by Yoav Blum
“He’s starting again,” said Emily.
“Aha,” said Guy, rolling his eyes.
“Say what you will, but the great coincidence makers are those who succeeded in creating elegant, fluent coincidences. Coincidences that were works of art, not a collection of causes and effects that ultimately led to . . .”
“So now art is the reason that the ‘how’ is more important than the ‘what’?” Guy asked. He turned to Emily: “What was it the last time?”
“I think he used the thing about ‘variety’ last time,” she responded.
“Oh, right, right. ‘If you don’t want to get up one day and discover that you hate what you do, you should avoid doing the same thing all the time.’ ”
“Something like that.”
“Of course I forgot the hand gestures.”
“It’s okay, you succeeded in communicating the feeling.” “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
They smiled at him.
“You’re pathetic,” Eric said. “And I waste precious energy on you that I could spend on a splendid coincidence that would bring me together with that young woman at the bus stop with the short red hair.”
“Of course. And we’re the pathetic ones,” said Guy.
“Come on, really,” Eric said. “For example, take a look at that coincidence maker Paul what’s-his-name. He worked for three years on an artistic project on the side, where he took The Dark Side of the Moon and synchronized it with The Wizard of Oz. How wonderful it is, how wonderful!”
“But, Eric, no one has ever met your Paul what’s-his-name. That coincidence never really occurred,” Emily said. “It’s only a story they tell in the course, in order to get the students excited.”
“Oh, come on, check the Internet. It happened. A great piece of work. And Paul what’s-his-name planned it all himself. A genius.”
“Breakfast,” said the waitress who burst forth from behind Guy and placed a plate with an omelet, bread and butter, and a small salad in front of him. “I’ll bring the mint lemonade in a moment,” she added.
Guy looked up in surprise. He always ordered the same thing but he didn’t think they’d noticed.
“You know, you really are transparent sometimes,” Emily said, smiling.
He nodded and looked down at his plate. In his mind, Cassandra suddenly laughed in front of him and a memory came to mind. “You? Don’t worry, you’ll never block my view. I can see through you to the end of the world.”
Guy, Emily, and Eric had met for the first time on the first day of the Coincidence Makers Course, three years earlier. Sixteen months of working together under the baton of the General could draw any three people closer, even those with such disparate personalities as theirs. Especially since the entire class was comprised of the three of them.
During those sixteen months, the three studied history and alternative history together, reviewed more than five hundred reports by coincidence makers from the past century, sat together in a car opposite a building for an entire night only to prove or refute Moldani’s Theory of Door Opening Frequency, and quizzed each other again and again on the possible patterns of cause and effect for each of the incidents reported during the latest newscast.
There was something that happened while studying how to quantify the chances that people would take one path of action instead of another. Something that caused the people closest to you to become exceptionally human.
So they called themselves “The Musketeers” (until they stopped because they felt it was idiotic) and enjoyed betting on what tomorrow’s news would be, based on an analysis of today’s news. Occasionally they would pose small challenges to each other. Guy once managed to cause an entire floor to hang laundry on the same day following a wager with Eric. After two months of frustrating attempts, Emily was able to create a situation in which, for half an hour, only buses with numbers divisible by three were at the central bus station. This was after Guy claimed it would take her at least six months just to understand the pattern of bus arrivals, and the complex connections among these buses, and the rest of the transportation system in the city.
Eric succeeded in solving nearly every challenge they posed to him within less than a week. He also incessantly spoke about each such success until they no longer posed challenges to him and let him serve as “judge.”
After the course was over, they continued to meet at least once a week for breakfast. They would tell each other about the latest coincidences they were working on and share small tips.
“So what do you have now?” Guy asked Emily while chewing his omelet.
“I’m still working on my poet,” Emily said. “This character is pretty dense. I thought poets were supposed to be dreamers who hate banality and are thirsty for life, people for whom every moment is meaningful.”
“You’d be surprised how conventionally minded they can be, just like accountants,” Guy said.
“Which is what he is now, right?” Eric asked.
“Yes.” Emily shrugged. “I’m trying to lead him to a situation in which he discovers his need to write, and I’m not succeeding. He is the materialistic type—well, you know. He thinks we all are machines of genes with evolutionary mechanisms, blah blah blah. No inspiration or idealism.”
“Did you try to arrange some extraordinary scenery or something like that?” Guy asked. “Something that would stimulate his excitement glands?”
“The guy lives in a three-room apartment in the city.” Emily sighed. “He leaves every morning at seven thirty for work, eats lunch alone, returns home, goes for an hour-l ong walk in the streets near his building, watches television until eleven, and reads nonfiction until going to sleep. He maintains contact with his few friends via laconic emails or telephone conversations of no longer than three minutes. He doesn’t travel, has no hobbies, doesn’t go to the beach or the theater or whatever. He even eats the same thing for dinner every day. How am I supposed to generate a change in consciousness in such a person? How am I supposed to make him discover his destiny when he lives life in such an automatic way?”
“Sounds like a tough character,” Eric said.
“I’m not sure he’s even capable of thinking in terms of ‘destiny,’ ” Emily said sadly. “I always get the most difficult coincidences.”
“How much time do you have left?” Guy asked.
“A month. I already tried to arrange chance encounters with pretty and melancholy girls. I tried to have him find a poetry book in the stairway. I even tried to arrange for a famous poet to get stuck with a flat tire right in front of his building and approach him to ask for help. The guy doesn’t get the hint. It’s as if he has no internal inclination for poetry.”
“It’s because he’s so busy,” Eric said.
“What do you mean?”
“He has other things on his mind. Numbers and facts when he’s at work, and idiotic television content when he’s at home.”
“So?”
“So, fire him.”
“What?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You know I don’t like solutions like that,” Emily said.
“You’re supposed to perform the job, not like it. Arrange for them to fire him, and for him to be without television for a week due to a technical malfunction. If, after a week of staring at the walls, he doesn’t try to take a pen in hand and write a poem, then there really is no chance.”
“This whole idea of ruining people’s lives in order to advance them never sat well with me,” Emily said. “The most I can do is make someone miss his dentist appointment. I don’t have the heart to get him fired.”
“You mean you don’t have the courage,” Guy said. “But Eric is right. The way it looks now, at the end of your month you’ll have to report a failed attempt at coincidence making, and your guy will continue to live a life that fifty years from now he’ll realize was wasted. And that, believe me, is much more painful than being fired.”
“But
. . .”
“At worst, you’ll find him another job later, if you’re really a softy,” Eric said.
“And if you have time,” Guy added.
Emily stared gloomily at the half-empty plate in front of her. “Ooh, I hate when things don’t go smoothly.”
“So you hate most of what happens in the world,” said Eric, turning to look toward the street. “By the way,” he added, “that reminds me of a coincidence I heard of about six months ago.”
“Also a poet?”
“No, a car mechanic,” Eric said.
“Did you know my first one was a composer?” Guy asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Eric said. “I’m talking. Quiet. Focus here, please. We’re not discussing artistic inclinations at the moment. The man was sixty-five years old and worked as a car mechanic. A widower with one daughter. In his great wisdom, he had decided to cut off contact with her because she married the wrong guy, in his opinion. He lived in a studio apartment above the garage, which he didn’t even own. Now, go and plan a coincidence that will make this type of person—who has been working for thirty-eight years at the same place, who is accustomed to spending his time grumbling about the unfair world and pitying himself for how they stole his life or his daughter or whatever, who spends his evenings drinking and his mornings dozing—renew a connection with his daughter. And make this happen—and I’m quoting the mission description—‘by means of an active move he initiates and not as a result of a chance meeting with the daughter.’ ”
“What did they do?”
“If what they told me was correct, they tried nearly everything, going exactly by the book. Strangers said sentences within his earshot that were supposed to arouse longings in him; the radio at the mechanic’s shop broke down and only played melancholy programs with sobbing mothers telling heart-wrenching stories about lost children; someone brought a car with a trunk full of children’s books. Nothing.”
“And in the end they got him fired?” Emily asked.
“Nooo,” Eric said. “The coincidence maker was an old-fashioned type. He reached the conclusion that there was no chance that any normal change in this person’s life would lead him to reassess his life. Not even getting fired. He would simply find another garage to distract himself from his loneliness or sit at home and do nothing.”
“So what did he do?” Guy asked.
Eric took a sip of his juice and said: “Cancer.”
“Cancer!” Emily asked in astonishment. “Didn’t he go a bit too far?”
“Perhaps,” Eric said, “but these are the facts: the man got cancer and underwent nearly a year and a half of treatments. After a stage of depression and a stage of anger and a stage of crazy pain, he started to talk to the people around him and ask them about their dreams. He developed an obsession about the fulfillment of people’s dreams, and what drove people to live. He started to write a journal and began to realize how foolish he had been. And one day, before being informed that he was healthy, the man saw a seventeen-year-old girl arrive at the hospital as a volunteer; her face reminded him of his daughter. It was the granddaughter, of course. And then, one day after they informed him that he was healthy, he did two things: he got into the car and drove to his daughter’s house, and he proposed marriage to the nurse who had treated him.”
“Wow,” Guy said.
“Definitely,” Eric said. “Not that it changed anything. The coincidence maker was reprimanded for excessive use of force, and because the time assigned for the mission was two months, they even defined the mission as a failure at first.”
“And after he drove to her home?”
“The status of the mission was changed, but the reprimand wasn’t erased from the record. As punishment, he had to arrange another coincidence that would cause this jerk with cancer to publish his life story. The belief was that similar methods would be unnecessary in the future, since similar clients could read the book instead of living through such a harrowing experience. An idiotic assumption, if you ask me.”
Emily and Guy sat up in their chairs. “Quite a story,” Guy said.
“Yes,” Emily said, “if we ignore the fact that it’s fiction.”
“Hey, don’t be insulting,” Eric said.
“It is forbidden for CMs to cause long-term illnesses, permanent injuries, or clinical death in missions that are not part of an historic process at rank five and have received approval on Form fifty-seven,” Emily cited.
“How do you remember all these things, huh?” Eric asked.
“What you told us is impossible,” Emily said.
“It’s possible that he received a reprimand.” Eric shrugged his shoulders.
“Like I said, it’s impossible,” Emily said. “It would be one thing if you said that he had an accident or something, but to cause someone to get cancer? How? How does one even do such a thing? Technically, we can’t do that at our rank. We don’t work at the cellular level.”
“Perhaps I erred a bit, or exaggerated a little. Perhaps he just arranged an error in the test results that made him think he had cancer for a certain period of time, and actually he didn’t have anything,” Eric said.
“Exaggerated?” Guy asked.
“Perhaps,” Eric said.
Guy and Emily looked at him. They had a standard look for these moments.
“What?” he asked and added, “In any case, it seems to me that what you need to do is get him fired.”
“I’ll think about it,” Emily said.
Guy leaned back in his chair. “And what coincidence are you working on now?” he asked Eric.
“I have two,” Eric said. “One of them I received two days ago. I’m supposed to somehow cause some loser to get a job within three weeks. It’s quite annoying. I’m forbidden to use government agencies, I can’t cause layoffs, and it has to be work that makes him get out of the house every day. It’s the type of mission that makes you feel that the guys upstairs are just trying to annoy you. Perhaps they’re making a wager at our expense.”
“And what’s the second mission?” Emily asked.
“Didn’t we speak two minutes ago about that young woman with the short red hair?” Eric smiled.
Emily and Guy shook their heads in disbelief.
“You are a nutcase,” Guy said.
“Perhaps,” said Eric, “but it’s quite fun.”
The waitress returned to their table and served Guy the mint lemonade. “I’m sorry about the wait,” she said and placed another small plate in front of them. She turned to Emily: “These brownies are for you.” Emily’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“I didn’t order brownies.”
“I know,” the waitress said, jerking her chin to the side. “It’s from the guy in the corner there.”
They turned around. A slightly embarrassed young man, who had expected only one pair of eyes, nodded his head shyly.
“And this too,” the waitress said, placing a small, folded piece of paper next to the plate.
Emily stared at the note.
“He’s quite cute,” the waitress said.
“Yes, Emily,” Eric said and nodded with a thin smile, “really cute.”
“Thank you,” Emily said to the waitress before turning a furious gaze on her companions.
“Okay,” she muttered angrily, “which of you two is responsible for this?”
They instinctively raised their hands in innocence.
“Why do you think it was us?” Guy asked.
“False accusations are not good for the complexion,” Eric said.
“Listen,” Emily said, “I know that one of you arranged a coincidence to have that guy send me brownies. I just know it.”
“Is it so hard for you to believe that someone is trying to flirt with you?” Eric asked.
“With brownies?”
“Why not? They’re delicious, aren’t they?” Guy asked.
Emily got up and took the plate in her hand. “Okay, I’ll settle this.”
“Come on, give him a chance,” Eric said.
Emily didn’t reply and rapidly walked away from them.
“Did you arrange this?” Guy asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
They were silent for a few seconds and Eric sighed. “Oh well, it’s a shame. The guy looks nice.”
“Yes.”
“My score is correct, right? This is the tenth guy she’s rejected since we completed the course?”
“At least of those we know about,” said Guy.
“Well, maybe it’s because she’s in love with someone else?”
Guy stared at his plate. “Shut up.”
“I’m just saying that—”
“I know what you’re saying. Just shut up.”
Eric was still smiling his little smile when Emily returned and sat down. “So,” she said to Guy, “what’s your next mission?”
“It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen,” she said a few minutes later.
They passed the page Guy had received in the morning envelope from hand to hand.
“ ‘Do you mind, perhaps, if I kick you in the head,’ ” Eric said. “That’s definitely a refreshing mission description.”
“I don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean,” Guy said.
“You’re sure it was an envelope? That is, a standard one? One of ours?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” Guy answered.
“Do you mind, perhaps, if I kick you in the head?” Eric said, emphasizing the question with his hands.
“That is, where’s the mission description? Where are the restrictions?” Guy asked. “Since when do I receive a riddle as a mission?”
“Do you mind, perhaps, if I kick you in the head?” Eric said. “No, that still doesn’t sound right.”
“It seems to me that there was a mistake here,” said Guy.
“I seriously doubt they make mistakes of this type,” said Emily.
“DYM PIIKYITH” said Eric.
“What?” Guy asked.
“These are the first letters of the words in the sentence,” Eric said. “It doesn’t mean anything to you, right?”