To Meet Fate Read online

  He sat back in the center of the sofa, an almost supernaturally handsome man of 33. His designer cloths hung on the muscles hardly earned through an hour a day at the gym. People at the office would tell him that he already had all the trappings of success—the five cars, the home on the Amazon, the 60-inch, ultra-high definition television with third-dimensional surround sound, the hot second wife—and he had obtained all these things before he’d turned 30. The faux leather couch (real leather would've been cruel and unsanitary). The centerpiece was their ancient Tiffany lamp, which neither he nor his wife allowed themselves to touch for fear that the acids on their fingertips would tarnish the gold—it just stood there and was pretty, much like the second wife.

  The reality show "Wife- Swap Island " would mercifully be over in a few minutes, and he couldn't help but wonder how reality TV had taken over all 10,000 channels. A sickening thud from behind him, like a body hitting the ground.

  Startled, he jumped and turned around. It was only the wife, coming in through their front door.

  "Hey," she said.

  "Hey." He didn't offer to help her with the groceries not because he was an irreconcilably rude husband but because he was preoccupied with the upcoming drawing. Winning this drawing would fundamentally alter not only his and his wife's lives, but those of his neighbors at well. (They would all want a piece of him!) The odds were the same for everyone, and the outcome the same, but he had the feeling that this would happen to him ever since becoming eligible for the weekly neighborhood drawing on the day he’d turned 25.

  Before his 25th birthday, he'd already lived a rich life.

  She unpacked the bundle upon bundle of fruits and vegetables she would purchase every week from the farmer’s market, where the prices were a little higher but you were granted the prestige of buying your organic food in a place where all your neighbors could best see you buying organic. (It was just healthier.)

  "Have they announced the week’s numbers yet?" she asked, as she stocked their fridge. She was wearing her watch—the watch he'd bought her for their third anniversary. The platinum and diamond-encrusted Rolex.

  "No, not yet. Two minutes."

  Done replenishing their kitchen, she took a seat on an armrest of their tastefully small sofa, hovering over his shoulder like a damn parrot. She clutched her own ticket between her well-manicured fingers. And despite it all—despite the fights over all the pitiful little things that all married couples go through—he was already quite lucky. And the results of this week's drawing could not change that.

  The numbered balls spun and turned in the spherical bin. It was amazing how little things had changed over the centuries. It was all still very cheesy.

  The first number rolled down a chute.

  "...seven..."

  "...six..."

  At this point, he was literally on the edge of his seat. The tips of his fingers were white, as the blood drained from them, and the perspiration fell from his temple.

  "...one..."

  His body filled with adrenalin, pulse racing like a thoroughbred. Three for three—he'd done the math in his head over and over again: ten to the power of three is 1,000—one out of a thousand, and if you lived in a community log enough, you'd make a match eventually.

  But it wasn’t over yet. The Decider number was next. The Decider—a single ball taken from a batch of 100, numbered 00-99—rolled down its little ramp, and settled on its little perch.

  At first, he was hoping that it really read "58"—but it didn’t. It read "82," and no amount of wishing to the contrary would alter that fact. He crumbled up his ticket so loudly, the neighbors just might’ve heard. He placed his hands on his temples, and he cried like he hadn’t cried since his great-grandfather passed away at 112. His wife placed a hand on his shoulder, in an attempt to comfort him—useless, as always. He knew now that this—this condo, this job, this woman—would be the rest of his life. And he wondered: Why couldn't that last number have been "58"?

  Crumpled in his right hand was a ticket carrying the digits 7-1-6—with a Decider Number of 82.

  There was no use in running. The same chip in his head that saved his banking records would aid the government in finding him. Of course, he had heard the stories of citizens fleeing their civic obligations by escaping into the forest, but having to leave behind civilization and all its technological comforts was too much for him to bear.

  No, tomorrow he would bathe and report to the local meat-processing plant, where he would be painlessly put down and his body processed. Most every part of him would be utilized for the common good. His lungs, kidneys, spleen would be processed into a spicy stew and sold by the pintful. His small intestines would be bratwurst-liner. His hard-earned muscles would be hamburger. His bones crushed and made into the sweetest gelatin.

  Because there was always room for Jell-O.

  His head and genitals would be given a Christian burial.

  Advanced Prion Disease, a global calamity brought about by generation upon generation of feeding herbivores their animal brethren—fattening chickens with poultry, cows with beef, pigs with pork. Offspring of the rare "Mad Cow Disease," sibling of the even rarer Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—symptoms included memory-loss, disorientation, hallucinations, seizures, tremors, and eventually a painful and humiliating death. Technology and society had grown so advanced—it was hard to tell where nature would end and humanity would begin—that the very God-ordained order had begun to resist by hitting humans where it hurt the most: the stomach. Every farm animal on Earth had to be culled; their remains burned. Hunting of wildlife was discouraged. For almost two hundred years, to protect the entirety of the race, the governments of the world had imposed a vegetarian diet on humanity. There had been mass-suicides. The public outcry had led the spineless politicians in Washington and London and Tokyo and the rest to authorize limited cannibalism—under government supervision, of course.

  It had taken hundreds of years for APD to develop among the lesser animals; so doing this bought humans more time. At some point, the lottery system had been devised to insure a democratic manner in selecting who would be processed—so neither a doctor nor a garbage man would be spared from making “the sacrifice.” Yes, it bought them more time, and who knew what the future might bring?

  "People need meat," his wife assured him, before kissing him atop his head. In the back of his mind, he knew that it was a taste.

  THE END

 

 

  J. Richard Singleton, To Meet Fate

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