The clerk set the gun on the counter.
“There’s a seven-day waiting period.”
Tommy peeled off an extra hundred and slid it across the counter. The clerk hesitated, then pocketed the bill and loaded the weapon into a brown paper bag.
“Some weeks are shorter than others.”
He added a box of bullets to the bag, then rang up the total. “You need any extra ammo?”
“No,” replied Tommy. “One box will be plenty.”
* * * * *
It was pissing rain on the walk back to his apartment, the first time it had rained in the city for months. The water cut greasy rivers down his cheeks, tasting faintly of gasoline and ash. At least the city’s consistent, he thought, even the rain’s corrupt. He ducked into a familiar coffee shop to douse the chill. He ordered what he always ordered and dug in his pockets for exact change.
“Can you believe those freaks?”
Tommy followed the kid’s gaze out the front window, across the street. A pack of No-Faters gathered on the corner, their placards bleeding ink as they fought to keep a fire alive in a trash bin. One of them, a chubby white kid with unconvincing dreadlocks, pulled out a white card, the size of the index cards Tommy’s students used to cram notes onto before exams, and tossed it into the fire. He stepped back, arms out, relishing the cheers of approval the protesters poured out at him.
“Yeah, you’re home free now, asshole,” said the kid behind the counter. He finished with Tommy’s order and passed the steaming cardboard cup to him. “What’s that shit supposed to accomplish?”
Tommy shrugged. “It’s a symbol. Rage against the dying of the light, that sort of thing. Just human nature.”
“More like rage against getting a job, the stupid hippies.” The kid flipped a rag off his apron string and wiped down the counter where Tommy’s cup had spilled a few drops. “You wanna know what my card says? Burned to death. Bad news, right? Not exactly the finest hand in the deck, right? But I still smoke. ‘cause what’s the point? Way I see it, the way we’re gonna die is the way we’re gonna die. That’s the way it’s always been, motherfucking death machine or no motherfucking death machine.”
Tommy didn’t say anything, just slugged back half the cup of coffee, letting it burn his throat, not caring. Outside, the rain had stopped as the No-Faters tossed another card onto the altar of inevitability.
* * * * *
He dropped the envelope into the mailbox. He’d written it all out, the whole thing, the night before in his motel room. As he watched Mel’s address—her new address—swallowed by the box’s maw, he marveled at how much life could change with the simple rearrangement of a few letters and numbers. She should get it by the end of the week, but she’d already know by then. She would have heard about it on the news, or someone would have told her. He’d be the name on a thousand pundits’ lips before rush hour. Lots of people asking why, but she’d be the only one with the answer. It felt right that way.
As he waited for the crosswalk light to change, he noticed the bar across the street. There was always a bar within walking distance of these places, without fail, or a liquor store. They were like remoras, feeding from the belly of the Death Machine wherever it sprang up. He could see a few of them in there now, heads down, that uniquely blank look on their faces. Some of them had their death cards laid out on the bar, staring as if waiting for the ink to shift, for the universe to hiccup, for destiny to laugh and admit, “Just kidding.” Others laughed and caroused, to all appearances celebrating a promotion at work rather than a glimpse at their own end.
Tommy waited in line, smiled at the girl behind the glass partition, and forked over $11.50 for his ticket. The Death Machines were everywhere now—doctor’s offices, mall kiosks. They were both wholly remarkable and thoroughly mundane. Not this one, though. This one was the first. The first Death Machine ever, entombed in a glass-and-chrome building that was half museum and half theme park. If, thought Tommy, you turned Auschwitz into a theme park.
Tommy ignored the huge plasma screens somberly reciting the history of this holy temple, the narrator’s voice smooth and comforting as the screens displayed the most famous photograph in the world. The first Death Machine, its creators lined up behind it, grinning with the pride of those who know they’ve changed the world. He’d heard the rumors, of course, that the whole thing had been an accident, that they’d been trying to create something else and only stumbled ass-over-teacups backwards into their discovery. Either way, they were all rich as sin now, at least the ones that were still alive. Not so the older man with a smile like Norman Rockwell’s grandpa, who had eaten a shotgun barrel six months after that photo was taken. Tommy wondered if he’d bothered to look at his death card first. Was it the knowing that drove him to that end, or the not knowing? Did it even really matter?
Tommy joined the queue that snaked its way up to the Machine. It was a weekday, so the crowds were light. It only took a minute or so until he reached the front of the line. The Machine’s words greeted him, the same as they always greeted everyone. “Please insert your finger.” It was a sentence that had become the punchline to a thousand jokes and monologues and headlines over the past few years, but Tommy didn’t think any of them were funny. The least they could have done was polish up the death sentence a little. Maybe hire some New York Times bestseller to do a pass, come up with something really snappy, something to bring a smile to your face on the bus ride home.
He winced as the needle pierced his fingertip, sucked at the tiny pearl of blood that peered out. The Machine buzzed, flashed “Thank you,” and spit out the card. He took it and moved aside to let the redheaded woman behind him have her turn. She was young, maybe nineteen, and from the way she was shaking, she’d never done this before. He wasn’t sure whether to envy her that.
He read the card, just one word. Seven letters, no substitutions. So final, and yet, in a way, so freeing. Tommy had never worried about car accidents or plane crashes or cancer. The same word that doomed him had also rendered him, in a way, untouchable. Was he only here because of the word? Would he have had the courage to do what needed to be done if the word was different? He smeared blood across the card, tossed the card into a nearby trash can along with his doubts. He reached in his pocket, felt the shape of the gun, solid and comforting.
The red-haired woman stepped over, her eyes glued to the card, welling up. She was pale as her legs gave out and she lowered herself to the floor. He crouched next to her.
“First time?”
She looked at him, but didn’t seem to see him at first. Then her eyes focused, and she brushed at the tears with the back of her hand.
“Yeah. I guess I wasn’t really ready for it.”
Her other hand white-knuckled the card. Tommy could read part of her word, “Explo–”, the rest eclipsed by her fingers.
“I haven’t met anybody yet who is.” He pulled a tissue out of the pocket without the gun and offered it to her.
“It could be wrong.”
Tommy smiled. “It could be. They say it’s infallible, but it only has to be wrong once, right?”
She smiled back at him, weakly, then looked sick to her stomach. She shook her head. “My mom told me not to get checked. She said it was better not to know. Now there’s no taking it back, you know? It’s like…now nothing else I do matters.”
He stood up, one hand sliding back to his pocket, wrapping around the gun. He offered her his other hand, and she took it, her knees barely finding the strength to stand. For a moment, the curve of her face reminded him of Mel, and he felt his commitment wavering. Did he have the right? But then his eyes turned to the screen above, to the photograph, to the smiling faces. Did he have the right? Did they? They’d killed the whole world. She would die to—just maybe—restore it to life.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Alice.”
His thumb caressed the back of her hand. “Alice, I want you to close your eyes.”
On any other day, she might have been suspicious, but today he was human contact, he was comfort, and that was enough. She closed her eyes.
Tommy pulled the gun from his pocket, locked the hammer back. He thought of his word, and her word, and billions of tiny little soulless goddamn cards around the world, each with their own word.
It only had to be wrong once, he told himself. Just once.
He lifted the gun, aiming at the center of her forehead.
Except…
His stomach wrenched as a terrible realization hit him. He envisioned the hammer falling, the spark, the bullet driven forward by the explosion. By the explosion. The Machine, the damned Machine, would still win by technicality.
He staggered back away from her, and she opened her eyes, confused. She gasped as she saw the gun in his hand. He spun, back toward the front of the line, toward the sound of the Machine vomiting up a new proclamation of doom. It wasn’t too late. He could still beat it. He leveled the gun at the man at the front of the line, trenchcoat and wild hair.
“You!”
He heard screams from the crowd, the squawk of walkie-talkies and the clatter of security guards’ booted feet. He only had seconds. He closed the distance, jammed the gun barrel against the man’s head.
“What does your card say?”
The man’s card lay in the machine’s tray, face down, future unwritten. The man was calm—why was he so calm?
Tommy screamed: “Pick it up and tell me what it says!”
The man smiled at him.
Furious, frantic, Tommy grabbed the card, flipped it over, reeled from déjà vu. The card read: “Suicide.”
The man shrugged. His trenchcoat hit the floor. Tommy saw the wires circling the man’s chest, through the gray claylike bricks, leading up to what looked like a TV remote in the man’s hand. Tommy thought it was odd; it looked just like it always did in the movies.
“No fate,” said the man, an edge of madness in his eyes.
Tommy wanted to laugh. The Machine never said it was his suicide.
The Machine only had to be wrong once.
But not today.
The man pressed the button.