INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1

by Casper Greysun

  “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.<
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  “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.

  “Focus on who instead of what you are?” She answers.

  “Where did I come from?” He continues tossing questions at her.

  “From what I know, you began at your bathroom mirror. And before that, well, I can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Does it matter?” She says with a sad smile, as if the thoughts behind it were infused with both joy and pain.

  For him, the response satisfies the question asked but it provides no answers for him. Inside his head, he thinks to himself, “What the fuck does ‘began’ mean?”

  He tries, and quite sternly, to understand everything he’s been told as the truth. He believes that she believes it is true. But then again, that would make the girl a bit of a loony, it does. Especially when you factor that he’s apparently never done a drug in his entire life. And actually, he’s only hours old.

  He squints his eyes and nods his head, exaggerating his body language to express that he attentively listening to her accounts. The accounts of someone who he begins to suspect is indeed a crazy person.

  “I’m not crazy,” she says, responding to his thoughts.

  “Then it must be me. That would explain the voice.”

  The gypsy begins laughing hysterically. This continues for quite a while until the unnamed man interrupts her.

  “You mind telling me why that’s funny?” He asks her sternly.

  “Don’t get too carried away by the voices in your head,” she replies. Her response approaching nothing close to an actual answer. It does, however, provide him proof that there is an actual voice in his head. Not only that, but the psychic and the voice seem to be of opposing opinions, to say the least.

  The unnamed man offers her a smile, out of sheer courtesy, before he begins to walk away. If he is to believe everything this woman has just said, then his life has just started and he will be heading to jail unless he reboots it by speaking a phrase from a dead language.

  Ride it out.

  The voice instructs the young man to disregard the gypsy’s advice about restarting his life. Instead, it implores him to accept the impending future which, according to the gypsy, involves going to prison. It does, however, also involve a beautiful, successful, and ambitious woman who has taken notice to the young man. Whatever the outcome, the choice is his and his alone. What can be said for him can be said for all people, there is always a choice. So far, he’s leaning towards a certain path, a path which the gypsy had tried to sway him from.

  As he walks away, it dawns on him as if were an epiphany. He knows his name. Turning to the gypsy, he begins to introduce himself.

  “My name is –

  “William Freeman,” she answers for him. “I already knew your name. My name is –

  “I didn’t say I wanted to know your name.” This time it is Will who does the interrupting.

  Bitch.

  “Bitch,” he adds comically, following the voice’s example.

  “Heather,” she says anyway. “My name is Heather. And you’re the bitch. Bitch.” She smiles, not because she has taken a liking to the insult, but because this time around the insult was unexpected. This gives her hope that he’s finally up to something new.
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br />   Will walks off, thinking about the gypsy’s smile and how he’s sure that she had gradually warmed up to the idea of being called a bitch. He feels accomplished for some reason or another. It is just too bad that as he thinks of interactions that are still frivolous and without meaning, a life altering event looms on the horizon. Because little does William know, he is in the forefront of Laura Cohen’s thoughts. If the old lady dies, someone must pay. In this regard, Laura is no villain. It is just a circumstance of no consequence that Laura gives absolutely no shits about the old lady dying. She only cares for the prestige behind punishing somebody for their crimes, whether intentional or not. Besides, the old lady is someone’s grandma and they might have a say in this too.

  A phone rings somewhere behind Will. He doesn’t look towards the sound. Will knows that it’s Heather’s phone that’s going off, and it doesn’t take a rocket science to figure that it’s the same person who had just called a few minutes ago, whoever that person is.

  “And pick that phone up,” he says jokingly, finally looking back so that he can see her reaction, an aptly raised middle finger directed at him. “Your singing sucks.”

  CHAPTER 4:

  When she arrives at the scene, Laura Cohen kneels by the old lady and grabs her hand, cupping it between her palms, so sweet and gently. She lets go softly, with great care, and flashes her badge at the crowd and the arriving EMTs. She assures the lady that justice will be served. She assures the crowd that that someone will pay, improvising a lecture on how the incident was no accident, but a crime deserving of a full and thorough investigation.

  Laura Cohen does not give a shit about whether this lady dies or not. Truthfully, she does not even care about whether or not justice is served. What she is vehemently invested in is her score card. She only cares about how powerful and intimidating her resume is. A case such as the one which lies before her isn’t compelling to her in any form or fashion, but it appeals to her hunger, her unquenchable ambition. And since Will has her special card, she might as well bag and tag him.

  A plain-clothed officer approaches Ms. Cohen and informs her that a possible witness to the incident would like to have a word with her. She reads his name tag, H. Kelly, not that it matters as she’ll never use his name to address him anyway. She agrees to see the alleged witness, following the cop to the man as the EMTs wheel the old lady away.