain places, creating probability pileups around certain people? I think about an old pal of mine, a no-nothing mob goon they called Mikey the Sprague. Some might say he’s the unluckiest man they ever seen, but I disagree. I think old Mikey is the luckiest guy I’ve ever met. Now, I don’t mean like good shit always happens for him, or he’s a great gambler or anything like that. I like to think of him more like a luck beacon, and let me explain.
Whenever Mikey is around, he will have colossally bad luck, and even other people will feel the effects. Lighters wont light, you’ll trip on a rock, you clothes catch on corners, and so on. But occasionally- occasionally- it’s like there’s a gross shift in the way luck works in the universe, and Mike will have almost unbelievably fortuitous things happen to him. So really, he’s completely capable of having both lucky and unlucky things happen to him. Its not that he leads to any particular side, its that the fabric of fortune itself bends and twists around him, affecting Mike and those around him.
And so it is. Maybe I am one of these luck beacons, great purveyors of universal probability and order. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just surrounded by them. Its all long past now, as that great blackened train chugs reliably into the station. As I look around in this run-down train station, see the bums and the prostitutes, the too-old men with their wives who are just old enough, all my fellow walkers on the path less traveled, I see intricate strands of fortune, of fate, of destiny, like the trails of smoke from my last cigarette.
I step into the darkness of the train, not caring where it takes me, and I am gone.
It’s funny, I think as I have a seat on a broken-down old bench, how circumstances conspire to get you where you need to go. Or, alternately, to keep you from it. Each and every step and action I took cumulated up to this point, and delivered me here, to this old run-down train station waiting on a bench for a one-way ticket out of this hole. It’s almost as though destiny reaches down from day to day and nudges us this way or that, guiding us all along through our crazy lives, our laughs and cries and everything in between.
Even this thought. It’s as though the word “destiny” triggers a whole new chain of logic in my head. If I had thought a different word, maybe “fate” or “fortune”, would I have carried through the line of thinking I’m on right now, that brings me to my very next point? Sometimes I don’t know, I think, as I light another cigarette.
Are there certain people for whom destiny cares more? Does the great tapestry bunch up in certain places, creating probability pileups around certain people? I think about an old pal of mine, a no-nothing mob goon they called Mikey the Sprague. Some might say he’s the unluckiest man they ever seen, but I disagree. I think old Mikey is the luckiest guy I’ve ever met. Now, I don’t mean like good shit always happens for him, or he’s a great gambler or anything like that. I like to think of him more like a luck beacon, and let me explain.
Whenever Mikey is around, he will have colossally bad luck, and even other people will feel the effects. Lighters wont light, you’ll trip on a rock, you clothes catch on corners, and so on. But occasionally- occasionally- it’s like there’s a gross shift in the way luck works in the universe, and Mike will have almost unbelievably fortuitous things happen to him. So really, he’s completely capable of having both lucky and unlucky things happen to him. Its not that he leads to any particular side, its that the fabric of fortune itself bends and twists around him, affecting Mike and those around him.
And so it is. Maybe I am one of these luck beacons, great purveyors of universal probability and order. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just surrounded by them. Its all long past now, as that great blackened train chugs reliably into the station. As I look around in this run-down train station, see the bums and the prostitutes, the too-old men with their wives who are just old enough, all my fellow walkers on the path less traveled, I see intricate strands of fortune, of fate, of destiny, like the trails of smoke from my last cigarette.
I step into the darkness of the train, not caring where it takes me, and I am gone.