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Fate, you son of a bitch!
Sep. 22nd, 2002 10:16 amSo, I was supposed to spend the next two weeks housesitting for my mom, during which time I was planning to be extraordinarily productive (ha ha) and get stuff done wrt school (ha ha ha) and make headway on some other projeccts (ha ha ha ha) -- in other words, the plan was to play with the cats and MUSH in peace. ;)
But due to circumstances beyond her control, my mom ended up not going at the very last minute. This has been very frustrating for us all. She went away for the weekend anyway, closer to home, and was going to deal with trying to reschedule the vacation on Monday.
Of course, over the weekend, Hurricane Isidore has moved into the area where she would have been had she gone on that vacation... and they're canceling flights at Cancun airport and preparing to evacuate the area.
There's a sci-fi story I read a long time ago. I can't remember who it's by, and I wish I did. The premise of the story is that this guy's about to get on a plane and fly to some tropical island to broker a movie deal with an eccentric mogul. He keeps getting weird phone calls and soon realizes that it's from his future self. The future self is fabulously wealthy, married to a supermodel, successful, and it's because the movie deal was so successful. But the only way this will happen is if he goes now.
I'm probably misremembering it, but anyway, he's all set to get on the plane, when they announce that the flight's overbooked and they're getting a second plane. Suddenly, he starts getting phone calls from another future self. This other future self seems scared and panicky and is urging him not to go because the plane's going to crash and he's going to die. But the phone keeps cutting out and he can't figure out which of the two planes he should get on.
He gets on the plane and the phone calls get more frantic, and then the line goes dead. There's a lot of turbulence, and we fear the worst, but the story is open-ended. We never find out if he's made the right choice; the last line of the story is something like "The plane began a rapid descent." God, I wish I could remember who wrote that story.
But, anyway, the point being, this is what I think of every time I get on a plane, or, more to the point, every time I have to change a plane reservation, or miss a plane, or whatever. "Did I get on the right plane or the wrong plane?" I am superstitious. I believe in Fate. I just don't think Fate's on my side, necessarily. I am on the wrong plane.
But due to circumstances beyond her control, my mom ended up not going at the very last minute. This has been very frustrating for us all. She went away for the weekend anyway, closer to home, and was going to deal with trying to reschedule the vacation on Monday.
Of course, over the weekend, Hurricane Isidore has moved into the area where she would have been had she gone on that vacation... and they're canceling flights at Cancun airport and preparing to evacuate the area.
There's a sci-fi story I read a long time ago. I can't remember who it's by, and I wish I did. The premise of the story is that this guy's about to get on a plane and fly to some tropical island to broker a movie deal with an eccentric mogul. He keeps getting weird phone calls and soon realizes that it's from his future self. The future self is fabulously wealthy, married to a supermodel, successful, and it's because the movie deal was so successful. But the only way this will happen is if he goes now.
I'm probably misremembering it, but anyway, he's all set to get on the plane, when they announce that the flight's overbooked and they're getting a second plane. Suddenly, he starts getting phone calls from another future self. This other future self seems scared and panicky and is urging him not to go because the plane's going to crash and he's going to die. But the phone keeps cutting out and he can't figure out which of the two planes he should get on.
He gets on the plane and the phone calls get more frantic, and then the line goes dead. There's a lot of turbulence, and we fear the worst, but the story is open-ended. We never find out if he's made the right choice; the last line of the story is something like "The plane began a rapid descent." God, I wish I could remember who wrote that story.
But, anyway, the point being, this is what I think of every time I get on a plane, or, more to the point, every time I have to change a plane reservation, or miss a plane, or whatever. "Did I get on the right plane or the wrong plane?" I am superstitious. I believe in Fate. I just don't think Fate's on my side, necessarily. I am on the wrong plane.
