The Lear Library

This was a piece I wrote for a short story contest with a very specific brief… which I will post before the body of the story. It was rushed, as I found out about the contest only a little while before the contest submission deadline.

__________________________

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words “DROWNED” or “CANCER” or “OLD AGE” or “CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN”. It let people know how they were going to die.

The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. “OLD AGE”, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by an bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does.

The realization that we could now know how we were going to die had changed the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. There’s no reason not to go skydiving if you know your sliver of paper says “BURIED ALIVE”. The realization that these predictions seemed to revel in turnabout and surprise put a damper on things. It made the predictions more sinister — yes, if you were going to be buried alive you weren’t going to be electrocuted in the bathtub, but what if in skydiving you landed in a gravel pit? What if you were buried alive not in dirt but in something else? And would being caught in a collapsing building count as being buried alive? For every possibility the machine closed, it seemed to open several more, with varying degrees of plausibility.

By that time, of course, the machine had been reverse engineered and duplicated, its internal workings being rather simple to construct, given our example. And yes, we found out that its predictions weren’t as straightforward as they seemed upon initial discovery at about the same time as everyone else did. We tested it before announcing it to the world, but testing took time — too much, since we had to wait for people to die. After four years had gone by and three people died as the machine predicted, we shipped it out the door. There were now machines in every doctor’s office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the same no matter what machine you went to. They were, at least, consistent.

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words “DROWNED” or “CANCER” or “OLD AGE” or “CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN”. It let people know how they were going to die.

The problem with the machine is that nobody really knew how it worked, which wouldn’t actually have been that much of a problem if the machine worked as well as we wished it would. But the machine was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. “OLD AGE”, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by an bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death — you can know how it’s going to happen, but you’ll still be surprised when it does.

The realization that we could now know how we were going to die had changed the world: people became at once less fearful and more afraid. There’s no reason not to go skydiving if you know your sliver of paper says “BURIED ALIVE”. The realization that these predictions seemed to revel in turnabout and surprise put a damper on things. It made the predictions more sinister — yes, if you were going to be buried alive you weren’t going to be electrocuted in the bathtub, but what if in skydiving you landed in a gravel pit? What if you were buried alive not in dirt but in something else? And would being caught in a collapsing building count as being buried alive? For every possibility the machine closed, it seemed to open several more, with varying degrees of plausibility.

By that time, of course, the machine had been reverse engineered and duplicated, its internal workings being rather simple to construct, given our example. And yes, we found out that its predictions weren’t as straightforward as they seemed upon initial discovery at about the same time as everyone else did. We tested it before announcing it to the world, but testing took time — too much, since we had to wait for people to die. After four years had gone by and three people died as the machine predicted, we shipped it out the door. There were now machines in every doctor’s office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the same no matter what machine you went to. They were, at least, consistent.
_____

Trauma

Since the advent of the Death Machine, there are some things that have changed irrevocably. Urban legends, for one thing. While many still remain the lurid, spurious nonsense that they’ve ever been, a new sub-sect has arisen. Now, along with Ouija boards and ghost stories there are the legends of specifying more on predictions. Divining from the source, elaborating on the nondescript pieces of paper that predict fate so flawlessly.
One such legend is based off the old “Bloody Mary” staple. Stand in front of a mirror, with your prediction held tightly in your sweaty palms, and read off the text three times. It’s said that you’ll see the exact specifics of your death play out in the mirror. Stare into the mirror, and know your death for what it is. Not that it’ll help you avoid your fate, of course. Everyone knows the Machine is infallible.
Still, this was the reason why young Darren Walker was sneaking past his parents’ room in the early hours of the morning. His bare feet made little sound on the thick, soft carpet of the landing as he began to move down the stairs of the modest house, creeping to the rows of coats next to the door and sliding his hand into the inside pocket of his father’s work jacket. He withdrew his father’s wallet, opening it. From inside the leather article, he took a small, rather nondescript slip of paper with the word “Stress” written on it. Then, because he was sixteen, he took a twenty-pound note as well before replacing the wallet and creeping back to his bedroom. He secreted his prizes inside his own wallet, and then slipped back into bed.

Several hours later and the small hours of the night had turned into the beginnings of a dull Friday morning. Outside the modest, slightly weather-beaten house rain was falling over the river Mersey. Liverpool’s skyline was made diffuse by a fine rain. Not the refreshing, clean rains of the countryside but the kind of rain that crawls into clothes and makes a person feel grimy and uncomfortable. Rain that can only be found in cities, making grey and soot-stained buildings look all the more unappealing
Entirely unaware that he’d recently been the victim of familial larceny, David Walker was walking along the street-side, glaring at a group of commuters waiting for the bus into the city centre.
He was glaring balefully at one woman in particular. She was rotund, and bundled up in a voluminous Macintosh of a riotous pink that stood out in surprising contrast from the muted colours of the dismal city. Her hair looked ratty and unkempt, but that could be attributed to the rain. Despite her surroundings she seemed to be obnoxiously good cheer, leafing through a tabloid magazine. Most likely named in one word like “Flash” or “Blast” or “Sputum.”
On the front cover of the magazine was the legend “CELEBRITY DEATH PREDICTIONS,” and David couldn’t help but let out a grunt of disgust before huddling up in his jacket and crossing the road, jogging across the road in front of grid-locked cars and to the entrance to the police station.
He let out a long sigh and shivered, throwing droplets of grey water from his shoulders before pulling off his coat and throwing it on a nearby chair before approaching the desk.
“Alright, Sadie.” He breathed slowly, giving the woman behind the reception desk a grimace. He pushed his hand through his damp-darkened hair, making it spike and spray a fine mist of moisture into the air. Sadie, for her part, grinned broadly. Apparently, she was impervious to the grey dullness outside the station.
“‘Ey, Davie.” She beamed, spinning the sign-in book to face him. “You ‘eard on the news? ‘Ad another jumper today. I think the Stats boys ‘ave already ‘ad a look at ‘im.”
It should be noted that, while David Walker’s Liverpudlian accent was quite broad, the receptionists was thick enough to support the ceilings if necessary. Some of her consonants could only be reproduced correctly while holding a handful of gravel at the back of the throat.
David sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right, right… I’ll go down and see them.” He scrawled his name in the sign-in book, then picked up his coat and headed into the police station. Sadie’s cackled words followed him;
“Careful, Davie! Them lot’ll be the death of you!”

The boy Walker jogged through the city streets. It was approaching ten o’clock, well after time in which he should be sitting in school. Instead, he was indulging in a different sort of education.
Three blocks down and two left turns later, he found himself in front of a wooden door, greyed and faded by the dismal weather over the years. He knocked surreptitiously at the door, shuffling his feet and ducking his head. In a curiously similar manner to his father, he brushed his hand over his hair. Although in his case it was closer to head-stubble, razored down to the thinnest dark covering of fuzz. It lent him a rather thuggish air and, coupled with the furtive manner, made him look like he was up to no good at all.
Which, of course, he wasn’t.
Eventually, the door opened slightly and an eye was applied to the gap. After a second of blatant staring, Darren gave an annoyed grunt and kicked the bottom of the door.
“C’mon, you muppet, stop screwin’ around.” He complained, his teenage voice a pitch higher than he meant to sound due to nerves and annoyance. The door crept open, revealing the staring youth. Darren gave the young man a look of disgust. “I should’ve known it’d be you, Jez,” he muttered, pressing forward and effectively muscling Jez out of the doorway.
“Did you get it, Daz?” Jez shouted after him, closing the door tightly behind the pair.
In truth, Darren hadn’t procured the item asked of him. When he’d been told by his mother and father that he was now of an age to get his own death prediction he refused out of fear. Now, once again out of fear, he avoided looking like a scared little boy by lying, and producing a surrogate prediction.
He pulled the small sliver of paper from his jacket, waving it in the air like a standard.

David Warner found himself in the basement stacks of the police station, heading towards Statistics.
While paperwork had always been necessary in the policing “business,” the Predictive Statistics arm of the police force was the one that generated the most paperwork since it was conceived. Almost twice as much as any other department in the Metropolitan Police since being set up had been generated, and this was all down to one particular incident.
It had been an April morning when one Mark Samson had his death predicted from his local death machine. The prediction had been an anomaly, stating quite baldly; The jealousy of Alan Cribb. Samson took it badly, as he’d recently found that the same man had been having an affair with his wife. He sought out Mr. Cribb, and found the man in his house, cleaning a recently purchased handgun; its serial number filed from the stock. Samson reacted badly, and attempted to assault Cribb, during which the adulterer strangled Samson to death. Cribb was arrested after the body was found, and convicted for murder.
Since then, the Predictive Statistics department had been set up to try and measure the accuracy and degree of literality to each new prediction in its area. This was an unholy and insurmountable task, and so the department was slowly side-lined after only six months of use, working only on a skeletal staff of raw recruits on low wages.
Save the department head: Marcus Daley. He and David had used to work together when they were younger, until Marcus volunteered for a desk job. His death prediction had read Trauma, and so he decided to escape from a life where being hit on the head or shot at was a regular occurrence.
This was entirely unnecessary, it would turn out. If he had the gift of foresight, he would find that he was destined not to die from a gruesome injury. In fact he would live until he was seventy-three, and wake up to find his devoted wife, lying cold in their bed. This sudden discovery would cause such a violent surge of emotion that he would, quite a short time later, die himself after his heart gives out.
It is likely that he would find such an end quite a blessing.

“Dave!” Marcus grinned, ebullient despite the surrounding basement office. It had no windows, and smelled of damp, stale sweat and old paper. Charts and tables filled one wall, and every work-surface was piled high with mismatched reports and photographs. “Been a while since you’ve been down here, my lad. You come about today’s latest?”
David nodded, giving Marcus a genuine, rarely seen smile. He’d always enjoyed the man’s company. It was a shame that the older man had developed his prediction-based fear of getting into trouble. More often than not, he refused David’s invitation to go for drinks after work, in case someone tried to start a fight. “What’ve you got, Marc?” The older policeman’s eyes flashed with anticipation and he turned back to his desk. He fished around in the draws, scoured the surface and even looked under the keyboard until he noticed a dog-eared page crumpled beneath his chair.
“Ah, here we are.” He moved back, retrieving the paper and brandishing it for David to read. “Looks like your standard jump. The guy was in a lot of debt, and he had a kid to support on his own.” Marcus paused briefly, inwardly cursing himself and glancing over at David. He appeared to be looking intently at the report. Standard blanking tactics, he knew, so he pressed on. “His slip said, ah…”
“Hubris.” David read from the report.
“Ah, yes. That was the one.” Marcus grinned, and then gestured to one of the charts on the wall behind him. “Quite a tricky one, that. Could fall anywhere, really.”
The chart was filled with small scraps of paper, each one a death prediction, pinned into overlapping circles. One marked out in green string, one in red, and one in yellow. Apparently someone had thought themselves quite clever, because there was a small flag sticking out of the centre of the overlapping area with “you are here” emblazoned on it. Marcus glanced at the flag, then back at David; expecting something. David merely sighed in response.
“Any of them could fall anywhere, Marc. That’s why this place is in such a bastard mess.”
“Oi,” Marcus responded, a little petulantly. “This place is heaps better since I started heading the place up.”
“That should be telling in itself,” was the blunt reply, but a teasing smirk followed a short moment after. Marcus relented, waving the paper again and resuming his earlier exuberance.
“But listen;” he picked up from his desk a thick book, dog-eared from much use. Running his finger down one side of the page, he grinned at David as he found his place. “Hubris: from the Greek hybris, wanton violence or outrage. Originally meaning ‘presumption towards the gods.” He crowed and slammed the book shut, narrowly avoiding trapping his fingers.
“I think this is another note from the Lenton killer.”
David sighed and rolled his eyes. “This again?”

The “Lenton Killer theory” was named after its first proponent, Detective Inspector Warren Lenton.
He put forward the idea that a criminal may be able to disguise his murderous attacks on the populous by falsifying and planting misleading death predictions at the scene of the crime. The prediction would have to be analysed and investigated carefully, as it was common knowledge that the predictions were accurate but misleading. In that period of confusion, the killer could conceivably make his retreat from the area, or further occlude the evidence pointing to himself.
Warren Lenton was pressured into early retirement shortly after that, when a standard psychology test suggested that he was suffering from paranoid delusions.

“It raises some valid points.” Marcus said, in the tone of level reasonableness that’s usually used by people supporting entirely wild claims.
“No, it doesn’t.” David shot the response down. “The idea was put forth by a madman, and there is no evidence at all to support it.”
“There’s no evidence against…” Marcus began, but was interrupted by the telephone at his desk ringing. He scooped up the receiver and talked to the person on the end of the line for a short time before frowning and passing the receiver over to David.
“It’s Sadie. She’s got your boys teacher on the line. Apparently, he didn’t show up for school.”

“Come on, man!” One of the youths pressured, clapping in a slow rhythm that slowly picked up speed and momentum, the other young thugs joining in. Darren was surrounded by a ring of young men, urging him on to step up to a basin set against the bathroom wall of the run-down property. Swallowing, he moved forward and placed the death prediction of his father in the sink. Gripping the sides of the basin with both hands until his knuckles turned white, he took a deep breath.
“Stress.” He said quietly, as the group around him quietened. His voice was a little tremulous, but he straightened his back and feigned bravado. “Stress,” he said again, his voice sounding stronger even though his hands gripped tighter still against the sink.
“Stress.”

For a long time he stared into the mirror, as if trying to see a sudden image. Perhaps something reflected in his eye, or the barest shadow moving in the background.
“Well?” urged Jez. “Do you see anything?”
But all that Darren saw was himself.